Quotes About Mythology

Now, one of the main problems of mythology is reconciling the mind to this brutal precondition of all life, which lives by the killing and eating of lives. You don't kid yourself by eating only vegetables, either, for they, too, are alive. So the essence of life is this eating of itself! Life lives on lives, and the reconciliation of the human mind and sensibilities to that fundamental fact

an ameliorative mythology [that through] prayer or good deeds or some other activity, one can change the basic principles, the fundamental preconditions of life... This is like marrying someone in order to improve him or her—it is not a marriage.

Mythology is the song. It is the song of the imagination, inspired by the energies of the body.

In the Hellenistic period, Scylla was identified with the rock of logic, while Charybdis was identified with the abyss of mysticism. One must sail between—as these are all instructions for moving down through the middle, between each pair of opposites.

Gods are metaphors transparent to transcendence. And my understanding of the mythological mode is that deities and even people are to be understood in this sense, as metaphors. It's a poetic understanding. It is to be understood in the same sense as Goethe's words at the end of Faust: "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis" ("Everything transitory is but a reference").

a complicated story. Indeed all of these get to be pretty complicated. But Isis and her husband Osiris

The serpent, who dies and is resurrected, shedding its skin and renewing its life, is the lord of the central tree, where time and eternity come together.

Mythology is not invented rationally; mythology cannot be rationally understood.

beginning of my interest in comparative mythology.

They come from every culture but with timeless themes. CAMPBELL: The themes are timeless, and the inflection is to the culture.

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.

Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words—in short, what we call transcendence. Without that you don't have a mythology. Any system of thinking, ideologies of one kind or another, that does not open to transcendence cannot be classified or understood mythologically.

We can't have a mythology for a long, long time to come. Things are changing too fast to become mythologized.

The symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche.

Mythology -and therefore civilization- is a poetic, supernormal image, conceived, like all poetry, in depth, but susceptible of interpretation on various levels.

The third function is the sociological one—supporting and validating a certain social order. And here's where the myths vary enormously from place to place. You can have a whole mythology for polygamy, a whole mythology for monogamy. Either one's okay. It depends on where you are. It is this sociological function of myth that has taken over in our world—and it is out of date.

Mythology is the song. Its the flight of the imagination inspired by the energy of the body.

this is the ground of what the myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason, not of my nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community; the eye of reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see? And this would be the philosophy for the planet, not for this group, that group, or the other group. When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come.

Orpheus struck dumb with hindsight.

Legends are always better from afar.

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it.

Nyx, born of Chaos in Greek mythology, was the goddess of "all-subduing" night who, in the Iliad, makes even Zeus tremble.

Si Edipo en lugar de hacer morir a la esfinge la hubiera domado y enganchado a su carro para entrar a Tebas, hubiera sido rey sin incesto, sin calamidades y sin exilio.

The old tales of China tell us that all things may grow and change. A stone may become a plant. A plant may become an animal. An animal may become a human. A human may become a god. Just so, a snake may become a woman. And we are told of one who did.