Joseph Campbell

(March 4, 2003)
In the spirit of "Carneval," I thought I would share my latest readings with you.

I just finished Joseph Campbell's book "Hero With A Thousand Faces" last night.  The first edition was published in 1949.  The second edition of 1968 purportedly made few changes, so it is remarkably prescient and/or radical in its pantheistic notions.  It was a hard book for me to follow, for I do not think it has much structure.  Campbell seems to ramble in his observations about the shared Hero myths among most cultures and religions.  He observes that the Hero's journey from virgin birth to innocent crucifixion (or death-torture) are shared events among many cultures other than Christianity, many of them much older than Christianity and obviously sources for that latter manifestation.

I had wanted to read this book ever since Bill Moyers interviewed Campbell before his death in the PBS series, "Power of Myth," years ago.  I recall watching Moyers, an ordained Baptist minister, desperately trying to get Campbell to say that Christianity was the most real or true manifestation of the various legends, but Campbell would have none of it.  In fact, many of Campbell's observations about Christianity are quite negative and not at all reinforcing.  If I had to guess, I would say that Campbell was most closely allied with the practices of Buddhism.

Here follow some paraphrasing of the most interesting passages--quote marks omitted--my editorial "observations" in []:
In a footnote on p. 150, he distinguishes Buddhism of South Asia (Hinayana Buddhism--Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Burma (now Myanmar) and Siam (now Thailand)) from that of the north (Mahayana Buddhism).  Hinayana reveres the Buddha as a human hero,  a supreme saint and sage.  Mahayana regards the Buddha as a world savior, an incarnation of the universal principle of enlightenment.  He also distinguishes a Bodhisattva as a personage on the point of Buddhahood; the Hinayana views a Bodhisattva as an adept who will become a Buddha in a subsequent reincarnation; the Mahayana have a pantheon of many Boddhisattvas and many past and future Buddhas, all  of whom are manifestations of the one and only Adi-Buddha, the Primal Buddha, who is  suspended in a void of nonbeing, the ultimate state.

I knew there were various sects among Buddhists, but I did not know these distinctions.

On pp. 156-157, he writes about the influence of totem, tribal, racial and missionizing cults.  He points out that: 

human ego is not minimized by such influences but is, instead, enlarged, and the individual thus differentiates between his own and outsiders.  Instead of clearing his own heart, the zealot tries to clear the world.  The laws of the City of God are applied only to his in-group (tribe, church, nation, class, etc.) while the fire of a perpetual holy war is hurled (with a sense of pious service) against whatever uncircumcised, barbarian, heathen, native or alien people happen to be neighbors.  [Sounds quite familiar.]

Thus, the world is full of the resultant mutally contending bands of totem-, flag- or party-worshipers.  Even the so-called Christian nations--which are supposed to be following a World Redeemer--are better known to history for their colonial barbarity and internecine strife than for any practical display of that unconditioned love, synonymous with the effective conquest of ego, ego's world, and ego's tribal god, which was taught by their professed supreme Lord: "I say unto you, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you.  Bless them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you....  Be ye therefore merciful as your Father also is merciful." (Luke 6:27-36)  Campbell then offers the following in a footnote:

        IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1682
To ye aged and beloved Mr. John Higginson:
There be now at sea a ship called WELCOME, which has on board 100 or more of the heretics and malignants called Quakers, with W. Penn, who is the chief scamp, at the head of them.  The General Court has accordingly given sacred orders to Master Malachi Huscott, of the brig PORPOISE, to waylay the said WELCOME slyly as near the Cape of Cod as may be, and make captive the said Penn and his ungodly crew, so that the Lord may be glorified and not mocked on the soil of this new country with the heathen worship of these people.  Much spoil can be made of selling the whole lot to Barbadoes, where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar and we shall not only do the Lord great good by punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for His Minister and people.

Yours in the bowels of Christ,

COTTON MATHER
[Amen.]
Apparently, Master Huscott was unsuccessful, for W(illiam) Penn went on to found the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania.  I think there is a lot of Cotton Mather in Dubya, John Ashcroft, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.  Most "good Christians" hereabouts remain predictably silent whenever these buggers open their mouths to criticize today's "heretics and malignants," and they most all viciously see to it that the secular law continues to prohibit and/or criminalize the suspected private lusts and behaviors of the excluded few.

Much later in the book (p. 248-249), Campbell gives examples of how important the role of myth has been in various cultures, but how it has been watered down and rendered lifeless as time has passed and civilizations have passed from a mythological to a secular point of view, citing Hellenistic Greeks (Mt. Olympus a Riviera of trite scandals and affairs), Imperial Romans (ancient gods reduced to mere civic patrons and household pets), Confucianism (a clutter of anecdotes about the sons and daughters of provincial officials who ... were elevated ... to the dignity of local gods).    Christ--Incarnation of the Logos and Redeemer of the World--is primarily a historical personage, a harmless country wise man of the semi-oriental past who preached a benign doctrine of "do as you would be done by," yet was executed as a criminal.  His death is read as a spendid lesson in integrity and fortitude.
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.

Ah, the oxymoron of "creation science."  Campbell died before that nonsense became a major part of White House philosophy among several administrations, but he could not have been more prescient.

