Joseph Campbell and mythology
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I’ve embarked on a brief study of mythology, starting with the work of Joseph Campbell. YouTube directed me to this very influential TV interview series titled “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth” from the late nineteen eighties, which I’ve so far found very engaging as a kind of taster session of the breadth and depth of the subject.
Maybe it would be interesting because Buddhism too is a kind of mythology. The Buddha’s enlightenment is the most well known of the enlightenment stories, but the Hindu Upanishads also reference the idea. I’ve heard it said that just to hear of the possibility of enlightenment is to put your feet on the path of the seeker.
In a way the Buddha’s enlightenment story is a classic rendition of the hero’s journey, where the Buddha sat under the Bodhi tree and meditated and was tempted, and eventually returned with the gift of enlightenment to share with the world.
Comments
‘It’s a secondary organ’ 🤯
‘ Break the dragon’ …..Amen to that!
Not compelled by desire or fear. …..The Buddha can’t tell me how to do it.
Long live the mavericks, hahaha
‘The only myth worth thinking about is……’
I enjoyed watching it…Thanks for posting
This is only the first episode of six, the whole series is on YouTube, freely available. I haven’t watched them all yet, this morning I was having a little conversation with the Bing chatbot about comparative mythology and Joseph Campbell, but the whole series is very worth watching. Enjoy!
You should find a copy of "Hero With A Thousand Faces"
I did, it’s available online as a pdf here…
http://www.rosenfels.org/Joseph Campbell - The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Commemorative Edition (2004).pdf
I’m still watching the interviews before I proceed to the book, but I find the whole area of comparative mythology and the ur-myths a fascinating area. There seem to be a whole series of these kind of thematic myths which recur in many cultures, from creation myths to heroic myths to flood myths to goddess myths.
Fascinating piece in the “Love and the Goddess” episode of the docu series about the early Goddess worshipping cultures, and how the Hebrew religions more or less wiped out that worship of a feminine goddess. The idea of the goddess being everything because she gives birth from her body, and everything is her child, just awesome, and an unavoidably true myth. Really deeply interesting.
Then the rise of warrior gods coming in with the nomadic cultures, and the slow rise of patriarchy through for example the Greeks with Zeus, where the chief god stil joins with the female, unlike later Christian theology where Jesus has a mother in the background but no wife.
I may have to watch this series of interviews a second time…
That depends on who you read. The group that wrote "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" (inspired the Da Vinci Code) asserted that Jesus was, in fact, married, and presents a rather convincing argument - coming short of actual proof.
You should and definitely find that copy of "Hero With A Thousand Faces". Also watch the original 3, Star Wars films. George Lucas was a friend and student of Campbell's, and it shows in those movies - mainly surrounding Luke Skywalker. Classic Hero.
Yes, my mother had that book on her bookshelf back in the day when she was still interested in her Christian upbringing. Which she chose not to pass on to me.
I find it interesting that people find a kind of security in the patterns of society around them. I came across a video of a young African woman in the Netherlands undergoing transcultural therapy, and she said in her village in Africa she had a range of elders, whom she knew had her back in difficult situations. It seemed like a classic case.
Security, in many forms, is what societies and other cultural components (clans, tribes, etc) are for.
You may have heard the term "ostracize". To be ostracized, in more elementary cultures than ours, is literally a death sentence. If you were ostracized, you died, bing cut off from your group. One of the reasons we have the social ills we have is we've departed from those kinds of things.
To be sure, being cast out was a death sentence in hunter-gatherer society. But then we are going back a very long way, agriculture has been around for nearly ten thousand years. I don’t think social ills only have to do with a lack of social control, they have to do with a lack of support and too much trauma.
In many indigenous villages children are brought up not only by their parents but by the whole village, and when a crisis develops between a child and its parents there are other voices that intercede, the child may go to live a while with someone else and so on. In that way a child becomes a child of the group.