Stephen Gerringer
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Phillip,
You may be onto something: if the self is all that exists, is that just the little”I”– the subjective ego? Os it the uppercase S Self that is the totality of existence? Seems like the latter, which strikes me as quite mysterious and magical.
I’d say it belongs (which is what counts, since I’m the All )
😉
Where to begin, Shaheda? I think I’ll make this just a brief, off-topic reply to the following tangential (but much appreciated) observation:
You conclude your comment above with the following:
I also noticed that now, if you search a Joe Campbell quote, or other Joe Campbell references, you find your way back to JCF’s Joseph Campbell quotes database, which is a treasure house for the best Joe references. In the past, I’d go to websites such as the Brainy Quotes, or invariably to Bill Moyer’s Power of Myth videos etc. This new link (perhaps not so new?) new to me, that is, is indeed most helpful.
At JCF we started compiling this database a few years ago in response to the proliferation of Joseph Campbell quotes on the Internet. Many are improperly sourced, or not sourced at all, while others are either misquotes or even things Campbell never said. Of course, any author who wants to quote Joseph Campbell in a published work needs permission from JCF, which is Campbell’s literary heir – but we can’t grant permission if we don’t know where in Campbell’s vast corpus (which includes audio and video lectures as well as interviews) the passage in question appears (and part of the requirement for granting permission is that the individual using the quote provide a reference when they cite it; readers can then look up the quote in context, and see for themselves if Campbell’s observation actually supports whatever point an author is making).
It is surprising, though, how many people when filling out the form for Michael Lambert (who handles Rights and Permissions for the Foundation), instead of providing a source, simply supply a link to wherever on the Internet they stumbled across those words (such as Goodreads, Brainy Quotes, etc.); alas, that’s not a source – the title of the work and where within that book or audio or video Joe uses these words – but simply someplace in cyberspace that repeats the unsourced passage.
Though either Michael, David Kudler (managing editor of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell), or myself often have a pretty good idea of what work an unsourced quote might be from, it can take any or all of us hours, days, and even weeks or longer to track down a quote or determine it is a misquote. Over the course of a year that adds up to a lot of man-hours doing other people’s research for them (for free).
So we start compiling a searchable database of known quotes to make that task easier – and we keep adding to it. I essentially serve as the “quote maven” for JCF, maintaining the database (I’ve added over 300 of the currently nearly 500 sourced quotes, and continue to researching the many that are unsourced: we have a “pending” file with nearly a hundred more likely Campbell quotes – most of these we’re pretty sure Joe said, but these are harder to find – I spend about six hours a month whittling away at this list, which keeps expanding).
Now the public is able to search the database of sourced quotes (which you link to in your post above). We really appreciate that Googling a Campbell quote brings one back to JCF, which is the most comprehensive (and accurate) list available. Thanks for bringing that up.
Of course, if anyone does have trouble finding a Joe quote, something they are sure he said that doesn’t seem to appear in the database, they can feel free to pose question in the Joseph Campbell Quotes forum here in Conversations of a Higher Order, and harness the power of the group mind . . .
I woke in the dark at 3:30 a.m. from a brief dream (at least the part I remembered was brief), where I am on a rock or earthen platform somewhere in a rugged area with the feel of the American southwest, and the sense that this is an archaeological site. There is a female guiding me, dark hair in a sophisticated pixie cut a’la Audrey Hepburn c. 1967 (and, come to think of it, my fifth grade teacher that same year, Diane Storli – my first real teacher crush), who speaks with authority about what we see. We are looking at zig-zag lines several feet long gouged into a dry gully at the edge of the platform, maybe at the base of a cliff.
The Lady tells me these were made in the long ago by the snake cult that was sacred here. She shows me a real red-black snake that this image is supposed to depict (not an alternating red-and-black pattern, but a reddish-black color, such as in a Rothko painting), maybe only three feet long or less – definitely not as long as the zig-zag pattern itself. She holds the snake stretched straight – no zigzag rhythm of a serpent in motion. I step to the far end of the platform to take a closer look at it on the altar, which also holds a heart-shaped wreath formed of red foliage – I am to place the Snake there.
When I wake I immediately think of rock art – petroglyphs, found in so many pre-literate cultures around the world, though most I’ve seen are in New Mexico, Arizona, California, and Hawaii. Zig-zag lines are common; besides snake, I wonder about water, as I am reminded of the meanders Marija Gimbutas points to in neolithic art, and in dream I see this image on the side of a dry gully, which at one time must have carried water.
Popping online at that early hour of the morning, I found two different-yet-overlapping and intriguing articles in scholarly journals about the rock art of the Saami people, a reindeer herding people in what is Finnland today. The zigzag pattern can be found in petroglyphs, and also on the drumheads of their shamans, representing snakes (the adder – whose name in their tongue is a synonym for shaman); in trance visions triggered by rhythmic drumming, the shaman transforms into a snake to visit the Under/Otherworld.
The zigzags also signify water, lightning, and power, sometimes all at once (multiple associations and meanings are layered in to any given symbol).
According to a number of works, zigzag motifs in rock art from the desert and mountain areas of the American southwest seem to mirror the same nexus of associations (snakes, lightning, water).A wealth of information imparted in dream that comports with findings of archaeological studies of actual sacred sites from many different cultures around the world – a numinous experience, courtesy of the collective unconscious! I’m making associations to this image in the dream, and more on waking – and then find that countless others across many cultures appear to have arrived at the same space.
I am reminded of Joseph Campbell’s aphorism:
Dreams are private myths.
Myths are public dreams.No connection between the two to my knowledge. I would think somewhere at OPUS Archives and Research Center there must be a list of the volumes in Campbell’s personal library, so it might be possible for you to inquire as to whether Luther Standing Bear’s My People the Sioux was on his bookshelf.
