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The Masks of God #1
Primitive Mythology
The primitive roots of the mythology of the world are examined in the light of the most recent discoveries in archaeology, anthropology, and psychology.
A monument of learning, wonder, and wisdom, daringly conceived and brilliantly written by a man who is at home in the Eastern and Western universe of spirit...In temporal span and spatial scope and in relevance to the needs of its own day, it is unexampled. - Henry A. Murray, Harvard University
Cover design by Neil Stuart. Cover illustration: CAve drawing from Lascaux.
A monument of learning, wonder, and wisdom, daringly conceived and brilliantly written by a man who is at home in the Eastern and Western universe of spirit...In temporal span and spatial scope and in relevance to the needs of its own day, it is unexampled. - Henry A. Murray, Harvard University
Cover design by Neil Stuart. Cover illustration: CAve drawing from Lascaux.
504 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1959
449 people are currently reading
10986 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Campbell
426 books6,186 followersJoseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles.
Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.
After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.
Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.
Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.
After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.
Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.
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July 17, 2020
Updated: July 2020 (Inclusive for all four volumes of the series)
The Masks of God is Joseph Campbell's principle work, and it represents the core model of his entire approach to comparative religions and mythology. The term "mythology" is imprecise and carries a lot of baggage, but in Campbell's usage it refers to any creative, symbolic, expressive art or act that deals at its core with man's central domain of concern, such as the structure and destiny of the cosmos, the origin of humanity, or the nature of mortality. This broad category includes not only material traditionally considered mythology such as the Greek myths, but everything from the cave art of Chauvet to the paintings of Chagall; from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Finnegans Wake.
Those who primarily know Campbell from his popular Bill Moyers The Power of Myth interviews may be surprised to learn that Campbell is a prodigious scholar of extremely uncommon erudition. He belongs to a school of grand scholarship that is very much out of favor these days, which favors ever-narrowing specialization, but the art of generalization and comparison is itself a precise specialization with its own unique requirements, and it is very difficult to do well.
In Campbell's account, mythology functions by directly rendering images that have a fundamental and biologically-motivated innate capacity to arouse our interest and energy. The basic component of a myth is a symbol, which the psychologist Carl Jung differentiates from a sign in that a sign stands for something else, while a symbol stands for itself.
In this sense, Campbell would often reference the Zen story of the flower sermon in his lectures, in which Buddha said nothing, but held up a single flower. All of his disciples were silent, and bewildered, but Mahakashyapa alone smiled. He was the only one who got it - there is nothing to get. You don't "understand" a flower, you enjoy it.
Similarly, you do not "understand" symbols, you experience them and their energy works upon the psyche in an excitatory and directional fashion. They speak for themselves.
Nevertheless, there is a lot that can be said about them, and that is the purpose of the massive journey that Joseph Campbell leads us on in this series, in which he traces out the history of human expression of mythological systems from its earliest origins in the distant Paleolithic and through to its latest articulations in the works of his favorite contemporaries, such as Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and Robinson Jeffers.
The art of comparative analysis of mythology as Campbell employs it is the art of illuminating the historical conditions under which various mythological forms took shape in various historical moments. This sheds light on the symbols themselves by illustrating their manifold and successive manifestation, ever different, ever the same; and it provides us with the occasion to more deeply understand the various historical moments by gaining insight into how various symbols were interpreted and valued by them at different times.
For example, in the first volume of this work, Campbell explores the goddess-based religions of the Aurignacian and Magdalenian eras, and how it evolved with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic into two distinct variants: religious forms associated with hunting cultures, and those associated with planting cultures. The hunting cultures generally express their core religious insight in introspective, individual shamanic visionary experiences, while in planting cultures, the key figure is the priest, and the orientation of the spiritual imagery organizes around images of the great cycle of death and rebirth that mimics the seasons of planting and the harvest.
It is uncanny to find just how pervasive some of these patterns are across time and space. There is, for example, a typical rivalry between the shaman as a powerful but unreliable magical expert and the established priestcraft who regard shamans as outside of the sanctified order. I've seen examples of this in societies as far-flung as Central Asia, Sumer, and the pueblo cultures of the American southwest.
What accounts for the reoccurrence of certain basic patterns and motifs across time and space? Campbell recognizes two mechanisms by which this occurs. The first is diffusion, in which the historical transmission of various forms may be traced, as when we trace the hero-god with the thunder weapon from Europe (Thor) through India (Indra) to Japan (Fudomyo). We can similarly trace the madonna from Catal Huyok in Neolithic Turkey through Isis and Horus in Egypt and down to Mary and the Christ child in the European middle ages, and note their considerable iconographic consistency. The image is passed along from person to person, and is assimilated by each culture into its local repertoire of images and ideas.
The second mechanism is Carl Jung's collective unconscious, which does not refer to any kind of transcendental, mystical force, but instead is simply a term for the shared collection of images that are innate in the consciousness of all humans, and appear to be part of the deep structure of cognition, perhaps analogous to the hypothetical deep grammar posited by Chomsky.
Anyone who has undertaken a serious comparative study of mythological symbols must admit the existence of such structures, for the images that speak to us in dreams and in art have a remarkable consistency the world over, to a degree that may not be explained by diffusion. The ubiquitous occurrence of the savior-hero who dies and is born again, or the child who is born not of the flesh but of the spirit, or the trickster, or the great flood, or the wise old helper who arms the hero with special tools and knowledge at the beginning of his quest - wherever people have gone, there these symbols have been known.
In the second volume of the series, Campbell focuses on the evolution of mythology with the birth of the cities in the Levant, and in its uniquely Asian forms east of Persia. The third volume traces Occidental mythology through the late classical period. The fourth volume locates the origin of the modern European spiritual and psychological paradigm in the romances of the High Middle Ages, especially those of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Straßburg, and traces its development through the Renaissance and down to the period of Modernism.
It has become increasingly clear to me as I've gone along that the basic matrix of Campbell's thought-world is taken over largely from 19th century German scholarship, which he has tried to bring into the present, and to refine in dialog with the latest discoveries of archaeology and science. His core sense of the power of mythology ultimately centers of its capacity to bring humans into dialog with the transcendental ground of their being, which Campbell variously affirms in language largely drawn from Vedanta, Buddhism, and post-Kantian idealism. Like the 19th century Romantics, Campbell interprets traditional depictions of the Absolute drawn from religious literature as metaphors for one's relationship with one's own unknown depths, or one's relationship with the transcendent basis of all their is, or both.
Masks of God is not an encyclopedic or historical survey of mythology and religion - I would recommend that readers looking for something along those lines consider Mircea Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas, which is more conventional in its structure and its goals. Campbell is doing something altogether deeper - he takes the reader on a tour of the history of the deepest creative possibilities available to the human condition, and provides a guide for how to understand and value their symbols. This series, and Campbell's work, have fundamentally influenced the way I encounter art, literature, and religion, and how I see the world.
I'll let Campbell have the final word in this arresting quote from Primitive Mythology:
"Clearly mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible forms of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations. There is a real danger, therefore, in the incongruity of focus that has brought the latest findings of technological research into the foreground of modern life, joining the world a single community, while leaving the anthropological and psychological discoveries from which a commensurable moral system might have been developed in the learned publications where they first appeared. For surely it is folly to preach to children who will be riding rockets to the moon a morality and cosmology based on concepts of the Good Society and of man's place in nature that were coined before the harnessing of the horse! And the world is now too small, and men's stake in sanity too great, for any of those old games of Chosen Folk (whether of Jehovah, Allah, Wotan, Manu, or the Devil) by which tribesmen were sustained against their enemies in the days when the serpent still could talk."
The Masks of God is Joseph Campbell's principle work, and it represents the core model of his entire approach to comparative religions and mythology. The term "mythology" is imprecise and carries a lot of baggage, but in Campbell's usage it refers to any creative, symbolic, expressive art or act that deals at its core with man's central domain of concern, such as the structure and destiny of the cosmos, the origin of humanity, or the nature of mortality. This broad category includes not only material traditionally considered mythology such as the Greek myths, but everything from the cave art of Chauvet to the paintings of Chagall; from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Finnegans Wake.
Those who primarily know Campbell from his popular Bill Moyers The Power of Myth interviews may be surprised to learn that Campbell is a prodigious scholar of extremely uncommon erudition. He belongs to a school of grand scholarship that is very much out of favor these days, which favors ever-narrowing specialization, but the art of generalization and comparison is itself a precise specialization with its own unique requirements, and it is very difficult to do well.
In Campbell's account, mythology functions by directly rendering images that have a fundamental and biologically-motivated innate capacity to arouse our interest and energy. The basic component of a myth is a symbol, which the psychologist Carl Jung differentiates from a sign in that a sign stands for something else, while a symbol stands for itself.
