Mala’s review of The Hero with a Thousand Faces > Likes and Comments

I'm so bad with myths... is this a good place to start for someone who has a very bad memory and can never keep one god from another?

Jimmy wrote: "I'm so bad with myths... is this a good place to start for someone who has a very bad memory and can never keep one god from another?"

I'd say it's a good point of entry esp. as regarding the hero's journey narrative. The second half of the book gets dense & heavy though but as I'm interested in comparative study of religion & culture, I still enjoyed that.
I think it would come handy in the reading of Classics as well which I seriously hope to embark upon next year.

Thanks... maybe I'll give it a try then.

Anything mythical is a powerful magnet. And place it in the field of the psychoanalytical dimensions and voila! we have a scorcher! Enticing review, Mala. Loved it.

P.S. The ToC is far from being a spoiler :)

Where are the myths of our modern age?! Why do we keep going back to Greek, Latin & Sanskrit classics for sustenance?! It's revealing that our heroes are the stars of cinema & reality television! It's said that we deserve the politicians we get; perhaps the same could be said of our heroes?

One may say that telly and the cinema are new myths of our age. (view spoiler)[pun intended (hide spoiler)]

What about video games? Some people treat it them as legendary Greek wars.

Or maybe our scientific age is bereft of imagining new myths (and therefore new heroes) because modern people like so much to be seen as rational, scientific truth-seekers?

So much food for thought here, Mala. Thanks for sharing :)

It was great reading about Kabbalah, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, & Maori poetry often on the same page!

I see this is the same Joseph Campbell who wrote The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake - it all makes sense..

Seemita wrote: "Anything mythical is a powerful magnet. And place it in the field of the psychoanalytical dimensions and voila! we have a scorcher! Enticing review, Mala. Loved it.

P.S. The ToC is far from being..."

Thanks, Seemita. I'm glad to see that you've added this book. Campbell is an authority on Myths & is a Joyce scholar with that impressive Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake—impressive credentials there! I'm sure you'll enjoy this book.
As for the ToC spoiler, it was done mainly for neat formatting-- not everybody would be interested in checking out the contents so why unnecessarily lengthen the review. I'm wary of looong reviews & I suspect so are the others. Time is precious.

Jibran wrote: Or maybe our scientific age is bereft of imagining new myths (and therefore new heroes) because modern people like so much to be seen as rational, scientific truth-seekers?

Yes, that was the conclusion reached by Campbell himself in the last chapter, 'The Hero Today'—Science & its related technological advancements have replaced the need for God. We can no longer believe in the myth of an old woman with a spinning wheel on the moon because man himself has landed there!
Here's the quote:
It is not only that there is no hiding place for the gods from the searching telescope and microscope; there is no such society any more as the gods once supported. The social unit is not a carrier of religious content, but an economic-political organization . Its ideals are not those of the hieratic pantomime, making visible on earth the forms of heaven, but of the secular state, in hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and resources. Isolated societies, dream-bounded within a mythologically charged horizon, no longer exist except as areas to be exploited. And within the progressive societies themselves, every last vestige of the ancient human heritage of ritual, morality, and art is in full decay . The problem of mankind today, therefore, is precisely the opposite to that of men in the comparatively stable periods of those great co-ordinating mythologies which now are known as lie. (358)

But what about societies where the word 'God' still means something? Science feeds our rational side but what about our imaginative, instinctive faculties? Wouldn't cognition require an amalgamation of all these? And that's where our need for myths, for larger than life narratives comes into play.
Cinema is called 'dream machine' because it creates fantasies & when the Lumière Brothers cinematic train stormed onto the screen, it did seem for a moment that a new myth was created. The decoding of the DNA sequence, mission to Mars, etc, etc, all seem like modern myths somewhat on the level of Prometheus stealing the light for mankind from the Gods—in the sense of the audacity & the wondrousness involved but where they differ from ancient myths is that here the process behind the wonder can be systematically explained & analyzed—myths remain in the realm of the impossible, improbable & the mysterious; that's why they've such close connection with the images & symbols of our dream state, a connection that Campbell has utilized here with the psychoanalytical approach.
Thanks for dropping by, Jibran. Our paths do cross occasionally :-)

Fionnuala wrote: "It was great reading about Kabbalah, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhism, & Maori poetry often on the same page!

I see this is the same Joseph Campbell who wrote The Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake - it all ma..."

:-)
And there is the Bible, the Holy Koran, Gospels of Shri Ramakrishna, Taoism, & many, many other different traditions covered here. The bibliography runs into 18 pages, filled with heavyweight tomes.
I remember NR & Geoff swearing by the Campbell Key during the FW read, but that you were not that enamoured of the supplementary texts & chose to let the book guide you.

Mala wrote: "And there is the Bible, the Holy Koran, Gospels of Shri Ramakrishna, Taoism, & many, many other different traditions covered here. The bibliography runs into 18 pages, filled with heavyweight tomes.
I remember NR & Geoff swearing by the Campbell Key during the FW read, but that you were not that enamoured of the supplementary texts & chose to let the book guide you..."

