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The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it is to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind. Whereas theologians, reading their revelations counterclockwise, so to say, point to references in the past (in Merton’s words: 'to another point on the circumference') and Utopians offer revelations only promissory of some desired future, mythologies, having sprung from the psyche, point back to the psyche ('the center'): and anyone seriously turning within will, in fact, rediscover their references in himself
Creation myths, furthermore, which, when read in their mystical sense might bring to mind the idea of a background beyond time out of which the whole temporal world with its colorful populations has been derived, when read, instead, historically, only justify as supernaturally endowed the moral order of some local culture.
Creation myths, furthermore, which, when read in their mystical sense might bring to mind the idea of a background beyond time out of which the whole temporal world with its colorful populations has been derived, when read, instead, historically, only justify as supernaturally endowed the moral order of some local culture.
In one of those cock-eyed theaters that are in New York, on 42nd and Broadway, I saw advertised Fire Women from Outer Space. That was a mythological idea. In Tibetan Buddhism these are called docheles—fire women from outer space! And in their spiritual powers they can excite you a little bit. And so I thought, Well, we’re getting back to the old days in a very funny way. Whenever the human imagination gets going, it has to work in the fields that myths have already covered. And it renders them in new ways, that’s all.
I have read somewhere of an old Chinese curse: "May you be born in an interesting time!" This is a VERY interesting time: there are no models for ANYTHING that is going on. It is a period of free fall into the future, and each has to make his or her own way. The old models are not working; the new have not yet appeared. In fact, it is we who are even now shaping the new in the shaping of our interesting lives. And that is the whole sense (in mythological terms) of the present challenge: we are the 'ancestors' of an age to come, the unwitting generators of its supporting myths,the mythic models that will inspire its lives."
If myth is translated into literal fact, then myth is a lie. But if you read it as a reflection of the world inside you, then it's true. Myth is the penultimate truth.
My writing is of a very different kind from anything I've heard about. All this mythological material is out there, a big gathering of stuff, and I have been reading it for some forty- or fifty-odd years. There are various ways of handling that. The most common is to put the material together and publish a scholarly book about it. But when I'm writing, I try to get a sense of an experiential relationship to the material. In fact, I can't write unless that happens … I don't write unless the stuff is really working on me, and my selection of material depends on what works.
On John Lennon: "He definitely was a hero. In the mythological sense, he was an innovator. The Beatles brought forth an art form for which there was a readiness. Somehow, they were in perfect tune with their time. Had they turned up thirty years before, their music would have fizzled out. The public hero is sensitive to the needs of his time. The Beatles brought a new spiritual depth into popular music . . . We are hearing more and more of it, and it’s being used in terms of its original intention as a support for meditations. That’s what the Beatles started.”
My favorite definition of mythology: other people's religion. My favorite definition of religion: misunderstanding of mythology. The misunderstanding consists in the reading of the spiritual mythological symbols as though they were primarily references to historical events.
Our outward-oriented consciousness, addressed to the demands of the day, may lose touch with these inward forces; and the myths, states Jung, when correctly read, are the means to bring us back in touch.
Our outward-oriented consciousness, addressed to the demands of the day, may lose touch with these inward forces; and the myths, states Jung, when correctly read, are the means to bring us back in touch. They are telling us in picture language of powers of the psyche to be recognized and integrated in our lives, powers that have been common to the human spirit forever, and which represent that wisdom of the species by which man has weathered the millenniums.
Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that's what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.
Some such elementary course in comparative mythology as I have here suggested––conducted, however, by a team of scholar-specialists lecturing in their special fields and separately directing individual student projects––could be put together readily in any one of the major universities. It would serve not only to open to students a view of the whole range of possibilities before them, when they enter as wide-eyed youngsters the enchanted wood of the world's learning, but also to lead them along, through paths of their own choosing, to explorations of its deep groves.
The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man.
From the Pyrenees to Lake Baikal, the evidence now is before us of a Late Stone Age mythology in which the outstanding figure was the Naked Goddess. And she can already be recognized in a number of her better-known later roles: as Lady of the Wild Things, Protectress of the Hearth, Consort of the Moon-bull, who dies to be resurrected––with herself thereby a personification of the mystery of the moon, which has the power to shed its shadow (as the serpent sloughs its skin) to appear reborn. Not a few of her images suggest pregnancy: she was almost certainly a patroness of childbirth and fecundity.
The new mythology is already implicit among us as knowledge a priori, native to the mind. Its images will be derived from contemporary life, thought, and experience, anywhere and everywhere, and the moral order to the support of which they are brought shall be of the unifying culture of mankind.
When I wrote about the Call forty years ago, I was writing out of what I had read. Now that I've lived it, I know it's correct. And that's how it turned out. I mean, it's valid. These mythic clues work.

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