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Mars,
What an amazing pilgrimage in an ancient place, where you came across the city of Nemi, and across the crater-lake was Diana’s temple complex, “excavated with toothbrushes …… but circling around, on the west side the mirroring lake, blues and blushes, on the steep eastern slope the remnants of a forest green and shady and no one was there, and everything was there …” The key phrase here, for me, what sort of describes my experience too is, ” and no one was there, and everything was there“. Personally, I wish I could visit my sacred pilgrimage site and maybe just for a minute embrace that same feeling of fullness and awe, as if “no one was there, and everything was there.”
My question to you is, did you intentionally take this trip as a pilgrimage or you experienced a sacred-pilgrimage-feeling while touring this ancient complex? Did you have the same reaction on your second visit? Would you visit again, as a sacred site?
Stephen writes,
“I’m curious about your experiences of sacred sites. Who has been to the prehistoric caves in France, or sites sacred to the Goddess in Turkey, or the pyramids, the vortexes in Sedona, Macchu Pichu, and so on?”
I have visited some ancient religious-sites in Norway, Turkey, Pakistan and India — ancient churches in Norway, Oslo and Bergen in particular; a Viking site; Sophia church-mosque-museum in Turkey, Ottoman mosques in Istanbul, and quite a few ancient temples in India. I have also visited ancient Native American burial mounds near Salt Lake City. Have I had a feeling of awe and wonder, of a sacred pilgrimage, of being there, and not being there, “no one was there, and everything was there?” Alas, no.
But I did have many moments of awe, many moments of wonder and moments that I wished could last forever and ever, where I and the place were one, where no one but I and the place existed, and I do wish I could be in that sacred place once again. My sacred place is the fjords between Oslo and Bergen. The trip was intended as a sight-seeing trip, but ended as a Pilgrimage to Norway’s silent blue lakes, clean sparkling waterways, smooth gentle waves along the fjords, where the fog from above and the mist from below met and danced. I am ruining this by describing that which can not be described, really. As you said, Stephen, “Of course, you don’t need to have set out on an exclusive pilgrimage to visit hallowed places in order to have a life-changing experience; a side-trip as part of a leisure vacation can be just as powerful.”
Thank you Mars for your words that do capture that sacred feeling, “no one was there, and everything was there“.
Love and gratitude
Shaheda
NB: “Fjord, from the norse “fjörðr”, means “der man ferder over” (English “where you travel across”) or “å sette over på den andre siden” (english “put across to the other side”).”
Stephen
I enjoyed your response to Sunbug’s question. It could very well be that ‘seeming’ indifference to activism would be difficult for many Campbell followers is what I feel strongly, and that is how Campbell might want us to be.
To Campbell a convincing mythology is one that is in sync with the cosmology of the the time. Although cosmology is “the scientific study of the large scale properties of the universe as a whole.”, it has an enormous impact on us culturally.
Our perception of the world has changed because of cosmology. “If we select four fundamental causes of changes in our perceptions of the world in the last century, then they would be first relativity, second quantum mechanics, third the expanding universe and fourth, the space programme.” The human space program continues to grow and expand. Cosmology has impacted our culture, our arts, and our way of life, and it’s this impact in every sphere of our lives is what Joe would challenge us to probe, to observe, to study.
Shaahayda
Marianne,
I love what you wrote, much to dwell upon. “Yes, As for Campbell, perhaps this is a hero’s journey threshold moment when it is not the others he sees that are alien at the threshold but himself he sees as he ha crossed the threshold overnight into the new strange life as a bug being the threshold because he is still in his own home–so there is a twist on a hero’s journey step, perhaps. ” Yes, hero’s moment of finally committing to the journey. IN my dreams, I have encountered a few, on the threshold.
There are so many variations in the hero’s journey, and as you somewhere elaborated that hero’s journey is part of the Lit curriculum in colleges now. On the internet, just yesterday, I came across another writer, whose paper, perhaps thesis was ‘change management’, as a hero’s journey. What more is to come?
Shaahayda
Sunbug
You ask a great question, “ Would Joseph Campbell challenge us? (If he was here in modern times?)”
