Joseph Campbell

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamic of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions sown are directly valid for all mankind

In choosing your god, you choose your way of looking at the universe. There are plenty of Gods. Choose yours. The god you worship is the god you deserve.

Of all the forms of māyā that of woman is supreme.

The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience — this is the mythological experience. So is the central mountain of the world Jerusalem? Rome? Benares? Lhasa? Mexico City?

Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.

The power of life causes the snake to shed its skin, just as the moon sheds its shadow. The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life.

The best part of the Western tradition has included a recognition of and respect for the individual as a living entity. The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to to support society.

It is the imperfections of life that are lovable.

If you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor.

Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end… The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth — that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us.

Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.

Recordé también esa descripción cuando una amiga le preguntó a uno de mis colegas por nuestra colaboración con Campbell: «¿Para qué necesitan la mitología?». Esta mujer sostenía la opinión, muy corriente y moderna, de que «todos esos dioses griegos y sus historias» nada tienen que ver con la actual condición humana. Lo que ella no sabía (e ignora la mayoría) es que las reliquias de esas «viejas historias» adornan las paredes de nuestro sistema interior de creencias, como restos de antiguos utensilios en un yacimiento arqueológico. Pero como somos seres orgánicos, hay energía en todos esos restos. Los rituales la evocan. Pensemos en la posición de los jueces en nuestra sociedad, que Campbell analizó en términos mitológicos, no sociológicos. Si esta posición fuera solamente un papel a desempeñar, el juez podría asistir con un traje gris al tribunal en lugar de vestir la toga negra. Para que la ley tenga autoridad más allá de la mera coacción, el poder del juez debe ser ritualizado, mitologizado.

In marriage you are not sacrificing yourself to the other person. You are sacrificing yourself to the relationship.
You become mature when you become the authority of your own life.
Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.
Awe is what moves us forward.

An amusing and instructive example of a great hero’s abject failure will be found in the Finnish Kalevala, Runos IV–VIII, where Väinämöinen fails in his wooing, first of Aino, and then of the “maid of Pohjola.” The story is much too long for the present context.

CAMPBELL: You yourself are participating in the evil, or you are not alive. Whatever you do is evil for somebody. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation.