Submerged City and Ark: Contrasting Meanings of Flood Symbolism in Celtic and Middle Eastern Myth and Their Implications for Contemporary Self-Understanding

Walter L. Brenneman, Jr. (USA)

Abstract

The compelling power of catastrophes and the mythic meanings attributed to them provide models for cultural formation, shaping attitudes about the cosmos. This paper focuses on the mythic meanings associated with flood events in Middle Eastern and Western European contexts, as well as the implications of their meanings for the cultural psyche of Western humankind. In order to emphasize the psycho-symbolic level, a discussion of Celtic myths that reveal a response to flood events is also included.

While the Black Sea flood is thought to have had an influence on Middle Eastern mythologization, the Celtic flood mythologem has been overlooked and its importance ignored.

Because of the alien nature of Noahetic flood themes to the native Celtic populations of Europe, a tension was generated between the Middle Eastern mythemes and those of the Celts. This tension is iconified in images of the ark and the submerged city, images whose tension and present separation from one another reflect the psychic disequilibrium of contemporary Western culture. In order to lay bare this tension and its influence on Western culture, it is necessary to examine the various symbolic components that constitute the flood mythologems, then to reconstitute them into their respective myths to see how they energize the tension between the ark and the submerged city. We then can search for symbols of resolution.