JOSEPH CAMPBELL THE MASKS OF GOD: PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY LONDON : SECKER & WARBURG : 1960 OCR by Angel (Christian Library) [email protected] Version 1.0 COPYRIGHT © 1959 BY JOSEPH CAMPBELL The author wishes to acknowledge with gratitude the generous support of his researches by the Bollingen Foundation Printed in England by The Pitman Press Ltd., Bath and first published 1960 by Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. 7 John Street, London W.C.I CONTENTS Prologue: Toward a Natural History of the Gods and Heroes 3 I. The Lineaments of a New Science 3 II. The Well of the Past 5 III. The Dialogue of Scholarship and Romance 8 PART ONE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYTH Introduction: The Lesson of the Mask 21 Chapter I. The Enigma of the Inherited Image 30 I. The Innate Releasing Mechanism 30 II. The Supernormal Sign Stimulus 38 Chapter 2. The Imprints of Experience 50 I. Suffering and Rapture 50 II. The Structuring Force of Life on Earth 57 III. The Imprints of Early Infancy 61 IV. The Spontaneous Animism of Childhood 78 V. The System of Sentiments of the Local Group 88 VI. The Impact of Old Age 118 PART TWO: THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE PRIMITIVE PLANTERS Chapter 3. The Culture Province of the High Civilizations 135 I. The Proto-Neolithic: c. 7500-5500 B.C. 136 vi CONTENTS II. The Basal Neolithic: c. 5500-4500 B.c. 138 III. The High Neolithic: c. 4500-3500 B.c. 140 IV. The Hieratic City-State: c. 3500-2500 B.C. 144 Chapter 4. The Province of the Immolated Kings 151 I. The Legend of the Destruction of Kash 151 II. A Night of Shehrzad 161 III. The King, and the Virgin of the Vestal Fire 165 Chapter 5. The Ritual Love-Death 170 I. The Descent and Return of the Maiden 170 II. The Mythological Event 176 III. Persephone 183 IV. The Monster Eel 190 V. Parallelism or Diffusion? 202 VI. The Ritual Love-Death in Pre-Columbian America 216 PART THREE: THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE PRIMITIVE HUNTERS Chapter 6. Shamanism 229 I. The Shaman and the Priest 229 II. Shamanistic Magic 242 III. The Shamanistic Vision 251 IV. The Fire-Bringer 267 Chapter 7. The Animal Master 282 I. The Legend of the Buffalo Dance 282 II. Paleolithic Mythology 286 III. The Ritual of the Returned Blood 295 Chapter 8. The Paleolithic Caves 299 I. The Shamans of the Great Hunt 299 II. Our Lady of the Mammoths 313 CONTENTS vii III. The Master Bear 334 IV. The Mythologies of the Two Worlds 347 PART FOUR: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MYTH Chapter 9. Mythological Thresholds of the Paleolithic 357 I. The Stage of Plesianthropus (<--600,000 B.c.-->) 357 II. The Stage of Pithecanthropus (<--400,000 B.C.-->) 360 III. The Stage of Neanderthal Man (c. 200,000- 75,000/25,000 B.c.) 365 IV. The Stage of Crô-Magnon Man (c. 30,000- 10,000 B.C.) 374 V. The Capsian-Microlithic Style (c. 30,000/10,000- 4000 B.C.) 379 Chapter 10. Mythological Thresholds of the Neolithic 384 I. The Great Serpent of the Earliest Planters (c. 7500 B.C.?) 384 II. The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (c. 7500- 2500 B.C.) 391 III. The Great Diffusion 418 Conclusion: The Functioning of Myth 461 I. The Local Images and the Universal Way 461 II. The Bondages of Love, Power, and Virtue 464 III. The Release from Bondage 469 Reference Notes 473 Index 489 ILLUSTRATIONS Sign stimuli releasing parental reactions in man 47 A child's drawing of his dream of the devil 79 Pottery designs, c. 4000 B.C. 142 Prevalence of ritual regicide (map) 167 Designs from shell gorgets, Spiro Mound, Oklahoma 233 Figures in the sanctuary of Trois Frères 287 The Venus of Laussel 288 The wizard-beast of Lascaux 300 Figures in the crypt of Lascaux 301 Ceremonial mask with horns (pointing sticks) 302 Australians with pointing-stick horns 303 The "Sorcerer of Trois Frères" 309 The Venus of Lespugue 326 The bear cult (map) 340 Capsian hunting scene, Castellón 380 Three women, Castellón 380 Man with a dart, Castellón 381 The "White Lady," Rhodesia 382 Sketches for illustrations on pages 288, 300, 301, 302, 303, 309, 326, 382 are by John L. Mackey. viii THE MASKS OF GOD: PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY TOWARD A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE GODS AND HEROES I. The Lineaments of a New Science The comparative study of the mythologies of the world compels us to view the cultural history of mankind as a unit; for we find that such themes as the fire- theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero have a worldwide distribution—appearing everywhere in new combinations while remaining, like the elements of a kaleidoscope, only a few and always the same. Furthermore, whereas in tales told for entertainment such mythical themes are taken lightly— in a