Yes, Joe Campbell would challenge us – challenge us to remain open to wonder and mystery of the universe, and to experience the wonder. Not to give in to despair. Referencing John Bucher’s article, who quotes Campbell, “Wonder was a recurring idea in Joseph Campbell’s writing as well, and a concept he took very seriously. In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, he lays out this challenge for mythologies looking to assert themselves into our culture: “Indeed, the first and most essential service of a mythology is this one, of opening the mind and heart to the utter wonder of all being.” (Inner Reaches, xx) ” While so much of his work is articulated with academic detail, Campbell fully recognized that the power of myth defies description, as wonder is an experience. We might search for the words to define the feelings we have when a myth has enraptured us, but it is in the experience itself that wonder is found.”
1. He would remind us to remain radiant in the filth of the world. To know that beyond the horror lies a mystery, ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinas’.
2. He would ask us not to just interpret the old myths, but to face our daily struggles heroically.
3. He would challenge us to listen to our own spiritual demands ..if we don’t then we have put ourselves out of center. This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. … “Now, is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity, or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?” Episode 1, Chapter 12 The Power of Myth (1988)
Your next question sunbug, The other question is would we expect him to be a certain way? Or to react a certain way? Because of how we think?”
I am not very clear as to what you mean by “Because of how we think?”
Would love to hear back.
Shaahayda
Stephen
You are a gentleman and a scholar indeed — A Joseph Campbell Scholar. You explained and analyzed extremely well, and caught my particular blunder, that is, the distinction between the book “The Historical Atlas of World Mythology” and Joe’s personal trajectory, “the historical development of mythology”. I should have known that rather well, because just two or three days ago, you sent in that fine thread, explaining the various segments of the Historical Atlas, why some volumes are never going to be printed, and why printed version is so expensive, and when all parts of Vol 1 and Vol 2 will be available, and most of all what they contain.
So, after listening to James, I did not elaborate upon the things that frustrated me, that is, 1) not acknowledging Joe as the great scholar thinker mythologist historian ++++ but referring to him as simply a writer/editor.
2) Power of Myth not = Hero with a thousand faces
Then I stopped because like you I realized she is analyzing the hero’s journey as a writing aid. It’s the nature of her work. As she writes, “However, the hero’s journey can be a useful tool even if you don’t use it the way Joseph Campbell originally intended. Readers who recognize these classic tropes can appreciate an unexpected twist. Innovative literary fiction often plays with traditional narrative structures in new ways.” She is writing for a different audience. So I did not write anything strong, negative or critical. Actually, I said nice things about her article and hoped to see more on Campbell’s other themes on the internet, although I did invite her over to jcf.org. That is all.
What’s funny is about a few hours after I signed into her website for comments, in came another Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey on the internet. SO, I was not going to play the internet police chief and go about reading through it and signing up on that website for some more comments. Then came your excellent piece detailing and clearing all the clouds. I had an appointment this morning so could not respond to you right away, but here I am.
Thank you Stephen. Always a pleasure reading your posts.
Shaheda
Hello James
Thank you for your excellent advice on all fronts. I’ll write the following to her, “If I do have a guru of that sort, it would be Zimmer—the one who really gave me the courage to interpret myths out of what I knew of their common symbols. There’s always a risk there, but it’s the risk of your own personal adventure instead of just gluing yourself to what someone else has found.”
Also, James, I’ll mention Campbell’s own words, “Historical Development of Mythology” is what I am interested in — Not the various volumes of the Historical Development of Mythology, which too are master pieces. I’ll invite her here. She might really be an asset. I’ll also chat about he gender bias issue. You turned me in the right direction, dear friend.
Shaahayda (grateful)
Hello James
No problem at all in declining my request. You are right in saying, “neither care about being accurate or are more concerned about driving traffic to their website.” I am simply unhappy with these new literature majors, who think they can drive traffic to their site by analyzing the hero’s journey. I’ll take this upon myself to query Ms. Hannah Yang, a lit major from Yale.
James,
Carrying on with the same theme, that is, people writing about Joe Campbell and the Hero’s journey, with incomplete data. So, Hannah Yang, writes, “he (Campbell) became fascinated with the works of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This was crucial to the development of hero’s journey” Firstly, he was rather bored with Freud, and secondly, his work embraced much more than Freud and Jung. Then she writes, that Campbell’s book, The Hero with a thousand faces was adapted for TV as Power of Myth!!! Huh??? Some part of Power of Myth, Chapter 1 is from the hero with a thousand faces, the rest is based on a series of interviews with Moyers.
