Man and Myth

by Joseph Campbell

Never before on audio and authorized by the Joseph Campbell Foundation, this is the fourth volume in a new 40-hour lecture series on mythology and spirituality.

Genres: Mythology, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality

300 pages, audio cd

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Joseph 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.


Reviews

[Magila · Rating 4 out of 5]

solid. this guy is one bright dude and it's hard to say someone that managed to influence the grateful dead and stars wars in one fell swoop is not worth a bit of your at least only-moderately-divided attention.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did Campbell repeat himself this much in his lectures, or did someone fuck up the editing?

He's brilliant, reminds me of Alan Watts in many ways, but he's sometimes factually wrong - life didn't split into female and male until 10 billion years after it began (wut?) - and this schizo tendency of retelling the same joke/story increasingly annoyed me.

[Shhhhh Ahhhhh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every time you think you've gotten to the end of Campbell's knowledge and wisdom, he just opens his mouth and out gushes an entirely separate value stream. One distinction that will now stay with me forever, much like Bohm's dialogue, is what I will probably refer to as Campbell's art, but which truly belongs to James Joyce. However, I'm not a Joyce fan, so Campbell it is. Anyway, the distinction is this. Art is that which inspires in you a static state. Awe, for example, is sort of freezing of cognitive processes and emotion. Pornography, on the other hand, mobilizes ('kinesis' is how Campbell put it). Pornography makes you feel something. Sadness, arousal, happiness, incredulity, thoughtfulness, something. Art halts where Pornography accelerates.

He also talks about the necessity of rites and the differences in perspectives on education between modern societies and indigenous ones. he describes education as consisting of everything that a person would need to prepare them to be a fully responsible member of the group from the point of adulthood forward and how that interacts with individuality. Putting a life or death trial as the dividing line between childhood and adulthood, wherein deviation means automatic failure, was a security mechanism for the protection of the group. A boy who was allowed to grow up without that would fail to act when action was necessary and would cost the group their lives. He also adds a distinction here between children and adults in that children ask themselves if they should do something and adults take instant responsibility. So, someone in a life or death situation who hems and haws rather than immediately taking responsibility is obviously dangerous during this part of human history and resultant from that, individuality has no real meaning at that point. Then we fast forward to today and individuality is heavily in fashion but so is anxiety and he links that anxiety to the inability to immediately take an adult level of responsibility and to a constant wondering of whether you should do something or if someone else will do it for you, which he describes as a child-like orientation tot he world.

He goes on to talk about Jung being a colleague and contemporary of Freud and how Jung's work led him to a place of understanding that personal mythology, being aware of and understanding the myths we live our lives by, is essential and that sometimes we need to take action to explore and live into that mythology in order to leave a full and real life. Campbell talks about Jung asking himself what made himself feel alive as a child and subsequently going out to build a log cabin as an adult as a way of connecting with that deep reservoir of self-ness.

And, of course, he touches on the two types of dreaming, the type that is personal and deals with the themes of our individual lives and the type that seems to permeate all of our minds and which reference themes and ideas bigger than any individual. He talks about the history and importance of dream interpretation among particular indigenous groups and its importance in relationship to personal mythology.

I think I need to give this one another pass for certain. As usual with Campbell, there's too much, too quickly, and it's all high quality stuff. The man was a genius.

[Lancelot Schaubert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather than write a review of this man's life work, I'd rather just cite the various posts I've written about him in the past:

• Monomyth Definition: A Defense of The Hero’s Journey
• Hindu Monotheism : The Upanishads and Vedanta
• Follow Your Bliss : Results of Joseph Cambell’s Advice
• The New
Hero: Tolkien and Subversion
• Joseph Campbell Religion :: Did Joseph Campbell Believe in God?
• Joseph Campbell Religion :: Did Joseph Campbell Believe in God?
• Was Joseph Campbell atheist?

And because I like having fun, the Zero with 1,000 Faces

Mark: Got a new lighting rig and arrangement that I want to test out, but I need something that changes and moves around a bunch. You up for a challenge?

Lancelot: [silence. I’m thinking…]

Mark: Day… in the… studio?

Lancelot: New lighting set up?

Mark: Yeah, it’s–

Lancelot: What if I tapped into my old thespian and modeling skillset and tried to give you as many faces as possible?

Mark: So… you’d… wait. Like trying to get me to mix it up as you mix it up?

Lancelot: Yes. You’ll keep me on my toes, making sure the faces are all different. I’ll keep you on your toes so you switch your style.

Mark: Sounds fun.

Lancelot: We’ll call it… [Dr. Evil voice] THE ZERO WITH 1000 FACES.

Mark: [Quiet for awhile, then:] Okay.

Well we got into the studio and I brought exactly four billion props and costumes.