Book Reflection: The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

This is my first ever book reflection on this blog.

I call it a reflection—and not a review—because I’m more interested in bolstering my understanding of the material, sharing how it impacted me, and exploring its key ideas than I am in actually evaluating the book or telling others what they should think about it.

With that said, I love this book. I give it 5 stars. You should definitely read it.

If you’re curious, in a recent post, I explained why I’m feeling compelled to write these reflections.

**If you’re scared by the length of this post and just want to get a more concise glimpse of Campbell’s work, philosophy, and ethos—scroll to the bottom and read the essay/poem at the end.

If you’re not scared, here we go.

The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campbell is based on a 1988 PBS TV documentary Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. It is a conversation between Joseph Campbell and journalist Bill Moyers.

Campbell was an influential American writer and professor specializing in comparative mythology and religion. He wrote about the commonalities found in different mythologies across cultures, religions, and time periods. He theorized that all of these stories and mythologies are variations of an underlying monomyth - ‘The Hero’s Journey’ - which encapsulates the universal truths of life and the shared human experience of being born, going out into the world, suffering, learning, and facing many trials in an effort to figure out what the hell to do with these lives we’ve been given.

“The images of myth are reflections of the spiritual potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating these we evoke their powers in our own lives.”

- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Campbell’s work and influence are ubiquitous in Hollywood and pop culture. Most notably, George Lucas has famously acknowledged that Campbell’s Hero’s Journey structure was hugely influential in his writing of Star Wars. The Power of Myth TV Documentary was actually filmed at Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch.

For me, The Power of Myth has this unique effect of making me feel like a kid again—in all the best ways—but also inspiring me to truly become an adult. To take responsibility and service to others seriously, in a way that perhaps nothing else ever has. It contextualizes many yearnings I’ve always felt but could never put into words. He argues that this is the role of mythology; to convey, via metaphor, the things we all feel and somehow know, innately, but can’t verbalize or understand in plain terms because, basically, these spiritual truths are divine and accessing them requires a different level of consciousness.

The Power of Myth, and Campbell’s work more broadly, are a call to adventure, joy, wonder and awe. To self actualization through art and creation, escaping self-obsession by realizing our true nature as part of a greater whole/oneness, and, ultimately, giving ourselves and our gifts in service of others.

“Ironically, to Campbell the end of the hero’s journey is not aggrandizement of the hero. “It is” he said in one of his lectures, “not to identify oneself with any of the figures or powers experienced. The Indian yogi striving for release, identifies himself with the light and never returns. But no one with a will to the service of others would permit himself such an escape. The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.”

- Bill Moyers, , The Power of Myth (intro)

Campbell on The Hero’s Journey

Moyers: Why are there so many stories of the hero in mythology?

Campbell: Because that’s what’s worth writing about. Even in popular novels, the main character is a hero or heroine who has found or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. A hero is someone who gives his or her self to something bigger than oneself.

Campbell: The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken, or who feels like there’s something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It’s usually a cycle, a going and returning….

We are in childhood in a condition of dependency under someone’s protection and supervision for some fourteen to twenty-one years – and if you’re going on for your Ph. D, this may continue to perhaps thirty-five. You are in no way a self-responsible, free agent, but an obedient dependent, expecting and receiving punishments and rewards. To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey – leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition.

It feels arrogant and self-indulgent to publicly frame my own life as a “Hero’s Journey”, but when I read the second excerpt above, I immediately identify with this arc and think of my own journey over the past ~10-12 years (roughly age 18-31). But I feel like we all identify with it in our own way, which is kind of the whole point of Campbell’s work and theories.

Specifically, I remember—while playing university football—feeling constantly frustrated by a sense of being held back, by what I’d characterize as a lack of real or effective leadership from the coaching staff, and by an environment that I now describe as a monoculture, which didn’t allow for any exploration or deviation outside of what was typical/expected. The rules were clear: hang with the same people, go to the same two bars, act like this, dress like this or be ostracized. I was terribly unhappy.

I ended up quitting football half way through my fourth year and was faced with a major identity crisis as I sought to figure out who I was and who I wanted to become after having identified so strongly as an athlete for most of my life.

“The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you feel most happy, when you really are happy – not excited, not thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self-analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call “following your bliss”.

-Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

[Finding and] Following your Bliss

After about a year of deliberate self-exploration, in which I tried to learn coding, digital marketing, and writing, my brother sent my one of Casey Neistat’s earliest daily vlogs and I knew right away that I wanted to try some version of what he was doing. His anti-establishment approach to work and life and his re-telling of his own hero’s journey were incredibly inspiring to me. His story and advice gave me permission to ignore what others thought (I was ridiculed and questioned by many close to me for trying something new and attempting to reinvent myself), to follow my bliss. This led to my decision to create a video every day for a year, which radically changed the trajectory of my career and life.