Interesting that his career with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show was cut short by a train accident in 1903, the year before Campbell was born (Joe traced his love of Indian culture back to a performance of Buffalo Bill’s show at Madison Square Gardens in 1910, I believe, when he was six years old). I wouldn’t be surprised if Standing Bear appeared in a few of the silent westerns Joe saw in his youth, but if Campbell knew who he was, I suspect that would be because of his activism and writings in later years.
I’d like to thank Patrick for spending time with us this week in Conversations of a Higher Order. In response to the unsettling events of this strange and surreal year, Patrick has generously made his film, Finding Joe, available to all (follow the link).
And feel free to check out other entries in our Mythological Resources database.Patrick, a parting question, if you don’t mind – something simple, I trust. The children in your film were delightful! Where did you find them? (That’s a leading question . . . ) And could you share the details behind the party scene that graphically underscores the difference between “following your bliss” and hedonistic overindulgence? That was some mighty convincing acting!
I know you have a full plate at the moment, so thank you for taking the time out to play with us. You aren’t obligated to stick around, but don’t be surprised if this conversation continues in your absence, perhaps wandering down a few intriguing side roads.
Bliss On!
Hello Scott (aka scottrparent),
You write
The biggest is a description for consciousness vs. mind vs. soul. I know I’ll be asked to make a distinction. If I can’t, the rest of the presentation(s) will stall on this point.
As both Juan and Patrick point out, that’s a tall order indeed. Naturally these terms have to be part of the conversation, but you don’t need to be an expert – just provide some working definitions. Given these are presentations on Joseph Campbell’s work, you don’t need to lock down an ironclad description of each (which is about as likely as nailing one’s shadow to the wall), but just give a sense of how Campbell uses the terms.
Perhaps the best way to approach it is to acknowledge up front Juan’s observation: humankind’s greatest thinkers have been wrestling with these terms for thousands of years, yet they remain a bit blurry.
To illustrate that point, you might want to borrow this tidbit Joseph Campbell cites:
The story is told of a Confucian scholar who besought the twenty-eighth Buddhist patriarch, Bodhidharma, ‘to pacify his soul.’ Bodhidharma retorted, ‘Produce it and I will pacify it.’ The Confucian replied, ‘That is my trouble, I cannot find it.’ Bodhidharma said, ‘Your wish is granted.’ . . .”
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, p. 142 (2008 edition)Part of the problem is that we are using mind to look for mind, using consciousness to define consciousness (sort of like trying to touch the tip of your right forefinger with your right forefinger, or bite your right eyetooth with your right eyetooth).
Campbell often uses consciousness in the sense of awareness – aka “waking consciousness,” or “ego-consciousness,” both terms he uses to represent the part of me that is aware of the world around me. This can include not just sensory objects, but thoughts, internal states – the part of me known to me.
Many people seem to think consciousness is the only thing there is: when we are awake, we are conscious, rational, self-acting – our default setting. But Campbell, like Jung and most other depth psychologists, contrasts consciousness with “the Unconscious” – which refers to those parts of our being that I’m not aware of, that which is unconscious to the waking me. He illustrates this at the simplest, physical level with the process of digestion: right now I am digesting my breakfast, but I have no idea how – it would take a blackboard filled with complex mathematical equations to represent the complex biochemical processes taking place within my belly and gut – and yet, it’s not something that is happening to me: I am the one doing the digesting.
Similarly, our total psyche is much larger than the conscious part of our being, which juts up above the threshold of consciousness like the tip of an iceberg, with the bulk of one’s being not visible, beneath the surface. The unconscious dynamics of the psyche often swamp rational, conscious processes (all you have to do to experience how this works is fall in love).
As for mind, that has multiple definitions. According to my American Heritage dictionary, the two most relevant definitions are
1. The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination.
2. Intelligence; intellect
The second definition equates the mind with mental processes (indeed, the etymology of the English word “mind” can be traced back to the Indo-European base *men- [“think”], from which the Latin word for mind [mēns] is also derived, which is the source of “mental” in English).
Joseph Campbell uses the word “mind” mostly in the sense of the first definition. There is clearly an overlap with “consciousness,” but mind seems to suggest something more (emotion and memory, for example, as well as imagination, aren’t always conscious, though they do lurk in the background).
Soul appears in most mythological belief systems (e.g. ka and ba in ancient Egyptian mythology), and has sometimes been described as the life force of the individual, the incorporeal essence of one’s being. Personally, I rather like archetypal psychologist (and Campbell friend and colleague) James Hillman’s description of soul:
By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment – and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground.
It’s as if [emphasis mine] consciousness rests upon a self-sustaining and imagining substrate – an inner place or deeper person or ongoing presence – that is simply there even when all our subjectivity, ego, and consciousness go into eclipse. Soul appears as a factor independent of the events in which we are immersed. Though I cannot identify soul with anything else, I also can never grasp it by itself apart from other things, perhaps because it is like a reflection in a flowing mirror, or like the moon which mediates only borrowed light. But just this peculiar and paradoxical intervening variable gives one the sense of having or being a soul. However intangible and undefinable it is, soul carries highest importance in hierarchies of human values, frequently identified with the principle of life and even of dignity.
In another attempt on the idea of soul I suggested that the word refers to that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern. These four qualifications I had already put forth several years ago; I had begun to use the term freely, interchangeable with psyche (from Greek) and anima (from Latin). Now I am adding three necessary modifications. First, “soul” refers to the deepening of events into experience; second, the significance soul makes possible, whether in love or in religious concern, derives from its special relation with death. And third, by “soul” I mean the imaginative possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream, image, and fantasy – that mode which recognizes all realities as primarily symbolic or metaphorical.”
From the “Introduction” to Revisioning Psychology, by James Hillman
I toss all the above out not to say this is the way it is, but more as entry points into these concepts. See how these comport with your own understanding – even if your thoughts differ, might help you clarify what you need for purposes of your presentations (I assume the 12 hour and 24 hour versions won’t be packed all into one day!).
