The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell
The JCF, in conjunction with New World Library, Acorn Media and Roomful of Sky Records, has undertaken to make Mr. Campbell’s unreleased and no-longer-available work–uncollected essays, journals, interviews, lectures, article fragments, etc–available through this thought-provoking series. The works in the on-going series are:
Print & Ebook:
- Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor— An exploration of the myths and symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition
- The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Myth As Metaphor and As Religion—The last book that Campbell completed in his lifetime explores the nascent mythology of the modern age.
- The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension— A collection of some of Campbell’s most far-reaching essays
- Asian Journals: India & Japan—The thoughtful diary of Campbell’s life-changing trip to India and his eye-opening experiences in Japan
- Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal—An exploration of the central myths and symbols of the great Asian religions
- The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work–A wonderful series of conversations between Campbell and many of his associates and friends
- Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce–An exploration of the mythic impact of the twentieth century’s greatest novelist
- A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake—co-written with Henry Morton Robinson and newly edited by Joyce scholar Edmond Epstein, this remains the seminal analysis of Joyce’s masterpiece
- Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation—In this work, Campbell explores myth as it pertains to the individual
- The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959-1987— A new volume of Campbell’s far-ranging, thought-provoking essays
- The Hero with a Thousand Faces—A new edition of Campbell’s classic exploration of the universal monomyth of the Hero’s Journey, and of its cosmic mirror, the Cosmogonic Cycle
- The Mythic Imagination: Collected Short Fiction—In these stories, readers will find rich mythological symbolism, down-to-earth concerns with the ravages of the Second World War, and singular iterations of Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey schema
- Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine—This exciting work traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance.
- Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth—The Arthurian myths opened the world of comparative mythology to Campbell, turning his attention to the Near and Far Eastern roots of myth.
- Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance—This book offers insight into Campbell’s lifelong fascination with the relationship of myth to aesthetic form and human psychology.
- Correspondence: 1927–1987 — This brand-new collection of letters features illuminating conversations between Joseph Campbell and a fascinating cast of correspondents, ranging from friends and cowriters to renegade scholars and fellow visionaries.
Ebook only (Available for download on JCF.org)
- Myths to Live By — The first new edition of Campbell’s popular exploration of myth in the modern age since its original publication is also the first ebook in the Collected Works series. Newly illustrated and annotated. (Now Available for Download from JCF.org)
- A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living — One of Joseph Campbell’s most popular, most quoted works, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration, thought-provoking in its depth, poetic in its scope. (Now Available for Download from JCF.org)
- The Thousand and One Nights — Experience the overflowing bounty of the world’s greatest collection of folk myths and fairy tales. (Now Available for Download from JCF.org)
- The Masks of God
- Primitive Mythology—From the earliest expressions of religious awe in pre-modern humans to the rites and art of contemporary primal tribes, myth has informed humankind’s understanding of the world, seen and unseen. Exploring these archetypal mythic images and practices, Campbell examines the basic concepts that underlie all human myth, even to this day.
- Oriental Mythology—The pre-eminent mythologist looks at Asian mythology as it developed over the course of five thousand years into the distinctive religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Japan.
- Occidental Mythology—Exploring the West’s shift from female-centered to male-centered mythology, Campbell examines the distinguishing characteristics and the shared root concepts of these mythologies.
- Creative Mythology—Joseph Campbell looks at the Western emphasis on the individual as it developed across Europe during the late Middle Ages, particularly in the tales of King Arthur’s court.
Video:
- The Hero’s Journey: A Biographical Portrait—This film, made shortly before his death in 1987, follows Campbell’s personal quest—a pathless journey of questioning, discovery, and ultimately of delight and joy in a life to which he said, “Yes.”
- Sukhavati: A Mythic Journey—This hypnotic and mesmerizing film is a deeply personal, almost spiritual portrait of Campbell.
- Mythos—This series is made up of talks that Campbell himself believed summed up his views on “the one great story of mankind.”
Audio:
- The Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell, Series I–A newly digitized and remastered release of these classic recordings, covering Campbell’s early years as a public speaker and including some of his most inspiring and beloved talks.
- The Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell, Series II—Lectures from the middle of Campbell’s career, starting just after the moon landing in 1969 and counting to the late 1970s.
