Collected thoughts from essays


Christopher

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... myths -- that is to say, religious recitations [are] conceived as symbolic of the play of eternity in time. These are rehearsed not for diversion, but for the spiritual welfare of the individual or community.

...Living myths are not mistaken notions, and they do not spring from books. They are not to be judged as true or false but as effective or ineffective, maturative or pathogenic. They are rather like enzymes, products of the body in which they work; or in homogeneous social groups, products of a body social. They are not invented but occur, and are recognized by seers, and poets, to be then cultivated and employed as catalysts of spiritual (i.e., psychological) well-being.

...out of the whole symbol-building achievement of the past, what survives today (hardly altered in efficiency or in function) is the tale of wonder. The tale survives, furthermore, not simply as a quaint relic of days childlike in belief. Its world of magic is symptomatic of fevers deeply burning in the psyche: permanent presences, desires, fears, ideals, potentialities that have glowed in the nerves, hummed in the blood, baffled the senses since the beginning.

[All passages taken from Campbell's Flight of the Wild Gander: pages 16, 6, & 35-36, respectively] ... from http://www.mythinglinks.org/

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... myths -- that is to say, religious recitations [are] conceived as symbolic of the play of eternity in time. These are rehearsed not for diversion, but for the spiritual welfare of the individual or community.

...Living myths are not mistaken notions, and they do not spring from books. They are not to be judged as true or false but as effective or ineffective, maturative or pathogenic. They are rather like enzymes, products of the body in which they work; or in homogeneous social groups, products of a body social. They are not invented but occur, and are recognized by seers, and poets, to be then cultivated and employed as catalysts of spiritual (i.e., psychological) well-being.

...out of the whole symbol-building achievement of the past, what survives today (hardly altered in efficiency or in function) is the tale of wonder. The tale survives, furthermore, not simply as a quaint relic of days childlike in belief. Its world of magic is symptomatic of fevers deeply burning in the psyche: permanent presences, desires, fears, ideals, potentialities that have glowed in the nerves, hummed in the blood, baffled the senses since the beginning.

[All passages taken from Campbell's Flight of the Wild Gander: pages 16, 6, & 35-36, respectively] ... from http://www.mythinglinks.org/

To put it more briefly, myths are a kind of meme.

Our minds need memes in a way somewhat like the way the stomach and gut need certain bacteria to function.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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