Circling back to consciousness, though Joseph Campbell does use the word in terms of ego-consciousness (or “waking consciousness”), he does sometimes bend brains with an expansion of the concept of consciousness (though you may not want to go there, depending on your audience and how deep you are diving)
It is a part of the Cartesian mode to think of consciousness as being something peculiar to the head, that the head is the organ originating consciousness. It isn’t. The head is an organ that inflects consciousness in a certain direction, or to a certain set of purposes. But there is a consciousness here in the body. The whole living world is informed by consciousness.
I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow. Where you really see life energy, there’s consciousness. Certainly the vegetable world is conscious. And when you live in the woods, as I did as a kid, you can see all these different consciousnesses relating to themselves. There is a plant consciousness and there is an animal consciousness, and we share both these things. You eat certain foods, and the bile knows whether there’s something there for it to go to work on. The whole process is consciousness. Trying to interpret it in simply mechanistic terms won’t work.”
Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
“Let us imagine ourselves for a moment in the lecture hall where I originally presented the material for this chapter. Above, we see the many lights. Each bulb is separate from the others, and we may think of them, accordingly, as separate from each other. Regarded that way, they are so many empirical facts; and the whole universe seen that way is called in Japanese ji hokkai, ‘the universe of things.’
But now, let us consider further. Each of those separate bulbs is a vehicle of light, and the light is not many but one. The one light, that is to say, is being displayed through all those bulbs; and we may think, therefore, either of the many bulbs or of the one light. Moreover, if this or that bulb went out, it would be replaced by another and we should again have the same light. The light, which is one, appears thus through many bulbs.
Analogously, I would be looking out from the lecture platform, seeing before me all the people of my audience, and just as each bulb seen aloft is a vehicle of light, so each of us below is a vehicle of consciousness. But the important thing about a bulb is the quality of its light. Likewise, the important thing about each of us is the quality of his consciousness. And although each may tend to identify himself mainly with his separate body and its frailties, it is possible also to regard one’s body as a mere vehicle of consciousness and to think then of consciousness as the one presence here made manifest through us all. These are but two ways of interpreting and experiencing the same set of present facts. One way is not truer than the other. They are just two ways of interpreting and experiencing: the first, in terms of the manifold of separate things; the second, in terms of the one thing that is made manifest through this manifold. And as, in Japanese, the first is known as ji hokkai, so the second is ri hokkai, the absolute universe.”
“Now the consciousness of ji hokkai cannot help being discriminative, and, experiencing oneself that way, one is bounded, like the light of a bulb, in this fragile present body of glass; whereas in the consciousness of ri hokkai there is no such delimitation. The leading aim of all Oriental mystic teaching, consequently, might be described as that of enabling us to shift our focus of self-identification from, so to say, this light bulb to its light; from this mortal person to the consciousness of which our bodies are but the vehicles. That, in fact, is the whole sense of the famous saying of the Indian Chāndogya Upaniṣad: tat tvam asi, Thou art That,’ ‘You yourself are that undifferentiated universal ground of all being, all consciousness, and all bliss.’ Not, however, the “you” with which one normally identifies: the “you,” that is to say, that has been named, numbered, and computerized for the tax collector. That is not the “you” that is That, but the condition that makes you a separate bulb.
It is not easy, however, to shift the accent of one’s sense of being from the body to its consciousness, and from this consciousness, then, to consciousness altogether.”
Joseph Campbell, “Zen,” Myths to Live By
Consciousness as we experience it both mediates and fits comfortably within ji hokkai – the experienced world – but Campbell suggests consciousness infuses and informs everything in the universe, making our individual ego-consciousness but one expression of consciousness qua Consciousness.
I love the lightbulb metaphor; however, here again we have a bit of an overlap with soul . . . or do we? I’ll leave that to you to determine, but this is a fun concept to play with – use it if it fits.
I don’t know if my post triggers any insights for you into how to present these terms, or just makes your task harder. Ultimately, though, you don’t have to have all the answers: you can’t go wrong if your presentation conveys your passion and enthusiasm for Campbell’s mythological perspective.
Metaphorically Yours,
G’day,Phillip!
We’re trying to collect essential myths in a thread called Myths Everyone Should Know, in our Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum. I notice that no one has mentioned any myths from Australia. I don’t know how familiar you might be with aboriginal tales, but sure would appreciate if if you would visit the link and add any titles and brief descriptions that come to you (or any myths from other cultures you feel might have been overlooked).
Hope all is flowing well for you in these surreal times . . .
Thanks!
Lovely posts, All!
Just thought I’d share a reminder that discussion boards don’t move at the pace of social media; conversations unfold a touch more leisurely here. That’s why we’ve asked Patrick to participate over the course of a week, which gives people time to find the conversation, and Patrick time to do justice to questions and comments (he’ll respond when he has a break in his day).
In the meantime, sure wouldn’t mind if those who haven’t posted before also pop over to our Meet & Greet forum and say hello, perhaps sharing a little bit about yourself and/or how you discovered Joseph Campbell’s work. That both gives other users a chance to welcome you, and makes this forum appear a touch less static (actually, some unexpectedly profound, long-lasting discussions have been generated in that forum – might be worth your time to check a few of those out). Also feel free to take a look at the other forums here in COHO (especially the Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum, near the bottom of COHO’s main page, which is a catch-all category for whatever topics don’t seem to fit anywhere else – there are intriguing threads unspooling on dreams and journaling at the moment, and we’d love for everyone to weigh in on what Myths Everyone Should Know, and add whatever you think has been overlooked).
(And a cheery G’day right back at you, Antoinette! It’s been way too long; much as I’d love hanging out with you in the flesh – I’m waiting till they build a bridge from California to Australia, and then I can just drive across – bumping into you in cyberspace is better than no contact at all!)
