We talked about the message and meaning of myth, about the first storytellers, about love and marriage, gods and goddesses, religion, ritual, art and psychology.

Over the last two summers of his life, we taped these conversations in California, at Skywalker Ranch, the home of his friend, George Lucas, whose movie trilogy Star Wars had been influenced by Campbell’s work.

Mythology was to him the song of the universe, music so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious that we dance to it, even when we can’t name the tune. Joseph Campbell was one of the most spiritual men I ever met, but he didn’t have an ideology or a theology. Some of his books are classics: The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which established his fame 40 years ago and his four-volume study of mythology, The Masks of God. When he died, he was working on a monumental Historical Atlas of World Mythology, his effort to bring under one roof the spiritual and intellectual wisdom of a lifetime. The 20 books he wrote or edited have influenced artists and performers, as well as scholars and students. When he died in 1987 at the age of 83, he was considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on mythology, the Stories and legends told by human beings through the ages to explain the universe and their place in it. We dance.”Ĭampbell could have said it of his own life. ìI think we don’t have ideology,” he said, “we don’t have theology. But I don’t get your ideology, I don’t get your theology.” The Japanese paused as though in deep thought, and then slowly shook his head. He was in Japan for a conference on religion, and he overheard another American delegate, a social philosopher from New York, say to a Shinto priest, “We’ve been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines.

And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.īILL MOYERS: Joseph Campbell believed that everything begins with a story, so we begin this series with Joseph Campbell with one of his favorites. And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.

The labyrinth is thoroughly known we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us. Released in 1988, The Power of Myth was one of the most popular TV series in the history of public television, and continues to inspire new audiences.

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell