# Occidental Mythology  ## Metadata - Author: [[Joseph Campbell]] - Full Title: Occidental Mythology - Category: #western-philosophy ## Highlights - The supreme aim of Oriental mythology, consequently, is not to establish as substantial any of its divinities or associated rites, but to render by means of these an experience that goes beyond: of identity with that Being of beings which is both immanent and transcendent; yet neither is nor is not. ([Location 141](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=141)) - However, certain exclusively Occidental complications result from the fact that, where two such contradictory final terms as God and Man stand against each other, the individual cannot attach his allegiance wholly to both. On the one hand, as in the Book of Job, he may renounce his human judgment in the face of what he takes to be the majesty of God: “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee?”Note 6 Or, on the other hand, as in the manner of the Greeks, he may stand by his human values and judge, according to these, the character of his gods. The first type of piety we term religious and recognize in all traditions of the Levant: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The other we term, in the broadest sense, humanistic, and recognize in the native mythologies of Europe: the Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic. ([Location 159](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=159)) - Much of the complexity and vitality of the Occidental heritage must be attributed to the conflicting claims — both of which are accepted — on the one hand, of the advocates of what is offered as the Word of God, and, on the other, of the rational individual. ([Location 179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=179)) - For on a deeper level of the past than that of the shuttleplay of Persia, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, Islam, and, later, Europe, the legacy of the Bronze Age supplied many of the basic motifs of Occidental, as well as of Oriental, mythological thought. ([Location 191](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=191)) - Toward the close of the Age of Bronze and, more strongly, with the dawn of the Age of Iron (c. 1250 b.c. in the Levant), the old cosmology and mythologies of the goddess mother were radically transformed, reinterpreted, and in large measure even suppressed, by those suddenly intrusive patriarchal warrior tribesmen whose traditions have come down to us chiefly in the Old and New Testaments and in the myths of Greece. ([Location 212](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=212)) - The wonderful ability of the serpent to slough its skin and so renew its youth has earned for it throughout the world the character of the master of the mystery of rebirth — of which the moon, waxing and waning, sloughing its shadow and again waxing, is the celestial sign. The moon is the lord and measure of the life-creating rhythm of the womb, and therewith of time, through which beings come and go: lord of the mystery of birth and equally of death — which two, in sum, are aspects of one state of being. ([Location 232](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=232)) - “Zeus is one of the few Greek gods who never appear attended by a snake.” ([Location 357](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=357)) - “A worship of the powers of fertility which includes all plant and animal life is broad enough to be sound and healthy,” she adds, “but as man’s attention centers more and more on his own humanity, such a worship is an obvious source of danger and disease.” ([Location 455](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=455)) - Thus in Medusa the same two powers coexisted as in the black goddess Kālī of India, who with her right hand bestows boons and in her left holds a raised sword. Kālī gives birth to all beings of the universe, yet her tongue is lolling long and red to lick up their living blood. She wears a necklace of skulls; her kilt is of severed arms and legs. She is Black Time, both the life and the death of all beings, the womb and tomb of the world: the primal, one and only, ultimate reality of nature, of whom the gods themselves are but the functioning agents. ([Location 469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=469)) - The patriarchal point of view is distinguished from the earlier archaic view by its setting apart of all pairs-of-opposites — male and female, life and death, true and false, good and evil — as though they were absolutes in themselves and not merely aspects of the larger entity of life. This we may liken to a solar, as opposed to lunar, mythic view, since darkness flees from the sun as its opposite, but in the moon dark and light interact in the one sphere. ([Location 490](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=490)) - For in Greece the patriarchal gods did not exterminate, but married, the goddesses of the land, and these succeeded ultimately in regaining influence, whereas in biblical mythology all the goddesses were exterminated — or, at least, were supposed to have been. ([Location 518](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=518)) - However, as we read in every chapter of the books of Samuel and Kings, the old fertility cults continued to be honored throughout Israel, both by the people and by the majority of their rulers. ([Location 520](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=520)) - But the ground, the dust, out of which the punished couple had been taken, was, of course, the goddess Earth, deprived of her anthropomorphic features, yet retaining in her elemental aspect her function of furnishing the substance into which the new spouse, Yahweh, had breathed the breath of her children’s life. And they were to return to her, not to the father, in death. Out of her they had been taken, and to her they would return. ([Location 530](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B074QQS4FC&location=530))