Mary,
Never any need to apologize for a “late response.” Fortunately, this is not social media, but a discussion board, where conversations unspool at their own pace. I definitely need time after reading a post, especially those as lengthy as you and I tend to write (I am cursed with excessive verbosity) to let the ideas encountered there simmer and percolate on a back burner in my brain before I’m ready to share my thoughts. It’s wonderful if someone replies in minutes, which is more a function of being in the right place at the right time when a post lands – but if that takes days, or weeks, no worry.
And sometimes I’ll reply a couple of times to a single post, maybe focusing on just one idea, then coming back later to address another, rather than try to work everything into just one post. Not this time though . . .
As for James Hillman claim that dreams have no meaning, I don’t necessarily see that as an either/or –but it does explain why dream dictionaries are wholly inadequate. They can help us amplify some of the symbolism in a dream image, which can give our own thoughts and associations a nudge, but there is no objective, independent meaning to, say, losing a tooth in a dream. For a male struggling with erectile dysfunction (or, say, inadequacies on the job), freudian variations on a sense of impotence might be relevant; for someone facing retirement, lost of a tooth could relate to failing faculties and the sense of one’s own mortality; but to a six year old, might represent a new, exciting stage of life.
I am reminded of Joseph Campbell declaring he doesn’t believe life has a purpose (“Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being.”). When Moyers challenged him, saying “Not true–not true,” Joe replied, “Wait a minute. Just sheer life cannot be said to have a purpose, because look at all the different purposes it has all over the place” – indeed, the fox and the hen are pretty much at cross-purposes.
Or, as Campbell asked (I’m paraphrasing here), “What’s the meaning of life? What’s the meaning of a flea? or a baby? or a sneeze?”
Elsewhere he observes, “What’s the meaning of life? You bring the meaning to it.”
So it is with dream. The Dream has no meaning, in and of itself; meaning is a function of the Dreamer, not the Dream.
That’s a bit of a simplistic condensation of Hillman’s thought, in contrast to others. I embrace all perspectives on dream, even those seemingly at odds (when one is working in the field of mythology, it helps to be willing to accept paradox) .
When I work with a dream, I find it often contains important information and insights relevant to my circumstances, my life (small wonder – so much is going on in any dream – but the little bits and pieces I bring back with me into consciousness I remember because of how they resonate with what is happening in my life, revealing feelings I’ve stuffed, possibilities I had not considered)
. . . but I also treat a dream as I would any work of art – incredible, mysterious, and beautiful all on its own.
And then there’s another level – the precognitive dream. Sometimes that can be quite specific (such as, back in the day when I was broke and thumbing my way around the country, waking from a dream where the right lens in my spectacles broke – and then, curious about that image as I was writing down the dream, pulling the glasses off my head to take a look and the right lens falls out in my palm – instead of, as it would have minutes later, shattering on the sidewalk; tending to that dream saved me from a disaster, as there is no way I could have afforded to replace my glasses at that point in my life. Did that dream have meaning? would it for anyone else? if I had not written it down and pondered it, still would have been the same dream, but would it have meaning then? Can’t really say, but sure felt like it held a message for me).
And sometimes the pre-cognitive aspect is an intense feeling-tone related to what’s to come. Here’s one such example from January 13 of this year:
In this dream, there is smoke, and then a huge explosion to the southwest, across a body of water (a little creek). Despite being some distance away, I can see the smoke turning dark, then dramatic explosion, followed by debris blowing up into the air, and realize there is nothing I can do to control where it comes down, no place I can hide – it’s all going to be random luck, one way or another.
This was just about the time we were starting to catch wind of a mysterious virus killing people in China. Six weeks later, when people in the United States started dying, same sense of nowhere to hide stuck when the coronavirus hit the United States – no control over whether or not we are exposed. I immediately looked up this dream: same intense anxiety, sense of trauma, near panic, powerlessness, and then resignation, in waking life as in this dream – but having had that dream helped me process what I experiencing inside about Covid.
Is that the meaning of the dream, it’s purpose? I certainly found relevance in it, and it did make a difference in my life, and hw I related to these energies, but I can’t say that was the dream’s intent.
Nevertheless, that happens for me a lot!
One final thought regarding the animal breathing the other side of the door in the dream I mentioned above. I didn’t make this connection until you asked the question, but a few nights later there was a dream where I opened a door and a huge (HUGE) cockroach or beetle came in. It’s body was about the size of a Ford Escort, but with a tiny head. I remember thinking this was strange, definitely Other, but neither threatening nor scary – no anxiety at all; rather, I was entranced.
The anxiety and fear only seem apparent in those dreams where I can’t bring myself to open the door.
Forgive this scattershot approach, tossing out some brief reactions. Don’t feel the need to respond – only reply to what intrigues you, a trail in the woods you want to explore.
Hello Kenneth,
I moved your post from the Meet & Greet forum, which is mostly for saying hello, to The Works of Joseph Campbell forum because you are seeking specific works that address your question, and it’s more likely to be seen here.
Morality, as related to good and evil, has a rather complex history mythologically
(just ask Eve & Adam about that apple from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – a knowledge the gods [Hebrew elohim, translated God, is a plural term] of Genesis intend to keep as a trait exclusive to deity).
Joseph Campbell points out that morality enters mythology with the emergence of Zoroastrianism in Persia. Prior to that, myths are not inherently moral. The Greek gods, the Hindu gods, the Norse, even Egyptian and Mesopotamian gods and goddesses do not concern themselves with sin and righteousness, nor salvation – they are themselves amoral, even immoral.
You should be able to find a discussion of this in Joseph Campbell’s Occidental Mythology (Volume III of The Masks of God), among other places.