I couldn't have managed without Mc Hugh's Annotations - in fact I learned to decipher the Wake from McHugh and eventually ditched him as well, letting the book be its own guide as you put it. As for Campbell, what he did was to render each chapter into simpler language like a reader's digest version. I felt I wanted to read what Joyce wrote rather than a digested version - but he was helpful too at the beginning. The most helpful thing was actually the Wake Grappa guys, Geoff, Jonathan, Nathan and Joshua. Geoff's updates drew me in in the first place - I heard the music - and the others cheered me on sometimes....and at one point I had a shoal of Nora Barnacles who followed in my wake - all that helped enormously.

Ah okay. All of you Grappa members reading of FW was truly inspirational.
I'll go through the tips shared by them if ever I feel plucky enough to pick up this book. Thanks.

And Jimmy, if you are following this conversation, I strongly recommend Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky to you. Ever since Samsa reviewed his Memories of the Future, I've wanted to read his books.
His Autobiography of a Corpse which I'm reading right now is equally fantastic so far— strictly in the Borges-Kafka territory.
And the funny thing? The guy never really got to read them!
Some original talent there.

What an apt quote, Mala, and an equally apt commentary. Thanks!
Since scientific wonders can be explained and rationalised with the help of some imagination, popular cinema has kept the mysterious and the impossible alive in, say, super heroes. Perhaps due to my personal imaginative incapacity I dismiss Greek mythology as overwrought and overpopulated just I dismiss Batman, Spiderman et al as useless, but popular culture seems to be in thrall to cinema superheores. So here enter Superman and Wonder Woman if not Hercules and Artemis. Don't you think myths are alive and well despite our scientific pretensions? Or does one have to believe in them as an article of religious faith?

Modern mythical figures are missing the divine component and increasingly modeled after animals and birds. Anthropologically, it should indicate something. I remember reading something from Slavoj Žižek but I no longer remember what it was. It shows how much I'm buried under fiction currently.

Don't forget to pick up JC's biography. It's fascinating. His friendship with Krishnamurti is lovely to read about!

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

Jibran wrote: Don't you think myths are alive and well despite our scientific pretensions? Or does one have to believe in them as an article of religious faith?

Well, cinema, literature, arts, all these mediums carry myths forward because basically they are telling stories and/or encouraging conversation about the material & it's a necessary requirement so we continue being part of a long tradition even if it takes secular, somewhat lighter tones. But then there's the banal aspect of it when super heroes come in tiny plastic figures as part of MacDonald's Happy Meal package! What a downfall for them!
Myths, whether they form part of religion or folk culture, almost always have the supernatural as an essential element: the Greek heroes-heroines with their divine parentage, the folk tales with their magical figures, Arabian Nights with their Hoories & genies, sort of entail a suspension of disbelief & when it comes to religious myths—definitely belief as an article of religious faith. Would the faithfuls be able to enact the passion if they didn't believe in that? Or the Tazia processions with their mourning for the battle of Karbala, or the joyous floats of Janamashtami if they didn't believe in the Krishna Leelas?
You don't care about the Greek myths but so much of literature & arts owe their inspiration & source material to them. English Romantic poetry would be unthinkable without them. I think cultures everywhere have borrowed heavily from their mythic treasures.
Recently, director Iñárritu tried incorporating the mythic element in his film Birdman via the superhero figure though surprisingly enough despite the stronghold of such figures on the popular imagination, the movie mainly found favour with the critics not the average cine goers.

Modern mythical figures are missing the divine component and increasingly modeled after animals and birds. Anthropologically, it should indicate something.

But the animals & birds also carry the divine spark, no?
They were dominant in ancient myths as well: there's the Greek Chimera & there's Jatayu in Ramayana. I'm sure Žižek would've plenty to say on the subject.

T.R. wrote: "Don't forget to pick up JC's biography. It's fascinating. His friendship with Krishnamurti is lovely to read about!"

Oh, okay. Thanks for the recommendation.

Mala wrote: "Jibran wrote: Don't you think myths are alive and well despite our scientific pretensions? Or does one have to believe in them as an article of religious faith?

Well, cinema, literature, arts, all..."

Thanks for the comprehensive comment Mala. Makes me want to take a more inclusive view of myth, esp ancient myths that have stood the vagaries of time. Perhaps like it's with everyone, I'm more disposed to myths I have been brought up with than the foreign ones that regularly fail to inspire me. But enough about me!