In this sense, Campbell would often reference the Zen story of the flower sermon in his lectures, in which Buddha said nothing, but held up a single flower. All of his disciples were silent, and bewildered, but Mahakashyapa alone smiled. He was the only one who got it - there is nothing to get. You don't "understand" a flower, you enjoy it.
Similarly, you do not "understand" symbols, you experience them and their energy works upon the psyche in an excitatory and directional fashion. They speak for themselves.
Nevertheless, there is a lot that can be said about them, and that is the purpose of the massive journey that Joseph Campbell leads us on in this series, in which he traces out the history of human expression of mythological systems from its earliest origins in the distant Paleolithic and through to its latest articulations in the works of his favorite contemporaries, such as Thomas Mann, James Joyce, and Robinson Jeffers.
The art of comparative analysis of mythology as Campbell employs it is the art of illuminating the historical conditions under which various mythological forms took shape in various historical moments. This sheds light on the symbols themselves by illustrating their manifold and successive manifestation, ever different, ever the same; and it provides us with the occasion to more deeply understand the various historical moments by gaining insight into how various symbols were interpreted and valued by them at different times.
For example, in the first volume of this work, Campbell explores the goddess-based religions of the Aurignacian and Magdalenian eras, and how it evolved with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic into two distinct variants: religious forms associated with hunting cultures, and those associated with planting cultures. The hunting cultures generally express their core religious insight in introspective, individual shamanic visionary experiences, while in planting cultures, the key figure is the priest, and the orientation of the spiritual imagery organizes around images of the great cycle of death and rebirth that mimics the seasons of planting and the harvest.
It is uncanny to find just how pervasive some of these patterns are across time and space. There is, for example, a typical rivalry between the shaman as a powerful but unreliable magical expert and the established priestcraft who regard shamans as outside of the sanctified order. I've seen examples of this in societies as far-flung as Central Asia, Sumer, and the pueblo cultures of the American southwest.
What accounts for the reoccurrence of certain basic patterns and motifs across time and space? Campbell recognizes two mechanisms by which this occurs. The first is diffusion, in which the historical transmission of various forms may be traced, as when we trace the hero-god with the thunder weapon from Europe (Thor) through India (Indra) to Japan (Fudomyo). We can similarly trace the madonna from Catal Huyok in Neolithic Turkey through Isis and Horus in Egypt and down to Mary and the Christ child in the European middle ages, and note their considerable iconographic consistency. The image is passed along from person to person, and is assimilated by each culture into its local repertoire of images and ideas.
The second mechanism is Carl Jung's collective unconscious, which does not refer to any kind of transcendental, mystical force, but instead is simply a term for the shared collection of images that are innate in the consciousness of all humans, and appear to be part of the deep structure of cognition, perhaps analogous to the hypothetical deep grammar posited by Chomsky.
Anyone who has undertaken a serious comparative study of mythological symbols must admit the existence of such structures, for the images that speak to us in dreams and in art have a remarkable consistency the world over, to a degree that may not be explained by diffusion. The ubiquitous occurrence of the savior-hero who dies and is born again, or the child who is born not of the flesh but of the spirit, or the trickster, or the great flood, or the wise old helper who arms the hero with special tools and knowledge at the beginning of his quest - wherever people have gone, there these symbols have been known.
In the second volume of the series, Campbell focuses on the evolution of mythology with the birth of the cities in the Levant, and in its uniquely Asian forms east of Persia. The third volume traces Occidental mythology through the late classical period. The fourth volume locates the origin of the modern European spiritual and psychological paradigm in the romances of the High Middle Ages, especially those of Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Straßburg, and traces its development through the Renaissance and down to the period of Modernism.
It has become increasingly clear to me as I've gone along that the basic matrix of Campbell's thought-world is taken over largely from 19th century German scholarship, which he has tried to bring into the present, and to refine in dialog with the latest discoveries of archaeology and science. His core sense of the power of mythology ultimately centers of its capacity to bring humans into dialog with the transcendental ground of their being, which Campbell variously affirms in language largely drawn from Vedanta, Buddhism, and post-Kantian idealism. Like the 19th century Romantics, Campbell interprets traditional depictions of the Absolute drawn from religious literature as metaphors for one's relationship with one's own unknown depths, or one's relationship with the transcendent basis of all their is, or both.
Masks of God is not an encyclopedic or historical survey of mythology and religion - I would recommend that readers looking for something along those lines consider Mircea Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas, which is more conventional in its structure and its goals. Campbell is doing something altogether deeper - he takes the reader on a tour of the history of the deepest creative possibilities available to the human condition, and provides a guide for how to understand and value their symbols. This series, and Campbell's work, have fundamentally influenced the way I encounter art, literature, and religion, and how I see the world.
I'll let Campbell have the final word in this arresting quote from Primitive Mythology:
"Clearly mythology is no toy for children. Nor is it a matter of archaic, merely scholarly concern, of no moment to modern men of action. For its symbols (whether in the tangible forms of images or in the abstract form of ideas) touch and release the deepest centers of motivation, moving literate and illiterate alike, moving mobs, moving civilizations. There is a real danger, therefore, in the incongruity of focus that has brought the latest findings of technological research into the foreground of modern life, joining the world a single community, while leaving the anthropological and psychological discoveries from which a commensurable moral system might have been developed in the learned publications where they first appeared. For surely it is folly to preach to children who will be riding rockets to the moon a morality and cosmology based on concepts of the Good Society and of man's place in nature that were coined before the harnessing of the horse! And the world is now too small, and men's stake in sanity too great, for any of those old games of Chosen Folk (whether of Jehovah, Allah, Wotan, Manu, or the Devil) by which tribesmen were sustained against their enemies in the days when the serpent still could talk."
August 26, 2010
This was one of the best books on mythology I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I only say it is "one of the" because I've started reading some others of Campbell's that are just as awesome. I've been a fan of mythology for as long as I can remember but this was the first time I was able to read a book by someone who shares my enthusiasm with the topic. I was enthralled by his re-tellings and his explanations. I was going to read all three of Masks of God Volumes but I decided to hold off on the next two till I can fully digest how powerfully Primitive Mythology hit me. It was profound. It was one of the most enjoyable academic book experiences I've ever had!! It also has had my mind firing off in new directions. I've been seeing movies and literature in a new way. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who loves reading. It will open up new ways to look at contemporary literature and movies--making it even more enjoyable than it normally is. His ideas on the evolution and origin of myths make perfect sense and add a layer to all story telling that I wasn't previously aware existed!!
March 5, 2019
What a delight! I've had my eyes on these four doorstoppers of mythology every since I read Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. And like that other classic, Campbell mixes an enthusiastic and encyclopedic knowledge of everything from Australian Aborigines to Sumerian to African to Egyptian belief systems in an attempt to find all the core recurring concepts in the same way that Frasier did in The Golden Bough, only MORE SO.
This is beyond impressive. Even if we criticize some of the conclusions he comes up with, no one can dispute the research or first-hand scholarship or the breadth of his knowledge.
I think he's something of a god. He breaks down whole systems of thought into inclusive theories that are truly universal. His influence on sooooo many artists from Lucas to Gaiman is undisputed. Of course, that's far from all. You might say that his way of thinking has permeated rational inclusive scholarship across the world. By the time this particular book came out in 1959, his clarity of thought and writing and speaking brought in a golden age of open-mindedness.
What do I mean? I mean he's the one who came up with the idea "Follow your Bliss." Vast passages in this text are devoted to the sanctity of play. It's even a valid argument that most societies work on the principle that we fake it till we make it. Act as if until it becomes real. There's no difference between putting on a mask you know very well was created by your neighbor and dance around with the perfect assumption that you're now the incarnation of a god and getting on stage at Eurovision and singing your heart out to adoring fans who invest you with the power of their worship. The only difference is scale.
There is no way I can do this book justice like this. There is such a wealth of mythologies between the covers of this book that I can't think of any other single book that covers as much. It's also extremely readable. But expect a long, long quest. The other three books are much larger. :)
Side note: I am required to remain skeptical about some of the conclusions for one rather big reason: they're addictive. I love them so much that I'm tempted to swallow it all whole. Few theories are this powerful. Or enjoyable.
After all, Inanna is Isis is Aphrodite is Mary mother of Jesus, after all. We can place this at this man's feet. :)
This is beyond impressive. Even if we criticize some of the conclusions he comes up with, no one can dispute the research or first-hand scholarship or the breadth of his knowledge.
I think he's something of a god. He breaks down whole systems of thought into inclusive theories that are truly universal. His influence on sooooo many artists from Lucas to Gaiman is undisputed. Of course, that's far from all. You might say that his way of thinking has permeated rational inclusive scholarship across the world. By the time this particular book came out in 1959, his clarity of thought and writing and speaking brought in a golden age of open-mindedness.