Here is a little glimpse from a manuscript I’ve been editing for publication for the Foundation, drawn from Campbell’s responses to interviews (including material never aired or printed), and question-and-answer sessions following lectures. This exchange follows on his explanation of the emergence of “the perennial philosophy”:
CAMPBELL: Now when you transfer that into philosophy, you get a metaphysical rather than an ethically based philosophy. “Good and Evil,” Aeschylus says, “are one.” Heraclitus says, “For God, all things are good and right and just. For men, some things are right and others not.”
But this does not take hold in the popular philosophy of the West.
Now in the West, we’ve had the address to objective fact (rather than the metaphoric reading of the universe, seeing the mystery behind it), becoming fixed on the objects of measurement and desire and fear. This short-circuiting leads us also to an ethical emphasis: good against evil. Our religions are largely ethical and not metaphysical. And so it’s just about at the period of 500 B.C. that this distinction begins to break in.
WHAT TRIGGERS THAT SPLIT?
CAMPBELL: It’s at that time that a different turn is taken in Persia. The Persian empire was founded by Cyrus, 529 B.C., and he is followed by Darius, whose dates are 521 to 486 B.C. Darius gives as his prophet, Zoroaster. His dates are variously argued. Some place him as early as 1200 B.C., others around 600 B.C.
You have a totally new mythology with Zoroaster. That mythology is basically an ethical tradition, with the notion that good and evil are absolutes—not just relative to the position you’re in, but that there is absolute Good, absolute Evil—and these are symbolized in two deities: a deity of light and virtue and justice and wisdom named Ahura Mazda, and then, contrary, the god of darkness and hypocrisy and misinformation and malice, named Angra Mainyu. Ahura Mazda created a good world; Angra Mainyu threw evil into it, so you have the Fall. And this world is not good.
The world that we are living in is a world that is compounded of these two principles. The other traditions ask you to put yourself in accord with nature. This tradition says, “No. Nature is mixed of good and evil. You do not put yourself in accord, you correct it.” Now that is a deep, fundamental distinction, which, as far as I know, nobody else has even pointed to.
SO THE FOCUS ON GOOD AND EVIL IN RELIGION BEGINS WITH ZOROASTRIANISM?
CAMPBELL: I think so. It’s in the Persian tradition. Everything that has come out of the Near East now has it. That also comes through in the biblical tradition: with the fall in the garden nature becomes corrupt. You get it in the Dead Sea Scrolls: the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness. And you get it in the whole Christian tradition. The teachings of this great prophet of the Persian Achaemenid house of Darius the Great have come down through the Bible into Christianity.”
Zoroastrianism was the dominant faith in the empire of Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Babylonian empire, shortly after Nebuchadnezzar the Great had carried off thousands of the nobility, intelligentsia, and the priesthood of Judah – the literate leadership – after sacking Jerusalem.
Cyrus liberated the Jews, and eventually allowed them to return to Palestine and rebuild their nation. This happened in several waves under Cyrus and his successors, particularly Darius and Xerxes.
During the seven decades before the first wave returned, these leaders were exposed to Zoroastrianism and it’s sharp dichotomy between Good and Evil, with an emphasis on the need to choose the side of Good for salvation from the coming conflagration. This marks the emergence of morality as the mythic context of Faith, one which was transmitted to Judaism and her daughter religions, Christianity and Islam. It was in this period, under that influence, that the Hebrew scriptures were edited into their final form.
Prior to the Babylonian captivity, Yahweh is as amoral as other gods. After outlawing murder (“Thou Shalt Not Kill”), Yahweh orders the Israelites to slay the male infants of the nations they defeat – that will teach those Moabites, Midianites, Amorites and Amalekites to sacrifice their children to Moloch
… er, wait a minute there…
And then whenever the Pharaoh of the exodus is on the point of capitulating and releasing the Israelites, God hardens the monarch’s heart, and Moses is forced to call down another plague. Sure would have spared both sides a lot of grief, and a lot of lives, if God had allowed Moses to take advantage of Pharaoh’s grudging generosity, rather than stiffening the monarch’s fading resolve.
In the book of Job, Yahweh and Satan hang out together in heaven, wagering away Job’s wealth, health, and the lives of his children, somewhat reminiscent of the Olympic pantheon’s disputes spilling over to life-and-death events before the walls of Troy . . .
and it is Yahweh, rather than the Devil, who sends an evil spirit from heaven to repeatedly torment King Saul.
Later, when God is holding council in heaven, looking for a way to cause King Ahab’s death, a lying spirit speaks up. Ahab, praying and sacrificing to Yahweh, seeks to know God’s will – whether or not he should go to battle – and the lying spirit volunteers to inspire all the prophets (save one: need to preserve a legal loophole) to persuade Ahab that God will preserve his life and ensure victory if he goes to war.
Ahab is killed and the army defeated: were Yahweh a national leader or mafia head, he could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder under the RICO act, or at least risk becoming an unindicted co-conspirator – but since he’s God, his actions transcend good and evil.
In fact, in Isaiah 45:7 (traditionally written prior to the Babylonian captivity), God proclaims “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” (emphasis mine)
Similarly, in Isa. 54:16, the same Yahweh declares, “Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.” (emphasis mine)
But by the New Testament period, the polarization is complete: the Judeo-Christian deity is no longer claiming to have created the waster, is no longer the source of evil, which has had its origins transferred to Satan, the Devil.
A little more from the Q & A with Campbell:
SO INSTEAD OF ENDLESS RECURRING CYCLES, HISTORY BECOMES LINEAR, WITH A FINISH LINE IN SIGHT?
And now everyone is called upon to participate in this mixed world where good and evil are in conflict. We are exhorted to put our weight on the side of the good powers and restore the world of perfection. We have inherited this in a secularized form in our notion of progress leading toward a golden age.
AND THIS IS IN CONTRAST TO THE GNOSTIC TRADITION OF THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY.
