Bøger af Joseph Campbell

The third volume in Campbell’s monumental four-volume series, The Masks of God, traces the mythological underpinnings of Western religions: the shift from female-centered to male-dominated mythologies Once upon a time in the West, the focal figure of all mythology and worship was the bountiful goddess Earth. She reigned supreme as the mother and nourisher of life and as the receiver of the dead for rebirth. As Joseph Campbell here elucidates, she was more than a symbol of fertility; she was “a metaphysical symbol: the arch personification of the power of Space, Time, and Matter, within whose bound all beings arise and die.” How, when, and why did this change? Campbell shows how “the mythologies of the goddess mother were radically transformed, reinterpreted, and in large measure even suppressed by those suddenly intrusive patriarchal warrior tribesmen whose traditions have come down to us chiefly in the Old and New Testaments and in the myths of Greece.” He goes on to describe the mythological underpinnings of Western religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism — and their historical influence on one another. No one who cares about history, mythology, religion, or past or current events in Western civilization can do without this venerable yet perennially fresh analysis.

Joseph Campbell famously defined myth as ''other people's religion.'' But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment - or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world's most powerful myths support the individual's heroic path toward bliss. In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth. Like his classic bestselling books Myths to Live By and The Power of Myth, Pathways to Bliss draws from Campbell's popular lectures and dialogues, which highlight his remarkable storytelling and ability to apply the larger themes of world mythology to personal growth and the quest for transformation. Here he anchors mythology's symbolic wisdom to the individual, applying the most poetic mythical metaphors to the challenges of our daily lives. Campbell dwells on life's important questions. Combining cross-cultural stories with the teachings of modern psychology, he examines the ways in which our myths shape and enrich our lives. He explores the many insights of Carl Jung; the notion of self as the hero; and how East and West differ in their approaches to the ego. The book also includes an extensive question-and-answer session that ranges from mythological readings of the Bible to how the Hero's Journey unfolds for women. With his usual wit and insight, Campbell draws connections between ancient symbols and modern art, schizophrenia and the Hero's Journey. Along the way, he shows how myth can help each of us truly identify and follow our bliss.

Standout correspondence spanning the famed mythologist¿s entire career sheds incomparable light on a fabled generation of artists and thinkers

Famed mythologist Joseph Campbell explores the form, function, and origin of myths

A tour of the Far East, narrated by the world¿s preeminent mythologist

In 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was able to visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore—the outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses, and that, Campbell attested, changed his career. For the next sixty years, Campbell moved through the labyrinths of Joyce’s creations—writing and lecturing on Joyce using depth psychology, comparative religion, anthropology, and art history as tools of analysis. Arranged by Joyce scholar Edmund L. Epstein, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words presents a wide range of Campbell’s writing and lectures on Joyce, which together form an illuminating running commentary on Joyce’s masterworks. Campbell’s visceral appreciation for all that was new in Joyce will delight the previously uninitiated, and perhaps intimidated, as well as longtime lovers of both Joyce and Campbell.

Master mythologist Joseph Campbell had a genius for finding the unifying symbols and metaphors in apparently distinct cultures and traditions. In Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, Campbell explores, with his characteristic clarity and humor, the principle that underlies all the great religions of India and East Asia, from Jainism and Hinduism to Buddhism and Taoism: the transcendent World Soul.Joseph Campbell began his comparative study of the world’s religions with a chance meeting with the renowned Indian theosophist Jeddu Krishnamurti on a trans-Atlantic steamer. Though Campbell was deeply fascinated by mythologies and religions from every continent, Asia’s potent mix of theologies captured his imagination more than any other, and offered him paths to understanding the essence of myth.In Myths of Light, Campbell explores the core philosophies and mythologies of the East, comparing them through vivid examples and stories to each other and to those of the West. A worthy companion to Thou Art That and to Campbell’s Asian Journals, this volume conveys complex insights through warm, accessible storytelling, revealing the intricacies and secrets of his subject with his typical enthusiasm.

Provides a study of the mythology of the world's high civilizations. This book explores the relation of dreams to myth, and demonstrates the important differences between oriental and occidental interpretations of dreams and life.

In these pages, beloved mythologist Joseph Campbell explores the Space Age. He posits that the newly discovered laws of outer space are actually within us as well, and that a new mythology is implicit in that realization. But what is this new mythology? How can we recognize it? Campbell explores these questions in the concluding essay, “The Way of Art,” in which he demonstrates that metaphor is the language of art and argues that within the psyches of today’s artists are the seeds of tomorrow’s mythologies.Campbell writes in his introduction: “My desire and great pleasure in the preparation of this little volume has been as rendering a return gift to the Graces for the transforming insights of these recent years, which...we have been testing out in a broadly shared spiritual adventure.”

Woven from Joseph Campbell's previously unpublished work, this volume explores Judeo-Christian symbols and metaphors -- and their misinterpretations -- with the famed mythologist's characteristic conversational warmth and accessible scholarship. Campbell's insights highlight centuries of confusion between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Western religious symbols that are, he argues, perennially relevant keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.

The author of the bestselling four-volume series The Masks of God explores how these enduring myths still influence our daily lives and can provide personal meaning in our lives.