The Masks of God, Volume 3: Occidental Mythology

By Joseph Campbell | Edited by David Kudler

This title is part of the The Masks of God series

This title is part of the The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series

The Masks of God™

Volume 3: Occidental Mythology

“The high function of Occidental myth and ritual . . . is to establish a means of relationship—of God to Man and Man to God”. — Joseph Campbell.

Occidental Mythology is a systematic and fascinating comparison of the themes that underlie the art, worship, and literature of the western world. The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks. On completing it, he wrote:

“Its main result for me has been the confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed, amplified and turned about, distorted, reasserted, and today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irrestibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge.”

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The virtue of heroism must lie, therefore . . . not in the will to reform, but in the courage to affirm, the nature of the universe. [share]

The adventure of the Grail––the quest within for those creative values by which the Waste Land is redeemed––has become today for each the unavoidable task; for, as there is no more any fixed horizon, there is no more any fixed center, any Mecca, Rome, or Jerusalem. Our circle today is that announced, c. 1450, by Nicholas Cusanus: whose circumference is nowhere and whose center is everywhere; the circle of infinite radius, which is also a straight line. [share]

In the older mother myths and rites the light and darker aspects of the mixed thing that is life had been honored equally and together, whereas in the later, male-oriented, patriarchal myths, all that is good and noble was attributed to the new, heroic master gods, leaving to the native nature powers the character only of darkness––to which, also, a negative moral judgment was now added. [share]