- The Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell, Series III—The JCF is preparing for the orderly release of thirty previously unavailable recordings of Campbell at his finest, exploring myth, religion, history, literature and personal growth as only he could. These lectures will come from the end of Campbell’s career, beginning with the late 1970s up until his death in 1987.
| Cover | Title | Description | Formats |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Asian Journals — India and Japan | At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until he was 50 to visit the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical from his teaching position and embarked on a yearlong voyage through India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan. He encounters an Asia that shocks and transforms him. Asian Journals combines the two hardcover editions of Campbell’s journals, … | audio book, book, cd |
 | Baksheesh and Brahman | Now available in Asian Journals: India & Japan Joseph Campbell was one of the foremost interpreters of myth in our time. Yet when he traveled to Asia for the first time he was nearly fifty and at a crossroads in his life and career. This journal of those transformative six months in India is as close as Campbell ever came to writing an autobiography. After ten years’ intense study of Indian art and philosophy, Campbell embarked on this long-postponed journey. Searching for the transcendent (Brahman)—the exotic mysteries of the India in his books—he found instead stark realities: growing nationalism, cultural … | book |
 | Correspondence | Selected letters capturing ongoing conversations between famed mythologist Joseph Campbell and a remarkable group of artists, seekers, filmmakers, novelists, and scholars This brand-new collection of letters features illuminating conversations between Joseph Campbell and a fascinating cast of correspondents, ranging from friends and cowriters to renegade scholars and fellow visionaries. Including letters from both Campbell and his correspondents, and spanning the course of his entire adult life (1927–1987), the collection demonstrates the lasting influence of Campbell’s work, which inspired creative endeavors and radical shifts in so many people’s lives. Included are exchanges with artists such as Angela Gregory and Gary Snyder; colleagues including … | book, ebook |
 | Ecstasy of Being, The | Joseph Campbell’s collected writings on dance and art, edited and introduced by Nancy Allison, CMA, the founder of Jean Erdman Dance, and including Campbell’s unpublished manuscript “Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts,” the book he was working on when he died. Dance was one of mythologist Joseph Campbell’s wide-ranging passions. His wife, Jean Erdman, was a leading figure in modern dance who worked with Martha Graham and had Merce Cunningham in her first company. When Campbell retired from teaching in 1972, he and Erdman formed the Theater of the Open Eye, where for nearly fifteen years they … | audio book, book, cd, ebook |
 | Flight of the Wild Gander, The | Explore the origins and impact of myth What is the “meaning” of a tree? of a butterfly? of the birth of a child? or of the universe? What is the “meaning” of the song of a rushing stream? Such wonders simply are. They are antecedent to meaning, though “meaning” may be read into them. — Joseph Campbell In these essays – contemporary with his years at Sarah Lawrence and with his legendary Cooper Union lectures – Campbell explores the origins of myth, from the Grimms’ fairy tales to Native American legends. He explains how the symbolic content of myth is linked … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Goddesses | Joseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics. While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep as he covered the world’s great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs. … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Hero with a Thousand Faces, The | This seminal work has influenced millions of readers since it was originally published in 1949, bringing the insights of modern psychology together with Campbell’s revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell formulated the dual schemas of the Hero’s Journey, a universal motif of adventure and transformation that runs through all of humanity’s mythic traditions, and of the Cosmogonic Cycle, the stories of world-creation and -dissolution that have marked cultures around the world and across the centuries. Translated into over twenty languages, The Hero with a Thousand Faces has sold well over a million copies … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Hero’s Journey, The (book) | See also: The Hero’s Journey: a Biographical Portrait (video) Joseph Campbell, arguably the greatest mythologist of the twentieth century, was certainly one of our greatest storytellers. This masterfully crafted book interweaves conversations between Campbell and some of the people he inspired, including poet Robert Bly, anthropologist Angeles Arrien, filmmaker David Kennard, Doors drummer John Densmore, psychiatric pioneer Stanislov Grof, Nobel laureate Roger Guillemen, and others. Campbell reflects on subjects ranging from the origins and functions of myth, the role of the artist, and the need for ritual to the ordeals of love and romance. With poetry and humor, Campbell recounts … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Hero’s Journey, The (video) | See also: The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work (book) “And so Galahad decided that it would be a disgrace to set off on a quest with the other knights. Alone he would enter the dark forest where there was no path. This is the myth of the Hero’s Journey.” — Joseph Campbell One of the greatest storytellers of our time, and arguably the greatest mythologist, Joseph Campbell spent most of his long, rich career explaining how ancient myths like the Hero’s Journey are relevant to modern life. In understanding the importance of myth as a vital, … | dvd, streaming, vhs |
