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Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:14 am
by Chris OConnor
Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations
The Hero with a Thousand Faces - by Joseph Campbell

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 10:54 am
by geo
I'm about halfway through Campbell's book.

I'm really enjoying Campbell's synopses of many of the world's myths. What strikes me most is how many primitive cultures seemed so instinctively attuned to what Jung called the universal archetypes. (It occurs to me that Plato's forms might very well be the same thing.) We had some kind of spiritual connection with our archetypes (which subconsciously stem from the psychological trauma of birth). Campbell connects our rituals and myths to these archetypes. It also seems to me that we instinctively took these myths and rituals as metaphors. Where religion went "wrong" (as I would see it) is when we started to pretending that these ritual and mythologies were literally true and, especially, with the Christian lie of an afterlife.

Most of the ancient cultures celebrated and embraced life and death. We can see in Eastern cultures that the truly enlightened are those who no longer see individual mortality but a continuum of life.
The Sun in the Underworld, Lord of the Dead, is the other side of the same radiant king who rules and gives the day; for "Who is it that sustains you from the sky and from the earth? And who is it that brings out the living from the dead and the dead from the living? And who is it that rules and regulates all affairs?"71 We recall the Wachaga tale of the very poor man, Kyazimba, who was transported by a crone to the zenith, where the Sun rests at noon;73 there the Great Chief bestowed on him prosperity. And we recall the trickster-god Edshu, described in a tale from the other coast of Africa:73 spreading strife was his greatest joy. These are differing views of the same dreadful Providence. In him are contained and from him proceed the contradictions, good and evil, death and life, pain and pleasure, boons and deprivation. As the person of the sun door, he is the fountainhead of all the pairs of opposites. (pg. 123)
As such, I'm starting to get a very different idea of Christianity. I can see now how the Jesus story does so greatly resemble and mimic these earlier myths that it does seem that such stories were not taken so literally or they at least resonated with people who were used to looking at the world in a very metaphorical way. Likewise, I can see how people could accept the Old Testament God, who was both good and bad at the same time. Maybe God,as a father figure, represents a duality of good and evil. Not sure if I'm being very clear because it's hard for me to wrap my mind around this stuff.

My final thought is that modern people are disconnected from this metaphorical perspective by virtue of our own reason. This is good in many ways, but it also means we're cut off from insight into our archetypes which can only be accessed through myths and rituals. Religion doesn't help any more precisely because it has mutated into supernatural memes that are divorced from the natural world. We've essentially destroyed our coping mechanisms and insight into the metaphorical realm. This would explain why we're such a neurotic culture.
There can be no question: the psychological dangers through which earlier generations were guided by the symbols and spiritual exercises of their mythological and religious inheritance, we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, and not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern, "enlightened" individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.* Nevertheless, in the multitude of myths and legends that have been preserved to us, or collected from the ends of the earth, we may yet see delineated something of our still human course. To hear and profit, however, one may have to submit somehow to purgation and surrender. And that is part of our problem: just how to do that. "Or do ye think that ye shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed away before you?" (86)

*"The problem is not new," writes Dr. C. G. Jung, "for all ages before us have believed in gods in some form or other. Only an unparalleled impoverishment of symbolism could enable us to rediscover the gods as psychic factors, that is, as archetypes of the unconscious. . . . Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But 'the heart glows,' and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being." ("Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious." ed. cit., par. 50.)
All of this seems to hinge on prenatal and perinatal psychology which Campbell doesn't discuss much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-_and_p ... psychology

"Prenatal and perinatal psychology is an interdisciplinary study[1][2][3] of the foundations of health in body, mind, emotions and in enduring response patterns to life. It explores the psychological and psychophysiological effects and implications of the earliest experiences of the individual, before birth ("prenatal"), as well as during and immediately after childbirth ("perinatal") on the health and learning ability of the individual and on their relationships."

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 2:10 pm
by Robert Tulip
geo wrote:modern people are disconnected from this metaphorical perspective by virtue of our own reason. This is good in many ways, but it also means we're cut off from insight into our archetypes which can only be accessed through myths and rituals. Religion doesn't help any more precisely because it has mutated into supernatural memes that are divorced from the natural world. We've essentially destroyed our coping mechanisms and insight into the metaphorical realm. This would explain why we're such a neurotic culture.
The chasm between dominant culture and archetypal reality is a decisive observation. The alienation of modern culture from nature is the basic cause of neurosis. This separation has deep memetic sources in religion, with the cultural mutation of the false Judeo-Christian belief in God as entity. Believing things that are not true is very dangerous, putting the culture on a delusory path that will eventually be confronted by the return of the repressed. Therapy for this mass psychological delusion requires the elimination of supernatural belief except as metaphor for natural reality.

In my view, Christianity can be redeemed against rational archetypal psychology by recognising Jesus Christ as mythic archetype for human effort to reconcile culture and nature, to overcome the fall of reason. The passion story of cross and resurrection is a tale of how depraved human society cannot see the truth, but the truth is vindicated. Damnation is separation from reality. The spiritual themes of incarnation and atonement point to salvation as arising from being at one with our bodily material presence.

