Our lives bring out our characters, and you find out more about yourself as you go on. The book is broken out by 8 interviews done over two years, so my notes here are organized by those sections. By going back you throw yourself out of sync with history. That relationship truly exists, Santa Claus doesn’t. 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.”. "[7], Newsweek May 4, 1992 p 68 [subject] the Arts "Just Too Good to Be True: another reason to beware of false eco-prophets" by Malcolm Jones Jr. with Ray Sawhill, Learn how and when to remove this template message, The Hero's Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell, "Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth | Shows | BillMoyers.com", Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth: The Hero's Adventure - TV.com, Films for the Humanities and Sciences - The Mythology of Star Wars with George Lucas and Bill Moyers, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Power_of_Myth&oldid=990597524, 1980s American documentary television series, Pages using infobox television with unknown empty parameters, Articles that may contain original research from June 2010, All articles that may contain original research, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 November 2020, at 11:47. If you deviate in the pursuit of money or fame or sex you’ve lost your life, but if you stay with your passion, even if you don’t get the money, you still have your bliss. There are many kinds of love. Our journey is to save ourselves. Then consider joining the 25,000 other people getting the Monday Medley newsletter. Finding bliss: We all have those little moments, those little intuitions, where for a fleeting second we think we might know where our bliss is. Maybe they need a hero to help guide them out of it. Compassion is suffering with someone. The Bassari people of Togo have a creation myth similar to the Christian one, in which a snake tricks the first persons into eating fruit, and their god, Unumbotte, asks who told them they could eat the fruit and they say the snake did. To him, mythology was the "song of the universe, the music of the spheres." For example, the Bible describes the evolution of the Judeo-Christian concept of God from the time when the Jews were in Babylon and the god they worshiped corresponded to a local tribal god, to when the concept became that of a world savior as a result of the Hebrews becoming a major force in the East Mediterranean region. I didn’t get anything in particular from this interview. We’ve lost these points of transition, no one goes through a specific struggle to reach a new plane of life, and no one has to make that kind of sacrifice to transition. Marriage: True mythological marriage is the sacrifice of the one individual for the union, for creating a whole that is greater than its parts. More recently, when the image of the earth, taken from the lunar landings, was published, it led to the universal realization that human beings must identify with the entire planet. Without specifically stating it, the assumption is made that the modern world under consideration is that of Campbell's world—the Christian-based, urbanized culture of North America, the so-called Modern Western Society. Moyers and Lucas filmed an interview 12 years later in 1999, modeled after The Power of Myth. Click here to listen to a podcast based on these book notes. Puberty Rites: In primal societies you go through a puberty rite, especially as a boy. The documentary was originally broadcast as six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) and journalist Bill Moyers. This, combined with an increased materialism and emphasis on technology, has led to modern youth in New York, becoming alienated from the mainstream of society and inventing their own morality, initiations and gangs. When different cultures expand their spheres of influence they eventually come into contact with each other, and the outcome of the collision, be it conquest, subjugation, or amalgamation, will be evident in the resultant mythology. A mythology is inevitably bound to the society and time in which it occurs and cannot be divorced from this culture and environment. But the models have to be appropriate to the time in which you are living, and our time has changed so fast that what was proper fifty years ago is not proper today. The denial of mythology, and the absence of transcendent religious experiences, is what Campbell thinks has turned young people to drugs. This concept of the emergence of a new mythology based on global aspects of life is reiterated several times by Campbell. The main theme of the book is the universality of myths—what Campbell calls "mankind's one great story"— that occur throughout the history of mankind, no matter which epoch or whichever culture or society is considered. The Power of Myth is a book based on the 1988 PBS documentary Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. Sometimes nothing will happen when you’re there, but if you cultivate that alone time and that removal, eventually, something will pop out of it. Yin and Yang, sacrificing to the relationship, to the whole, similar to as discussed in the first interview. We typically live in a world of duality: good and bad, true and untrue, but mythology shows us that there’s an underlying union between the polarities, a Yin and Yang where there is