52 pages • 1 hour read
Joseph CampbellThe Power of Myth
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1991A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Universality of Mythological Symbols and the Collective Unconscious
Campbell sees similar story structures and images across cultures and eras, leading him to hypothesize that there is an unconscious connection between all humans. Campbell integrates Jung’s theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes to explain the psychological connection between humans that produces universal symbols and motifs. Jung theorizes that the collective unconscious of humanity is a result of the evolution of the brain. There are instincts, impulses, and behaviors inherent to the brain which produce shared means of understanding. Since humans across time and place have had this organ, and “since the imagination comes out of the biological ground, [the brain] is bound to produce certain themes” that manifest as mythological symbols (49). All humans also go through the same stages of life—birth, childhood, adulthood, and death—which, Campbell argues, produce shared mythological stories of transformation. The energy that animates the brain is a mystery, and Campbell argues that all mythology works to describe and understand this invisible life energy.
Throughout the book, Campbell discusses several archetypal images and motifs with multiple examples of each to prove their universality. A large portion of the discussion centers on the hero’s journey, which exists in some form in every culture. He gives examples from biblical, Hindu, Buddhist, American Indian, and many other traditions, noting how the basic structure of leaving on a journey and returning with illumination remains the same under the variety of local details. A comparison he constantly returns to is that between Jesus and the Buddha, whose stories of founding spiritual movements are strikingly similar. Other structures Campbell and Moyers explore include the vision quest, the father quest, the refusal of suitors, and the virgin birth; other common symbols they explore include the snake, the wheel and circle, and the tree of knowledge, among others. Campbell argues that if the individual is “not alert to the parallel themes, [they] perhaps would think they were quite different stories, but they’re not” (14). He believes that universal images and structures manifest from the shared unconscious, which societies then adapt to fit their context and specific values.
Common to all mythologies is the belief in an invisible realm behind the physical world, which is the origin and animator of all life. Campbell observes that the earliest known evidence of this belief can be seen in Neanderthal burials, which developed in the written stories of later mythologies. Religious images of a place beyond the physical world—like the biblical heaven or the Buddhist Nirvana—point towards the hidden world behind physical life. Although religious institutions argue that these are real places the soul goes to after death, Campbell argues that heaven, Nirvana, and even the Garden of Eden are all symbols for “the plane of consciousness where you can identify yourself with that which transcends pairs of opposites” (56). For Campbell, all myths try to represent ways of “experiencing the world that will open us to the transcendent that informs it, and at the same time forms ourselves within it” (61). Campbell believes that meditating on the symbols shared across mythologies can help prompt this recognition of the transcendent energy of all life.
The Loss of Ritual in the Modern West and the Need for New Myths
As opposed to earlier eras that centered society around spirituality and rituals that connected people to cosmic thinking, Campbell sees the modern era as devoid of meaningful myths and rituals, which leaves young people without guidance. Campbell particularly discusses America as a demythologized country focused on economic desires and competition instead of community and compassion. His and Moyers’s vision of modern America is pessimistic: full of violence, drug use, and apathy to the larger world. Campbell believes that, rather than forging connections with other societies and peoples, Americans focus on the “conquest of the planet” (35) and concern themselves only with “economics and politics and not with the voice and sound of reason” (36). Dominant American mythologies—such as modern Christianity and Judaism—leave young people feeling unprepared for adulthood and unsure of their place in the world. Without spiritual awareness, Campbell says, people “spend most of life in meditating on where their money is coming from and where it’s going to go,” a way of life which he believes focuses too much on physical conditions rather than the condition of the spirit (19).
Campbell argues in Chapter 1 that America was not always demythologized, as it was founded on the mythic idea that all people have access to transcendent truth. America’s concerns with imperialism and conquering other nations since World War I, he argues, has led the nation away from this structuring mythological belief. Campbell frequently counters his explanations of powerful rituals with examples of American rituals that have become obsolete or so watered down that they no longer hold any power. For example, Campbell believes that American rituals initiating boys into adulthood prompt no lasting spiritual transformation but rather prolong immaturity and create adult men “still trying to be obedient to [their] father” (102). In comparison, rituals like that of the Australian Aboriginal tribes he describes in Chapter 3, which permanently alter the boy’s body and mind through extended spiritual instruction, produce a clear difference in roles from childhood to adulthood.
Mythologies must reflect the values and morals of the era they are in, Campbell asserts, making it difficult for new mythologies to grab hold in the West due to how quickly society changes. However, he is certain that mythologies of the future will take a global view of humanity, such as the Gaia principle focused on Mother Earth. Those with firsthand transformative spiritual experiences are few and far between, Campbell states, so the interpreters, creators, and teachers of modern myth will be artists, whose job will be “the mythologization of the environment and the world” (107). Moyers and Campbell believe that literature and film can fill the void of mythology in the West if their creators remain aware of the difficulty and seriousness of their task. George Lucas—a friend and student of Campbell’s—understood the power art has for relaying mythological themes. Campbell notes that Star Wars’ mythological message of trusting the self’s intuition and recognizing the connective life energy—the Force—within and between all things has shown to have a powerful impact on audiences, particularly young people who don’t connect to the mythologies of their ancestors.