 | Inner Reaches of Outer Space, The | Developed from a memorable series of lectures delivered in San Francisco, which included a legendary symposium at the Palace of Fine Arts with astronaut Rusty Schweickart, this book–the last Campbell completed in his lifetime–explores the space age. Campbell posits that the newly discovered laws of outer space are actually at work within human beings as well and that a new mythology is implicit in this realization. He examines the new mythology and other questions in these essays. Reviews: This book, more than any other, unambiguously delineates his basic understanding of mythology and religion….Inveterate underliners will be tempted to highlight things … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Joseph Campbell Companion, A | In an intimate seminar gathered at the Esalen Institute for one month in 1983, Joseph Campbell discussed the ways in which myth informs and pervades each of our lives. This popular book gathers together many of Campbell’s mind-opening thoughts and observations from this seminar, from his lectures, and from his published work. This is both an inspiring and a very accessible volume to enjoy. | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Mythic Imagination | Before he was the engaging professor who brought mythology into people’s living rooms through his conversations with Bill Moyers, before he became known as the thinker whose ideas influenced Star Wars, and before his now-beloved phrase “follow your bliss” entered the popular lexicon, Joseph Campbell was a young man who tried his hand at writing fiction. At the age of twenty-nine, after years of Depression-era unemployment, when he lived off money he had earned playing saxophone in a jazz combo and read the world’s great literature in a syllabus of his own design, Campbell published his first short story. That … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Mythic Worlds, Modern Words | In 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was able to visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore—the outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses, and that, Campbell attested, changed his career. For the next sixty years, Campbell moved through the labyrinths of Joyce’s creations—writing and … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Mythos | “Myth comes from the same zone as dream . . . from the great biological ground, whatever it may be. They are energies and they are matters of consciousness.” – Joseph Campbell During the final years of his life, Joseph Campbell embarked on a speaking tour in which he drew together all that he had learned about what he called the “one great story” of humanity. These remarkable talks were filmed and are presented here in the order and manner in which Campbell himself intended, with enhanced images and in minimally edited form. This series is made up of fifteen … | dvd |
 | Myths of Light | This previously unpublished title brings the focus of Campbell’s remarkable knowledge and intellect to one of his favorite topics: the myths and metaphors of the Asian religions. By his own account, Joseph Campbell began his comparative study of the world’s religions with a chance meeting with the renowned Indian Theosophist Jeddu Krishnamurti on a trans-Atlantic steamer. Though he was deeply fascinated by mythologies and religions from every continent, Campbell’s imagination was most captured by Asia’s potent mix of theologies as they offered him paths to understanding the essence of myth. Readers who have been waiting for an accessible summation of … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Myths to Live By | In Myths to Live By, Joseph, Campbell explores the enduring power of the universal myths that influence our lives daily and examines the myth-making process from the primitive past to the immediate present, returning always to the source from which all mythology springs; the creative imagination. Campbell stresses that the borders dividing the earth have been shattered; that myths and religions have always followed the certain basic archetypes and are no longer exclusive to a single people, region, or religion. He shows how we must recognize their common denominators and allow this knowledge to be of use in fulfilling human … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Pathways to Bliss | Joseph Campbell famously defined myth as “other people’s religion.” But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment — or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world’s most powerful myths support the individual’s heroic path toward bliss. In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth. Like his classic best-selling books Myths to Live By and The Power of Myth, Pathways to Bliss draws from Campbell’s popular lectures and dialogues, which highlight his remarkable storytelling and … | audio book, book, cd, ebook |
 | Romance of the Grail | Throughout his life, Joseph Campbell was deeply engaged in the study of the Grail Quests and Arthurian legends of the European Middle Ages. In this new volume of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, editor Evans Lansing Smith collects Campbell’s writings and lectures on Arthurian legends, including his never-before-published master’s thesis on Arthurian myth, “A Study of the Dolorous Stroke.” Campbell’s writing captures the incredible stories of such figures as Merlin, Gawain, and Guinevere as well as the larger patterns and meanings revealed in these myths. Merlin’s death and Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, for example, … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | Sake and Satori | Now available in Asian Journals: India & Japan In 1954, famed mythologist Joseph Campbell traveled, at age 50, to Asia for the first time. In this second volume of his Asian journals, he continues East after nearly seven months in India, moving through Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally coming to rest, for a full five months, in Japan. Fueled by his remarkable eye for cultural differences and similarities, yet written through the unjaded perspective of a remarkably erudite teacher on his first trip to the Asia he has studied for most of his life, Sake and Satori … | book |
 | Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake, A | Countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake — James Joyce’s 1939 masterwork, on which he labored for a third of his life — have given up after a few pages and “dismissed the book as a perverse triumph of the unintelligible.” In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with novelist and poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first guide to understanding the fascinating world of Finnegans Wake. Page by page, chapter by chapter, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake outlines the basic action of Joyce’s book, simplifies and clarifies the complex web of images and allusions, and provides an understandable, … | audio book, book |
 | Sukhavati – A Mythic Journey | Also released as Sukhavati: Place of Bliss “We’re in a free fall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast. And always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. But all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective . . . Joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world and everything changes.” —Joseph Campbell Through archival excerpts from his finest filmed lectures interwoven with exquisite images and evocative music from around the world, … | dvd |
 | The Masks of God™ 4: Creative Mythology | Explore the power of myth as it exploded from twelfth century Europe into the modern world. Creative Mythology is the fourth and final volume of Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology, The Masks of God™. In this installment, the pre-eminent mythologist looks at the European mythology of individualism as it took flower in medieval Europe and spread, through the Renaissance, to influence modernist thought, art, and literature. The Masks of God™ is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks. On completing it, he wrote: Its main result for me has … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | The Masks of God™ Volume 1: Primitive Mythology | Masks of God™ Volume 1: Primitive Mythology In this first volume of The Masks of God — Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology — the preeminent mythologist looks at the wellsprings of myth. From the earliest expressions of religious awe in pre-modern humans to the rites and art of contemporary primal tribes, myth has informed humankind’s understanding of the world, seen and unseen. Exploring these archetypal mythic images and practices, Campbell examines the basic concepts that underlie all human myth, even to this day. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | The Masks of God™ Volume 2: Oriental Mythology | The Masks of God™ Volume 4: Creative Mythology “The myth of eternal return, which is still basic to Oriental life, displays an order of fixed forms that appear and disappear through all time.” – Joseph Campbell Explore the power of myth as it flowered in Asia In this second volume of The Masks of God – Joseph Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology – the preeminent mythologist looks at Asian mythology as it developed over the course of five thousand years into the distinctive religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Japan. The Masks of God is a four-volume study … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | The Masks of God™ Volume 3: Occidental Mythology | The Masks of God™ Volume 3: Occidental Mythology “The high function of Occidental myth and ritual . . . is to establish a means of relationship—of God to Man and Man to God”. — Joseph Campbell. Occidental Mythology is a systematic and fascinating comparison of the themes that underlie the art, worship, and literature of the western world. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks. On completing it, he wrote: “Its main result for me has been the confirmation of a thought I have long and … | audio book, book, ebook |
 | The Mythic Dimension | These twelve essays explore the topic for which Campbell was best known: the many connections between myth and history, psychology, and everyday life. Drawing from such varied sources as Thomas Mann, the occult, Jungian and Freudian theory, and the Grateful Dead, these dynamic writings elucidate the many ways in which myth touches our lives, our psyches, and our relationship to the world. | book |
 | The Thousand and One Nights | Experience the overflowing bounty of the world’s greatest collection of folk myths and fairy tales “Shehrzad was a priestess of the psyche secure in her science. The wonderful ease with which she gave not the best of her tales the opening night, yet enough to pique the invalid king’s interest, is one of the subtleties of the collection. Her understanding of the paradoxology of fate was transferred to King Shehriyar’s morbid intellect little by little (never more at a time than a self-righteous tyrant could assimilate), until, in the end, what was there left in the world for him to … | book, ebook |
 | Thou Art That | “Thou Art That is a compilation of previously uncollected essays and lectures by Joseph Campbell that focus on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Here Campbell explores common religious symbols, reexamining and reinterpreting them in the context of his remarkable knowledge of world mythology. According to Campbell, society often confuses the literal and metaphorical interpretations of religious stories and symbols. In this collection, he eloquently reestablishes these metaphors as a means to enhance spiritual understanding and mystical revelation. With characteristic verve, he ranges from rich storytelling to insightful comparative scholarship. Included is editor Eugene Kennedy’s classic interview with Campbell in The New York … | audio book, book, ebook |