What do I mean? I mean he's the one who came up with the idea "Follow your Bliss." Vast passages in this text are devoted to the sanctity of play. It's even a valid argument that most societies work on the principle that we fake it till we make it. Act as if until it becomes real. There's no difference between putting on a mask you know very well was created by your neighbor and dance around with the perfect assumption that you're now the incarnation of a god and getting on stage at Eurovision and singing your heart out to adoring fans who invest you with the power of their worship. The only difference is scale.
There is no way I can do this book justice like this. There is such a wealth of mythologies between the covers of this book that I can't think of any other single book that covers as much. It's also extremely readable. But expect a long, long quest. The other three books are much larger. :)
Side note: I am required to remain skeptical about some of the conclusions for one rather big reason: they're addictive. I love them so much that I'm tempted to swallow it all whole. Few theories are this powerful. Or enjoyable.
After all, Inanna is Isis is Aphrodite is Mary mother of Jesus, after all. We can place this at this man's feet. :)
March 17, 2024
”…човешкото съзнание е същинска митогенна зона - създател и рушител, роб, но и господар на всички богове.”
Кембъл борави с вселенски категории от най-различен порядък в своето изследване на мита. Рядко се среща, и затова е толкова просвещаващ и силен, интердисциплинарният подход към дадена тема. В повечето случаи изследователите се съсредоточват само върху своето парченце от пъзела. Кембъл не само работи с целия пъзел, но го нарежда и пренарежда в различни комбинации, и дори да останата празни полета, а при тази тема и времеви период винаги остават - въпросите са толкова важни, колкото и евентуалните им отговори.
Митологията (по Кембъл и Юнг) е ключ. А човекът и човечеството са ключалката, която се отключва. Унаследените архетипи и психични стихии са зад ключалката - универсални, неосъзнати, несъзнаваеми, безбрежни и изпепеляващи. Митът и ритуалът, адаптирани според конкретната географска среда, историческа епоха и местни обществени специфики се завърта в ключалката, за да отвори врата към трансформацията на индивида във верен член на общността и да го преведе през различните етапи на зрялост (раждане - детство - младост - зрялост - старост - смърт и всичко, което ги съпътства). Ключът на митологията не е универсален, част от останалото зад вратата никога не намира ключ, или го намира в други епохи и събития, а отключеното е винаги изкривено и пречупено през избраната форма на обществено устройство, развитие и световъзприятие. Поради което вариациите са много, част от тях - дълбоко отвратителни.
Интересна е идеята на Кембъл, че ловните общества наблягат на смъртта на животното като дар към човека, на силата на мъжа-ловец и на агресията, поради което формират патриархални и често женомразки митологични и обредни системи. А земеделците, от друга страна, наблягат на раждането и възраждането на растението, на “меката” сила на жените и поради това там култовете към богинята-майка са избраният “ключ”.
Подходите към мита са много и често минават през дисциплини като антропология, история, археология, психология. Всеки един клон на знанието допълва останалите, а всички заедно творят един голям разказ за човечеството, както правят и митовете, които издържат на всички изпитания на времето и само менят формата и ритуалите си. Кембъл се е подготвил да приложи всяка една от достъпните му “лупи”, доколкото може, за да разгледа от множество ъгли различните “ключове”.
За мен без отговор остава въпросът дали развитието на човека и неговият митичен разказ за самия него и за вселената започва от една точка, или се развива паралелно в много точки, може би е някаква комбинация от двете. Също така интердисциплинарността и епичният замах на Кембъл при сравнението на различните митове през времето и пространството, особено за толкова отдалечена точка във времето, на моменти ми изглежда като чиста спекулация, а някои асоциации изобщо не ме убедиха в тезата на Кембъл за обща основа и съпоставимост, или поне конкретните случаи ми изглеждаха избирателно изкривени през предпочитанията и предразсъдъците на самия Кембъл. Но прочитът е епичен, пътешествието е завладяващо и такова е нужно във всяка епоха. През 21 век със сигурност има какво да се добави по темата, дано се намери и изследователят.
П.П. Комплименти за професионалното издание от страна на “Елементи”!
———
▶️ Цитати:
🎭“Като мислене митовете се доближават, или са първобитна прелюдия към науката; като изживяване те са точно изкуство.”
🎭“…на всеки мит или обред бихме могли да гледаме като указание за онова, което е може би трайно или всеобщо в човешката природа (в който случай слагаме ударението върху психичното или може би дори метафизичното), или като функция на местната сцена, панорамата, историята или социологията на въпросната общност (в който случай нашият подход ще бъде етнологичен или историчен).”
🎭“…културните схеми са в състояние да оцелеят и след изчезването на расите, сред които се появяват за първи път!”
🎭“…с положителност четем една и съща книга, всички ранни издания на която са, така да се каже, изчезнали.”
🎭“…сред основните философски проблеми на човека е да се примири не само в емоциите, но и в мислите си с чудовищността на това “просто така” на света…”
🎭“В примитивните, архаичните и източните сфери образованието никога не имало и без съмнение още много векове няма да има за цел преди всичко да просвети съзнанието по отношение на природата на вселената, а да създаде общности със споделен опит, които да обвържат растящия индивид с въпросите, интересуващи най-много местната група.”
🎭“…въздействието на съзнателно разработени фалшиви митове и модулации на митове върху структурата на човешките вярвания и постигнатото в резултат на това развитие на цивилизацията.”
Кембъл борави с вселенски категории от най-различен порядък в своето изследване на мита. Рядко се среща, и затова е толкова просвещаващ и силен, интердисциплинарният подход към дадена тема. В повечето случаи изследователите се съсредоточват само върху своето парченце от пъзела. Кембъл не само работи с целия пъзел, но го нарежда и пренарежда в различни комбинации, и дори да останата празни полета, а при тази тема и времеви период винаги остават - въпросите са толкова важни, колкото и евентуалните им отговори.
Митологията (по Кембъл и Юнг) е ключ. А човекът и човечеството са ключалката, която се отключва. Унаследените архетипи и психични стихии са зад ключалката - универсални, неосъзнати, несъзнаваеми, безбрежни и изпепеляващи. Митът и ритуалът, адаптирани според конкретната географска среда, историческа епоха и местни обществени специфики се завърта в ключалката, за да отвори врата към трансформацията на индивида във верен член на общността и да го преведе през различните етапи на зрялост (раждане - детство - младост - зрялост - старост - смърт и всичко, което ги съпътства). Ключът на митологията не е универсален, част от останалото зад вратата никога не намира ключ, или го намира в други епохи и събития, а отключеното е винаги изкривено и пречупено през избраната форма на обществено устройство, развитие и световъзприятие. Поради което вариациите са много, част от тях - дълбоко отвратителни.
Интересна е идеята на Кембъл, че ловните общества наблягат на смъртта на животното като дар към човека, на силата на мъжа-ловец и на агресията, поради което формират патриархални и често женомразки митологични и обредни системи. А земеделците, от друга страна, наблягат на раждането и възраждането на растението, на “меката” сила на жените и поради това там култовете към богинята-майка са избраният “ключ”.
Подходите към мита са много и често минават през дисциплини като антропология, история, археология, психология. Всеки един клон на знанието допълва останалите, а всички заедно творят един голям разказ за човечеството, както правят и митовете, които издържат на всички изпитания на времето и само менят формата и ритуалите си. Кембъл се е подготвил да приложи всяка една от достъпните му “лупи”, доколкото може, за да разгледа от множество ъгли различните “ключове”.
За мен без отговор остава въпросът дали развитието на човека и неговият митичен разказ за самия него и за вселената започва от една точка, или се развива паралелно в много точки, може би е някаква комбинация от двете. Също така интердисциплинарността и епичният замах на Кембъл при сравнението на различните митове през времето и пространството, особено за толкова отдалечена точка във времето, на моменти ми изглежда като чиста спекулация, а някои асоциации изобщо не ме убедиха в тезата на Кембъл за обща основа и съпоставимост, или поне конкретните случаи ми изглеждаха избирателно изкривени през предпочитанията и предразсъдъците на самия Кембъл. Но прочитът е епичен, пътешествието е завладяващо и такова е нужно във всяка епоха. През 21 век със сигурност има какво да се добави по темата, дано се намери и изследователят.
П.П. Комплименти за професионалното издание от страна на “Елементи”!
———
▶️ Цитати:
🎭“Като мислене митовете се доближават, или са първобитна прелюдия към науката; като изживяване те са точно изкуство.”
🎭“…на всеки мит или обред бихме могли да гледаме като указание за онова, което е може би трайно или всеобщо в човешката природа (в който случай слагаме ударението върху психичното или може би дори метафизичното), или като функция на местната сцена, панорамата, историята или социологията на въпросната общност (в който случай нашият подход ще бъде етнологичен или историчен).”
🎭“…културните схеми са в състояние да оцелеят и след изчезването на расите, сред които се появяват за първи път!”
