Historical Atlas of World Mythology 1: The Way of the Animal Powers Part 2: Mythologies of the Great Hunt

The Way of the Animal Powers Part #2

by Joseph Campbell

Hard cover with dust jacket, from the famed series by spiritual anthropologist Joseph Campbell.

Genres: Mythology, Philosophy, History

cloth

Published January 1, 1988

About the author

Joseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles.

Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities. 


After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.


Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.


Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gorgeously illustrated volume. The maps and historical info. are relatively light, with an emphasis on story telling. The myths are presented without too much interpretation. Campbell mostly lets the ancient story-tellers weave their spells, which are presented region by region over the world of ancient hunting cultures: Australia, Scandinavia, Siberia, each major cultural region of North America, and a brief touch on South America. Each of the cultural worlds visited has a distinctive style of myth-making, and its stories may seem beautiful, haunting, baffling, or grotesque, according to the reader's own background.

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

These images! These stories! These historical phantoms! This is a huge (about 18 x 12? bigger?), beautifully designed volume, immaculately researched. It will just feed your dreams like you can't imagine. You want to cry when you realize what this culture's missing though, and what most other cultures worldwide are killing right at this moment...but replacements are bound to occur...the impulse is morphing now, no doubt...

[David Melbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of other books, mostly other Joseph Campbell books, were read along with this. That is actually a cool way to read these atlases; there are a lot of repeated tales and themes but with more and excellent visuals. --From A Reader's Journal, by d r melbie.

[Nancy Raines]

Atlas: Volume 1, Part 2

[John Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part II of the five-volume series offered by Book of the Month Club some years back.

[David Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second part of Volume 1 in this series covers those peoples living like people in the Paleolithic Era who exist or existed, and very few still exist, into modern times. In the first volume, most of the discussion was archaeology, geology anthropology, of Paleolothic and Neolothic peoples. Necessarily, there was much guesswork as to what mythical thinking existed in those cultures. In Volume 2, much of that guesswork is gone. Instead, Campbell compiles myths and legends that have been written somewhere, so that at least there is some historical trace. While Volume 1 consisted of mostly commentary and speculation, Volume 2 consists of much less of that. Most of Volume 2 is taken up by recounting the myths and legends of peoples who had been pushed to the fringes of existence by the expansion of "high" culture. The record is not perfect by any means, most of all because almost all of it was recorded by members of the "high" cultures that were destroying these more primitive cultures. The sad truth, which Campbell acknowledges, is that for most of these cultures, such records are all we have. There is very little in the archaeological record to support what the written record recounts mostly because these cultures made their artifacts from less durable substances than stone. Wood, reeds, leaves, mud, clay, and so on leave hardly a trace after a couple of hundred years. Only a few cultures in Meso-America had writing, and these cultures do not figure in this volume.

As usual, Campbell is systematic in his presentation. He divides the mythological thinking of these primitive cultures into two broad types - those formed around shamanism and creation myths centered on a single Sky Father figure, and those formed around a communal model with a creation arising often from an Earth Mother's womb. Similarly, since the series is an atlas, he follows a geographical course, Australia to the Arctic to North America to South America. The volume also has photos of artifacts where such things are available, though almost all such artifacts are post-Neolithic, and so one can only surmise that their imagery and design carries over from pre-history.

Where the book falls down somewhat is in Campbell's attempts to unify everything. Typically, he notes a tenuous connection between the mythography or rituals of cultures and then assumes that such a link proves some kind of deep connection, often in a Jungian sense of archetypes or deep culture. Such connections may be tantalizing, interesting, suggestive even, but conclusive they are not.

This volume gives the reader some excellent material for engaging with ancient worldviews far, far removed from contemporary ones.

[Michael Patton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great pictures. Not an overabundance of text--which is fine by me. I love to hear Campbell talk, but his writing numbs my mind.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume focuses largely on the spectrum of myths and cultures from the Arctic Circle and Siberia through the Americas. The comparisons are fascinating.