Let me restate the question about mythical birds & animals. What I had meant with the new myths modeled after birds and animals was to draw the distinction between such old myths that had a divine element to them, as those you pointed out and as the Persian mythical bird Homa also represents, Or Unicorn whose equivalent in Arab mythology can be said to be Buraq etc - all of them at one point or another representated a divine spark as you put it, Buraq being a blessed horse that took Muhammad to a full board trip to the heaven and the hell (Dante rehashed an old idea). But the new cinema-inspired myths we have now are supernatural without having some great divine purpose. This makes me wonder if new myths will survive the box office and influence the culture in the same way as old ones did to their corresponding times, and still do (celebration of Hindu mythology remains popular as do Shia passion plays during the month of Muharram etc)

Very interesting, I've actually been reading here and there about the Mahabharata (because I've been interested on the Bhagavad Gita which I know nothing about, only things I've heard that kind of resonate nice with me) and I find it all amazing! But also quite overwhelming, it's like the Odyssey on steroids! So for now, it's just a long term project :)

(I actually got super hooked on this Youtube series https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... ~ I kind of doubt you'll like it, the whole thing has been over-westernised... which I don't like, but still, I think it does help me at least to wrap my head around all the characters, main events and stuff...)

I added this book to my TBR, hopefully I can get to it soonish. Nice find!

PS. Do you know of any good, if there is, "getting-started" with the Mahabharata? (this book?)

Jibran wrote: Let me restate the question...But the new cinema-inspired myths we have now are supernatural without having some great divine purpose. This makes me wonder if new myths will survive the box office and influence the culture in the same way as old ones did to their corresponding times

I got that & partially answered that in "even if it takes secular, somewhat lighter tone."
In their diluted, somewhat dumbed down version they wouldn't influence the culture the same way the old myths did. The purists would always find fault in them but the odd chance is always there that being intrigued by them, some folks might dig deeper & seek out the original.
Times are such that anything approaching religion is suspect, no wonder these new superhero animal & bird figures are kept secular, though as products of Hollywood they may be seen as pedaling a capitalist ideology. They got muscle power of money & science on their side, not surprising then that the devil in Flaubert's The Temptation of St. Anthony, finally appears in the form of science!
That reminds me I left a very safe comment on your Madame Bovary thread, actually I wasn't sure that my thoughts would be welcome there given the kind of sympathy/antipathy she inspires so If you don't mind, I'd share them here: what I recall from my reading of years ago is that Flaubert was neither endorsing the bourgeois ideals of materialism & the happily-ever-after, nor the passionate escapades—Flaubert was too much of a realist to believe in either. He knew that ultimately both led to disappointment, as Beckett put it so succinctly: "You're on earth. There's no cure for that!"
She was discovering in adultery all the platitudes of marriage—that was a key line. Did Flaubert actually say, "Madame Bovary, c'est moi"? I think that assertion remains controversial but if we are honest enough, we would admit that there remains a little of Emma in all of us, in our foolish hopes, our unreachable dreams, our desire to always aspire for the forbidden.

Pablo wrote: "Very interesting, I've actually been reading here and there about the Mahabharata (because I've been interested on the Bhagavad Gita which I know nothing about, only things I've heard that kind of ..."

Hey Pablo, you've become a good boy! Getting interested in the Bhagavad Gita, wanting to read the Mahabharata-- wow!
Thanks for sharing those YouTube clips, I watched the first one- cool, though Krishna never came riding a horse on the battlefield! So factual inaccuracy, yes, but it segues well into the discussion I was already having with Jibran about continuation of myths in popular culture via new mediums. Graphic art series on mediums like YouTube could bring new readers to Mahabharata, how cool is that!
In fact, my first introduction to this longest epic in the world was via the famous Amar Chitra Katha Series! Do check them out, they can be purchased online. They are not expensive & give a faithful rendition of the source material. Almost every Indian child during the 80s onwards grew up reading them.
For scholarly reading there are the endless Clay Sanskrit Library editions. I'll endorse Prof P. Lal's transcreation in 18 volumes into English—I've read a couple of them & skimmed a few others. They are available Here.
The Campbell book only provides glimpses from world mythologies, those familiar with them would be happy to see them while those new to the material would perhaps feel enthused enough to peruse the bibliography. I hope you'd enjoy this book.
Ps. If you are really interested, perhaps you could check out the local ISKCON center, I'm sure there would be one in Brisbane. They would happily guide you in all matters related to Krishna.

Mala wrote: "Jibran wrote: Let me restate the question...But the new cinema-inspired myths we have now are supernatural without having some great divine purpose. This makes me wonder if new myths will survive t..."

Thanks for taking the time to expand. Because these myths are new and we don't know their future potential, it would be fair to take a guarded view till the next generations have the benefit of hindsight to judge their cultural value.
Thanks, too, for sharing your thoughts on Madame Bovary. You're always welcome to post on my reviews without reserve; more welcome if it's to challenge my conclusions, which, frankly, I prefer more than polite but uncritical comments. I totally agree that one has to take an equivocal view either way, whether one leans toward antipathy or sympathy, not least because Flaubert's himself went to great lengths to maintain a neutrality that was so unlike his times, and later refused to interpret it for whoever had asked, always referring them back to the text. And I believe anyone who claims to find a definite conclusion from the story hasn't read it carefully. The line you've quoted about marriage/adultery represents that conclusion eloquently. Like I wrote, there was no escape, happiness did not come to Emma either way which, you're right, is the story of all of humanity!