🎭“…с положителност четем една и съща книга, всички ранни издания на която са, така да се каже, изчезнали.”
🎭“…сред основните философски проблеми на човека е да се примири не само в емоциите, но и в мислите си с чудовищността на това “просто така” на света…”
🎭“В примитивните, архаичните и източните сфери образованието никога не имало и без съмнение още много векове няма да има за цел преди всичко да просвети съзнанието по отношение на природата на вселената, а да създаде общности със споделен опит, които да обвържат растящия индивид с въпросите, интересуващи най-много местната група.”
🎭“…въздействието на съзнателно разработени фалшиви митове и модулации на митове върху структурата на човешките вярвания и постигнатото в резултат на това развитие на цивилизацията.”
August 17, 2017
These are the books which introduced me to Joseph Campbell - the single most serious influence in my intellectual life.
These books are exhaustive, but maybe because of that reason, not as readable as his other books. In this first volume, Campbell takes us to the very origin of myth, before it became institutionalised as religion.
These books are exhaustive, but maybe because of that reason, not as readable as his other books. In this first volume, Campbell takes us to the very origin of myth, before it became institutionalised as religion.
July 28, 2013
Joseph Campbell was a veritable demigod of comparative mythology. He was brilliant at discovering connections in seemingly unrelated myths across the globe, illuminating the ways in which beliefs moved from culture to culture over thousands of years.
However: If you haven't read Campbell before I suggest you take The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Masks of God Lite) out for a spin first. It's only one book, and far less of a commitment. You'll be able to tell immediately if Campbell's dense & astoundingly long-winded writing style is something you can hang with, because hey, it's not for everyone.
First off, be prepared to encounter verbosity so thick you may need a mental machete to hack your way through it. Secondly, expect paragraphs and individual sentences so long that you may need to hire a cartographer to draw you a freaking map of them. If this doesn't daunt you than by all means, read The Masks of God. In this series, Campbell does not hold back. The contents of his incredibly fertile and overstuffed brain overflow from the pages in a deluge of information. He tells great stories from a plethora of different cultures. He loves to make Byzantine diagrams and complicated explanations where simplicity would suffice.. And he likes to namedrop like crazy. Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Oswald Spengler, Friedrich Nietzsche, James Joyce.. You will be hearing a lot about these guys. (No girls, though. Conspicuously absent, but I suppose that's not surprising.)
As for this particular volume, Primitive Mythology, the Freudian Whackadoo is strong here. Mighty strong. It reaches a crescendo around pg. 73 to pg. 76. If you have an allergy to Freudian concepts, you might want to skip it.
This volume is mostly concerned with comparing and contrasting the myths of early agriculturally based societies with the beliefs of ancient hunter-gatherer peoples. The former would concur with Star Trek's Spock: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." whereas the latter, well, read the book and find out... but don't say I didn't warn you.
However: If you haven't read Campbell before I suggest you take The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Masks of God Lite) out for a spin first. It's only one book, and far less of a commitment. You'll be able to tell immediately if Campbell's dense & astoundingly long-winded writing style is something you can hang with, because hey, it's not for everyone.
First off, be prepared to encounter verbosity so thick you may need a mental machete to hack your way through it. Secondly, expect paragraphs and individual sentences so long that you may need to hire a cartographer to draw you a freaking map of them. If this doesn't daunt you than by all means, read The Masks of God. In this series, Campbell does not hold back. The contents of his incredibly fertile and overstuffed brain overflow from the pages in a deluge of information. He tells great stories from a plethora of different cultures. He loves to make Byzantine diagrams and complicated explanations where simplicity would suffice.. And he likes to namedrop like crazy. Sigmund Freud, Thomas Mann, Oswald Spengler, Friedrich Nietzsche, James Joyce.. You will be hearing a lot about these guys. (No girls, though. Conspicuously absent, but I suppose that's not surprising.)
As for this particular volume, Primitive Mythology, the Freudian Whackadoo is strong here. Mighty strong. It reaches a crescendo around pg. 73 to pg. 76. If you have an allergy to Freudian concepts, you might want to skip it.
This volume is mostly concerned with comparing and contrasting the myths of early agriculturally based societies with the beliefs of ancient hunter-gatherer peoples. The former would concur with Star Trek's Spock: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." whereas the latter, well, read the book and find out... but don't say I didn't warn you.
February 7, 2024
Не предполагах, че Кембъл е написал нещо, което да надминава постиженията му в “Героят с хилядите лица” и “Пътища на блаженството”, но ето че е написал - “Маските на бога том 1” е най-високият полет на Кембъл в полето на митологията и най-дълбокото му гмуркане в неизследвания първобитен мрак, който е оставил своя отпечатък в съзнанието на човека още от зората на времето.
Книгата е леснодостъпна, но не и плитка. Което само по себе си е огромно постижение в отделна категория.
Българското издание отговоря на най-високите стандартни в книгоиздаването. Такива каквито и в чужбина не съм виждал при такъв тип книги. Браво.
Пп: Останалите издатели нямат право да претендират, че са адекватни пред това, което са сътворили “Елементи” с усъвремененото издание на Маските на бога 1. Ето че могло да се работи професионално!
Книгата е леснодостъпна, но не и плитка. Което само по себе си е огромно постижение в отделна категория.
Българското издание отговоря на най-високите стандартни в книгоиздаването. Такива каквито и в чужбина не съм виждал при такъв тип книги. Браво.
Пп: Останалите издатели нямат право да претендират, че са адекватни пред това, което са сътворили “Елементи” с усъвремененото издание на Маските на бога 1. Ето че могло да се работи професионално!
August 4, 2007
Staggering book. In a similar vein to Frazer's Golden Bough, an attempt to find underlying mechanisms to the various world mythologies.
Campbell examines the prevelence of some very specific motifs, across all varieties of unconnected cultures: Ghosts, "voodoo dolls", the power of hair/nail clippings of victims in magic, the use of totem figures in hunting societies, and birth/rebirth gods in planting cultures.
For myself, I was frustrated by some of the lengthy debate over whether Meso-American agriculture was an introduction from Polynesia, or a seperate invention (which would make it the perfect testing ground for "parrallell development", to compare Incan grain gods with Babylonian grain gods). I thought that Campbell was grasping a bit, to try to reconcile what was no doubt a lively debate in 1959, but as far as I know is now a dead issue. And, at least according to my friend the anthropology undergrad, Campbell bet on the wrong horse.
On the other hand, the broader concepts of this book are phenomenal. Certainly one of the underlying points, that Christ is "of a type" which is particularly suited to an agricultural lifestyle -- death/rebirth god, communion of grain and wine, close community values -- raises a strong suggestion why post-industrial suburban existance seems lacking in meaningful symbols, and many people are experiancing an "age of anxiety" -- its as misplaced as asking a greek vineyard worker to do a Buffalo Dance, wrong symbols for the wrong epoch.
All that any much more.
Campbell examines the prevelence of some very specific motifs, across all varieties of unconnected cultures: Ghosts, "voodoo dolls", the power of hair/nail clippings of victims in magic, the use of totem figures in hunting societies, and birth/rebirth gods in planting cultures.
For myself, I was frustrated by some of the lengthy debate over whether Meso-American agriculture was an introduction from Polynesia, or a seperate invention (which would make it the perfect testing ground for "parrallell development", to compare Incan grain gods with Babylonian grain gods). I thought that Campbell was grasping a bit, to try to reconcile what was no doubt a lively debate in 1959, but as far as I know is now a dead issue. And, at least according to my friend the anthropology undergrad, Campbell bet on the wrong horse.
On the other hand, the broader concepts of this book are phenomenal. Certainly one of the underlying points, that Christ is "of a type" which is particularly suited to an agricultural lifestyle -- death/rebirth god, communion of grain and wine, close community values -- raises a strong suggestion why post-industrial suburban existance seems lacking in meaningful symbols, and many people are experiancing an "age of anxiety" -- its as misplaced as asking a greek vineyard worker to do a Buffalo Dance, wrong symbols for the wrong epoch.
All that any much more.
September 26, 2024
Spectacular.
I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would.
Prior to reading this. I didn’t know Campbell was as grounded in evolutionary theory as he is. I thought of him as more of a Jungian. I didn’t realize he was an anthropologist.
His work was interdisciplinary.
He was highly influenced by Niko Tinbergen.
This book is founded on ethological theory.
The science is dated (obviously).
It was written in the 1940’s.
But the central observation. That of the existence of pan-cultural thematic through lines in comparative world mythology, is still convincing to this day.
Grounding this argument in evolutionary psychology and animal behavior gives the Jungian and Freudian elements a little bit of badly needed theoretical support.
There’s a really good reason this is a classic, genre defining, field birthing text. Not only is it interesting and entertaining. There is something very satisfying and wise about it.
