by Chris McGowan

In 1986, journalist Bill Moyers sat down with mythologist Joseph Campbell for a series of interviews taped at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch. The sessions, which aired on PBS in '88 (see Bill Moyers Remembers Joseph Campbell), introduced Campbell's transcendental wisdom to a wide audience for the first time. Joseph Campbell And The Power Of Myth became a bestseller in both book and video form. Campbell's ideas about the narrative structure of myth have influenced a generation of filmmakers and writers, and his crosscultural perspective has inspired millions of spiritual speekers (and infuriated fundamentalist Christians). The six-volume Power Of Myth set is available in DVD and VHS boxed sets, and as a book and audio CD.

The first volume in the Power Of Myth series, The Hero’s Adventure, looks at Campbell’s favorite area of mythology, the tests and trials undergone by heroes from Prometheus to Sir Gawain to Jonah to Luke Skywalker. “There are two types of deeds,” says Campbell. “One is the physical deed, in which the hero performs a courageous act in battle or saves a life. The other kind is the spiritual deed, in which the hero learns to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life and then comes back with a message.” There are adventures which are chosen and others into which the hero/heroine is thrown; but ultimately the journey is about a transformation of consciousness. As we read about the hero’s adventure, it inspires us in our own lives. “Myths inspire the realization of the possibility of your perfection, the fullness of your strength, and the bringing of...light into the world,” says Campbell.

The Message Of The Myth talks about the common threads between many myths -- such as the creation myths of Genesis, Basari legend and the Upanishads -- and how these stories, ancient or modern, can awaken a sense of awe, gratitude and even rapture within ourselves. “Myth opens the world to the dimension of mystery, to the realization of the mystery that underlies all forms. If you lose that, you don’t have a mythology.”

The First Storytellers takes us back to our Paleolithic ancestors, “to whose lives and life ways we nevertheless owe the very forms of our bodies and structures of our minds.” Mythological themes that came from ancient hunting peoples, as well as from -- later -- the first agricultural societies, still resonate in our dreams, stories and religions. In the 20th century, writers and artists such as James Joyce, Thomas Mann, and Paul Klee have emerged as the new myth-makers.

Sacrifice And Bliss discusses how each of us needs to find our sacred place (a place or an activity that gives us peace and to which we can retreat for a little while every day), how sacrifice leads us to a discovery of our own spiritual selves, and how one way of opening the door to mystical experience is to “follow your bliss” (do what it is you love to do). Says Campbell, “If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t even know they were going to be.”

In Love And The Goddess, Campbell discusses how our current idea of romantic love largely began (in the West) with the troubadours of 12th century Europe, who thought of love as a highly personal “person-to-person relationship.” Before that in Europe, love was simply Eros (impersonal sexual desire) or Agape (love thy neighbor as thyself; also impersonal). Campbell looks at woman, as goddess, virgin, and Mother Earth.

Masks Of Eternity is in many ways the most challenging of all six Power Of Myth programs, and one in which Bill Moyers the Baptist struggles to reconcile his beliefs with the transcendental ideas of Campbell the global mythologist. “A myth is a mask of God, a metaphor for what lies behind the visible world,” says Campbell, who discusses our need for God and the differences and commonalities between gods of different cultures. “In most Oriental thinking and in primal thinking, the gods are manifestations and purveyors of an energy that is finally impersonal. They are not its source. The god is the vehicle of its energy. But the ultimate source of the energy remains a mystery.”

Also see: Bill Moyers Remembers Joseph Campbell & The Power Of Myth

The above review was originally published in the September, 1989 issue of Pulse! magazine. © Chris McGowan 1989 / 2007