Joseph Campbell

Now began immediately a great battle for possession of the invaluable drink. One of the titans, Rahu, managed to steal a sip, but was beheaded before the liquor passed his throat; his body decayed but the head remained immortal. And this head now goes pursuing the moon forever through the skies, trying again to seize it. When it succeeds, the cup passes easily through its mouth and out again at its throat: that is why we have eclipses of the moon.

Campbell was exposed not only to the great, groundbreaking novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann and the radical art of Pablo Picasso, Antoine Bourdelle, and Paul Klee, all of whom integrated mythic motifs into their very modern work, but also to the revolutionary psychological teachings of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. These last two brought young Joseph Campbell to the epiphany that, as he would later put it, “Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths.”[1]

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.

“Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths.”[1]

everything that he was studying, from contemporary artists (“the modern mythmakers”[2]), to modern scientists, to ancient texts, to the legends of Arthur and his knights all seemed to be speaking in the same language — the language of myth

It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back

His role is precisely that of the Wise Old Man of the myths and fairy-tales whose words assist the hero through the trials and terrors of the weird adventure.

His second solemn task and deed therefore (as Toynbee declares and as all the mythologies of mankind indicate) is to return then to us, transfigured, and teach the lesson he has learned of life renewed.

As he did with one of his favorite tales, the Parsifal legend, when he threw down the gauntlet at the end of his Arthurian romance seminars: So is it going to be the Grail Quest or is it going to be the Wasteland? he would ask. Are you going to go on the creative soul’s quest or are you going to pursue the life that only gives you security? Are you going to follow the star of the zeal of your own enthusiasm? Are you going to live the myth or is the myth going to live you?

Furthermore, he would add gnomishly, “Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.”