Gnosis is the psychological crisis of seeing everything as God. In Sanskrit this is called bodhi – enlightenment – and he who has attained it is called the Enlightened One, the buddha. The Kingdom of God is not a historical event yet to come—it’s here, it’s happening, iti iti as they say in Sanskrit. The only thing holding you back from seeing it is your attachment to the hard physical thing you are. So kill that attachment. When you do, when you see, then it really doesn’t matter if you die this minute.
In Christianity you get a concretization of everything. God is concretized. Not only God but the Devil. Heaven and Hell are fixed poles. When you have a polarity, you are still in the world of phenomenology, and God is a fact and has a name. He represents something—and anything that represents something is this side of maya, isn’t it?
I suggest you get hold of Elaine Pagel’s book, The Gnostic Gospels. She deals with some of these problems, and gives references there to help understand how and why the Byzantine notion of Christianity came down full force and wiped out everything else.
The whole Gnostic tradition is wiped out. When you go to India, you find that there are 98 different ways of thinking about the deities. There were 98 different ways also in early Christianity. But then, by military power and violence, all ways, except this one of the Byzantine throne, were called anathema, heretical, and wiped out. That’s a choice of which Christianity you are going to develop. This is a specific, historically determined choice.
Why, I cannot answer. You don’t get that kind of thing elsewhere. Well, you do in Islam, and I think in Judaism also—you can see it in the Old Testament: the Yahwist group were the ones who gained control. And when you read Elijah, for instance, my God! It’s a bloodbath of people who are on the other side of the fence!
Then, as you read in the books of Samuel and Kings of the lives of the different Jewish kings, you find that about four of them did well in the sight of Yahweh. All the rest were worshipping on the hilltops, worshipping the Goddess. Then Josiah in 621 B.C. went in and cleaned up the temple. He found in the temple prostitutes, a horse of the sun god, a serpent that was being worshipped named Nehustan, which Moses was supposed to have molded in bronze in the desert, and all that kind of thing. It was quite a moment there. This history of the dominant pushing out the other varieties comes right through our own story.
And one more section, from a later chapter discussing philosophy:
HOW DOES THE GERMAN TRADITION ADDRESS THE DIVIDE BETWEEN ETHICAL RELIGIONS AND THE PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY?
Well, in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra—that’s his great, great book—he says Zarathustra is the one who first formulated the idea of an absolute ethic: Good and Evil as absolutes, not as relative. He said we’ve learned a lot from this ethical accent, but if Zoroaster were to come back today he would say, “OK you’ve learned that lesson, now let’s take the next one. Beyond good and evil is the mystical principle.”
Morality is the local and contemporary, and the metaphysical vision is transcendent of that—the “elementary idea,” rather than the “folk idea.” This is the basic problem in religion: relating the ethical notion of good and evil, which is local. There is no such thing as absolute good and absolute evil. This is locally transformed in time and space, and then these two, good and evil, come together in our life.
We have to make decisions about good and evil in life, but in our metaphysical knowledge we must go past, to wisdom.
Now, Nietzsche says the idea of the good man is an inorganic idea. What you have done has been to cut man in half. Every act has both good and evil results. What’s good for the tiger is bad for the antelope. But the antelope acquiesces in it. This is the idea of the old primitive hunters: this is the nature of life, and there is a covenant between the animal world and the human world. The animal gives itself as a willing victim with the understanding that a ritual will be proposed by which the life will be given back to its source; the animal will come back. With that you have a disregard of the finality of the physical. The physical is not final; it’s the garment of something that lives past it, and the recognition and gratitude for that which transcends.
This is a theme that Wolfram Von Eschenbach brings up in his Grail legend of Parzival. He starts out by saying every deed involves light and dark; all that can be done is to intend the light. But the dark will come out, and I think we have learned that: two world wars that were for one thing have yielded another, haven’t they? We’ve been working for virtue and have achieved something else.
The acts of God are like acts of nature, indifferent to good and evil. . . . And so Nietzsche in his Zarathustra puts us back on the “beyond good and evil” stretch.
BUT IF ONE’S GOAL ISN’T TRIUMPHING OVER EVIL, WHAT’S THE POINT? WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “GOOD”?
Nietzsche, in his Genealogy of Morals, speaks of the two ways of reading the word “virtue.” There is the earlier way of “virtu”: a virtuous lion is a lion who fulfills all the potentialities of lion-hood, such as tear a lamb in half. That’s a virtuous lion. A good knife is a knife that cuts. But with the ethical way of reading the word “good,” good-versus-evil is the way it’s thought about, not “good versus no-good.”
One of the characteristics of Western thinking again, in contrast to the primitive and the Oriental (which I’m beginning to be more and more respectful of), is the notion that nature is to be corrected. It comes from the old Biblical idea that nature is corrupt and man has been given dominance over the animals and nature and everything else, and there’s going to be a reformation when we restore the good Day of Yahweh and all will be grace and perfection again. This is sheer nonsense, but it’s what’s moving people.
The virtue manager is the real curse of the modern world, I think—the one who’s got righteousness on his side and knows that everyone else is to be corrected.
WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?
The great health-giving and spiritually supporting attitude is that of yielding to nature, even in its ferocity and its terror. We think the ferocity and terror is evil. It isn’t. It’s part of the operation of what is natural. But there’s a faith in nature that’s involved here which we do not have in our biblical tradition, a faith that all things manifesting themselves in their perfection coordinate to a perfect manifestation in the world. There’s a saying: the processes of nature cannot be evil. That’s a dreadful thought, but realize what the processes of nature involve.
I saw a picture several years ago in an issue of National Geographic of three cheetahs eating a gazelle. The gazelle was still alive. They were at his belly, and the gazelle’s head was lifted. And I said to myself, “Do we say yes to that?” We do.
THE WAY YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT “SAYING YEA” TO IT ALL—DOESN’T THAT RISK CONDONING IMMORALITY?
Sure. That’s what’s tough about it; it’s the essence of the problem. How long can you look at it? How deeply can you see? What can you take? Or are you going to play a little game: “Listen to the birds, aren’t they just sweet? Don’t look at the gazelle being eaten by three cheetahs.”
