In The Power of Myth, Campbell and distinguished journalist Bill Moyers offer a brilliant combination of wisdom and wit in conversations that range from modern marriage ("Marriage is a relationship. When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship") to virgin births, from savior figures to heroic figures such as Luke Skywalker from Star Wars ("...By overcoming dark passions, the hero symbolizes our ability to control the irrational savages within us").
The Power of Myth is a great summing up of Joseph Campbell's work, sure to stand alongside his two celebrated classics The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Masks of God and his recent The Atlas of World Mythology.
There is no other subject that is more captivating than myth--a combination of history, literature, critical thinking, and creativity, I find myself wondering how I can integrate more myth into my work in religion and spirituality. Why mythology? Whether you're Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, or none of the above, if the role of "story," is important to your life, then you need to study mythology, too. It's a rabbit hole that never seems to end. The deeper into the study of myth I go, the more I wonder why it took me so long to discover and appreciate it. I know it's a taboo word for many Christians, but I am convinced myth is represented more times than not in the Bible, and while some may be offended by that sentiment, if it were not for mythology, I'm not sure I would still be reading the Bible.
Joseph Campbell's extensive knowledge of mythology in this interview with Bill Moyers is informative, refreshing and mystifying. These bits of information from ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don't know what the guide signs are along the way, you have to work it out yourself. But once this subject catches you, there is such a feeling, from one or another of these traditions, of information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort that you don't want to give it up. Regardless on how you've grown to understand the role of myth, I find its impact on the story of Jesus and all religious figures to be monumentally important. Human beings were born to wonder about their existence, there is no denying that. From the first thinking-humans to present day, ancient mythology confirms for us how our creativity and imagination have produced an endless variety of poetry, stories, analogies, parables and questions which all help to put ligaments, cartilage and flesh on the skeletons of where we come from.
Myth has been around a long, long time--longer than any of our world's religious writings. Evidence abounds that Greek mythology was everywhere before, during and after the time of Jesus. What if we opened ourselves to the possibility that some if not most of our religious roots were mythological? Would that change how you felt about Jesus? From what I've read, belief in God isn't going to disappear, and there is big power to be experienced through our beliefs. So what about the Bible? Could we live with the Bible being a work of myth-making? If we can tell ourselves that stories like the talking serpent, Noah's ark and Jonah being swallowed by the whale likely didn't go down exactly as written, then we have to at least be willing to accept that the writers of the New Testament, particularly the Greek Gospel writers, were also influenced by the mythology of their time and culture when they embarked on telling the story about Jesus. The goal of the Bible has been and will remain the same: to inspire people to believe in God and follow Jesus and imitate his love and compassion for the well-being of others. What difference does it truly make if things were embellished in order to make a more compelling case for Jesus' significance in history? There is still power in his name for those who believe.
For those of us desiring a deeper and more expansive search for truth in the limited amount of time we have on earth, I have found the study of mythology to be more than satisfying, and I have Joseph Campbell to thank for it. I think it is time to reassess the role that myth plays in our lives today as well as in the ancient scriptures. If you agree, then pick up The Power of Myth and get started.
People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about, and that's what these clues, or these myths, reveal about the spiritual potentialities of the human life. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
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