Here is a link to her essay.
Shaahayda
James
Thank you for your very generous and comprehensive answer to my question, which was about Vogler’s analysis of the Hero’s journey – 17 steps vs. 12. You write, “Nothing wrong with Vogler’s approach concerning story telling; but each individual has their own unique life course; and Joseph’s point about the individual’s ability to respond to whatever life throws at them does not follow a sequence pattern in this regard. Yes; these are elements involved within this alchemical process and the validity of these aspects run true” Yes indeed James. Wonder if you would have time to write all this and a bit more in the comments to Hannah Yang? Her website is Hannahyang.com
Additionally, my complaint was that there are so many new experts on the internet, who are analyzing the various stages of Joe’s Hero’s Journey, but, I find these articles lack accuracy, they distort information, for example, there was one that referred to Joe Campbell, as ‘gender biased’ before proceeding to describe the hero’s journey. And all this while using his scholarship to enhance their particular work. Can JCF do something about it? I agree Policing the internet is not possible even for mega high techs like Google, so yes, Stephen can not police them, but maybe ask these writers for their credentials. They are surely not on JCF website, nor do they contribute to the mythblast. There are at least two articles per day on the topic. People like Vogler, who have benefitted from Joe’s work, should at least contribute to the foundation.
All through his life, Joe edited books, and papers of other scholars for nothing, and I recall reading somewhere that he was finally getting tired of that, although when Marija Gimbutas asked him to write a foreword to her book, he immediately set aside his projects, and wrote a magnificent foreword.
So at least now, we have a foundation and its members standing up for him. Today’s article on the net was by Hannah Yang. Among other things, she cited two criticisms of the hero’s journey a) reduces the world to simple binary choices. Good vs. Evil; Us vs. Other; Victory vs. False etc. She then writes, if all stories followed this layout of the journey, writers would not be able to express a nuanced perspective? Huh? I am not sure what she is trying to say here. b) that it favors male protagonist.
Yes, I have heard a good deal on point b, but not much on Joe Campbell reducing the world to binary choices. Have you, James, Stephen, Sunbug, Rcubed and Mars?
Moreover what irks me are statements such as, (Joseph Campbell is saying just what Freud and Jung said). What about Joe’s original work? — THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF MYTHOLOGY. Neither Jung nor Freud wrote on that.
Well, there’s more reason to be irked but that would mar the reason for writing this, which is how best to address this issue?
Shaahayda
Stephen
You wrote, “ Whether these sightings are of physical objects, mental projections, or a combination thereof, the ambiguity and uncertainty speak to the mystery, which strikes me as an essential quality of the experience. This has been happening for at least three-quarters of a century, yet, despite the plethora of sightings, it’s not anything we are able to nail down. There seems to be something there, but nothing we can know for sure, including whether or not the something is a something. ”
Exactly, mystery is the essential quality of this experience, and the second one, is “why me?” That was the trajectory of my thoughts on the first day of the event. What played often in my head was, “There were so many others on the highway, why did the light just follow me, and for so long, why not others?”
Also, the light-creators, wish this to remain a mystery, perchance a message between the sender and the recipient? The sender or the light-bearers do have much expertise on their side, while the recipient is observing, interpreting, real or unreal, a message from the gods or something else?
Shaheda
Sunbug
No it was not a solid light as in stars or the moon, or the sun or the GPS. In the sky and all along as the light followed me, it looked like a dimly illuminated cloud. This dim cloud became strong and bright in the driveway, about a few feet away, it was large, bright and numinous…if you can imagine some invisible person holding a flash light high above, you can’t see the flash light, you can’t see the person, just the light on the grass, and wherever else it follows. As if it has eyes and ears too, but no smell, no heat. It had eyes because it followed my car and later me, and ears, because it heard me when I pleaded for it to leave me alone..….more like our wi-fi, that can pick up and transmit sound but has no smell nor heat, but add another dimension to the wi-fi, that of laser beams.
Norland writes, “So rather than determining the literal definition of the concrete in opposition to the metaphoric, we must learn to see in the symbolic order the literal and concrete meaning of our lives. There is neither the symbolic nor the literal but only the becoming-symbolic of the literal. Time is the thing that melts them both within..” Indeed so true Norland, time has dissolved and de-concretized my particular experience.