spirit, obviously, of play—they appear also in religious con• texts, where they are accepted not only as factually true but even as revelations of the verities to which the whole culture is a living witness and from which it derives both its spiritual authority and its temporal power. No human society has yet been found in which such mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies; in• terpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or philosophers; presented in art; magnified in song; and ecstatically experienced in life- empowering visions. Indeed, the chronicle of our species, from its earliest page, has been not simply an account of the progress of man the tool-maker, but—more tragically—a history of the pour• ing of blazing visions into the minds of seers and the efforts of earthly communities to incarnate unearthly covenants. Every peo• ple has received its own seal and sign of supernatural designation, communicated to its heroes and daily proved in the lives and ex- 3 4 PRIMITIVE MYTHOLOGY perience of its folk. And though many who bow with closed eyes in the sanctuaries of their own tradition rationally scrutinize and disqualify the sacraments of others, an honest comparison imme• diately reveals that all have been built from one fund of mytho• logical motifs—variously selected, organized, interpreted, and ritu• alized, according to local need, but revered by every people on earth. A fascinating psychological, as well as historical, problem is thus presented. Man, apparently, cannot maintain himself in the universe without belief in some arrangement of the general in• heritance of myth. In fact, the fullness of his life would even seem to stand in a direct ratio to the depth and range not of his rational thought but of his local mythology. Whence the force of these unsubstantial themes, by which they are empowered to galvanize populations, creating of them civilizations, each with a beauty and self-compelling destiny of its own? And why should it be that whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination—preferring even to make life a hell for themselves and their neighbors, in the name of some violent god, to accepting gracefully the bounty the world affords? Are the modem civilizations to remain spiritually locked from each other in their local notions of the sense of the general tradi• tion; or can we not now break through to some more profoundly based point and counterpoint of human understanding? For it is a fact that the myths of our several cultures work upon us, whether consciously or unconsciously, as energy-releasing, life-motivating and -directing agents; so that even though our rational minds may be in agreement, the myths by which we are living—or by which our fathers lived—can be driving us, at that very moment, dia• metrically apart. No one, as far as I know, has yet tried to compose into a single picture the new perspectives that have been opened in the fields of comparative symbolism, religion, mythology, and philosophy by the scholarship of recent years. The richly rewarded archaeological researches of the past few decades; astonishing clarifications, sim- TOWARD A NATURAL HISTORY 5 plifications, and coordinations achieved by intensive studies in the spheres of philology, ethnology, philosophy, art history, folklore, and religion; fresh insights in psychological research; and the many priceless contributions to our science by the scholars, monks, and literary men of Asia, have combined to suggest a new image of the fundamental unity of the spiritual history of mankind. Without straining beyond the treasuries of evidence already on hand in these widely scattered departments of our subject, therefore, but simply gathering from them the membra disjuncta of a unitary mythological science, I attempt in the following pages the first sketch of a natural history of the gods and heroes, such as in its final form should include in its purview all divine beings—as zo• ology includes all animals and botany all plants—not regarding any as sacrosanct or beyond its scientific domain. For, as in the visible world of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so also in the visionary world of the gods: there has been a history, an evolution, a series of mutations, governed by laws; and to show forth such laws is the proper aim of science. II. The Well of the Past Very deep," wrote Thomas Mann at the opening of his mytho- logically conceived tetralogy, Joseph and His Brothers, "is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?" And he then observed: "The deeper we sound, the further down into the lower world of the past we probe and press, the more do we find that the earliest foundations of humanity, its history and culture, reveal themselves unfathomable." l * Our initial task must be to ask if this be true.