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 4:11 pm
by geo
As I've said before, I'm not too hopeful about resurrecting Christianity, but I do think it's possible that prehistoric humans took a more metaphorical view of reality. As Wright said in TEoG, the primitives didn't even have a word for religion, and likely they didn't have a word for myth either. There was only one way of seeing the world and that was through story-telling.

This schism from nature is well-illustrated by the Garden of Eden story, and I can appreciate reading the Biblical stories as such—metaphorically. But again I have a hard time imagining that humanity will be able to reimage Christianity in such a way. I think we all would have to become atheists first, deconstruct religion and stitch it back together again in a whole new tapestry. How would this be accomplished? And how would Christianity be a part of it? How do you reconcile such primitive beliefs with a new reconciliation with nature that is largely informed by empirical evidence?

Even Campbell seems to suggest that a better path to universal love (Wright's non-zero-sumness) might be through Buddhism:
Once we have broken free of the prejudices of our own provincially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that: the supreme initiation is not that of the local motherly fathers, who then project aggression onto the neighbors for their own defense. The good news, which the World Redeemer brings and which so many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate, is that God is love, that He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his chil­dren. Such comparatively trivial matters as the remaining details of the credo, the techniques of worship, and devices of episcopal organization (which have so absorbed the interest of Occidental theologians that they are today seriously discussed as the “principal questions of religion,” are merely pedantic snares, unless kept ancillary to the major teaching. Indeed, where not so kept, they have a regressive effect: they reduce the father image back again to the dimensions of the totem. And this, of course, is what has happened throughout the Christian world. One would think that we had been called upon to decide or to know whom, of all of us, the Father prefers. Whereas, the teaching is much less flattering: "Judge not, that ye be not judged." The World Savior's cross, in spite of the behavior of its professed priests, is a vastly more democratic symbol than the local flag.The understanding of the final—and critical—implications of he world-redemptive words and symbols of the tradition of Christendom has been so disarranged, during the tumultuous centuries that have elapsed since St. Augustine's declaration of the holy war of the Civitas Dei against the Civitas Diaboli, that the modern thinker wishing to know the meaning of a world religion (i.e., of a doctrine of universal love) must turn his mind to the other great (and much older) universal communion: that of the Buddha, where the primary word still is peace—peace to all beings. (pg. 135)

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 10:32 pm
by Robert Tulip
geo wrote:Campbell seems to suggest that a better path to universal love (Wright's non-zero-sumness) might be through Buddhism
Geo, the comparison between Christianity and Buddhism is very interesting. I like Buddhism, and consider that the eight fold noble path is a key to enlightenment. The eight steps are understanding, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, concentration. The acrostic is 'use these steps and leave everything mara causes'.

Where I consider that Christianity is ultimately superior to Buddhism is that the story of Christ is about the confrontation with evil, and the victory of good over evil in the world. Buddhism considers that suffering is the first of the four noble truths, and that nothing can be done about suffering except individual action to understand suffering as caused by attachment, to become dispassionate and to follow the eightfold noble path.

By contrast, Christianity says that people can name and overcome suffering through a transformation of the world by pure love, following the example of Christ. So in this sense Christianity is dynamic while Buddhism is passive, Christianity is engaged while Buddhism is detached, and Christianity is about liberation while Buddhism is about escape. Christianity also has a deeper understanding of economic development and politics, through its amazing claim that people who have will be given more in the parable of the talents.

Christian eschatology, the theory of global transformation, can be understood against this framework, as a way to reconcile Christianity with science, retaining its ethical core while discarding the dross of traditional supernatural metaphysics. All this dross is just corrupt accretion that is not essential to real faith.

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:09 am
by geo
Robert, to each his own. I can appreciate that you are able to glean the good stuff out of Christianity. It just doesn't resonate much with me at this point in my life. For what it's worth, I am beginning to see the likelihood that Christianity grew out of many earlier classical myths and was viewed much more symbolically in the past which is a point I had been very skeptical about.

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:24 pm
by tat tvam asi
For what it's worth, I am beginning to see the likelihood that Christianity grew out of many earlier classical myths and was viewed much more symbolically in the past which is a point I had been very skeptical about.
Yes Geo, and welcome to the fold!

You were very skeptical about all of this previously and in reading what you've posted here I see that your eyes are opening to the depth of the issue. That's what going through Campbell tends to do to people. And there's plenty more insight to add to Campbell's works for sure. He was considered as going beyond both Freud and Jung with his life's works and insights, but there is still plenty of room for others to go beyond Campbell and I think if he were alive today he'd be very proud of many of the comparative mythologists of our generation and what they've been accomplishing in terms of popularizing these truths and getting out into the general community via the invention of the Internet.

