The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [107]
In the Near East, the god who descended into the field of time was originally a goddess. Jesus took over what is really the Goddess’ role in coming down in compassion. But when the Virgin acquiesces in being the vessel of the incarnation, she has herself already affected the redemption. It has become more and more apparent that the Virgin is equivalent in her suffering to the suffering of her son. In the Catholic Church now I think she is called the “co-savior.”
MOYERS: What does all of this say about the reunion of the male and female? For a long while in primitive societies, the female is the dominant mythological image. Then along comes this masculine, aggressive, warlike image, and soon we’re back to the female playing a role in creation and recreation. Does it say something about the basic yearning of men and women for each other?
CAMPBELL: Yes, but I think of it rather in historical terms. It is a very interesting thing to see that this Mother Goddess was the queen right across to the Indus Valley in India. From the Aegean to the Indus, she is the dominant figure. Then you have the Indo-Europeans coming down from the north, into Persia, India, Greece, Italy, and you have a male-oriented mythology coming in, all along the line. In India it’s the Vedas, in Greece it’s the Homeric tradition, and then about five hundred years later, the Goddess begins coming back. There is actually an Upanishad from about the seventh century B.c.—which is just about the time she is coming back to force in the Aegean as well—where the Vedic gods are together, and they see a strange sort of amorphous thing down the way, a kind of smoky fog, and they ask, “What’s that?” None of them knows what it could be. So one of them suggests, “I’ll go find out what that is.” And he goes over to this smoky thing and says, “I’m Agni, the Lord of Fire; I can burn anything. Who are you?” And out of the fog there comes flying a piece of straw, which falls on the ground, and a voice says, “Let’s see you burn that.” Agni finds that he can’t ignite it. So he goes back to the other gods and says, “This surely is strange!” “Well, then,” says the Lord of Wind, “let me try.” So over he goes, and the same sort of thing takes place. “I’m Vayu, Lord of the Wind, I can blow anything around.” Again a straw is thrown. “Let’s see you blow that.” And he can’t. So he, too, returns. Then Indra, the greatest of the Vedic gods, approaches, but as he draws near, the apparition vanishes, and where it had been, a woman appears, a beautiful, mysterious woman, who instructs the gods, revealing to them the mystery of the ground of their own being. “That is the ultimate mystery of all being,” she tells them, “from which you boys yourselves have received your powers. And It can turn your powers off or on, as It wills.” The Indian name for that Being of all beings is brahman, which is a neuter noun, neither male nor female. And the Indian name for the woman is Maya-Shakti-Devi, “Goddess Giver of Life and Mother of Forms.” And there in that Upanishad she appears as the teacher of the Vedic gods themselves concerning the ultimate ground and source of their own powers and being.
MOYERS: It’s the female wisdom.
CAMPBELL: It’s the female as the giver of forms. She is the one who gave life to the forms and she knows where they came from. It is from that which is beyond male and female. It is from that which is beyond being and nonbeing. It both is and is not. It neither is nor is not. It is beyond all categories of thought and the mind.
MOYERS: There is that wonderful saying in the New Testament, “In Jesus there is no male or female.” In the ultimate sense of things, there is neither.
CAMPBELL: It would have to be. If Jesus represents the source of our being, we are all, as it were, thoughts in the mind of Jesus. He is the word that has become flesh in us, too.
MOYERS: You and I possess characteristics that are both male and female?
CAMPBELL: The body does. I don’t know anything about the actual