It’s a nurturing text.
Even though it’s over 70 years old.
It’s still very worth reading.
LOVED IT
5/5 stars ⭐️
I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would.
Prior to reading this. I didn’t know Campbell was as grounded in evolutionary theory as he is. I thought of him as more of a Jungian. I didn’t realize he was an anthropologist.
His work was interdisciplinary.
He was highly influenced by Niko Tinbergen.
This book is founded on ethological theory.
The science is dated (obviously).
It was written in the 1940’s.
But the central observation. That of the existence of pan-cultural thematic through lines in comparative world mythology, is still convincing to this day.
Grounding this argument in evolutionary psychology and animal behavior gives the Jungian and Freudian elements a little bit of badly needed theoretical support.
There’s a really good reason this is a classic, genre defining, field birthing text. Not only is it interesting and entertaining. There is something very satisfying and wise about it.
It’s a nurturing text.
Even though it’s over 70 years old.
It’s still very worth reading.
LOVED IT
5/5 stars ⭐️
May 31, 2017
Campbell is an incredible source of knowledge and for the first 350 pages he really shows it, it's almost awe inspiring the way he links and dances between different schools of thought and cultures and how they naturally link metaphysically and literally.
This book isn't perfect though. Specifically his use of psychoanalysis in the Freudian vain which is sex obsessed and boring and really brings no insight, but he's a product of his time, so this isn't a real criticism but something that bothered me personally. The writing itself though is muddled. He's an incredible writer, but some of his paragraphs drag on much longer than they need to, usually making me forget what the heck he's talking about and how it links at all to the chapter. Some sections are straight up boring and the last 120 pages had me struggling.
But dang baby, those first 350 pages...amazing.
This book isn't perfect though. Specifically his use of psychoanalysis in the Freudian vain which is sex obsessed and boring and really brings no insight, but he's a product of his time, so this isn't a real criticism but something that bothered me personally. The writing itself though is muddled. He's an incredible writer, but some of his paragraphs drag on much longer than they need to, usually making me forget what the heck he's talking about and how it links at all to the chapter. Some sections are straight up boring and the last 120 pages had me struggling.
But dang baby, those first 350 pages...amazing.
April 6, 2016
In graduate school, when I asked my beloved mentor, Freudian/Lacanian David Wagenknecht about Carl Jung, his response was, "I dunno: a little too Joseph Campbell for me." There is no better or smarter human on earth than David and so I didn't read either Jung (who I worship) or Campbell (who I now really, really love) for many years. I think the wait was just fine for me (sorry Dave) but I know I will be reading at least Campbell's Masks of God for the rest of my life (and perhaps also his Skeleton's Key to Finnegans Wake at least twice more). Campbell is NOT a mere popularizer of Jung (more like a popularizer of Thomass Mann if you had choose) and not the hokey Ur-mythologist I was expecting -- but a a rigorous academic and scholar, an inspiring thinker, a terrific organizer, and a fabulous bibliographer. Admittedly, in my middle-age, I find something very comforting about these books (which in fact make no truth-claims whatsoever regarding supernatural matrices) but am not entirely sure why. I love these four books.
November 9, 2011
What Joseph Campbell lacks in objectivity he makes up for in his enthusiastic endorsement of his own personal myth, his unified psychological theory of myths. He stretches his interpretations of the myths so far that they fall apart. I am left incredulous. I would like to find a more objective work on historical and comparative mythology. One with a more clear and concise writing style.
I could only manage to make it half way through the first volume before I considered his work a waste of time.
I could only manage to make it half way through the first volume before I considered his work a waste of time.
December 28, 2023
Blew my world view up and created a new, a way more open perspective.
I will definitely continue with this series.
I will definitely continue with this series.
February 16, 2011
Re-reading. This is bk 1 of 4 vol work. I read the 1st time as a graduate student yrs ago and find myself drawn back to this 4 vol work every 10 yrs or so. Stunning, stoking, how one man could hold the sum total of world mythology and religious tradition in his head, chelate and analyze thru the lens of modern psychology and archeology, and tell us all abt it in a way that is accessible and makes sense.
November 23, 2017
I quattro (o cinque, essendo l’ultimo diviso in 2 parti) corposi volumi “Le maschere di dio”, nei quali Joseph Campbell investiga con molto acume l’origine delle mitologie, delle religioni e dell’arte dai popoli primitivi fino all’epoca moderna, spaziando da oriente a occidente per tutto il globo alla ricerca di una comune radice, residente, per tutti, nella mente umana creatrice e distruttrice di divinità come di idee spirituali e poetiche, sono un'opera che, per quanto datata (risale agli anni '60), è ancora estremamente suggestiva e affascinante. Si legge con la fluidità di un romanzo, risultando, in molte sue parti, avvincente.
March 9, 2022
OK, wow. No way in hell im gonna explain everything that was exposed in this gem-of-a-book.
Myth is an instrument that is still used, no matter what we do, human beings, due to their cognition, are prone to myth.
The book is the right attempt to understand myth, and it is important to mention that this book is so old, that by the time it was written, not even DNA was discovered; that happened three years later. However, without these tools (evolutionary psychology will have been a science forty years later), Campbell explains to us why we believe. He even mentions the words "human universals" concerning myths, and these are words that are explained in evolutionary psychology, this is amazing.
What I really kept in my mind were the explanations concerning plant mythology and the great hunt. Gender feminists (not equity) say that we live in a patriarchal world because that's why we (men) can achieve power and thus, eternally rule over women. The explanations go like this:
"There was a time, that hunting was not the rule. Geology and weather conditions could explain certain activities like agriculture in certain areas. Thus, the myths were matriarchal in the sense that -women are fertile, thus the soil were everything grows is feminine-, The beliefs were quite different, included men too and there was no bloodshed.
Time went on, and weather conditions changed. We could no longer support agriculture and we had to become nomads to survive. We switched our ways to obtain calories. We stopped recolecting nut and fruits and our sole purpose was to hunt. Men did that. Men had more muscle and stamina to get the job done. They killed and were killed; blood and guts became part of the every day life.... and myths changed. They were no longer matriarchal but became patriarchal, bloody, savage, cannibalistic, and women (soil) were no longer worshipped."
Unfortunately (or not, im not biased), religions that exist today, were based in the symbolic meaning of the latter. This is when I say, education on knowing who we are from an evolutionary perspective is the one and only tool that will save us from ourselves.
Myth is an instrument that is still used, no matter what we do, human beings, due to their cognition, are prone to myth.
The book is the right attempt to understand myth, and it is important to mention that this book is so old, that by the time it was written, not even DNA was discovered; that happened three years later. However, without these tools (evolutionary psychology will have been a science forty years later), Campbell explains to us why we believe. He even mentions the words "human universals" concerning myths, and these are words that are explained in evolutionary psychology, this is amazing.
What I really kept in my mind were the explanations concerning plant mythology and the great hunt. Gender feminists (not equity) say that we live in a patriarchal world because that's why we (men) can achieve power and thus, eternally rule over women. The explanations go like this:
"There was a time, that hunting was not the rule. Geology and weather conditions could explain certain activities like agriculture in certain areas. Thus, the myths were matriarchal in the sense that -women are fertile, thus the soil were everything grows is feminine-, The beliefs were quite different, included men too and there was no bloodshed.
Time went on, and weather conditions changed. We could no longer support agriculture and we had to become nomads to survive. We switched our ways to obtain calories. We stopped recolecting nut and fruits and our sole purpose was to hunt. Men did that. Men had more muscle and stamina to get the job done. They killed and were killed; blood and guts became part of the every day life.... and myths changed. They were no longer matriarchal but became patriarchal, bloody, savage, cannibalistic, and women (soil) were no longer worshipped."
Unfortunately (or not, im not biased), religions that exist today, were based in the symbolic meaning of the latter. This is when I say, education on knowing who we are from an evolutionary perspective is the one and only tool that will save us from ourselves.
December 18, 2016
Well, it's again a repetitive review of Joseph Campbell's book- It's so good! I weirdly started from the last one of this series, and ended up reading the Primitive Mythology last. Detailed, funny, insightful, as always. Again Campbell deeply yet entertainingly pulls together all the threads. I found really interesting the history of the switch from feminine/matriarchal beliefs to patriarchal. It's worth to read for everybody. Also the myths of the serpent an the maiden in relation to the Christian Bible story of Adam and Eve is enticing. Lots of incredibly fascinating stories and findings.
February 20, 2016
nothing schematic in this series (perhaps unlike the more famous texts), which concerns more the working out of historical particulars--though one might discern readily enough the monomyth thesis working in the background.
this volume concerns an antiquity that is barely evidenced, and tries to trace hunter-gather religion, the beliefs of late troglodytes, and other things found under upturned stones.
this volume concerns an antiquity that is barely evidenced, and tries to trace hunter-gather religion, the beliefs of late troglodytes, and other things found under upturned stones.