That project helped me develop me the skills, confidence, and courage I needed to leave my first salary job and become a freelance videographer, and to eventually start threesixfive. Finally, I’d found myself in a position where I could be “self-responsible”, as Campbell put it. I felt empowered and alive.

Mythology and the Transition from Childhood to Adulthood

Campbell lamented the lack of mythology and ritual in modern western society, specifically, around the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Campbell: “When I was a kid, we wore short trousers, you know, knee pants. And then there was a great moment when you put on long pants. Boys now don’t get that. I see even five-year-olds walking around with long trousers. When are they going to know that they’re now men and must put aside childish things?”

He explains that many societies, historically and necessarily, had traditional rites of passage involving tests, challenges, and ceremonies that marked the end of childhood and the beginning of adult responsibilities and social roles.

I do feel like this is something I missed out on. At 31 years old, I feel like I’ve been meandering for a decade in this grey zone between childishness and true adulthood, waiting for some concrete marker like marriage or having children to signify that it is time to become fully adult. Turning 18 and legally becoming an adult was certainly not a significant experience for me, other than the knowledge that I’d now be punished more more severely if caught committing a crime.

I think this is probably a big part of why I loved “Ender’s Game” so much; a story of a very young boy, conscripted into Earth’s military and sent to space where he’s trained and tested, brutally, amongst his peers in order to defend the planet from an alien threat. I was looking for my call to/initiation into adulthood, and I found it in characters and stories when I couldn’t seem to find it anywhere else.

I think that, innately, I knew the world was a place full of difficulty, pain, suffering, and violence, and that the watered down experience of sitting in a desk all day at school, being confined to so many arbitrary rules ( please pardon my arrogance, often enforced by uninspiring adults), and sheltered from the realities of adulthood felt like a sham. My time playing high school football was one of the only structured activities in mainstream society that offered a release from the restrictive confines of ‘the rules as usual’. Once on the field, in a game, there were no parents out there to protect you from the very real threat of violence and danger. Yes, there was a coach on the sideline, but it was just you and your team out there working together toward a common goal.

Despite its pitfalls, which are many, I really do believe there is something beautiful about this sport and the way it demands a combination of discipline, focus, leadership, controlled aggression, teamwork, and community. When at its best, I think it emulates and embodies some of the best elements of warrior culture & spirit that so many young men (and others) yearn for and are missing in modern society. I’m very curious to explore this more. I’m currently reading Boyz 2 Buddhas by David Forbes, in which he describes his experience of teaching mindfulness meditation to a group of urban male high school football players in order to help them manage the many unhealthy pressures they faced in their communities.

I’d guess boy scouts or adjacent programs would offer something similar. Or learning to hunt. Or perhaps having a real job, with stakes, where people depend on you in a meaningful way. A friend mentioned a young man or woman working on a farm, for example.

I can attest that starting a company and have folks depend on me to provide support and structure, and to dependably pay their salaries every two weeks, has been one of the greatest forcing functions for me to think of myself as a real and responsible adult.

Solitude and Sacred Spaces

Moyers: You write about… the idea of a scared place where the temporal walls may dissolve to reveal a wonder. What does it mean to have a sacred place?

Campbell: This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Moyers: This sacred place does for you what the plains did for the hunter.

Campbell: For them, the whole world was a sacred place. But our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it. Get a phonograph and put on the music that you really love, even if it’s corny music that nobody else respects.

This is what I’m trying to cultivate with this blog and my writing practice. My mornings at my desk writing, this is my sacred space where I can (ideally) have my phone put away, and just dive into my own thoughts and curiosities, and see where they take me. To be clear, it’s not always bliss. More often than not is has been excruciating to try to resist the myriad addictions pulling me to do basically anything but sit down and write, but when I’ve managed to push through and find my flow, it has truly resulted in what Campbell would describe as rapture and bliss. When this happens, I’m able to tap into a higher consciousness, a more attuned creativity, and the deeper sense of purpose, service, and connectedness I’m searching for.

Artists as Modern Shamans

Moyers: Who interprets the divinity inherent in nature for us today? Who are our shamans? Who interprets unseen things for us?

Campbell: It is the function of the artist to do this. The artist is the one who communicates myth for today. But he has to be an artist who understands mythology and humanity and isn’t simply a sociologist with a program for you.

