The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [117]
The third age, which this philosopher in around 1260 said was now about to begin, is the age of the Holy Spirit, who speaks directly to the individual. Anyone who incarnates or brings into his life the message of the Word is equivalent to Jesus—that’s the sense of this third age. Just as Israel has been rendered archaic by the institution of the Church, so the Church is rendered archaic by the individual experience.
That began a whole movement of hermits going into the forests to receive the experience. The saint who is regarded as the first representative of this was St. Francis of Assisi, who represented the equivalent of Christ, and who was himself a manifestation in the physical world of the Holy Spirit.
Now, that is what lay behind the quest of the Grail. Galahad on his quest was equivalent to Christ. He was introduced to Arthur’s court in flaming red armor, on the Feast of Pentecost, which is the feast of the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles in the form of fire. Each of us can be a Galahad, you know. That’s a Gnostic position with respect to the message of Christianity. The Gnostic documents, buried in the desert during the time of Theodosius, express this idea.
In the Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas, for example, Jesus says, “He who drinks from my mouth will become as I am and I shall be he.” That is the idea in those romances of the Grail.
MOYERS: You’ve said that what happened in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was one of the most important mutations of human feeling and spiritual consciousness, that a new way of experiencing love came into expression.
CAMPBELL: Yes.
MOYERS: And it was in opposition to the ecclesiastical despotism over the heart that required people, particularly young girls, to marry whomever the Church or their parents wanted them to marry. What had this done to the passion of the heart?
CAMPBELL: Well, to say a word for the other first—one has to recognize that in domestic life there grows up a love relationship between the husband and wife even when they’re put together in an arranged marriage. In other words, in arranged marriages of this kind, there is a lot of love. There’s family love, a rich love life on that level. But you don’t get this other thing, of the seizure that comes in recognizing your soul’s counterpart in the other person. And that’s what the troubadours stood for, and that has become the ideal in our lives today.
But marriage is marriage, you know. Marriage is not a love affair. A love affair is a totally different thing. A marriage is a commitment to that which you are. That person is literally your other half. And you and the other are one. A love affair isn’t that. That is a relationship for pleasure, and when it gets to be unpleasurable, it’s off. But a marriage is a life commitment, and a life commitment means the prime concern of your life. If marriage is not the prime concern, you’re not married.
MOYERS: Does romance in marriage last?
CAMPBELL: In some marriages, it does. In others, it doesn’t. But the problem, you see, the big word in this troubadour tradition, is “loyalty.”
MOYERS: What do you mean by loyalty?
CAMPBELL: Not cheating, not defecting—through whatever trials or suffering, you remain true.
MOYERS: The Puritans called marriage “the little church within the Church.” In marriage, every day you love, and every day you forgive. It is an ongoing sacrament—love and forgiveness.
CAMPBELL: Well, the real word, I think, is “ordeal,” in its proper sense. That is the submission of the individual to something superior to itself. The real life of a marriage or of a true love affair is in the relationship, which is where you are, too. You understand what I mean?
MOYERS: No, I’m not clear on that.
CAMPBELL: Like the yin/yang symbol, you see. Here I am, and here she is, and here we are. Now when I