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W.H. Auden once remarked that a real book reads us, an observation that seems right enough to me, and certainly seems right to apply to the work of Joseph Campbell. After all, Campbell spent...
Six years ago I was literally elbow deep in the Joseph Campbell archives, retrieving dozens of audio cassette tapes on whose delicate ribbons were etched hours of Campbell talking about goddess myths. Between 1972...
Last week JCF, through its new arrangement with Amazon, made available a new digital edition of Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension. As I have remarked recently in this...
‘In the beginning, there was the Word.’ While this is obviously a prominent phrase in the Judeo-Christian psyche, it is not an idea unique to one culture. In origin stories from around the world, a...
When I first was drawn to myth, it was through play. My sisters and I, nerdily passionate children of academics, spent a lot of time playing “Greek Gods and Goddesses” in a father-made fort...
Joseph Campbell Foundation is excited to announce the release of our latest eSingle, Campbell’s wonderful overview of myth, “The Historical Development of Mythology.” In this fascinating overview of the shape of myths throughout human...
It is high summer in the Catskill mountains of New York where I live: green, lush, blooming, sparking with life. It’s an enchanted time. Every morning I walk my dogs in our meadows and...
Ramadan, celebrated this year between May 27th and June 24th by approximately a quarter of the world’s population, is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and commemorates the revelation of the Quran to...
We’re excited to announce that we’ve released one of Joseph Campbell’s earliest, most influential articles as an eSingle! Campbell wrote “Bios & Mythos” for a collection of essays, Psychoanalysis and Culture, printed in 1951 to...
What is myth… and why should anybody care? What do you think? I ask this because that one of the most marvelous ways to play with mythology is to assess our own answers to this question. ...
¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that began to be celebrated in California in the 1860’s marking the Battle of Puebla. It is not, as it is commonly misunderstood to be, the...
American poet T.S. Eliot opens his masterpiece The Wasteland with a section titled “The Burial of the Dead”: APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull...
The most important and oldest date on the Christian calendar is the celebration of Easter, the death and resurrection of Christ. The whole of Christianity rests on this event and without it, Christian mythology...
We’re delighted to announce the release of the first two lectures in Series II, volume 6 of the Joseph Campbell Audio Collection: Mythic Ideas and Modern Culture. Joseph Campbell presents mythic ideas and concepts with...
We are excited to announce that New World Library has released The Mythic Dimension, the collection of Joseph Campbell’s essays, as a paperback in the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series. The essays collected in The Mythic...
Why do we tell stories about quests? In traditional, warrior cultures, such tales make a certain practical sense: they’re a way to give a sense of purpose to young men who have nothing to...
A week ago, I found myself at that hard moment of freeing my eighteen-year-old cat from a body that was failing her. From the moment of her choosing me at a California animal rescue,...
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we read story after story of a human (or demi-human) encountering the gods and being literally transformed by the experience. The stories generally come in one of two flavors: the human is ready...
Shivaratri, The Great Night of Shiva, is celebrated this year on the 24th of February, the 6th night of the Phalgun, and devotees fast and maintain vigil all night. This, the largest of Shiva celebrations, centers on...
The origins of Valentine’s Day are a bit murky, but they seem to reach back far into the early Roman celebrations of Romulus and Remus and the fertility festival of Lupercalia celebrated at the...
Joseph Campbell was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: “Follow your bliss.” More…
