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In our present world, the cosmological and the sociological functions have been taken away from us. Our image of the cosmos is totally different from the image expressed by the religious traditions in which we have been brought up. Likewise, the social order today is totally different from what it was in the days when . . . → Read More: Today There is No Cosmological or Sociological Function Finally, the fourth function of mythology is psychological. The myth must carry the individual through the stages of his life, from birth through maturity through senility to death. The mythology must do so in record with the social order of his group, the cosmos as understood by his group, and the monstrous mystery. The second . . . → Read More: The Fourth Function of Mythology The second function of mythology, then, is to present an image of the cosmos that will maintain your sense of mystical awe and explain everything that you come into contact with in the universe around you. Joseph Campbell (Pathways to Bliss,8) The second function of mythology is to present an image of the cosmos, an image of the universe round about, that will maintain and elicit this experience of awe. This function we may call the cosmological function of mythology. The question of truth doesn’t matter here. Nietzsche says that the worst point we can present . . . → Read More: The Second Function of Mythology The phantasmagorias of dream and vision are of “subtle matter.” Extremely fluent and mercurial, they are not illuminated, like gross objects, from without, but are self-luminous. Moreover, their logic is not that of Aristotle. In dream, we all know, the subject and object are not separate from each other-though they seem so to the dreamer-but . . . → Read More: Participation mystique: mythological cosmologies are functions of dream and vision The first is what I have called the mystical function: to waken and maintain in the individual a sense of awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe, not so that he lives in fear of it, but so that he recognizes that he participates in it, since the mystery of . . . → Read More: The four functions served by a properly operating mythology “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) |
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