You make your choice. If you want to be a moralist, go ahead. If you want to go love life, do—but know that life is nasty. And it will involve death. Sorrow is part of the world.
Not to say that Campbell believes there is no place for ethics in religion (though conceived somewhat different from the morality in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, a morality rooted in revelation). Bill Moyers points out to Campbell in the small paperback edition of The Power of Myth that “myths deal with metaphysics,” but that religion “deals with ethics, good and evil, how I relate to you, and how I should behave toward you and toward my wife and toward my fellow man under God. What is the role of ethics in mythology?”
Campbell’s response, on page 281:
We spoke of the metaphysical experience in which you realize that you and the other are one. Ethics is a way of teaching you how to live as though you were one with the other. You don’t have to have the experience because the doctrine of religion gives you molds of actions that imply a compassionate relationship with the other. It offers an incentive for doing this by teaching you that simply acting in your own self-interest is sin. That is identification with your body.
This is the essence of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – or, in Bill Moyers’ formulation,
“Love thy neighbor as thyself, because thy neighbor is thyself”).We find variations of the Golden Rule in all major religions, including those, like Hinduism, which don’t automatically assume Good = God = Good.
The difference Campbell finds is that the religion often codifies a morality (e.g., the Ten Commandments; the Levitical code; Sharia law), a pattern of behavior that approximates the actual experience of the unity of all Life – whereas mythology propels us past revelation, to the experience of unity itself . . . and once we realize this Truth, this recognition of my Self in the Other, morality does not need to be externally enforced, but is etched in one’s heart.
Much of our approach to morality is grounded in determining the difference between Good & Evil – which are subjective, often changing concepts.
Better to root morality in Compassion – but that’s just my opinion.
Hope some of that is relevant. Unfortunately, the Q & A excerpts cannot be quoted – the book won’t be out until 2022; however, that did seem to touch on some of what you had in mind, and they were close at hand. Give me a day or two, and I will track down and point you toward passages that echo those themes in his published work (start with Occidental Mythology).
Mary writes
Twilight/dusk and dawn are the magical times when the half-light time brings the two worlds together of day and night and is the time then of fairie or magical consciousness.”
Though my response is really a bit of a tangent, not directly related to Breath as a core archetypal motif in myth, that sense of the liminal has been very much present during the fires here on the West Coast.
Have to admit there have been many days when the sun is but a rumor – but we have also experienced several spectacular sunrises and sunsets. And the last full moon appeared, over the course of three days, a blood amber color (for lack of a better description I’m afraid that’s the best I can do), which I have never seen before and hope I never see again – a surreal, otherworldly presence. That was around the time the sky (and really more than the sky, but the air surrounding us) was a deep red. Though the sense and feel has been more of an eerie, post-apocalyptic hellscape than a more traditional faerie-like sunset, I can definitely report being pitched into a liminal, dreamlike, mythic zone.
Johanna writes
I am deeply disturbed that the landscape is changing in such devastating ways , not least of which is our impact in dismissing our responsibility to take care of our planet-Campbell says “fragile planet’ . Stephen, I am sorry to hear of your struggle, it seems so ironic given the focus on so many of our conversations this summer.
Thank you for your kind words, Johanna.
Just this weekend, after a month of unbreathable air, blue skies appeared and the local air quality index finally registered in the green zone. It’s only a temporary respite – as the winds shift, the AQI forecast places us back in the unhealthy red zone by tomorrow morning – so I’ve taken advantage of this brief window to “un-trash” my backyard: hose the ash off the patio (which reeked like the inside of a full ashtray the moment the water hit it), rinse off the foliage, clean the cogged air conditioning filter, drain the hot tub and suck up the black wet ash, etc.
At the time of my last post (August 31), the fires and smoke were mainly impacting our part of northern California, including the San Francisco Bay area (with its 7 million inhabitants), where the atmosphere glowed a translucent red for two days; since then the skies have appeared overcast and the atmosphere varying shades of gray, with the sun but a rumor the last several weeks.
And the prevailing theme, re “the air we breathe,” has in that time once again moved center stage as fires ignited up and down the west coast, placing up to 10% of Oregon’s population under emergency evacuation orders and swamping Washington and Oregon as well as California skies with unbreathable air, affecting some 50 million people!
Oddly enough, I find the prevalence of that pattern reassuring. Breath, as noted in the essay that generated this discussion (and as you and Mary and Richard and others have underscored with your contributions to the conversation), is a core motif reverberating throughout all mythologies of the world, even hidden in the language of secular societies that have seemingly moved beyond myth (re pneuma, spirit, Odin/Wotan as breath, etc.) … so when that theme keeps surfacing throughout 2020 (including what Covid does to respiration, or George Floyd’s last words inspiring a mass movement, or the effect of global warming, or the hazardous, unbreathable blanket of smoke settling in over a thousand mile span north to south), it evokes a powerful mythic resonance that allows me to associate and make sense of otherwise seemingly unrelated traumatic collective events
. . . which brings me back to myth, and the power of story.
Joseph Campbell draws on Schopenhauer, who speaks of how, once one reaches the age of fifty, sixty, and beyond, and looks back over one’s life, it all seems one grand, unified narrative. Events that were experienced as random and confusing at the time they occurred now seem essential plot twists that help move the story along.
Schopenhauer asks who is writing that story – and answers that you are the author of your life story – not the conscious you, the “you” you think you are, but a deeper aspect of your Being.
Campbell’s point is that you can trust the Story you are living. Yes, conflict and pain are present, as they are in every story – but that’s what makes the tale worth telling.
I remember somebody asked Ramakrishna one time, ‘Why is there so much evil in the world?’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s to complicate the plot.”‘
(Joseph Campbell, in a question and answer session at Esalen)
We are living through one heck of a plot twist in the grand global narrative – hard to make rational, logical sense out of it when we are still caught in that bubble – but, in the long run, I trust the Story.