Following Personal Bliss to Navigate Life’s Dualities
Campbell encourages people to experience spirituality and connect to the transcendent by following their bliss. Following bliss means finding something that sparks profound happiness and joy, intuitively following its path regardless of societal expectations. Each person navigates both an inner and outer world, but Campbell believes that people today disregard the inner world’s needs to please society. As an example, Campbell describes signing up for a military draft, which asks the individual: “How far are you going to go in acceding to what the society is asking of you?” (247). In a more domestic example, the drudgery of office work also serves outer economic interests over inner personal interests that can bring happiness. By recognizing that one can navigate the world by following personal intuition—while also respecting the rules of society—the individual can live in harmony between the inner and outer worlds. Identifying the object of bliss opens the self to new possibilities and “the waters of eternal life” in the present moment (150).
Campbell notes that mythological stories affirm the wisdom of the individual but do not teach how to find what makes one feel bliss. Like Campbell’s students at Sarah Lawrence College who lit up with interest when they stumbled upon an interesting topic, the feelings of bliss appear accidentally through life experience. What myth can teach, Campbell suggests, is what happens once a person trusts their intuition and follows the path of their choosing. In the hero’s journey, the hero recognizes that he lacks in some way and seeks an experience to make himself whole. The hero courageously ventures on his own and opens a world of adventure. Like the example of the Iroquois refusal of suitors in Chapter 5, the adventure can be riddled with fear and suffering, but Campbell believes that a journey of one’s own choosing is preferable to being told what to do all of one’s life.
Throughout his conversation with Moyers, Campbell illustrates his advice to “follow your bliss” through the mythological symbol of the wheel, particularly the medieval Wheel of Fortune in Chapter 4. Circles in mythology represent the totality of life, as they have no beginning or end, but moving wheels also symbolize the fluctuations of life in the temporal human world. As Fortune blindly spins the wheel, those on the outside rim can either feel great joy or great suffering, which Campbell reads as the primary dual experiences of life. The center point of the wheel, represented in circle imagery as the source of life energy, is a static point that endures through all of life’s oscillations. By finding the object of bliss in your life, Campbell argues, you find the center of your life’s wheel which sustains you through great suffering and also allows you to feel great joys.
Myth as Metaphoric and Symbolic, Not Literal and Historical
Campbell views all myths as metaphoric and symbolic manifestations of the human psyche’s attempts to understand the mysteries of life. Myth becomes distorted when an individual or institution tries to interpret the stories as matters of historical fact, preventing the individual from seeing their place within mythic structures and experiences. Campbell observes that human language, because it comes from the temporal world of dualities, cannot accurately represent ultimate concepts of life and the universe. Therefore, humans employ stories and images as symbols for these deeper truths. Campbell continually urges readers of myth to keep in mind that mythic stories are symbolic and must be read as suggesting something about universal human experience beyond the literal meaning of the story. Choosing to read myth literally, Campbell believes, is a “child’s way of thinking” about the world (63).
A prominent mythological symbol is the anthropomorphized God—either a male or female figure—who symbolizes the creative life energy of the transcendent. The transcendent is the word Campbell uses throughout his discussion to describe the invisible energy that gives life awareness and from which come shared human symbols. God figures visually represent the creation, wisdom, and laws of the universe, as well as the values particular to each society. For example, hunting cultures, where men provided life-sustaining food, usually had supreme male Gods—like the late Babylonian god Marduk—whereas planting cultures that saw women as the primary bringer of food and life had supreme female Goddesses—like the early Babylonian Mother Goddess. God figures are useful for spiritual meditation because it is easier for humans to contemplate a visual image rather than “imagine what [they] cannot personify” (260). Campbell notes that all images of the divine must be understood as pointing to the transcendent rather than capturing or fully expressing it.
Myths teach that transcendent energy lives behind all aspects of life, and so the stories try to bring awareness of this divine energy to each person. By understanding this mythological message, an individual can live in better harmony with themself, their community and environment, and the universe. Campbell observes that the biblical tradition—the dominant mythology of the modern West—hinders the individual from making these connections because its institutions focus on the historical facts of its stories and figures. By making Jesus and God concrete figures rather than symbols of the transcendent, these religions encourage the individual to “cling to the image in [their] mind” when the “larger experience of God approaches” (262). Campbell tells Moyers that he has “not found […] anywhere else” (125) the biblical tradition’s desire to dissuade its followers from identifying with the divine energy in themselves. If, like Moyers, the Christian believer rediscovers the symbolism of biblical stories, their perspective may open up to reveal the core messages of the religion, such as loving thy neighbor.
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