“And so let us now ask what the proper source of awe might be for the race of mankind today. . . our most immediate mysterious neighbor today is not the animal or the plant; nor is it any longer the heavenly vault with its wonderfully moving lights. Frobenius points out that we have demythologized . . . → Read More: The center of mystery is man himself
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“What I would suggest is that by comparing a number from different parts of the world and differing traditions, one might arrive at an understanding of their force, their source and possible sense. For they are not historical. That much is clear. They speak, therefore, not of outside events but of themes of the imagination. . . . → Read More: Where do myths come from? “One consideration more, before proceeding to our next concern: that of the fact that in our present day–at least in the leading modern centers of cultural creativity–people have begun to take the existence of their supporting social orders for granted, and instead of aiming to defend and maintain the integrity of the community have begun . . . → Read More: consciousness evolving “An altogether different approach is represented by Carl G. Jung, in whose view the imageries of mythology and religion serve positive, life-furthering ends. … Our outward-oriented consciousness, addressed to the demands of the day, may lose touch with these inward forces; and the myths, states Jung, when correctly read, are the means to bring us . . . → Read More: Campbell on Jung on Myth This recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology. And along with this there runs another realization; namely, that the social group into which the individual has been born, which nourishes and protects him and which, for the greater part of his life, he must himself help . . . → Read More: Three factors that shape Mythology “Myths, according to Freud’s view, are of the psychological order of dream. Both, in his opinion, are symptomatic of repressions of infantile incest wishes, the only essential difference between a religion and neurosis being that the former is the more public. The person with a neurosis feels ashamed, alone and isolated in his illness, whereas . . . → Read More: Freud on Myth and Dreams “Shakespeare’s definition of the function of his art, “to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature,” is thus equally a definition of mythology. It is the revelation to waking consciousness of the powers of its own sustaining source” (4). Creative Mythologies (Vol IV of The Masks of God) When these stories are interpreted, though, not as reports of historic fact, but as merely imagined episodes projected onto history, and when they are recognized, then, as analogous to like projections produced elsewhere, in China, India, and Yucatan, the import becomes obvious; namely, that although false and to be rejected as accounts of physical history, . . . → Read More: On Universal Symbols of Mythic Imagery as Facts of the Mind “But if we are to grasp the full value of the material, we must note that myths are not exactly comparable to dream. Their figures originate from the same sources – the unconscious wells of fantasy – and their grammar is the same, but they are not the spontaneous products of sleep. On the contrary, . . . → Read More: Campbell: myths are not exactly comparable to dream “It is remarkable that in this dream the basic outline of the universal mythological formula of the adventure of the hero is reproduced, to the detail” (Hero 20). [personal dream of an operatic artist] |
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