January 30, 2017
The material is verbose, dry, and dated at times; however, the detail is profound . . . a wealth of information. Recommended for anyone interested in mythology.
June 4, 2017
An excellent and promising opening to this four volume work, Primitive Mythology gets to work quickly, setting out its task and framing the importance of mythology, even (if not especially) for we who are of the time whose mythology is an absence of mythology. For despite centuries of philosophers and thinkers attempting to explicate Man as the rational animal, and the constructs based on the import and majesty of reason as the supreme aspect of human existence, it is myth that digs into the abyssal depths of our being. For human beings are not merely anthropos, but mythanthropos, and for the human being "the fullness of his life would even seem to stand in direct ratio to the depth and range not of his rational thought but of his local mythology" (4). Human beings are more than a rational faculty for thought and speech, and these things cannot grasp, ascertain, or circumscribe all the aspects of our existence. There moves through us a profound and ineffable force, the portrayal of which has been attempted throughout time in countless different ways, though none can get to the heart of this unspeakable experience that eludes experience, that rises up from the abyss that undergirds us through the passions and sufferings of our living and dying. Each mask of God can be pulled away to reveal another mask - the face of God is never given in and as itself. Campbell quotes Thomas Mann on the subject, writing that "myth is the foundation of life, the timeless schema, the pious formula into which life flows when it reproduces its traits out of the unconscious" (18). Campbell goes on to note that the schema, the formative patterns or framework, of mythology seeks to express that which has no schema - that which is aschematic (call it life, the unconscious, the sacred, the impossible, the divine, etc...). Myth, we could say, is an ordering or imagining of that which emerges from the abyssal night of existence, from out of the bare earth. The blood must be transmuted, for passion is neither linguistic nor discursive - myth is a translation of the unexpressable expression which seeks to translate us back over, returning us to from whence we have emerged (perhaps long forgotten (purposefully or otherwise)).
Myth is a creative expression - a proliferation of the sacred creative forces that demand it and, in a sense, produce it. The work of myth is the production of further differentiation and dispersion of the divine forces which bring about its demand for speech or expression. Myth combines or takes up three related images of existence in its creation - those of the child (play, imagination, freedom), the poet (imagination, passion, the word) and the monstrous or daemonic (the divine, force, freedom). These three (which are not the only three aspects, but merely three of the innumerable aspects that are being forgrounded here) come together through the mythical play of imagination, which opens up, opening out upon the differential possibilities of existence - the flows of life which reason closes off, renders impossible. The freedom of this mythic space embraces the child, the monster and the poet in their relation to the divine and its (non)expression. This realm of creativity, with all its attendant destructions, is not a happy place, per say. Its joy is one of ecstasy. It is a dangerous space, at the limits of life and death, and its opening and sustained play demand passionate suffering and sacrifice. This is the realm not of the head, but of the heart.
This mythical space is expressed not only through the verbal myth, the myth as tale, but as a way of life, of relating to the sacred. It is expressed through the festival. To partake in this festival, to live in this passionate manner, moving closer to the divine, involves stepping beyond oneself, becoming enrapt, overtaken and ravaged in the rending of joy's suffering, death's exsanguination - the ecstasy of this mythical passion. It is only thus, through this lacerating experience of loss, of giving up (which I am passing over here over-quickly, in far too few words), that one is opened to the freedom that one can be the vehicle for, through sacrifice. For in this festival, this bacchanal of sorts, we are not freed from something, but for something. We are freed unto our own bare existence, to proliferate and create further differences, to incite further avenues of life through the gift of death. We become mad, become monstrous and cruel, like the existence of which we are but a singular instance - a rupturing wound which spills forth blood of the divine, for the divine. This is myth - the grounding of our existence in the groundlessness of the wound from which we spring and have sprung.
Myth opens up and resides within a space of paradox - as Campbell notes, where A is B, and B is C as well. Thus it exists as an antinomy, in that the experience or passion of the mythical tears Man from himself and from all humanity (this is 'the mystical'), yet at the same time serves to ground him in the human, founding the society and what it means for him to be as Man ('the topological'). This antinomic existence is the mode of myth as founding rupture - the eruption which places into relation with the other in a mode that is sustainable, livable, and communicable. Myth can be a wandering, an unsettling or disturbing experience, or it can be a foundational worlding and topologically constructive and constitutional process. Either way, it is a way of life and death, of living and dying. Myth is a relationary field or space of a multiplicity of pathways, lines and threads that are interwovem and yet ever disjointed.
And what then of our age, this age that, like Kiekegaard's own, lakcs passion (perhaps in a way even more unsettling)? What is our life, and our death, here, now, without myth? Where are we and where are we going, with no direction, no further openings or passages? How are we to relate to one another, to understand the divinity that underlies our relations with each and every other? Our myth, as Bataille so adeptly diagnosed it, is an absence of myth. We are lost - lost on our way (which is none); lost to ourselves, having lost the divine, the sacred. We are losing our lives; we hardly even live. Soon we may even lose our own death. How does one fix a shadow in a pitch black night? Herein does Campbell locate the impostance of mythology - perhaps it has never been more important than it is now, now that it has been relegated to oblivion. Campbell seeks to reopen the mythic space of the past for us, to help us to find our way back to what we are, as wekk as in order for the past to help to guide us forward, to aid us in composing our own new myths. Such a creative act is so very exigent, as I have said, perhaps now more than ever, lest we become utterly lost in our own technological oblivion (perhaps we already fail to see our own effacement?). No longer Man, less than even human, we cannot even see our own failings.
== If only there were still a God to have pity on us - or to laugh at the tragedy of our self-inflicted demise. ==
Myth is a creative expression - a proliferation of the sacred creative forces that demand it and, in a sense, produce it. The work of myth is the production of further differentiation and dispersion of the divine forces which bring about its demand for speech or expression. Myth combines or takes up three related images of existence in its creation - those of the child (play, imagination, freedom), the poet (imagination, passion, the word) and the monstrous or daemonic (the divine, force, freedom). These three (which are not the only three aspects, but merely three of the innumerable aspects that are being forgrounded here) come together through the mythical play of imagination, which opens up, opening out upon the differential possibilities of existence - the flows of life which reason closes off, renders impossible. The freedom of this mythic space embraces the child, the monster and the poet in their relation to the divine and its (non)expression. This realm of creativity, with all its attendant destructions, is not a happy place, per say. Its joy is one of ecstasy. It is a dangerous space, at the limits of life and death, and its opening and sustained play demand passionate suffering and sacrifice. This is the realm not of the head, but of the heart.
This mythical space is expressed not only through the verbal myth, the myth as tale, but as a way of life, of relating to the sacred. It is expressed through the festival. To partake in this festival, to live in this passionate manner, moving closer to the divine, involves stepping beyond oneself, becoming enrapt, overtaken and ravaged in the rending of joy's suffering, death's exsanguination - the ecstasy of this mythical passion. It is only thus, through this lacerating experience of loss, of giving up (which I am passing over here over-quickly, in far too few words), that one is opened to the freedom that one can be the vehicle for, through sacrifice. For in this festival, this bacchanal of sorts, we are not freed from something, but for something. We are freed unto our own bare existence, to proliferate and create further differences, to incite further avenues of life through the gift of death. We become mad, become monstrous and cruel, like the existence of which we are but a singular instance - a rupturing wound which spills forth blood of the divine, for the divine. This is myth - the grounding of our existence in the groundlessness of the wound from which we spring and have sprung.
Myth opens up and resides within a space of paradox - as Campbell notes, where A is B, and B is C as well. Thus it exists as an antinomy, in that the experience or passion of the mythical tears Man from himself and from all humanity (this is 'the mystical'), yet at the same time serves to ground him in the human, founding the society and what it means for him to be as Man ('the topological'). This antinomic existence is the mode of myth as founding rupture - the eruption which places into relation with the other in a mode that is sustainable, livable, and communicable. Myth can be a wandering, an unsettling or disturbing experience, or it can be a foundational worlding and topologically constructive and constitutional process. Either way, it is a way of life and death, of living and dying. Myth is a relationary field or space of a multiplicity of pathways, lines and threads that are interwovem and yet ever disjointed.
And what then of our age, this age that, like Kiekegaard's own, lakcs passion (perhaps in a way even more unsettling)? What is our life, and our death, here, now, without myth? Where are we and where are we going, with no direction, no further openings or passages? How are we to relate to one another, to understand the divinity that underlies our relations with each and every other? Our myth, as Bataille so adeptly diagnosed it, is an absence of myth. We are lost - lost on our way (which is none); lost to ourselves, having lost the divine, the sacred. We are losing our lives; we hardly even live. Soon we may even lose our own death. How does one fix a shadow in a pitch black night? Herein does Campbell locate the impostance of mythology - perhaps it has never been more important than it is now, now that it has been relegated to oblivion. Campbell seeks to reopen the mythic space of the past for us, to help us to find our way back to what we are, as wekk as in order for the past to help to guide us forward, to aid us in composing our own new myths. Such a creative act is so very exigent, as I have said, perhaps now more than ever, lest we become utterly lost in our own technological oblivion (perhaps we already fail to see our own effacement?). No longer Man, less than even human, we cannot even see our own failings.