Also, with time, advances in astronomy and cosmology have given us new eyes and ears and perhaps reason to interpret things that are directly in front of us. How different our world is today. For now reading Campbell’s aeroplane to moon walk stories seem to talk about our changing cosmology.
Quoting from Myths to live by. “I remember when I was a very small boy my uncle one evening brought me down to Riverside Drive to see “a man,” as he told me, “flying in an aeroplane [as they called them in those days] from Albany to New York.” That was Glenn Curtis, 1910, in a sort of motorized box-kite he had built. There were people lined along the low wall at the westward margin of the city, watching, waiting, facing into the sunset. All the nearby rooftops, too, were crowded. Twilight fell. And then suddenly everybody was pointing, shouting, “There he comes!” And what I saw was like the shadow of a dark bird, soaring in the fading light some hundred feet above the river. Seventeen years later, the year I left Columbia, Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. And this year, on our television sets, we have seen two landings on the moon.” (Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By: The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell (p. 248). Joseph Campbell Foundation.)
“All humanity,” Buckminster Fuller once said, in prophecy of these transforming forces working now upon our senses, “is about to be born in an entirely new relationship to the universe.” Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By: The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell (p. 249). Joseph Campbell Foundation. Kindle Edition.
I just picked a few gems from Dennis Slattery’s Mythblast, “The Inner Reaches of Outer Space is Within Reach” The following two paragraphs are so relevant to the way we establish a sense of identity to the images.
Quoting from Dennis Slattery’s Mythblast: “Interpretation is a fundamental act in learning. As he creates a unique form of such meaning-making, Campbell uncovers “an implicit connotation through all its metaphorical imagery of a sense of identity of some kind, transcendent of appearances, which unites behind the scenes the opposed actors on the world stage” (81). Life itself is dramatic, but to miss the experience because of an obsession with meaning is to miss the action that is before us and within us. “
Dennis, I think I missed the experience because I was lost in the reification of the object.
From Dennis’ MythBlast “A brief example may suffice to unfold such a distinction. In their book Your Mythic Journey, Sam Keen and Anne Valley-Fox offer that “a myth can make a cow sacred in one culture and hamburger meat in another” (xi). Same animal. One cultural myth perceives it as sacred, the other reaches for it in an act of consumption”Sunbug, the above paragraph resonates with me, at the time of that particular experience, I was clinging to the idea of REAL UFO objects, and forty years forward, this new mythic perspective and our new cosmic reality with a million more stars blinking in the sky, has made that experience very SACRED! And to borrow your words, like “Sacred doodling”.
Shaahayda (in gratitude to Joseph Campbell, to jcf, to all the members)
Stephen
Firstly, thank for your answer that covers so much ground including the road travelled by Joe Campbell, Bob Walters and Alfred van der Marck – the McGraw Hill’s firing of Fred, and Joe’s answer in that he was “incensed at their treatment of his friend and publisher, so he refused to write another word; he returned his advance, and paid an additional $25,000 to secure title to all the material developed up to that point (a huge financial hit)” This part of history is perhaps known to just a few, and you just documented that so well in your poetic prose. Thank you ever so much for all the questions you answered so thoroughly. This post is already filed in my Joe Campbell-resource-data-base plus should be in “Resources” category on jcf.org as well. I’ll refer to it from time to time.
Secondly, thank you also for clearing up one huge misconception that people hold, that Joe & Jean were wealthy, lived in style in their Greenwich Village apartment, toured and travelled around the world, and retired in Hawaii. That he didn’t even receive a pension from Sarah Lawrence when he retired is indeed news to me. He is my hero!
You write,
Volume I – The Way of the Animal Powers, was published in 1983 as a beautiful but massive, unwieldy, coffee table sized hardbound book, selling for $75 ( a prohibitive sum back in the early eighties, equivalent to roughly $200 today). When it was released in paperback, still oversized, it was published as two distinct coffee table sized softcover books.”