Campbell tries to explain (p. 258) how: 

the human senses and logic interfere with the attainment of ultimate spiritual being via meditation and abandonment of the self in all its manifestations.  He maintains that rituals and myths are but a penultimate path toward the truth and openess beyond.  The ultimate is openess--that void, or being, beyond the categories (therefore not defined by either of the pair of opposites called "void" and "being"--only clues to the transcendency) into whichthe mind must plunge alone and be dissolved.  God and gods, Heaven, Hell, myths, Olympus, etc. are mere symbols to move and awaken the mind and be called past themselves.  In a footnote he says that in Christianity, Mohammedanism, and Judaism, however, the personality of the divinity is taught to be final--which makes it comparatively difficult for the adherents to understand how one may go beyond the limitations of their own anthropomorphic divinity. [e.g., being created in the "image of God"--or is it God created in the image of man?].  The result has been, on the one hand, a general obfuscation of the symbols, and on the other, a god-ridden bigotry such as is unmatched elsewhere in the history of religion.  [Sounds like a take on our current Middle East entanglements.]

I won't restate it here, but he gives a useful recitation of the fundamentals of Jainism and Hinduism beginning on p. 262.  It is pretty tough going, but I found it interesting after reading it over a few times.

On p. 348 in a footnote he gives an interesting etymology of the divergence and spread of ancient Persian philosophy into India and beyond, evolving into Vedic beliefs, Buddhism, etc. in India and Sumero-Babylonian beliefs in ancient Persia.  He then says: 

the Persian beliefs were "reorganized" early in the First Millenium, BC by the Prophet Zarathustra to a strict dualism of good and evil.  He attributes an influence of this onto Hebrew beliefs and thereby Christianity.  He says it is a "radical departure" from the previous thought that good and evil originated with a single source.  [What about the notion of Satan as a fallen archangel, formerly of the Heavenly Host?  Mark Twain suggested that there were several minor falls prior to the Great Fall.]

There is a great recitation of the death of Buddha starting around p. 262 which I won't recite here.  I never knew any of that before, but I think it is interesting to note that the Buddha does not escape the reality of mortal death--a supernatural existence for him was simply not important to the extent and truth of the Buddha's enlightenment--his death was a necessary part of his journey to the next plane of Nonbeing.  It is truly celebrated.

Beginning on p. 368 there is a recitation from the Egyptian Book of the Dead of passage of the deceased's Osiris-spirit through the Underworld to the final resting place in the Great House in Heliopolis (the Sun?).  The mummified burial ritual is explained here as is the recognition of the unification of the divine hidden Soul and the universal being.  Great stuff.

Finally, Campbell has several observations (p. 387) about the preservation of myth among today's well-informed, well-educated people in the face of geographic, historical and scientific knowledge.  He says that: 

the hero-deed to be wrought is not today what it was in the century of Galileo.  The great coordinating myths are now known as lies.  Today no meaning is in the group--none in the world: all is in the individual.  But there the meaning is absoutely unconscious.  One does not know toward what one moves.  He says it is obvious we cannot turn back or away from modern accomplishments.  He says the problem is to make the modern world spiritually significant.  The national idea, with the flag as totem, is today an aggrandizer of the nursery ego, not the annihilator of an infantile situation.  Its parody-rituals of the parade ground serve the ends of the tyrant dragon, not the God in whom self-interest is annihilate.  The numerous saints of this anticult--namely the patriots whose ubiquitous photographs, draped with flags, serve as official icons--are precisely the local threshhold guardians ... who must be first conquered by the hero.  The great world religions have become associated with the causes of the factions, as instruments of propaganda and self-congratualation--even Buddhism.   Religious pantomime is hardly more today than a sanctimonious exercise for Sunday morning, whereas business ethics and patriotism stand for the remainder of the week.   Such a monkey-holiness is not what the functioning world requires....  [Can you say,  "Weasels of Mass Distraction"?  "Just War"?  "Enron"?  "Harken Energy"?  Halliburton"?  I knew you could!]

The idiotic public outcry against the recently affirmed decision by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to outlaw COERCED recitation of the "Pledge of Allegiance" by public-school students (and COERCED leading thereof by public-school teachers) is an example of this, I think.  Even the NY Times News Service has shamefully and incorrectly reported this decision as outlawing the primary recitation of the Pledge as most people misunderstand (and most national leaders willfully and deliberately and dishonestly mis-state) the decision.  Contrary to the deliberate lies of John Ashcroft and Dubya Bush, no one has been banned from truly voluntary participation in the Pledge of Allegiance which was, after all, a 19th-Century creation of the publisher of a socialist youth magazine!  The decision merely tracks the principles of the public-school-prayer decisions.


My purpose is transcribing all of this was not to inflict it onto anyone per se.  I wanted to record my own thoughts while they were fresh in my memory, and so I have.  But, I would like to hear from anyone who has also read this book and perhaps gets a different take on things than I have.  Joseph Campbell was quite an original thinker for his time and place; it is amazing that there has not been a pillorying of his thoughts and writings since his death, given the current climate.  Perhaps his death is more effectively magnified by being ignored.  I am sure very few True Believers even saw the PBS series, much less has any opinion about Campbell.  Perhaps they were too busy being "saved" by watching the "700 Club" instead.