== If only there were still a God to have pity on us - or to laugh at the tragedy of our self-inflicted demise. ==
December 11, 2024
Masks of God #1 - Primitive Mythology — 3.5✲
A dupla função do mito; as estampagens inatas da humanidade; a mitologia e a arte.
Ainda o tenho como ligeiramente denso, mas depois de passar a limpo minhas as notas, o livro engrandeceu e fez muito mais sentido. Muito dos seus pontos principais estão espalhados — intencionalmente — ao longo de diferentes capítulos e em meio a mitos e ritos de primitivas Tribos Caçadoras e Agricultoras de culturas muito diversas.
Quem só conhece o Campbell pelo "monomito" ou pela simplificação batida em estrutura da "Jornada do Herói" terá de suar para lê-lo aqui, e quem (como eu) tinha um pé atrás quanto a interpretação dos mitos demasiadamente puxada para o lado da psicanálise, há de se surpreender, que o livro é muito mais que isso; Campbell diz, acerca destas interpretações (nas quais também se apoia, mas coloca como UMA DAS funções do mito) que elas "não abarcam a extensão do pensamento ou mesmo o conceito metafísico dessas respectivas crenças", ao mesmo tempo que mostra como os ritos primitivos xâmanicos de morte e restituição, ligam-se com a religião budista e hindu muito posteriores: o ponto é que há um tipo de unidade.
Parafraseia Rimakrisihna sobre isso:
Religião, para Campbell, é mitologia incompreendida. Mas é mais uma tirada do que uma colocação, que você deve ler suas obras para entendê-la completamente, como outra dele: mitologia é a religião do outro. Ele nega tanto a crença cega como a descrença cega, ambas capazes de anular talvez o fator mais importante dos mitos, o seu poder de metáfora.
Desde a primavera da humanidade, rito e mito tem relação com arte; e aqui, agora mais minha opinião juntando tudo que é apontado e mostrado pelo Campbell ao longo do livro, A finalidade última da mitologia está na sua função artística. “Dificilmente se pode negar,” diz Campbell “a mitologia poderia ter brotado de alguma outra mente que não a dos artistas?”.
É bem representativo que ele chame de "arte e poder", aquilo que o Xamã perscruta dentro de si e descobre, dando-o uma condição à parte dentro de uma tribo; na natureza da espécie, também há algo próximo, o prazer estético: o ritmo de beleza, que também pode ser espiritual, místico ou religioso. A dança dos chimpanzés de Kohler.
As descobertas/criações dos primeiros xamãs, o que contam e fazem, são narrativas, ficcionalizações, exercícios de imaginação: nos ritos do xamã, a realidade entra em transe, e por momentos, crê-se naquilo, é imersivo. São narrativas, porém, que devem assumir uma função externa, certas vezes ilusória, fogo de palha, e outras vezes mística e inexplicável, ele mostra ambas essas situações em relatos de diferentes etnólogos. Mesmo "a cura do xamã é obtida por meio da arte: por exemplo, (pela) mitologia e canto." Como não pensar na purificação aristótelica, em uma das interpretações da Katharsis?
Integrando tudo isso, há a função dupla do mito, como um bússola que aponta para o local e para o universal — mais uma vez, cruzamentos entre mitologia e arte, que clássico da literatura não abrange isso? Não é atoa, também, que Campbell pegue emprestado muito terminologias (o monomito) e termos do Joyce: "tudo o que é grave e constante, que não pode ser mudado no sofrimento humano".
Depois que se entende o ponto dele, as comparações entre os mitos torna-se acessória, e a disposição ao longo das páginas é ligeiramente confusa, mas os relatos ainda são interessantes, por exemplo, ainda na função-dupla: características locais, daquela terra, são elevadas no princípio da formação de símbolos: as enguias, na Polinésia, substituem as cobras de outras mitologias, e trazem consigo significados específicos; o deus lagarto-réptil no Havaí, é uma lagartixa inofensiva, como as nossas do Brasil, diminutas e que devoram mosquitos, elevadas, entretanto, no processo mitológico da formação de símbolos. Essas características locais, são que importantes no entendimento de uma das funções do mito (a função etno-sociológica), representam, sobretudo, um um caminho para o universal, para um entendimento da condição humana, de uma função psicológica e cosmológica; a parte local do mito nos faz entender a história, a paisagem e a sociologia do povo em questão, agora, os símbolos, as metáforas, nos dão pistas para aquilo que há de permanente e inerente à humanidade: A Eva, a Serpente e o Jardim; O ritual de Perséfone na Grécia; as três Demas virgens de Hainuwele; o mito Polinésio de Mauí; todos fazem parte de um mesmo antigo livro da humanidade, do qual todas as edições anteriores foram perdidas.
A dupla função do mito; as estampagens inatas da humanidade; a mitologia e a arte.
Ainda o tenho como ligeiramente denso, mas depois de passar a limpo minhas as notas, o livro engrandeceu e fez muito mais sentido. Muito dos seus pontos principais estão espalhados — intencionalmente — ao longo de diferentes capítulos e em meio a mitos e ritos de primitivas Tribos Caçadoras e Agricultoras de culturas muito diversas.
Quem só conhece o Campbell pelo "monomito" ou pela simplificação batida em estrutura da "Jornada do Herói" terá de suar para lê-lo aqui, e quem (como eu) tinha um pé atrás quanto a interpretação dos mitos demasiadamente puxada para o lado da psicanálise, há de se surpreender, que o livro é muito mais que isso; Campbell diz, acerca destas interpretações (nas quais também se apoia, mas coloca como UMA DAS funções do mito) que elas "não abarcam a extensão do pensamento ou mesmo o conceito metafísico dessas respectivas crenças", ao mesmo tempo que mostra como os ritos primitivos xâmanicos de morte e restituição, ligam-se com a religião budista e hindu muito posteriores: o ponto é que há um tipo de unidade.
Parafraseia Rimakrisihna sobre isso:
“Deus criou diferentes religiões para servir a diferentes aspirantes, épocas e países. Todas as doutrinas são apenas outros tantos caminhos; mas um caminho não é de maneira alguma o próprio Deus. De fato, é possível até encontrá-lo quando se segue qualquer um dos caminhos com devoção sincera”
Religião, para Campbell, é mitologia incompreendida. Mas é mais uma tirada do que uma colocação, que você deve ler suas obras para entendê-la completamente, como outra dele: mitologia é a religião do outro. Ele nega tanto a crença cega como a descrença cega, ambas capazes de anular talvez o fator mais importante dos mitos, o seu poder de metáfora.
Desde a primavera da humanidade, rito e mito tem relação com arte; e aqui, agora mais minha opinião juntando tudo que é apontado e mostrado pelo Campbell ao longo do livro, A finalidade última da mitologia está na sua função artística. “Dificilmente se pode negar,” diz Campbell “a mitologia poderia ter brotado de alguma outra mente que não a dos artistas?”.
É bem representativo que ele chame de "arte e poder", aquilo que o Xamã perscruta dentro de si e descobre, dando-o uma condição à parte dentro de uma tribo; na natureza da espécie, também há algo próximo, o prazer estético: o ritmo de beleza, que também pode ser espiritual, místico ou religioso. A dança dos chimpanzés de Kohler.
As descobertas/criações dos primeiros xamãs, o que contam e fazem, são narrativas, ficcionalizações, exercícios de imaginação: nos ritos do xamã, a realidade entra em transe, e por momentos, crê-se naquilo, é imersivo. São narrativas, porém, que devem assumir uma função externa, certas vezes ilusória, fogo de palha, e outras vezes mística e inexplicável, ele mostra ambas essas situações em relatos de diferentes etnólogos. Mesmo "a cura do xamã é obtida por meio da arte: por exemplo, (pela) mitologia e canto." Como não pensar na purificação aristótelica, em uma das interpretações da Katharsis?
Integrando tudo isso, há a função dupla do mito, como um bússola que aponta para o local e para o universal — mais uma vez, cruzamentos entre mitologia e arte, que clássico da literatura não abrange isso? Não é atoa, também, que Campbell pegue emprestado muito terminologias (o monomito) e termos do Joyce: "tudo o que é grave e constante, que não pode ser mudado no sofrimento humano".
