The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [108]
MOYERS: So through life we are honoring or suppressing one or the other.
CAMPBELL: And in that yin/yang figure from China, in the dark fish, or whatever you want to call it, there is the light spot. And in the light one, there’s a dark spot. That’s how they can relate. You couldn’t relate at all to something in which you did not somehow participate. That’s why the idea of God as the Absolute Other is a ridiculous idea. There could be no relationship to the Absolute Other.
MOYERS: In this spiritual transformation that you’re talking about, won’t the changes depend on those feminine characteristics such as nurturing, creativity, and collaboration instead of competition? Isn’t this at the heart of the feminine principle we’re discussing?
CAMPBELL: Well, the mother loves all her children—the stupid ones, the bright ones, the naughty ones, the good ones. It doesn’t matter what their particular character is. So the feminine represents, in a way, the inclusive love for progeny. The father is more disciplinarian. He’s associated much more with the social order and the social character. This is actually the way it works in societies. The mother gives birth to his nature, and the father gives birth to his social character, you might say, how he is to function.
So moving back toward nature will certainly bring forth the mother principle again. How it will relate to the patriarchal principle I do not know, because the organization of the planet is going to be an enormous operation, and that’s the male function, so that you can’t predict what the new thing is going to be. But certainly nature is coming back.
MOYERS: So when we say, “Save the earth,” we’re talking about saving ourselves.
CAMPBELL: Yes. All this hope for something happening in society has to wait for something in the human psyche, a whole new way of experiencing a society. And the crucial question here, as I see it, is simply: With what society, what social group, do you identify yourself? Is it going to be with all the people of the planet, or is it going to be with your own particular in-group? This is the question, essentially, that was in the minds of the founders of our nation when the people of the thirteen states began thinking of themselves as of one nation, yet without losing consideration for the special interests of each of the several states. Why can’t something of that kind take place in the world right now?
MOYERS: A question arises in discussing all this—the male-female principle, the virgin birth, the spiritual power that gives us the second birth. The wise people of all times have said that we can live the good life if we learn to live spiritually. But how does one learn to live spiritually if one is of the flesh? Paul said, “The desires of the flesh are against the spirit and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.” How do we learn to live spiritually?
CAMPBELL: In ancient times, that was the business of the teacher. He was to give you the clues to a spiritual life. That is what the priest was for. Also, that was what ritual was for. A ritual can be defined as an enactment of a myth. By participating in a ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life. And it’s out of that participation that one can learn to live spiritually.
MOYERS: The stories of mythology actually point the way to the spiritual life?
CAMPBELL: Yes, you’ve got to have a clue. You’ve got to have a road map of some kind, and these are all around us. But they are not all the same. Some speak only of the interests of this in-group or of that, this tribal god or that. Others, and especially those that are given as revelations of the Great Goddess, mother of the universe and of us all, teach compassion for all living beings. There also you come to appreciate the real sanctity of the earth itself, because it is the body of the Goddess. When Yahweh