Perhaps you've heard of German musician Richard Wagner.  He's most famous for two things.  One, his "Ring" cycle opera (the most well known part of which is probably "Gotterdammerung" ("The End or the Twilight of the Gods").  Two, the influence that his music exercised, and not in a positive way, on Adolf Hitler.

     Wagner's "Ring" is a very long opera.  Only those who really like it are wiling to sit through its seventeen hour length.  The plot is involved and complicated.  And rich with Norse mythology.  It's a singularly powerful work.

    In thinking about the "Ring" as I read a study of it recently, I was reminded that, at its core, the "Ring" is about the point of life.  It says this, however, in a deliberately exasperating way.  As this study put, the "Ring" argues that although love is beautiful, it is worth nothing.

    In other words, although we should love and treasure love and life, we should also know that when they end, everything else does, too.  It's not difficult to see how this thought undergirded Naziism:  if there's no afterlife, there's no meaning.  Therefore, as British occultist Aleister Crowley once observed, whatever is met:  do whatever you wish.  You're going to die anyway.

    For some, this is simply accepting the brave futility of existence.  For others, however, if mythology is to mean anything, anything at all, existence must have a deeper underpinning.  Otherwise, why even dream of it?