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 5:48 am
by DWill
Wouldn't an important question be: to whom did these symbolic or metaphorical understandings originally appeal? I mean to ask whether we're talking about select groups of devotees or the common, unlettered person. What tat and Robert seem to say is that once, before a church got hold of the sacred ideas, they were understood not literally but imaginatively, or as not forcing doctrines on people but rather expressing timeless natural truths through myth. Then, a priestly class essentially hijacked all that for use as institutional controls. They shifted the focus onto the literal framework of the scriptural stories in an effort to steer people away from the true content. Is that an accurate summary of the view?

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:27 am
by geo
DWill wrote:Wouldn't an important question be: to whom did these symbolic or metaphorical understandings originally appeal? I mean to ask whether we're talking about select groups of devotees or the common, unlettered person. What tat and Robert seem to say is that once, before a church got hold of the sacred ideas, they were understood not literally but imaginatively, or as not forcing doctrines on people but rather expressing timeless natural truths through myth. Then, a priestly class essentially hijacked all that for use as institutional controls. They shifted the focus onto the literal framework of the scriptural stories in an effort to steer people away from the true content. Is that an accurate summary of the view?
I had previously speculated that prehistoric folk would have viewed the world in a more metaphorical—less certain—way. They told stories to explain the workings of the world which is why so many of the old stories end with that's why the cheetah has spots or elephants large ears. The ancient people would not have had the certainty which came later with empirical study. This would also explain why during our polytheistic phase that we could so easily take on more gods or could choose between cults that worshipped specific deities while acknowledging the existence of others.

Campbell addresses your question later in the book. He says that when we pay too close attention to the symbols, we can lose sight of the actual meaning.

From page 202:

"Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, of their reference. No matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they remain but convenient means, accommodated to the understanding. Hence the personality or personalities of God--whether represented in trinitarian, dualistic, or unitarian terms, pictorially or verbally, as documented fact or apocalyptic vision--no one should attempt to read or interpret as the final thing. The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey. "For then alone do we know God truly," writes Saint Thomas Aquinas, "when we believe that He is far above all that man can possibly think of God." And in the Kena Upanishad, in the same spirit: "To know is not to know; not to know is to know." Mistaking a vehicle for its tenor may lead to spilling not only of valueless ink, but of valuable blood."

(That's some damned fine writing by the way)

And from page 213:

"In the later stages of many mythologies, the key images hide like needles in great haystacks of secondary anecdote and rationalization; for when a civilization has passed from a mythological to a secular point of view, the older images are no longer felt or quite approved. In Hellenistic Greece and in Imperial Rome, the ancient gods were reduced to mere civic patrons, household pets, and literary favorites. Uncomprehended inherited themes, such as that of the Minotaur—the dark and terrible night aspect of an old Egypto-Cretan representation of the incarnate sun god and divine king—were rationalized and reinterpreted to suit contemporary ends. Mt. Olympus became a Riviera of trite scandals and affairs, and the mother-goddesses hysterical nymphs. The myths were read as superhuman romances."

Also on page 213:

"Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended on the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.

To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning."

Re: Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations

Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:20 am
by tat tvam asi
That was a good selection of quotes Geo. The main issue is that in the mystery schools the symbols were presented as just that, symbols. The symbol of the sun dying for three days metaphorically and then appearing to rise once again as per the movement on the sun dials. This mystery passed down through the ages under several mythic designations. And it showed up in Christianity rather late on the scene. The Alexandrians were quite privy to the meaning of these mythological symbols. And the Gnostics were likely the original Christians when all is said and done, only to have had an orthodox tradition begin to arise later which took these metaphorical symbols and presented them in terms of historical fact. That's the shifting from an esoteric reading to an exoteric reading of the very same mythological symbols.

Dwill, I suspect that the orthodox tradition came in response to the persecution Christians were receiving for blabbing the ancient mysteries publically - the resurrection and so on. By that time it was a capital punishment to divulge the ancient mysteries to the vulgar public, which is precisely what the Christians were doing by taking these mystery symbols and passing them around. The only way to reverse what had been done is to simply shift the interpretation of the symbols to a strictly historical reading. Then the meanings are once again put back into secrecy which is where the state wanted them at that point in time. This subject matter was for the initiates of the mystery schoools. That's what it had come down to by the beginning of the common era under Roman law anyhow.

So it wasn't necessarily an evil intention on the part of the orthodoxy at first. Not considering the problem in these terms. But as time went on the mythological symbols were continually passed on as historical fact and the esoteric sects were all but wiped out in the process. And it was a long drawn out process taking several centuries. Origen tried to speak up about this very thing by mentioning how ridiculous it is to take all of these stories as literal fact - such as the six day creation and Jesus going up to the top of a mountain to be tempted by Satan - and he payed the price for speaking out against the will of the orthodoxy. So it gets complicated to try and decode but the bottom line is that there were people who knew good and well not to take all of these mythic symbols too literally and they were put down by those who were insisting that the symbols be taken literally...