In the movie The Thirteenth Warrior, a modern retelling of the Beowulf, exist all the components of an important Archetypal myth that retells itself. It is the myth of the alphabet people and the murder of the sacred mother. Leonard Shlain illustrates in the book The Alphabet and the Goddess, that a change of culture began with the advent of the written alphabet. Female predominance or matriarchal rule may have existed in all pre-literature cultures. The era of male dominance, a hemispherically-left way of thinking emerged when ancient cultures made the move to alphabet-based culture over previous pictographic scripts and oral heritages. Symbolically, this change was mythologized by having male warrior characters allegorically destroy, enslave or dominate a symbolic representative of the sacred feminine. The most common sacred female symbolic archetypes were the cow, the pig, the snake, the bull, the sea serpent, and the bear. The tasks of slaying which Hercules went about may also be similar mythological events.
The movie The Thirteenth Warrior written by Michael Crichton implies a complete understanding of this specific type of allegory. Other examples of this myth are; Perseus and Medusa, Theseus and the Minotaur, and Apollo and python.
An early scene in the movie is shows the Muslim main character Ahmad ibn Fadlan learning the Norse language, representing his transition into the male hemisphere. Thereafter, Ahmad becomes the “13th” warrior in the tribe of men who would go out and destroy a threat to their whole society, a cave dwelling tribe of Matriarchal cannibals; the Wendol.
Excerpt Wikipedia: Their numbers dwindling and their position all but indefensible, an ancient wisewoman of the village tells them to track the Wendol to their lair and destroy their leaders, the "Mother of the Wendol" and the war leader who wears "the horns of power". Buliwyf and the remaining warriors infiltrate the Wendol cave-complex and kill the Mother, but Buliwyf is poisoned by her.
The mother figure of the Norse tribe betrays her own sex, entering into the modern mode herself, telling her tribe to go kill the mother of the Wendol. The mother bear and the horn of power are both feminine symbols. The hive-like mentality of the Wendol also hints at pre-literate organizational modes of society. When the Mother bear poisons the warriors the myth cycle is complete. This poison wound is none other than an Amfortas wound, popularized by Joseph Campbell.
The Grail myth as explained by Joseph Campbell, is the reversal of this plight, the redemption of the sacred feminine and the resulting sacred marriage of masculine and feminine. The 13th Warrior, as the mythological reversal of the grail castle story, explains what the Amfortas wound is and how it was obtained.
The Grail Myth was advocated by Joseph Campbell as a highly important myth with modern significance. To pass information through time, the medium is as relevant as the message. An aphorism of warfare is best displayed on sword or shield. An aphorism of peace, to contain its truest intention, is best past from teacher to student verbally. Upon complete understanding of the concept, the message can be passed on though a new parable of the master’s choice. This is the mythopoetic way of passing down a right-brain concept through the generations. A prayer rug or mandala contains a wordless concept which is released through meditation on its iconic form. In the same way, myth carries its own deeper meaning in between the words, in the metalanguage of the concept itself. The written word can take the reader out of the mode of perception in which these deeper perceptions emerge. Poetry is the written form of right brain dialogue. The marriage of the two forms exists though an equal respect for masculine dialogue and the feminine, surreal, or mythopoetic discourse. The grail myth directs the observer to a feminine, or right brain version of this same concept. This is an extremely common myth form of which examples exist in Greek, Nordic, Jewish, Roman, etc, thought. The synopsis of this myth is that of a masculine society destroying symbolically the feminine principle. The reversal of this myth is found in the original The Wicker Man movie in which a feminine society destroys symbolically the male principle. The purest form of this myth implies that neither societal form is perfect unto itself; that either would be a deviation from center. Placing too much dominance on either principle would create its own Amfortas wound, which in turn can be healed by the sacred marriage.
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