always some good in bad and vice versa. It’s brutal, but tribal and communal, and once you go through it, you know you are not a boy anymore. © Nathaniel Eliason, 2020 | You're looking great today | This site built on, Get My Searchable Collection of 200+ Book Notes, Get My Searchable Collection of 250+ Book Notes. The Power of Myth is a book based on the 1988 PBS documentary Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Men say they love war because it makes them feel alive. I couldn’t do that! Osiris was the judge and lord of the dead and the lord of regeneration and life. Our kids lose their faith in the religions that were taught to them, and they go inside. These talks include excerpts from Campbell's seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces[2]. Something went wrong while submitting the form. There is no black and white. [1], The interviews in the first five episodes were filmed at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch in California, with the sixth interview conducted at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, during the final two summers of Campbell's life. It deals with the universality and evolution of myths in the history of the human race and the place of myths in modern society. At the beginning of this chapter, and in other parts of the book, Campbell states that modern society lacks the stability it previously derived from being educated in the mythology and legends of the Greek and Roman classics. This, he states, is a mythological image that embodies the sacrifice of the visible for a transcendent good. Life is pain, suffering, horror, but you’re alive. I couldn’t be a writer!” that’s the dragon inside of you, and you have to slay it. Creation myths, transcending duality, pairs of opposites, God vs. In general, however, Campbell and Moyers, reach the conclusion that there is a lack of effective mythology and ritual in modern American society. The question then is if you’ll be able to say yes to your adventure when it presents itself, the adventure of being alive. SACRIFICE AND BLISS. Many gods of death were also gods of birth or fertility or regeneration. [4], The words attributed to Chief Seattle, read by Campbell in the fourth episode of the series, were actually written by Ted Perry for a 1972 ecology film called Home. They claim that the exclusion of classical studies from the modern educational syllabus has led to a lack of awareness of the mythological foundations of western society's heritage. The old-time religion belongs to another age, another people, another set of human values, another universe. Campbell expresses great enthusiasm for this film; a film that he says conforms to classical mythological legends. During the interview, Campbell reveals his views on religious fundamentalism in the modern world. Campbell and Moyers agree that the main objective of marriage is not the birth of children and the raising of families. Campbell says this is one of the perils of modern society, the impotence and ennui that people feel. There is no Santa Claus, but he is a metaphor for the relationship between parents and children. You go kill the lion, get beat up, get circumcised. I wonder how much of feeling lost comes from lacking a strong narrative to track your life against, to motivate and guide you. “If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there … Sacrifice and Bliss. Your submission has been received! But theology and religion fix things a certain way, they “turn poetry into prose,” and say there are rules and everything is literal. (The series was broadcast on television the year following his death.) Contemporary rituals are carried out to mark special events in private lives, such as an individual's marriage or enlistment in a branch of the armed forces and, on public occasions such as the inauguration of civil and national leaders. In a general sense myths include religion as well and the development of religion is an intrinsic part of a society's culture. The Haitian Voodoo god of death, Ghede, is also the god of sex. Thank you! First there was just Eros, the excitement of sexual desire. Campbell blends accounts of his own upbringing and experience with stories from many cultures and civilizations to present the reader with his most compelling thesis that modern society is going through a transition from the old mythologies and traditions to a new way of thinking where a global mythology will emerge. The Power of Myth (1991) is a compilation of six hour-long conversations that took place between preeminent scholar and mythologist Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, an American field journalist. The Power of Myth is a sort of campfire dialogue between Campbell … This is true even though Western society previously learnt from, and was informed by, the mythology of other cultures by including the study of Greek and Roman writings as part of its heritage. "[3] The book follows the format of the documentary and provides additional discussions not included in the original six-hour release. They find nothing that compares with the powerful puberty rituals of primitive societies. “One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. In a similar fashion, John Wayne is identified as a modern myth and Campbell recalls Douglas Fairbanks as having been a boyhood hero. 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