Joseph Campbell (1) (1904–1987)

Make no mistake, the Masks of God series by Joseph Campbell is something fierce.

The level of scholarship and devotion to the whole subject of mythology blows me away. Where the first book devoted itself to ancient mythos, the kind we can only infer from lacking sources, this Oriental Mythology tackles time-periods closer to home if not always particularly close.

The exceptions to this are Taoism and Buddhism. Both of these are treated in the perfect storytelling-way that the rest are treated. show more (And no worries, Christianity will get its day with equal time.)

This is Campbell, after all.

What we get here is Babylonian, Egyptian, Buddhist, Taoist, and a smattering of some others.

Did I enjoy the collective treatment and the positioning that showed us, in grand glory, how traditions and stories carry on from one culture to another? Hell, yeah. Did I appreciate the insight and the perspicacity of the author in laying it out in such an obvious and clear-as-day manner?

What do you think?

Yeah. I'm a fanboy. For good reason. Campbell has reshaped our society in more ways than one. Our whole way of looking at things has changed thanks to him. And no matter what your persuasion, a God Fearing Christian or any other faith, a clear eye is better than none.

I can and will thank the man for this. :)

Never go blindly. show less

Ever since Bill Moyers’s TV series, “Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth,” aired in the 1980s, I have been a fan of Joseph Campbell. I have completely read some of his books and perused many others. The Joseph Campbell Foundation began in 1991, just a few years after Campbell’s death. One of its goals is to keep Campbell’s works in print. This volume, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, is a collection that David Kudler created from the Campbell archive, show more building out many of the chapters from Campbell’s public lectures. Because I have re-watched “The Power of Myth” so many times, I can hear Campbell’s voice with his particular emphases and inflections as I read these previously oral documents.

Kudler cultivated a set of works that focus more on the “hows” and “how-tos” than most of Campbell’s published works. For example, he explains “Today, we don’t have the stasis that is required for the formation of a mythic tradition. The rolling stone gathers no moss. Myth is moss So now you’ve got to do it yourself, ad lib” (xxiii), and “You can get some clues from earlier traditions. But they have to be taken as clues. As many a wise man has said, ‘You can’t wear another person’s hat’” (xxiv).

Campbell takes his audiences through the major persons and ideas in both Eastern and Western philosophy and psychology, aligning Freud’s big concepts with those of Jung and those of the Eastern traditions, including kuṇḍalinī yoga.

Most of these lectures were given in the 1960s and 1970s. They have some moments that were very much “of their time.” One that stood out to me is Campbell’s dismissal of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. He posits that people should focus less on “survival, security, personal relationships, prestige [and] self-development” (89) in order to follow their bliss and a more spiritual existence. There’s a flippancy in this, whether intended or not, of a privileged white man who brushes over the idea that people can’t “follow their bliss,” if they are hungry, cold, and have no place to live.

Nevertheless, Campbell says many smart things about how Western religions (particularly, not exclusively) do not adapt well with the passage of time: “one of the great calamities of contemporary life is that the religions we inherited have insisted on the concrete historicity of their symbols” (88). I enjoyed coming back to Campbell’s slow and methodical style of teaching after many years of not reading his works. I especially identified with this statement: “Alan Watts once asked me what spiritual practice I followed. I told him, ‘I underline books’” (138). show less

There are now years of hesitation in getting into Campbell's longer works; somehow I just end up exploring a page here and there, at times chapters, go back watching his audiovisual conversations and then spend my days and nights thinking about his ideas. It is like someone being unable to strike a balance between one's excitement and one's fear in his first bungee diving, or for that matter first glacier hike, railway or air journey.

In all these years of ideological wooing, he remains one show more of my favorite thinkers. He oscillates between Freud and Jung, takes sparingly from them, moves ahead of them, goes back and forth at times, never assertively formulaic like Freud, never too abstract in his individualism like Jung.

Sometimes I do remind myself that I haven't read any of his longer works from cover to cover! I think part of the reason is my personal approach to reading where culmination of a reading project necessarily means a break, a kind of emotional closure of sorts, a disconnect while assimilating the fragments of memories, not memories of ideas but memories of reading experience. I don't want closure with Campbell. He is like Jung in this aspect; you should bank on him if you get past that sexagenarian barrier; I want to keep wooing him till he prepares me for death, the final dream, or metadream of sorts.

These conversations are similar attempts at ideological wooing; they would prepare you to undertake some amazing journeys into the life of mind with him; and no preparation is enough if you really want to connect with the inner meaning of Campbell's philosophies of myth. show less

Resolvi passar pela íntegra de um livro que, hoje em dia, é mais conhecido como fornecedor de regras de roteiro do que uma análise freudiana universalista da importância da mitologia para o estabelecimento de um senso saudável de pertencimento coletivo humano. Um pouco como o manual de roteiro "Poética", do Aristótolo, mas tal como na leitura real do último, há mais do que simplesmente a lista das etapas do herói e uma lista de histórias agrupadas pela sua similaridade. Primeiro, show more porque fica patente a grande quantidade de soluções e desvios a partir do esquema, que por vezes parece excessivamente geral ou amplo. Depois, a insistência de Campbell no papel arquetípico significa um olhar para os estágios pós-mitológicos (religiosos e de secularização) que busca alertar para o fato de que, se os mitos refletem os povos, eles apontam para o comum do humano e não para a elaboração de facções ou o desencantamento meramente individualista. show less