Excerpts from "The Power of Myth" (dialogue between Bill Moyers and Joseph
Campbell that was also the most watched series in PBS history)
Campbell: They (humankind) destroy their own nature too. They kill the song.
Moyers: And isn't mythology the story of the song?
Campbell: Mythology IS the song. It is the song of the imagination,
inspired by the energies of the body. Once a Zen master stood up before his
students and was about to deliver a sermon. And just as he was about to
open his mouth, a bird sang. And he said, "The sermon has been delivered."
...the only mythology that is valid today is the mythology of the planet --
and we don't have such a mythology. The closest think I know to a planetary
mythology is Buddhism, which sees all beings as Buddha beings. The only
problem is to come to the recogniton of that. There is nothing to do.
...There are two totally different different orders of mythology. There is
the mythology that relates you to your nature and to the natural world, of
which you are a part. And there is the mythology that is strictly
sociological, linking you to a particular society. You are not simply a
natural man, you are a member of a particular group.
...Now, the biblical tradition is a socially oriented mythology. Nature is
condemned. In the nineteenth century, scholars thought of mythology and
ritual as an attempt to control nature. But that is magic, not mythology or
religion.
Nature religions are not attempts to control nature but to help you put
yourself in accord with it. But when nature is thought of as evil, you
control it, or try to, and hence the tension, the anxiety, the cutting down
of forests, the annihilation of native people. And the accent here
separates us from nature.
...Once you reject the idea of the Fall in the Garden, man is not cut off
from his source.
I just felt compelled to share this with you. In my book, Joseph Campbell
was truly THE MAN.
Best regards,
Dennis Kostecki
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