Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations
Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2011 3:14 am
Part 2 - Ch. 1: Emanations
The Hero with a Thousand Faces - by Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces - by Joseph Campbell
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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.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)
All of this seems to hinge on prenatal and perinatal psychology which Campbell doesn't discuss much.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.)
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.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.
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)
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'.geo wrote:Campbell seems to suggest that a better path to universal love (Wright's non-zero-sumness) might be through Buddhism
Yes Geo, and welcome to the fold!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.
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.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?