POLITICAL MYTH AS A PHENOMENON: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND ALWAYS
The article is devoted a study of the mythological part of world outlook as a factor of forming a person’s and group’s attitude in the political sphere. Myth is considered as the basic component of traditional thinking and an actual component of individual and collective consciousness in the modern period of social development. Features of the religious type of world outlook, which isspecifically combined with features of political consciousness, are analyzed. Secular principles are interpreted as elite and noncompetitive in relation to mythology of the political sphere. The main characteristics of a political myth as a kind of a social one are singled out. A study of political mythology as the archaic component of mentality, exerting influence on its other components, is performed. Ideas of power, as well as the ruler and the pyramid of power relations, which are central ones for the system of political mythology, are considered. The ruler’s image combines functions of a cosmocrat, the demiurge and a divinator within the boundaries of cosmic and social space. General and local features of mythological world outlook of traditional and modernized political consciousness are considered. Political aspects of mythological systems on the basis of narratives of traditional cultures are analyzed. Religious and secular principles are determined as factors of forming of the alternative models of political consciousness which partially reproduce features of traditional political mythology.