Masks
of God: Occidental Mythology – Joseph Campbell (1958)
This book is the third in a series of
four books in which Joseph Campbell created and crystallized the modern science
of comparative religion and ethnographic mythology. The vast amount of research and scholarship involved
in this is staggering to imagine, but it reflects upon Mr. Campbell’s lifelong
fascination with humanity’s belief systems and the shared themes found within
all of these mythologies. The first two
books in this Masks of God series, Primitive Mythology, and Oriental Mythology, explore the deep mythological source materials from humanity’s
earliest tribal times in the former, and then investigates the development of
these primal themes and ideas as they coalesced into organized religion during
humanity’s first great civilizations in the latter. This volume, Occidental Mythology,
details the evolution of these myths as the Eastern (Vedic and early Buddhist)
and Western (Greek and Hebrew) ideas combined to form what were the first
"World” religions, such as Christianity and Islam.
Early mythology created tribal cults,
mainly concerned with worshiping the life impulse evident all around in the
cycles of birth, death, and regeneration seen by all humans in the past. The waxing and waning Moon, the rising and
setting Sun, the coming of life in Spring and Summer and the decline of it in
the Fall and Winter, all became signs which humanity saw fit to sacrifice to,
and worship as divine. Death brought
Life. Life brought Death. It was a never-ending cycle which is reflected
in the oldest religions still around in our modern world. These are mainly found in the Eastern
religious thought, where life/existence has no beginning and no end, instead
cycling endlessly from high to low and back again. The end goal of these religions is to remove
the trappings of self, of placing value in things which are transient at best
and illusory at worst. This leaves the
devotee to experience a unity with the divine which is in all, surrounds all,
and is ever-lasting.
These religions detailed in Primitive
Mythology did not focus on good versus evil, for those were just two poles of
an ever-varied existence. The religions
that developed out of and after these original family religions were different
in that they explored the source of Evil in the world. Many, like Zoroastrianism, proposed a
Universe in which the personification of Good and of Evil are constantly at
odds, and that only through the good works of humanity would Evil finally be
vanquished by Good, leading to everlasting peace on Earth. Many religions followed this example. Others, like the religion of the tribal
peoples that became the Hebrews, posited that the world is full of sin, due to
Man’s disobeying God/Yahweh, but that only God’s Chosen People (of course it is
the Hebrews) would be able to bring about an end to evil when they finally are
able to join all together and worship their god in unity. This was drawn from the idea that God created
the world but is not immanent in the world, that not everything is divine, and
that this world we currently live in is but a shadow of the true existence of
divinity. That is a big difference from
the earlier tribal, and current Eastern, belief that one can find god by
looking within themselves just as easily as one can find god by looking
without. The Hebrew Messiah is described
as someone who would be a political, as well as spiritual leader, who would
finally unite all the Hebrew nation and bring about God’s will. This was still a “national/tribal” religion,
not meant to include the world population at large. Yahweh was specifically the god of the
Hebrews, proclaiming himself the mightiest of gods.
The Western world developed what are
termed “World” religions, Christianity and Islam, out of the basis provided by
the original Hebrew faith. Christianity
slowly moved away from the vengeful, petty, nationalistic god of the Bible’s
Old Testament that required constant sacrifices to appease, towards a conception
of god as love, whereas all the evil in the world was caused by Satan, who
sought to destroy and ruin God’s perfect creation, Man. To do this, the example of Jesus of Nazareth
was used, and mythologized, to be able to spread this idea to all corners of
the Earth. The New Testament speaks of
Jesus teaching his followers that any and all are to be welcomed into the “flock,”
even those who religion normally turned away, such as the very poor, the sick,
the leprous, the prostitutes, basically the lowliest of the low. It brought a dignity in being human that was
to be respected by all. At its core,
Islam also teaches this. All humans are
capable of being good Muslims, or good Christians. Your membership in these belief systems are
not dependent on your birth, nationality, race, etc., but solely upon your personal
desire and dedication to live the Christian/Muslim life. This has been codified into widely differing dogma
by religious groups, but the core message is the same.
The Eastern system of Buddhism does the
same thing, in terms of being a World religion, and seeks to instruct all
mankind in the ways of living a proper life, so that anyone can be one with the
divine, which is in us, around us, and always available. In this sense it is different from
Christianity and Islam, for the Buddhist is not taught that the Buddha was the
only son of god, or that the Buddha is the only prophet that is valid, or that
only by worshiping the Buddha will you attain Heaven/union with the divinity. Anyone can, through good works, good
thoughts, and good living, become an enlightened one, a Buddha. The focus in the East is never on the tribe
or the nation or the group, but on the individual mind/soul and its connection
to the divine.
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| You can never go too deep |
It is amazing how Mr. Campbell draws in
the seemingly infinite threads of world myth and shows how the basic core ideas
are transformed from one era to the next. He details how the Trinity in Christianity has
endless predecessors in the nature cults and early religions of the Middle
East. He describes how the concept of worshiping the Female aspect of Life as Life’s very creator was twisted around
to benefit a patriarchal society, to the point where in Christianity, God is
the Father, Son and Holy Ghost all himself, with no feminine entity to provide
Life. This is something that changed
even the very early story of Adam and Eve, as can be seen in the Bible’s two different
versions of creation, where in one God creates Adam and Eve together, and in
the later addition, God creates Adam, and then, from Adam, creates Eve. This
is essentially a denial of the life power of the Female, and it is still used
to this day to keep women down, in both Christianity and Islam, for they seem
Woman as the cause of the Fall of mankind.
Horrible huh? It seems inherently
anti-nature.
(Within Catholicism, the cult of the
Virgin Mary has essentially refocused humanity’s original worship of the Female
as the giver of all Life into the worship of one perfect Female who was used by
God to bring humanity’s savior into existence.)
There is so much more in this book, so
much I wish I could get into, but it would make this review exceedingly
long. One thing that is evident from Mr.
Campbell’s writing is that he feels that while there is evidence that Jesus of
Nazareth, the Buddha, and other “saviors” like Osiris in Egypt were actual
historical people, their ideas and lives were elaborated and developed into
cosmological mythologies. Joseph
Campbell states that this MUST be so, in order to progress from tribal ideas to
truly universal ideas with the power to change the entire world. That is the beauty and power of myth, that it
touches upon something deep within all of us, allowing our consciousness to
comprehend and appreciate the resonance between us and every other aspect of
creation. That is a very valuable thing,
and will go on whether or not individual religions come and go.
(You can read or download this book as a .pdf here: http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_13907.pdf )
(This book can be purchased here: AMAZON )
