Joseph Campbell and Myth

This weekend I watched the remainder of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. It took me quite a while to get through this two-disc program, partly because it's hard to find six hours to devote to anything, partly because when I did make time, I found myself frequently pausing and replaying sections so I could write notes. I remember wondering how Campbell could clearly articulate so many thoughts and ideas wordlessly residing inside me. Even the ideas contradictory to my own helped me to understand my own reasoning. He also raised many new concepts, which I want to think and read about further.

Some random paraphrased snippets from the program:

• The influence of a vital person vitalizes.
  
• One should seek the experience of being alive, not seek the meaning of life.
• Consider intention (aesthetic) versus nature (expressive)...the beauty of a spider's web comes out of the spider's nature.
  
• Myths and dreams come from realizations, find expression in symbolic form.
  
• Myths need to change as the world changes. The world is changing too fast for new mythology.
• Art reveals through the object the radiance, speaks to the order in one's own life.
  
• There could be no relationship with that which is absolute other (lots in the program about dualities...male/female, man/god, good/evil, man/nature, love/pain).
  
• Images/symbols of myth are reflections and potentialities of all of us.
• Myth, like poetry, attempts to say what cannot be said with words.
  
• Poetry is a language that has to be penetrated...it opens, doesn't shut you off...it is the precise choosing of words that has implications past the words.
• Your (image of) god is your ultimate barrier to the transcendent experience.
  
• This moment now is the heavenly moment.
  
• One must have a sacred place.
• Myths are basically the same all over the world, in separate cultures and separate time periods...two possibilities for this are diffusion (mythology travels with traditions that travel through cultures) and the human psyche is essentially the same all over the world.
  

As I reread these and my other notes, I realize the effect has been diminished, the meaning blurred. It's like eating just the cherry off the top of a sundae. So if you're curious after this post, read Campbell's work or watch the PBS program, listen to these ideas directly from the source, devour the whole dessert. I ate and am more ravenous for it.