Bibliofreakblog

Myths to Live By by Joseph Campbell

Oh Joseph Campbell, how I love you.  If you weren’t dead, I would find you and stalk you until you married me.  I want to live inside your head.  No other one scholar has influenced me like you have.  It was your work which inspired me to major in Comparative Religion, possibly the most useless of all liberal arts degrees (except maybe Art History), and I have never really regretted it.

Myths to Live By was my first introduction to Joseph Campbell.  Like many of his books, it is a collection of lectures he gave.  Perhaps because of that, it is written in such an accessible style one doesn’t need to know anything about mythology or religion to enjoy it and learn from it.

Early on in the book Campbell writes:

“What I would suggest is that by comparing a number [of myths] from different parts of the world and differing traditions, one might arrive at an understanding of their force, their source and possible sense.  For they are not historical.  That much is clear.  They speak, therefore, not of outside events but of themes of the imagination.  And since they exhibit features that are actually universal, they must in some way represent features of our general racial imagination, permanent features of the human spirit–or, as we say today, of the psyche.  They are telling us, therefore, of matters fundamental to ourselves, enduring essential principles about which it would be good for us to know; about which, in fact, it will be necessary for us to know if our conscious minds are to be kept in touch with our own most secret, motivating depths.  In short, these holy tales and their images are messages to the conscious mind from quarters of the spirit unknown to normal daylight consciousness, and if read as referring to events in the field of space and time–whether of the futures, present, or past–they will have been misread and their force deflected, some secondary thing outside then taking itself the reference of the symbol, some sanctified stick, stone, or animal, person, event, city, or social group.”

And then he goes on in the rest of the book to do just that.

He compares the obvious–the creation myths of say, Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions with Hinduism.  But he also compares the little things, and what they tell us about the philosophy of their various cultures.

 
Buy Myths to Live by on Amazon 

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise Von Franz
The Writers Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
Poplore: Folk and Pop in American Culture by Gene Bluestein
The Portable Jung by CG Jung
A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam by Karen Armstrong
A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong
The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong
The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade
A History of Religious Ideas: Vol. 1 From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries by Mircea Eliade
History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 2 From Gautama Budda to the Triumph of Christianity by Mircea Eliade
A History of Religious Ideas, Vol 3 From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms by Mircea Eliade
Myth and Reality by Mircea Eliade
Patterns in Comparative Religion by Mircea Eliade
Myth and Meaning: Cracking the Code of Culture by Claude Levi-Strauss
A Theory of Semiotics by Umberto Eco
The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts by Umberto Eco
An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in conversation with Michael Toms by Michael Toms
Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind by Stephen Larsen and Robin Larsen
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
Days With Uncle God-Momma: A Man’s Retreat Diary by Francis Gross 

Other works by Joseph Campbell:

Thou Art That
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion
The Hero with a Thousand Faces 
Transformations of Myth Through Time
Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion 
Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation 
The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959-1987 
Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce 
The Mythic Image
Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal 
The Masks of God, Vol. 1: Primitive Mythology
The Masks of God, Vol. 2: Oriental Mythology
The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology
The Masks of God, Vol. 4: Creative Mythology
Sake and Satori: Asian Journals — Japan 
Baksheesh and Brahman: Indian Journal 1954-1955
Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension: Select Essays, 1944-1968
A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake: Unlocking James Joyce’s Masterwork 

With Bill Moyers:

The Power of Myth

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