I was once a proud owner of Volume I – Part 1, that beautiful but massive coffee table sized hardbound book. So what happened? My entire book collection was lost & stolen, which included Joe’s first edition of the Mythic Image, the hardbound book, many other Joe-masterpieces, Marija Gimbutas the language of the goddess – beautiful hardbound coffee table version, with Joe’s Foreword. Volume I – Part 1, I found at the ‘Second Story Book Shop’ in DC. In it were newspaper cuttings of a lecture that Joe was giving somewhere in DC. All priceless to me. https://www.secondstorybooks.com/
Essentially, those interested, will be able to replace Volume I part 1 (with all its sections as one e-book) , and Volume II, in it’s entirety one day (digital format only) by — 2025? But not the print version?
Now thank you once again for clearing my confusion on what parts have been digitized, what parts will never be digitized because they were not written at all, and what parts are going to one day be available in digital form. “No sections from the second part of Volume 1, nor any section from Volume II, are available in a digital format.”
You write, “Instead, we will ultimately end up publishing all the sections of Volume I as one large, beautiful eBook (including the four sections already out) replete with hundreds of images, and the same for Volume II. That date lies a few years in the future (possibly by 2025, given the current publishing schedule).” Looking forward to 2025, Stephen.
Shaheda (in gratitude)
Addendum:
Stephen, talking about the Historical Atlas Vol 1, part 1 and Vol2..print form, (1988 – 1989) I found them at this book store:
Thank you Dear Norland,
Just fascinating and mind boggling and to be honest, lot of what you write is well above my head. My experience falls in the subjective category, no doubt.
I did some reading on the Maya Twin Heros, and on Xibalban to understand some of your references, but it’s going to be along road. You write, “UFO follows the unconscious movement of myth as a movement into the mythic unconscious. In my own work with Maya mythology I have described this movement as a descendental journey of Xibalban depth-interiorization.” I can relate to depth-interiorization, post UFO disappearance, into the realm of Hades and Persephone, a realm of invisibility. I’d love to read this research, perchance understand a bit.
Thank you Norland
Shaahayda.
Sunbug
I can relate to your mother’s story completely because something similar happened to me, and the light stayed with me, or followed me for a very long time.
You wrote, “My Mother (an Astronomer) saw some unusual “phenomena” both naked eye and through telescope but could only describe what she observed. She never pinned it down beyond referencing her viewings as unidentified. A big round light going behind a mountain (not the sun)…and…
I remember seeing a line of lights that stayed in one place for about 30 mins before moving in night sky. That one peaked my Mother’s interest.My UFO story
One day, almost 40 years ago, while driving back from work, I spotted a circular light up in the sky. It was dark, and not much traffic on the highway either. The circular light followed my car, even after the the exit from the highway, and down a few country roads, and right down into my driveway. It became larger, larger than any light I had ever ever seen, a light from nowhere, that is, not plugged into a transmission line, a light pole, an electric outlet, none, just hanging onto the driveway. Not knowing a thing about it, was quite scary, and I openly pleaded with the light to go away, which it did!!
Next day, I spoke with a neighbor about the light that followed me, and the neighbor appeared unconvinced, as if to say, you might be hallucinating, a bit tired I suppose. I left it at that. But that one incident became a very memorable event and still plays back, as if it was just yesterday.
Forty years forward, with geo-stationary-satellites up in the sky, monitoring our cell telephones, guiding the GPS systems, working as eyes and ears of this earth, as they look no different than the celestial stars up in the sky, I have a different view of that light. On that later.
Years later, after having read various stories and reports released by the Pentagon, I think UFOs are scientific objects produced by scientists who are researching at a level with a field that not many know about, or use yet, or have seen, and its a privilege when the Shamans of space technology, point that light upon you. They choose to say, “hello, there”. What for? For what reason? That is indeed a mystery, and maybe they want it to be that way.
Sunbug, I think UFOs are lights that our Shamans in space technology (like your mother) are working with, and once in a while, they let us peek into their world, because explaining the whole mystery would be much too difficult. It would be like Apple trying to explain how all the information that is on the iphone is also connected to those shining stars (geo-stationary-satellites) up in the sky.
As Joe Campbell wrote in Myths to Live By: “Our mythology now, therefore, is to be of infinite space and its light, which is without as well as within. Like moths, we are caught in the spell of its allure, flying to it outward, to the moon and beyond, and flying to it, also, inward. On our planet itself all dividing horizons have been shattered. ”
Shaahayda