Doesn’t mean I like everything that happens to me over the course of that story (including the likelihood that, at some point, I’ll be written out of the narrative) … but that brings me back to another poignant point Campbell makes:
I will participate in the game. It’s a wonderful, wonderful opera–except that it hurts.”
(Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers, p. 66)Joe’s thoughts are cogent and informative, as usual. I am curious how you relate this to the discussion of the Shadow, above (or is the clip also part of a test post), unless you are drawing attention to Consciousness as distinct from the Shadow, which Jung equates to the personal unconscious?
James,
Thanks for sharing this compelling and troubling video discussion of the Social Dilemma! This Netflix event seems to have struck a chord for a number of people across the political spectrum. On Facebook one friend of mine, Jon (who I believe used to be active on the old version of COHO under the cyber moniker jonsjourney) who leans to the left, at least to the extent that he believes both parties support capitalism’s status quo, immediately posted that he was considering stepping away from Facebook.
The very next post in my newsfeed was from a lady in her early thirties whom I first met when she was a gifted student, back in my days teaching junior high. She is pro-business and leans to the right, but her reaction wasn’t that different from Jon’s. She asked what friends had watched the Social Dilemma, what they thought about it, and if they were willing to change their behavior and walk away from social media (sounded to me like she was wrestling with this issue herself). Ironically, she spent a few years as Sheryl Sandberg’s chief deputy at Facebook, right in the belly of the beast.
Of course, an added irony is that these discussions are unfolding on Facebook . . .
I have yet to view this program, but the lengthy interview you share does draw attention to the shadow side of the internet. We may think of the dark web as that shadow, the seamy underbelly where criminal deeds and deviancy take place out of sight – but shadow also refers to that which is unknown, what we are unconscious of that shapes one’s perception of reality and compels behavior (shadow contents can include what we are simply incapable of seeing, but also that which we would prefer not to see – how the sausage is made, so to speak).
The collective shadow, much like the personal shadow, exerts tremendous influence on a society. Often, it is projected out onto some Other, the way the collective shadow of the German people in the 1930s was projected onto the Jews, with disastrous consequences.
No surprise that the best way to depotentiate the shadow is with light: the expansion of consciousness, bringing unconscious motivations and pre-conceptions into awareness, which limits the ability of the unconscious to drive one’s behavior. (If we know Russia is creating faux Black Lives Matter and pro law enforcement groups on Facebook, scheduling clashing protests in the real world, and are aware these actions are organized not by grass roots activists but algorithms, then we are less likely to fall for the bait).
But though individuals may experience a wake-up call through viewing the Social Dilemma or other research in this area, I doubt that awareness will necessarily ripple out to the billion-plus in thrall to social media. I strongly suspect we are entering (or have entered, might be a more accurate way of phrasing it) a post-factual phase of society where magical thinking is primary. Since we’re all caught in the bubble, it’s not entirely clear what evolves from here . . .
“The Shadow Knows . . .” – which is where I stop. The complete thought is uttered in mysterious tones during the opening sequence of The Shadow (as alluded to in an earlier post, a radio show airing from 1937 to 1954, initially starring Orson Wells). “The Shadow” is the secret identity of Lamont Cranston, who learned, from a Yogi priest serving as the “Keeper of the Temple of the Cobras,” in Delhi, India, the power of how to cloud men’s mind so they cannot see him, in effect making himself invisible – a tool he wields each week to thwart the plans of evildoers.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men? The Shadow knows!”
Intriguing that Lamont Cranston, when using his powers, appears invisible to others; he doesn’t physically become invisible, but just can’t be seen, suggesting to me one’s Shadow is what one does not see. I also find it significant that in the popular radio show, which spawned a pulp comic, there is a distinction between Evil and Shadow – the twain are not the same. So two major take-aways for me from pop culture (which, as an expression of the collective psyche, is as valid a source as that of any of Jung’s observations, all arriving at the same place) are that Shadow is what is unknown (whether about oneself on the microcosmic scale, or society-at-large on a grander scale), and shadow is not the same as evil.
Evil, though, often serves as a portal guardian, dissuading the fainthearted from crossing that threshold between Light and Dark, between the Known and the Unknown.
With that in mind, I enjoyed your posts above, James – particularly the shadow nuggets you gleaned from the Gospel of Thomas and the dream treasure of “Invictus.” Mysterious indeed are the workings of the Unconscious, but we can know its workings when we experience its effects (in the same way we know the wind exists not because we can see it, but feel and see what it does).
What problem I have with Shadow is because of the baggage it carries, relating it to Evil – just one term of a duality: Black/White, Light/Shadow, Good/Evil.
But I’m not a dualist; mine is more of a polytheistic perspective.
Alan Watts says it best, in Om: Creative Meditations:
So between
Black and White
There is the whole range of colors.Between a smashing fist on the face and
Trying to touch the air
There are all the textures of
Feeling
Burning
Throbbing
Pushing
Hugging
Fondling
Tickling
Kissing
Brushing
and light wind on the skin.Your world is all these elements
Of life and sound
Of taste, smell and touch
Woven together in many dimensions on the
Fabulous loom of your brain.”There is, in my experience, so much more to Shadow than just dark, or black, or evil. There is so much texture, so much depth, to what is Unseen.
It’s a Rothko painting.
The black field in the upper section of this Rothko work – Untitled (Black on Grey), 1969 – appears a solid color in a picture this size viewed over the internet. But in person, the blackness of a Rothko painting is an epiphany, displaying a range of textures, saturation, and depth. On the page, it’s just black – but in the flesh one can get lost in a Rothko
. . . or in the Shadow.
Not always a bad thing – appreciation, rather than fear.
And, as Lamont Cranston tells us, tending to shadow can at times serve as a tool to thwart evildoers.
