Season Six Explained ... If You Squint.
Parenthetical emphases are mine.
MICHAEL: We tend to use the word “myth” to mean something that is untrue or an erroneous belief. Why is that?
JOSEPH: I can understand why that idea arose. Myth is metaphor. The imagery of mythology is symbolic of spiritual powers within us (BLOODLINES): when these are interpreted as referring to historical or natural events which science in turn shows could not have occurred, then you throw the whole thing out (CIVILIANS). You see, myths do not come from a concept system; they come from a life system (HUNTING); they come out of a deeper center. We must not confuse mythology with ideology. Myths come from where the heart is (DEAN), and where the experience is, even as the mind may wonder why people believe these things (SAM). The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact (ALPHAS).
When you think, for instance, “God is thy father”, so you think he is? No, that’s a metaphor, and the metaphor points to two ends: one is psychological - that’s why the dream is metaphoric; the other is metaphysical. Now, dream is metaphoric of the structures of the psyche, and your dream will correspond to the level of psychological realization that you are operating on. The metaphysical, on the other hand, points past all conceptualizations, all things, to the ultimate depth. And when the two come together, when psyche and metaphysics meet, then you have a real myth. And when that happens the sociological and cosmological aspects of your life have to be re-envisioned in terms of those realizations.
So there are two stages to this: one is going inward, and finding the relationship of your own deepest self to the ground of being so that you become transparent to transcendence (SAM); the other is bringing this realization back into operation in the field, which is the work of the artist - to interpret the contemporary world as experienced in terms of relevance to our inner life (DEAN).
To me, all mythologies are provinces of one great system of feeling (POWERS). I think of the mythological image as an energy-evoking sign that hits you below the thinking system. Then words can be found to interpret the mythic image: image of the structure. Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that are renditions of insights giving some sense of the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life. And a poet working within a mythological system has the advantage of the major structuring images being already at hand. All he’s giving is part of the big myth.
--Joseph Campbell and Michael Toms, An Open Life
MICHAEL: We tend to use the word “myth” to mean something that is untrue or an erroneous belief. Why is that?
JOSEPH: I can understand why that idea arose. Myth is metaphor. The imagery of mythology is symbolic of spiritual powers within us (BLOODLINES): when these are interpreted as referring to historical or natural events which science in turn shows could not have occurred, then you throw the whole thing out (CIVILIANS). You see, myths do not come from a concept system; they come from a life system (HUNTING); they come out of a deeper center. We must not confuse mythology with ideology. Myths come from where the heart is (DEAN), and where the experience is, even as the mind may wonder why people believe these things (SAM). The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact (ALPHAS).
When you think, for instance, “God is thy father”, so you think he is? No, that’s a metaphor, and the metaphor points to two ends: one is psychological - that’s why the dream is metaphoric; the other is metaphysical. Now, dream is metaphoric of the structures of the psyche, and your dream will correspond to the level of psychological realization that you are operating on. The metaphysical, on the other hand, points past all conceptualizations, all things, to the ultimate depth. And when the two come together, when psyche and metaphysics meet, then you have a real myth. And when that happens the sociological and cosmological aspects of your life have to be re-envisioned in terms of those realizations.
So there are two stages to this: one is going inward, and finding the relationship of your own deepest self to the ground of being so that you become transparent to transcendence (SAM); the other is bringing this realization back into operation in the field, which is the work of the artist - to interpret the contemporary world as experienced in terms of relevance to our inner life (DEAN).
To me, all mythologies are provinces of one great system of feeling (POWERS). I think of the mythological image as an energy-evoking sign that hits you below the thinking system. Then words can be found to interpret the mythic image: image of the structure. Essentially, mythologies are enormous poems that are renditions of insights giving some sense of the marvel, the miracle and wonder of life. And a poet working within a mythological system has the advantage of the major structuring images being already at hand. All he’s giving is part of the big myth.
--Joseph Campbell and Michael Toms, An Open Life