The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [0]
Where the Two Came to Their Father: A Navaho War Ceremonial (with Maud Oakes and Jeff King)
A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (with Henry Morton Robinson)
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology
The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology
The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology
The Masks of God: Creative Mythology
The Flight of the Wild Gander
The Mythic Image
Myths to Live By
Historical Atlas of World Mythology
I. The Way of the Animal Powers
II. The Way of the Seeded Earth (forthcoming)
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space
EDITED BY JOSEPH CAMPBELL
The Portable Arabian Nights
The Portable Jung
Myths, Dreams, and Religion
Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks (6 volumes)
EDITED AND COMPLETED FROM
THE POSTHUMA OF HEINRICH ZIMMER
Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
The King and the Corpse
Philosophies of India
The Art of Indian Asia (2 volumes)
FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JULY 1991
Copyright © 1988 by Apostrophe S Productions, Inc., and Alfred van der Marck Editions
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. The fully illustrated edition of The Power of Myth was originally published in both hardcover and paperback by Doubleday in 1988. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement with Doubleday.
ANCHOR BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Barnes & Noble Books, Totowa, New Jersey, for permission to quote from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats.
Campbell, Joseph, 1904–
The power of myth / Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers;
Betty Sue Flowers, editor.—1st Anchor Books ed.
p. cm.
1. Myth. 2. Campbell, Joseph, 1904–Interviews. 3. Religion historians—United States—Interviews. I. Moyers, Bill D. II. Flowers, Betty S. III. Title.
[BL304.C36 1990] 90-23860
291.1′3—dc20
eISBN: 978-0-307-79472-7
www.anchorbooks.com
v3.1
To Judith, who has long heard the music
CONTENTS
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
EDITOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION BY BILL MOYERS
I MYTH AND THE MODERN WORLD
II THE JOURNEY INWARD
III THE FIRST STORYTELLERS
IV SACRIFICE AND BLISS
V THE HERO’S ADVENTURE
VI THE GIFT OF THE GODDESS
VIII MASKS OF ETERNITY
About the Author
EDITOR’S NOTE
This conversation between Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell took place in 1985 and 1986 at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch and later at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Many of us who read the original transcripts were struck by the rich abundance of material captured during the twenty-four hours of filming—much of which had to be cut in making the six-hour PBS series. The idea for a book arose from the desire to make this material available not only to viewers of the series but also to those who have long appreciated Campbell through reading his books.
In editing this book, I attempted to be faithful to the flow of the original conversation while at the same time taking advantage of the opportunity to weave in additional material on the topic from wherever it appeared in the transcripts. When I could, I followed the format of the TV series. But the book has its own shape and spirit and is designed to be a companion to the series, not a replica of it. The book exists, in part, because this is a conversation of ideas worth pondering as well as watching.
On a more profound level, of course, the book exists because Bill Moyers was willing to address the fundamental and difficult subject of myth—and because Joseph Campbell was willing to answer Moyers’ penetrating questions with self-revealing honesty, based on a lifetime of living with myth. I am grateful to both of them for the opportunity to witness this encounter, and to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the Doubleday editor, whose interest in the ideas of Joseph Campbell was the prime mover