Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Joseph Campbell and Goddess Worship
There are certain consolations in being impressionable and stupid, for instance, you may read books with which you entirely agree, that is, you will not be bringing anything contradictory to the table.
Joseph Campbell presents enough information to show that every viable Civilization had at its cure a belief in the Mother Goddess. He shows that every Destroyer militated against Mother Goddess Worship. And yet, after all of that, he presents Western Civilization as the First Successful Barbarian Civilization, not seeing his contradiction, or supposing his audience too stupid to catch on. He quite ignores that Western Civilization was formed for some 14 hundred years around the Worship of the Virgin Mary, who, afterall, even he acknowledges is another aspect of the Mother Goddess.
What may be slowing down Joseph Campbell, if he is actually sincere, is his being an Atheist, that is, carrying the assumption that Religious Beliefs are formulated by cynical committees in smoky rooms – that Religions are not essentially Real.
From my own experience – through actual dreams and visions, which one can never fake to oneself – the Goddess Mother is a recurrent and powerful Entity within the workings of the Psyche. And then we have the instances of Her Saints, Her Devotees, having been the most powerful Saints in their Civilizations. In the face of this we have Joseph Campbell projecting the intellectual’s fantasy that intellectuals actually have ever had the least bit of influence by simply making up useful fictions to achieve certain political ends. That is what Barbarians do.
So reading Joseph Campbell is something of a mixed bag. He presents plenty of information which is good in itself, but then he tries to spin it to support the War of the Western Barbarians against the Civilized World. He brings to mind all the Pre-War Intellectuals who spoke of Arian and Teutonic Racial Superiority, because brutes from that Race were able to destroy, during the Iron Age, many of the southern Civilizations. People forget how much Intellectual Support the Nazis got from, well, intellectuals. Joseph Campbell is simply rehashing all the same arguments. He doesn’t call his Master Race Arian, or Teutonic, or specifically German. Now he includes all of the West. But it is all still Nazism. And the argument is easy enough to refute. Barbarians would never stand a chance against a thriving Civilization in its prime. It is only when Civilizations have grown old and move away from their original Civilizing Principals that they can weaken and become vulnerable to barbarian onslaught.
Anyway, the book I am reading is Joseph Campbell’s “Occidental Mythology”. He wrote a series of books, but he constantly goes back over what he had uncovered in the other books of the series, and so I can’t see wasting time or money for any more than just the one book.
There are certain consolations in being impressionable and stupid, for instance, you may read books with which you entirely agree, that is, you will not be bringing anything contradictory to the table.
Joseph Campbell presents enough information to show that every viable Civilization had at its cure a belief in the Mother Goddess. He shows that every Destroyer militated against Mother Goddess Worship. And yet, after all of that, he presents Western Civilization as the First Successful Barbarian Civilization, not seeing his contradiction, or supposing his audience too stupid to catch on. He quite ignores that Western Civilization was formed for some 14 hundred years around the Worship of the Virgin Mary, who, afterall, even he acknowledges is another aspect of the Mother Goddess.
What may be slowing down Joseph Campbell, if he is actually sincere, is his being an Atheist, that is, carrying the assumption that Religious Beliefs are formulated by cynical committees in smoky rooms – that Religions are not essentially Real.
From my own experience – through actual dreams and visions, which one can never fake to oneself – the Goddess Mother is a recurrent and powerful Entity within the workings of the Psyche. And then we have the instances of Her Saints, Her Devotees, having been the most powerful Saints in their Civilizations. In the face of this we have Joseph Campbell projecting the intellectual’s fantasy that intellectuals actually have ever had the least bit of influence by simply making up useful fictions to achieve certain political ends. That is what Barbarians do.
So reading Joseph Campbell is something of a mixed bag. He presents plenty of information which is good in itself, but then he tries to spin it to support the War of the Western Barbarians against the Civilized World. He brings to mind all the Pre-War Intellectuals who spoke of Arian and Teutonic Racial Superiority, because brutes from that Race were able to destroy, during the Iron Age, many of the southern Civilizations. People forget how much Intellectual Support the Nazis got from, well, intellectuals. Joseph Campbell is simply rehashing all the same arguments. He doesn’t call his Master Race Arian, or Teutonic, or specifically German. Now he includes all of the West. But it is all still Nazism. And the argument is easy enough to refute. Barbarians would never stand a chance against a thriving Civilization in its prime. It is only when Civilizations have grown old and move away from their original Civilizing Principals that they can weaken and become vulnerable to barbarian onslaught.
Anyway, the book I am reading is Joseph Campbell’s “Occidental Mythology”. He wrote a series of books, but he constantly goes back over what he had uncovered in the other books of the series, and so I can’t see wasting time or money for any more than just the one book.
