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The Power of Myth

9 min read

Author: Joseph Campbell

notes

1. Myth and the Modern World

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

  • Our inner lives are equally as important as our outer lives
    • There, we have tasks, too (2)
    • “All of life is a meditation, most of it unintentional” (19)
  • Stories and mythology are a map of the soul
    • “They are the world’s dreams” (19)
    • We don’t have comparable literature to take the place of mythology
    • “we tell stories to try to come to terms with the world, to harmonize our lives with reality” (2)
    • “what human beings have in common is revealed in myths” (4)
    • Wisdom of life (11)
    • Myths have timeless themes across culture (13)
    • Create “fixed stars” and “known horizons” (16)
  • A life of perfection is a life with no love
    • “It is the imperfections of life that are lovable” (3)
    • “The umbilical point, the humanity, the thing that makes you human and not supernatural and immortal—that’s what’s lovable” (4)
    • Suffering is imperfection
  • Existence is meaning in itself (5)
  • Modern society lacks rituals (9)
    • Marriage is a spiritual exercise, but its meaning has been degraded over time (8)
      • It is a union of two into one
      • {Isn’t marriage primarily a social construct?}
    • America has no ethos, or an unstated mythology, so it relies heavily on law
  • America’s founding principles
    • God of Reason
      • Democracy: everyone is capable of reason, and thus, knowledge of God, or the truth of the universe
      • Reason differs from thinking—reason is piercing through the veil of the material world to reach clarity and touch our inner nature
    • Symbolism of the Great Seal
      • Mythological imagery and symbolism
    • We lost our way when we took sides in WWI
  • Functions of myth
    • Mystical: the wonder of the universe
    • Cosmological
    • Sociological: ethical, now many myths are outdated due to how fast society evolves and globalization occurs
      • “A god is a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe—the powers of your own body and of nature.” (28)
    • Pedagogical: how to live, how to be
  • Harmony with nature vs. domination over it
    • Machines and technology
      • “Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart” — core message of Star Wars (24)
      • Religion is like software, which has its own set of signals, but all of them work
      • “MOYERS: Machines help us to fulfill the idea that we want the world to be made in our image, and we want it to be what we think it ought to be. CAMPBELL: Yes. But then there comes a time when the machine begins to dictate you.” (24)
    • Destroying nature destroys the song of humanity
    • Christian notion of Eden and The Fall
      • We are masters of the world
      • Opposing ideas of being put onto this Earth from elsewhere (i.e. God’s hands) and being created from it
  • We need a mythology and philosophy of the planet
    • {Is the rising popularity of sci-fi dystopia related?}
    • {Reminds me of Hadestown (reimagining old myths to fit our new world) and Cowboy Bebop (space-themed speculative fiction with existential motifs)}
    • {Media is so individual now, people so fragmented—would achieving a collective mythology even be possible?}

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself — Chief Seattle

2. The Journey Inward

CAMPBELL: … There is a wonderful story of the deity, of the Self that said, “I am.” As soon as it said “I am,” it was afraid.

MOYERS: Why?

CAMPBELL: It was an entity now, in time.

  • Myths come from within
  • A dream is a private myth; a myth is a public dream
    • If one’s dreams do not align with mythos of society, then they have an adventure in a dark forest ahead of them
      • Exploring the unknown in the unconscious is the work of a hero
  • Types of dreams
  • Duality comes from unity
  • Religion is metaphorical
    • Interpreting metaphors as facts leads to trouble and conflict
    • “These images are outward, but their reflection is inward” (68)
    • “Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.” (68)
    • “The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet” — Novalis (69)
  • The map is not the territory
    • Symbolic fields do not directly reflect reality
    • Functionary: someone who studies to serve the community, e.g. priests
    • Someone who has experience: e.g. shaman, monks
      • These people can understand each other across religions, but the clergy cannot
        • “There has to be an experience to catch the message, some clue—otherwise you’re not hearing what is being said” (73)
  • Thinking in images
    • “There is more reality in an image than in a word” (74)
  • Orders of myths
    • Folk idea: having to do with society
    • Elementary idea: a trail back to yourself
  • Life is trouble
    • “Only death is no trouble” (80)
    • What is good for one is evil for another
    • Loss is inevitable within temporality
    • Life is not meaningless
      • Accept everything as is
      • Choice to participate, to do our best
    • Life lives on other life
  • Judgment
    • Field of action (situation)
    • Metaphysical observer (thing)
  • Transcendence
    • Beyond
      • The field of nature
      • Space and time
      • Categories of thinking
        • Being and non-being
      • Duality
      • Language
    • The ultimate thing, which is no thing
      • “We enclose it as we try to think of it” (75)
      • “It both is and is not; neither is, nor is not” — Buddha (76)
      • e.g. Shattering the Pride of Indra
    • It cannot be conveyed directly, only through metaphors, archetypes, and allegories
    • The purpose of creation myths is to experience the transcendent
    • “The field of time is a kind of shadow play over a timeless ground” (64)
    • “He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.” (65)
      • {Similar to don’t know mind in zen Buddhism and the premise that 道 the Dao can only be experienced indirectly through 德 (De)}
  • Eternity
    • Eternity is beyond thought, time, and space
    • “The source of temporal life is eternity. Eternity pours itself into the world.” (57)
    • The “experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life” (85)

3. The First Storytellers

Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience—this is the mythological experience.

  • Myths harmonize the mind and body
    • Reconciling with death
      • Burials and survival beyond death
    • Killing becomes a ritual act
      • Reverence for hunted animals
        • Seen as equals, sometimes superiors
      • {Direct ties to nature are lost in modern society, in most cases there are too many degrees of separation}
      • Soothes guilt and fright
  • Subjugation
    • Indigenous people saw life as “thou”
    • Once life becomes "it", attitudes change
      • War in news
      • Marriage
      • Children
  • Beauty and intentionality
    • “And with respect to the problem of beauty—is this beauty intended? Or is it something that is the natural expression of a beautiful spirit? … To what degree was the intention of the art what we would call ‘aesthetic’ or to what degree expressive? And to what degree is the art something that they had simply learned to do that way? … How much of the beauty of our own lives is about the beauty of being alive? How much of it is conscious and intentional?” (100)
  • Ritual and rites
    • “A temple is a landscape of the soul” (101)
    • Different dimension where people are changed through rites
    • Movies, the modern equivalent?
      • “Yes, but what is unfortunate for us is that a lot of the people who write these stories do not have the sense of their responsibility. These stories are making and breaking lives. But the movies are made simply to make money. The kind of responsibility that goes into a priesthood with a ritual is not there.” (103)
    • Reduction in ritual in modern times
      • “The history of Western culture has been the steadily widening separation of the self from society. ‘I’ first, the individual first” (105)
      • {No more courage to face the unknown due to increasing sense of control over our environment}
  • Artists keep myth alive
    • Ideas and poetry of traditional culture do not come out of folk, but elite experiences
      • “the experience of people particularly gifted, whose ears are open to the song of the universe” (107)
      • {Opp. Barthes’s The Death of the Author}
    • Shamans
    • Ecstasy
  • God is a sphere “whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere”
    • {All dharmas are buddhadharmas}

thoughts

  • Campbell’s ideas are very cool, but the way he talks about certain topics gives me the impression that he has a more conservative worldview
  • He has a tendency to romanticize and glamorize ancient societies while only highlighting the bad of the present
    • Is he projecting a desire, or is this grounded in research? How does he know whether people before felt more rapture?
    • This makes me slightly skeptical, but I do agree that society and attention to humanity is degenerating
  • I need to watch Star Wars

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