joseph campbell and the power of myth

[bobbyburns]

I caught joseph campbell and the power of myth on pbs last week. even though I'd watched it a couple times when I was really young, for some reason none of it clicked until now. I was thinking, "wow, there's definitely something there". for one, campbell was dead on with his observation of how myths and religions symbolize different psychological processes. secondly, as the times change, and we evolve psychologically, some myths and religions will no longer meet our needs. that really hit the nail on the head. personally, I don't think we need any religion. sometimes he could get a little academic, but bill moyers knew how to ask questions. "then what's the purpose of all this?" campbell: "to change consciousness." pretty en-zenulating stuff.

 

[novella]

I think that myths--and really all stories that are worth telling--circumscribe something that can't be told directly. It can only be told in drawing the connections, working the metaphors, writing the characters' changes, taking the heroes through fire. When a story recapitulates something universal in a new way, it becomes something powerful, nearer to myth. I also think that in reading mythical narratives (including those novels and memoirs and other accounts that build on a mythological archetype) you should always be aware that the interpretation will change, that others will interpret differently, and that each interpretation shows a different true facet of the myth.

Take something like slaying of the Minotaur, slaying of the dragon. What secrets enable the slayer to prevail? What does the dragon or Minotaur represent? Why does it have to be slain? Why is this hero successful? The answers will always be different, depending on who you are and what stage of life you're at. You can go back to those archetypes, like Icarus, and Sisyphus, and Leda over and over and still pull something different and retell it in a way that still works. For that reason, it's very important that they are not seen as morality tales.

About that show, I watched that a while ago and I was annoyed by Moyers always inserting the god concept in, when Campbell is careful to avoid it. (Though I do agree that Moyers can interview well, when he quits trying to lay an agenda on someone.) Campbell talks about his ideas about the sacred, the creative, and the individual in a way that allows for many levels of understanding, where Moyers kept trying to put those ideas in the box labelled Christianity.

Campbell also understands that the trajectory of myth and heroic stories is about the human desire for transcendence--something that everyone desires but few find, which is where the stories' power lies-- and that finding that experience is possible if you don't get swallowed up by the dragon that is all around.

 

[bobbyburns]

warm_enema sent me some cds of him talking about different topics. it's been a while since I listened to any of them, but I remember there was this one really interesting discussion he had on astronauts travelling in outer space. the experience of being up there alone and staring at the earth, which is everything we know, brings about this complete loss of ego. one astronaut in particular, whose radio had died temporarily while performing tests outside of the shuttle, leaving him completely cut off from everything, asked himself, in a sense, "what did I ever do to deserve this?" he had discovered something bigger than himself. that sort of realization can't be taught, because it comes unasked. like campbell said, that's the common theme in the heroes journey. being thrown into a situation in which you discover you're more than what you thought you were.

 

[novella]

One thing that sets the classic myths apart is that the heroes are not self-reflective. They go through their trials, they interact, but they are largely not concerned with the psychological implications of their quest (possibly unlike the questioning astronaut).

But the implications were there nonetheless. So the people reading those myths didn't articulate that aspect, though they would intuit that it was there.

The reinterpretations and recastings of those mythical stories now often involves the hero questioning the quest and himself. I think Woody Allen plays with that idea all the time. He's a hero without a worthy quest, all he has is the questions, which winds up making him look like a Freudian strawman, though one who understands the humor of that.