Depois que se entende o ponto dele, as comparações entre os mitos torna-se acessória, e a disposição ao longo das páginas é ligeiramente confusa, mas os relatos ainda são interessantes, por exemplo, ainda na função-dupla: características locais, daquela terra, são elevadas no princípio da formação de símbolos: as enguias, na Polinésia, substituem as cobras de outras mitologias, e trazem consigo significados específicos; o deus lagarto-réptil no Havaí, é uma lagartixa inofensiva, como as nossas do Brasil, diminutas e que devoram mosquitos, elevadas, entretanto, no processo mitológico da formação de símbolos. Essas características locais, são que importantes no entendimento de uma das funções do mito (a função etno-sociológica), representam, sobretudo, um um caminho para o universal, para um entendimento da condição humana, de uma função psicológica e cosmológica; a parte local do mito nos faz entender a história, a paisagem e a sociologia do povo em questão, agora, os símbolos, as metáforas, nos dão pistas para aquilo que há de permanente e inerente à humanidade: A Eva, a Serpente e o Jardim; O ritual de Perséfone na Grécia; as três Demas virgens de Hainuwele; o mito Polinésio de Mauí; todos fazem parte de um mesmo antigo livro da humanidade, do qual todas as edições anteriores foram perdidas.
''O reino do mito é de onde procede todo o espetáculo do mundo''
April 15, 2012
Campbell is best known because of the PBS series The Power of Myth with Moyers that aired in 1988 and for his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces that influenced George Lucas of Star Wars fame and influential with many a writer, especially in speculative fiction. Primitive Mythology is the first part of his four-book series The Mask of God. This first book was published in 1959 and tried to incorporate then current findings in psychology (primarily Freudian and Jungian theories), archeology and physical anthropology and ethnology to examine the common threads in "primitive" mythology among "savages"--that is, prehistoric and non-literate cultures covering from 600,000 BC to 7,500 BC until the first civilizations arose as well as hunter-gatherers in modern times. Campbell believes there's "one fund of mythological motifs" that might have a biological basis and can be seen in myths found around the world with "such themes as the fire-theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero." In the book he seeks to make a "sketch of the natural history of the gods and heroes." In pre-literate cultures he often looks to ritual. "Ritual is mythology made alive."
He sees a different morphology in the hunter/gather cultures with their shamanistic rituals and what he sees as a more female-oriented early planter societies, then another major shift when we move to the city-state, sacred king and regicidal sacrifices that support the new world order by linking the hierarchy on earth to the heavenly order of planets and the stars. It made me think of that phrase in the Lord's Prayer--"your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The book doesn't feel dated despite the passage of over four decades, although I would have dearly loved an annotated edition that could tell me how more recent developments might have changed the picture. The narrative is dense and scholarly, often text-book dry, sometimes rambling and hard to follow, but I found his ideas thought-provoking and they made me see literature and myth in new ways. Indeed, the book made me want to read up on what we know of pre-historic humans and certainly made me wish to go on to the next volumes on Occidental and Oriental mythology.
He sees a different morphology in the hunter/gather cultures with their shamanistic rituals and what he sees as a more female-oriented early planter societies, then another major shift when we move to the city-state, sacred king and regicidal sacrifices that support the new world order by linking the hierarchy on earth to the heavenly order of planets and the stars. It made me think of that phrase in the Lord's Prayer--"your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." The book doesn't feel dated despite the passage of over four decades, although I would have dearly loved an annotated edition that could tell me how more recent developments might have changed the picture. The narrative is dense and scholarly, often text-book dry, sometimes rambling and hard to follow, but I found his ideas thought-provoking and they made me see literature and myth in new ways. Indeed, the book made me want to read up on what we know of pre-historic humans and certainly made me wish to go on to the next volumes on Occidental and Oriental mythology.
September 10, 2011
When I first saw this book, I knew what I was getting into. I knew I was facing a man who knew what he was talking about, and wasn't going to spare any details for the sake of audience. So I stepped knee-deep in Campbell's world, and I came out soaked.
I learned a lot, and this is only volume 1 of 4. From his ideas on the origin of mythology in general, to his ideas on separate stories from around the world, I was never left without information to digest.
The only complaint I have is that it was so scholarly. I was bombarded with dates and anthropological ages left and right. I cannot take my own complaint seriously though, since this effectively means I was too ignorant to fully enjoy the work. I can rectify that myself.
Oh well, now to find something fun to read before I move on to volume 2.
I learned a lot, and this is only volume 1 of 4. From his ideas on the origin of mythology in general, to his ideas on separate stories from around the world, I was never left without information to digest.
The only complaint I have is that it was so scholarly. I was bombarded with dates and anthropological ages left and right. I cannot take my own complaint seriously though, since this effectively means I was too ignorant to fully enjoy the work. I can rectify that myself.
Oh well, now to find something fun to read before I move on to volume 2.
March 12, 2008
I have a goal to read all 4 of Campbell's Masks of God series, and i started in the beginning. I like other cultures myths. I like finding out what sustains other groups of people. What stories give them their identities. This is a book i could put down and pick back up again at any time and dip into any one of the chapters. Specifically the different cultures puberty rites where interesting to me in this book. As a 24 year old american male i am still trying to find out how to transition from boyhood dependency to adulthood. There are several stories in this book that talk about boys in tribes and other cultures that transition to manhood in a matter of hours or days through cultural rituals at about the age of fourteen or fifteen, and here i am at 24 still figuring it out.
September 9, 2012
I read every Joseph Campbell book I could get my hands on. He charismatically brings stuffy church teachings, zany mythology events or stories, historical events in cave man time, inner conflict and all the diverse religions in the world to one concept. Joseph explains the abstract so that the reader 'gets' the symbolism without having to interpret it; he shows one how to experience the real and points out when and why the masks go on. I just love his teachnigs~~~
January 24, 2013
Unfortunately I haven´t found any consistent theory in this book. Quotations are without regular references so one can not find from where Campbell took the ideas he presents. Sometimes it seems like he is imagining the whole thing. There are some good points but I think this could took only a half of its size to write it down.
But to be honest, I read it in the Czech translation (by Jana Novotná) and it can be the reason why I can not enjoy it.
But to be honest, I read it in the Czech translation (by Jana Novotná) and it can be the reason why I can not enjoy it.
February 8, 2010
Like a lot of generalists, he probably overreaches, but still, there are riches here. I haven't anything like "finished" this book, or the others in the series, and don't expect to in my lifetime. But they will be an ongoing source of reference and inspiration.
August 10, 2011
Exactly right book to start reading about comperative mythology and religion.
September 4, 2016
First in a set of 4 works. All of which are an indispensible resource if you have any ambition to understand Mythology and comparative religion.
August 25, 2024
Imprescindible clásico de la mitología chamanica y neolítica. Sin embargo, otras obras clásicas como "El chamanismo" de Mircea Eliade han aguantado mejor el paso del tiempo y con una exposición y discurso más "cientificos".
No obstante, ofrece interpretaciones y mitologias que son el complemento idoneo a cualquier otra lectura paralela, ya sea coetanea a Campbell o mas actualizada (lo cual consideramos preferible). Ahora bien, este ensayo debe ser leído con gran cautela por varios motivos:
-Los datos están muy desactualizados, pues los descubrimientos arqueológicos de las últimas décadas, así como los genéticos, han puesto patas arriba lo que en época de Campbell podía ser posible (aunque también él se agarraba a tesis altamente especulativas).
-Su obsesión con la tesis universalista del difusionismo cultural le hace dedicar párrafos y párrafos a defender especulativamente dicha tesis. Hoy resulta casi imposible de sostener, y menos con las herramientas de Campbell...
En conclusión, junto con capitulitos de excepcional valor, el lector tendrá que lidiar con segmentos amplios de especulación anacrónica. Junto con el volumen dedicado a la mitología oriental (la colección consta de 4 libros), es, pese a todo, recomendable (siempre como introduccion).
No obstante, ofrece interpretaciones y mitologias que son el complemento idoneo a cualquier otra lectura paralela, ya sea coetanea a Campbell o mas actualizada (lo cual consideramos preferible). Ahora bien, este ensayo debe ser leído con gran cautela por varios motivos:
-Los datos están muy desactualizados, pues los descubrimientos arqueológicos de las últimas décadas, así como los genéticos, han puesto patas arriba lo que en época de Campbell podía ser posible (aunque también él se agarraba a tesis altamente especulativas).
-Su obsesión con la tesis universalista del difusionismo cultural le hace dedicar párrafos y párrafos a defender especulativamente dicha tesis. Hoy resulta casi imposible de sostener, y menos con las herramientas de Campbell...
En conclusión, junto con capitulitos de excepcional valor, el lector tendrá que lidiar con segmentos amplios de especulación anacrónica. Junto con el volumen dedicado a la mitología oriental (la colección consta de 4 libros), es, pese a todo, recomendable (siempre como introduccion).
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