Audio books-- Joseph Campbell

When we are on road trips, we often take audio books with us. Some are simply for pleasure. Others about subjects in which we have a particular interest. On the last trip we made over to Montana and Eastern Oregon, we took Man and Myth-- lectures by Joseph Campbell.


Joseph Campbell was a lecturer fascinated by cultures and mythology with an ability to link up stories with larger truths. His work has influenced a lot of writers and film makers because he understood not only the mythologies but their value to us. I had first read his books many years back as a way to understand deeper themes in writing, the kinds of things that make books into something more than pleasure while also adding to our understanding of life and ourselves.

Campbell wrote many many books and they are much encouraged for those who want to write. An example is his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, where he lays out the adventure of the hero, which is, after all, the basis of all good fiction and lasting mythologies.  There is the call to adventure, the departure into the adventure with the first threshold; then the initiation which requires a set of trials and finally the return which is the satisfactory ending where hopefully the reader as well as the adventurer has learned something valuable.

Campbell believed that with our modern religiosity (and remember he was writing and speaking of all this some years back as he died in 1987) demanding that Biblical stories must be taken historically and factually, can lead you to throw out the whole story without considering the symbolic importance. In short the demand for historicity can cause the loss of why the story was there.

Religious mythologies have broader themes which apply to our life cycles and experiences. This was his take on many stories such as those of Jesus with the virgin birth and the resurrected king, myths that are in many cultures. Now why would that be? Possibly because they offer wisdom for us today.

I decided rather than just write about the fact that I take notes when listening to such audios, I'd share examples (a bit chaotic though they might seem) from these five discs-- Man and Myth, Mythic Living, Society and Symbol, The Necessity of Rites, and Personal Myths. These notes are a flavor, a teaser, not the essence.

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from my notes:
The function of mythology is to give images for roles we play. They form the basis through ritual of transcending self and ego to play the necessary human role we all must. James Joyce is the ideal example as he turned his mind to unknown art.

Symbols of religion are binding when they are not interpreted as symbols but instead taken as facts. In short the symbols can become negative and limiting instead of how they were intended which is to be enriching our understanding.

Jung explored what it means to live with a myth or without and then sought to find his own myth. He decided he could find his own myth by going back in time to when he was a child and asking-- what did I love to do? Jung found for himself that was building with stones which he then did in building his own structures.  

Mazlo's theories on the values for which people live like survival, security, prestige, self development, they all disappear when there is a big mythological dream. The jump from what seems prosaic or ordinary to the mythological dream can be called a mystical moment.

Yeats's vision was of two orders of masks. We are born animal, without definition; then comes the model the mask that life puts on the baby-- Primary Mask. We  go through life and take on new masks in series.

We can see the cycles of our lives in the moon's with its 28-day cycle. It begins in darkness. With growing light comes growing consciousness.  By the eighth night, light begins to dominate awakening of own possibilities. There is then a struggle with light versus darkness for which has most weight. The primary mask appears to be the darkness. The emergence of the individual is the light.  Some societies block this emergence and will wipe out people who teach or speak of such. 

An open society encourages what Campbell referred to as the antithetical mask, the ability to see the complexities of life, the opposing aspects to all of living, the encouragement of whole leading to fulfillment. Some societies oppose this which gives them control but also limits creativity and an ability to move beyond boxes.

Still using moon cycles as the example, it, with the full moon where light dominates, represents by the fifteenth night, the achievement of fulfillment at what is about our thirty-fifth year.

With the moon, what comes next is increasing darkness with the twenty-second night. In humans, this means you have done your deed. Now what should happen then is actually no less important than the growing of light was as the shadow gains power. You are now moving from solar to lunar world.

Concern of youth is to bring vehicle to fulfillment so that it can be best carrier of consciousness then shift from vehicle to identifying with consciousness. The body can go. Dante illustrates this with his Divine Comedy.

To many people, mythology is other people’s religion. Look instead at your own religion as a mythology. Religion is misunderstood mythology.  It is misunderstanding symbols which refer to spiritual symbols as though they refer to facts. If you throw away the symbols because they are not facts, you lose something. All basic mythological symbols refer from all mankind from primary imagination and big dream system not facts. But they use imagery of human life to do this. Images of myth come from the psyche and are reflected through the world through projection. We see this in dream motifs.

Difference between mystic and lunatic is the lunatic has fallen into water where it cannot swim while the mystic swims there with delight-- and can leave when he/she chooses.

Mythological shows you your own face. Art hosts mirror up to nature.

Disengage then from the world. Experience the imagery to engage in society’s work and then disengage. 

Orient-Occident example: Isis seated on throne with two students in painting with Hermes at her right, the author of many mystical writings of first century. At her left hand is Moses. Both have learned from Isis.

All imagery that came to Europe, the same symbols were found in Hermetic writings. Spiritual references all come together in symbolisms. Facts or psychological spiritual realization. Facts will bind and limit you.

Cultivating the antithetical mask (in other words being able to deal with opposing conflicting views that collide) conflicted with the Christian tradition. 

 An example: marriage was a social arrangement that became sacramentalized as though it was a spiritual arrangement. Love became a danger. Rome authoritarian mask. Amore the antithetical mask.

On love—the eyes are scouts of the heart. They go forth to find an image which they can recommend to the heart. If it is a gentle heart, not moved by lust, love will be awakened. Amore is the awakening, the symbol of awakening.

When Arthur, with his Round Table, sent his knights out the search for the Holy Grail, it was part of a Round Table tradition of having an adventure before the meal. The knights then went out to find the Holy Grail as a quest, but they didn't go in a group. They went individually. They went where it was darkest and with no path. If you went by someone else's path, it would be their way, not yours. The antithetical mask is your own path.

From James Joyce the greatest novelist—theory of aesthetics. Proper and improper art. Proper art that is serving a function that is proper to art. Improper serves some other service. Improper art is kinetic. Arouses desire or loathing. Art exciting desire Joyce terms pornography (not our meaning of pornographic). Didactic inspires loathing. And what you should not like. Novels in the service of sociology are didactic.

Symbols of mythology are of the spirit reflected through matter. Leading to the enchantment of the heart. A rhythmical quality of organization that echoes something that awakens beyond the mere pain or reference. It is a vehicle to mystery of the human organism.

Pity and terror are tragic emotions. Comic emotions are joy. Pity the emotion that arrests the mind. Before whatever cannot be changed and ignites it with the human suffering. Terror is before whatever and ignites it with the secret cause. Secret cause is what is grave and constant. Mortality is first possibility. Shadow of moon lives within it.

Static means you cannot go out an reform. Desire and loathing and fear.

Art is affirmative. The object and brings out the radiance.

The word kills. It is the job of the intellectual to see and name. Seeing deviations. Describe the faults. Perfections are not loveable. If you live in the world, you have to accept the faults. Humanity. Sends accurate word with love-- Ironic

We project what the person must be not what they are.

Artist must say yea to life to all of it. Where he says nay, he’s lost his humanity.

A symbol is an energy releasing image.

Are symbols imprinted or inherent?

Adult pattern of responsibility—Initiation rites enter this Ancestral images. First great crisis. Old age diminishing of powers, losing capacity. Images and symbols are there to help the individual cross over