This is the function Casey Neistat and his art served for me when I needed it. He was my shaman, weaving compelling stories though a modern medium and constantly espousing the value of hard work, dedication, focus, fearlessness, and raw creativity. Ryan Holiday was another of my guides, reinterpreting stoicism and applying its core tenets to life today. So were Viktor Frankl, and Alan Watts, Patrick Rothfuss, and Orson Scott Card. These days I would add bell hooks, Anne Lamott, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Campbell, Tom Sachs, Theaster Gates, and many more to this list.

I can’t imagine where I’d be if I hadn’t been inspired, shaped, and awakened by these folks’ work.

Read & Read & Read

Moyers: What about those others who are ordinary, those who are not poets or artists, or who have not had a transcendent ecstasy? How do we know of these things?

Campbell: I’ll tell you a way, a very nice way. Sit in a room and read – and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. This realization of life can be a constant realization in your living. When you find an author who really grabs you, read everything he has done. Don’t say, “Oh, I want to know what So-and-so-did” – and don’t bother at all with the best-seller list. Just read what this one author has to give you. And then you can go read what he had read. And the world opens up in a way that is consistent with a certain point of view. But when you go from one author to another, you may be able to tell us the date when each wrote such and such a poem – but he hasn’t said anything to you.

You could easily read the word “ordinary” above, and to interpret this quote as suggesting that artists are somehow superior to others. For me though, in combination with the quote above about artists interpreting “divinity” and “unseen things”, it makes the title “artist” feel more accessible. I think it suggests that being an artist is not necessarily something you’re born with as a gift. That it’s not about the level of raw talent, but that it’s something you can dig for and find through curiosity and commitment.

These excerpts make me feel like my reading and note taking, writing on this blog, and writing this reflection are part of a sacred practice, that they are important, and that I may call myself an artist, should I choose, for having read and read and read until I was overflowing with discovery and rapture and a desire to understand and convey all of this in my own way.

Accepting Difficulty, Escaping Self Obsession, & Higher Service

Moyers: The Koran says, “Do you think that you shall enter the garden of bliss without such trials as those who came to pass before you?” And Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew, “Great is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth to life, and few there be who find it.” And the heroes of the Jewish tradition undergo great tests before they arrive at their redemption.

Campbell: If you realize what the real problem is – losing yourself, giving yourself to some higher end, or to another - you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.

Moyers points out that in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism (among so many other religions and traditions), there are these stories of heroes facing great trials and difficulties, which are necessary to their discovery of something greater than themselves. It’s a beautiful idea, and it sounds so simple the way it’s written here, but no matter how many times I have this experience/realization myself, I eventually fall back into that self-obsessed state, where I’m overly focused on how to improve myself or improve my situation.

I find this tough to balance because it’s absolutely necessary to focus on and improve yourself but, when done without a higher purpose in mind, it’s also a recipe for being miserable.

I just listened to a great podcast with Tim Ferries and Greg McKeown, that explores this battle in a really interesting way. Highly recommend. 

Marriage & Discovery of the Feminine & Masculine

Campbell: That’s correct. Furthermore, he represented symbolically the fact of the unity of the two. And when Odysseus was sent to the underworld by Circe, his true initiation came when he met Tiresias and realized the unity of male and female.

Moyers: I’ve often thought that if you could get in touch with your feminine side, or if you’re a woman, your masculine side, you would know what the gods know and maybe beyond what gods know.

Campbell: That’s the information that one gets from being married. That’s the way you get in touch with your feminine side.

I really enjoyed this bit. I think Campbell speaks beautifully about relationship and marriage a number of times in this book. I like this idea of becoming whole, or knowing what the gods know (which to me, just means knowing your true nature as a human being, as conscious awareness, as a tiny part of a greater oneness).

One of the big criticisms of Campbell’s work is its gender bias. While it’s certainly true that there is a bias and a focus on men, he does definitely speak highly of women and femininity and talks about motherhood and giving birth as heroic acts. Obviously women want to, need to, and are very capable of being heroes in ways other than being mother, but I remind myself that Joseph Campbell was born in 1904, and that times were a lot different. Not that it excuses or nullifies bias but, for what it’s worth, it would appear that he was ahead of his time as far as respecting/valuing women, their lives and contributions, as well femininity more generally.

Myth, Metaphor, Truth, & The Adventure of Being Alive

Moyers: But people ask, isn't a myth a lie?

Campbell: No, mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth - penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told. So this is the penultimate truth.

It's important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery and of your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor. Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitable of this vale of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.

Moyers: The adventure of the hero?

Campbell: Yes, the adventure of the hero-- the adventure of being alive.

This is why we go to the movie theatre and read epic fiction about heroes and monsters and struggle and triumph and good and evil.

