Quotes from Joseph Campbell

of that dragon power. When Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature. He has transcended his humanity and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life, and from which our minds remove us. You see, consciousness thinks it's running the

Because I have called and you refused, 24 I have stretched out my hand and no one regarded, Because you disdained all my counsel, 25 And would have none of my rebuke, I also will laugh at your calamity; 26 I will mock when your terror comes, When your terror comes like a storm, 27 And your destruction comes like a whirlwind, When distress and anguish come upon you. Proverbs 1:23-27

In the West we know the military uniform, clerical collar, medical goatee, and judge's wig. But where people are naked, it is the body itself that must be changed.

To what degree was the intention of the artist what we would call "aesthetic" or to what degree expressive? And to what degree is the art something that they had simply learned to do that way? When a spider makes a beautiful web, the beauty comes out of the spider's nature. It's instinctive beauty. How much of the beauty of our own lives is about the beauty of being alive? How much of it is conscious and intentional? That is

Where you stumble, there your treasure lies.

Myth is much more important and true than history.

In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." Then the next chapter says, "Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it." That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other.

The ultimate dragon is within you. It is your ego clamping you down.

Just as anyone who listens to the muse will hear, you can write out of your own intention or out of inspiration. There is such a thing. It comes up and talks. And those who have heard deeply the rhythms and hymns of the gods, the words of the gods, can recite those hymns in such a way that the gods will be attracted. JOSEPH CAMPBELL, Esalen, 1983

Follow your bliss.

first book of Corinthians: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

These caves are the original men's rite sanctuaries where the boys became no longer their mothers' sons but their fathers' sons.