Many of the moments I’ve felt most invigorated, most alive, were times where I was able to experience awe and wonder at the great mysteries of life and the universe. When I was able to watch a Hayao Miyazaki film or look up at the stars with an unbridled sense of openness and an adventurous heart.

The Sublime

Campbell: There's another emotion associated with art, which is not of the beautiful but of the sublime. What we call monsters can be experienced as sublime. They represent powers too vast for the normal forms of life to contain them. An immense expanse of space is sublime. The Buddhists know how to achieve this effect in situating their temples, which are often up on high hills. For example, some of the temple gardens in Japan are designed so that you will first be experiencing close-in, intimate arrangements. Meanwhile, you're climbing, until suddenly you break past a screen and an expanse of horizon opens out, and somehow, with this diminishment of your own ego, your consciousness expands to an experience of the sublime.

Moyers: And yet, Joe, all we puny human beings are left with is this miserable language, beautiful though it is, that falls short of trying to describe -

Campbell: That’s right, and that’s why it is a peak experience to break past all that, every now and then, and to realize, “Oh… ah….”

That “Oh… ah…”, that childlike state of wonder, mystery, and awe, is something I’m looking for more of. Reading this book, and now reflecting on it, really reaffirmed and restored my reverence for life, beauty, and the sublime.

I do think everyone should read Joseph Campbell. But if you’re never going to read his books, I recommend that you at least read the poem/essay below.

Or you could watch the docu-series on YouTube.

Do whatever you want!

It’s your journey.

The Hero’s Journey (On Living in the World) by Joseph Campbell

from "Reflections on the Art of Living: a Joseph Campbell Companion”:

“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.
What you have to do, you do with play.

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it.
The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be.
Being alive is the meaning.

The warrior's approach is to say "yes" to life: "yea" to it all.
Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world.
We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

When we talk about settling the world's problems, we're barking up the wrong tree.
The world is perfect. It's a mess. It has always been a mess.
We are not going to change it.
Our job is to straighten out our own lives.

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.
If we fix the old, we get stuck. When we hang onto any form, we are in danger of putrefaction.

Hell is life drying up.

The Hoarder, the one in us that wants to keep, to hold on, must be killed.
If we are hanging onto the form now, we're not going to have the form next.
You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

Destruction before creation.

Out of perfection nothing can be made.
Every process involves breaking something up.
The earth must be broken to bring forth life.
If the seed does not die, there is no plant.
Bread results from the death of wheat.

Life lives on lives.

Our own life lives on the acts of other people.
If you are lifeworthy, you can take it.
What we are really living for is the experience of life, both the pain and the pleasure.
The world is a match for us. We are a match for the world.

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life.

We are not there until we can say "yea" to it all.

To take a righteous attitude toward anything is to denigrate it.
Awe is what moves us forward.
As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you.
Don't bother to brush it off.
Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance.
Having a sense of humor saves you.

Eternity is a dimension of here and now.
The divine lives within you.
Live from your own center.

Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss.
The society is the enemy when it imposes structures on the individual.
On the dragon there are many scales. Everyone of them says "Thou Shalt."
Kill the dragon "Thou Shalt".
When one has killed that dragon, one has become The Child.

Breaking out is following your bliss pattern, quitting the old place, starting your hero journey, following your bliss.
You throw off yesterday as the snake sheds its skin.
Follow your bliss.

The heroic life is living the individual adventure.
There is no security in following the call to adventure.
Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.

To refuse the call means stagnation.
What you don't experience positively you will experience negatively.
You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path.
Where there is a way or path, it is someone else's path. You are not on your own path.
If you follow someone else's way, you are not going to realize your potential.

The goal of the hero trip down to the jewel point is to find those levels in the psyche that
open,
open,
open,

and finally open to the mystery of your Self being Buddha consciousness or the Christ.

That's the journey.

It's all about finding the still point in your mind where commitment drops away.
It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble there lies your treasure.
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.
The damned thing in the cave that was so dreaded has become the center.

You find the jewel, and it draws you off.
In loving the spiritual, you cannot despise the earthly.

The purpose of the journey is compassion.
When you have come past the pairs of opposites, you have reached compassion.

The goal is to bring the jewel back to the world, to join the two things together.

The separateness apparent in the world is secondary.
Beyond that world of opposites is an unseen, but experienced, unity and identity in us all.

Today, the planet is the only proper "in group".
You must return with the bliss and integrate it.
The return is seeing the radiance everywhere.

Sri Ramakrishna said: "Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond."

If you want the whole thing, the gods will give it to you.
But you must be ready for it.

The goal is to live with godlike composure on the full rush of energy, like Dionysus riding the leopard, without being torn to pieces.

A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation:
"As you go the way of life,
you will see a great chasm.

Jump.

It is not as wide as you think.”