Knowledge = Power

Woven from Joseph Campbell’s previously unpublished work, this volume explores Judeo-Christian symbols and metaphors — and their misinterpretations — with the famed mythologist’s characteristic conversational warmth and accessible scholarship. Campbell’s insights highlight centuries of confusion between literal and metaphorical interpretations of Western religious symbols that are, he argues, perennially relevant keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.

The first collection of Joseph Campbell’s writings and lectures on the Arthurian romances of the Middle Ages, a central focus of his celebrated scholarship, edited and introduced by Arthurian scholar Evans Lansing Smith, PhD, the chair of Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Throughout his life, Joseph Campbell was deeply engaged in the study of the Grail Quests and Arthurian legends of the European Middle Ages. In this new volume of the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, editor Evans Lansing Smith collects Campbell’s writings and lectures on Arthurian legends, including his never-before-published master’s thesis on Arthurian myth, “A Study of the Dolorous Stroke.” Campbell’s writing captures the incredible stories of such figures as Merlin, Gawain, and Guinevere as well as the larger patterns and meanings revealed in these myths. Merlin’s death and Arthur receiving Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, for example, are not just vibrant stories but also central to the mythologist’s thinking. The Arthurian myths opened the world of comparative mythology to Campbell, turning his attention to the Near and Far Eastern roots of myth. Calling the Arthurian romances the world’s first “secular mythology,” Campbell found metaphors in them for human stages of growth, development, and psychology. The myths exemplify the kind of love Campbell called amor, in which individuals become more fully themselves through connection. Campbell’s infectious delight in his discoveries makes this volume essential for anyone intrigued by the stories we tell—and the stories behind them.

Explore the magic of modern myth In 1927, as a twenty-three-year-old postgraduate scholar in Paris, Joseph Campbell first encountered James Joyce’s Ulysses. Known for being praised and for kicking up controversy (including an obscenity trial in the United States in 1920), the novel left Campbell both intrigued and confused, as it had many others. Because he was in Paris, he was able to visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore—the outpost of the original publisher of Ulysses, Sylvia Beach. She gave him “clues” for reading Ulysses, and that, Campbell attested, changed his career. For the next sixty years, Campbell moved through the labyrinths of Joyce’s creations—writing and lecturing on Joyce using depth psychology, comparative religion, anthropology, and art history as tools of analysis. Arranged by Joyce scholar Edmund L. Epstein, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words presents a wide range of Campbell’s writing and lectures on Joyce, which together form an illuminating running commentary on Joyce’s masterworks. Campbell’s visceral appreciation for all that was new in Joyce will delight the previously uninitiated, and perhaps intimidated, as well as longtime lovers of both Joyce and Campbell.

Joseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics. While Campbell’s work reached wide and deep as he covered the world’s great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs. In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossi—a goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal library—collects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration.

Galahad is  a word from the Old Testament that means Mountain of Testimony; [Sir  Galahad] is a mountain of testimony to Christ. The whole tradition of  the virgin knight as the Grail knight belongs to a Cistercian monastic  line. Whereas the line of Wolfram is the secular line of a secular  knight [Parcival] who is married. And as we’re going to see it’s because  of his loyalty to his marriage under all circumstances and his courage  and resolution in combat, fearlessness and also integrity in love that  he becomes finally the Grail King. —Joseph Campbell Joseph Campbell explores the historical roots of the Grail legend. He  discusses the development of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dark  Ages, and shows how new conceptions of love, marriage, and worship gave  rise to a secular “religion,” that of courtly romance. He then examines  the quest for the Holy Grail, both as an expression of these new ideas  of love and as a reaction against the dogmatic practices of the medieval  Church. Finally, in his own inimitable style, he recounts the Grail  Legend.

Joseph Campbell’s collected writings on dance and art, edited  and introduced by Nancy Allison, CMA, the founder of Jean Erdman Dance,  and including Campbell’s unpublished manuscript “Mythology and Form in  the Performing and Visual Arts,” the book he was working on when he  died. Dance was one of mythologist Joseph Campbell’s  wide-ranging passions. His wife, Jean Erdman, was a leading figure in  modern dance who worked with Martha Graham and had Merce Cunningham in  her first company. When Campbell retired from teaching in 1972, he and  Erdman formed the Theater of the Open Eye, where for nearly fifteen  years they presented a wide array of dance and theater productions,  lectures, and performance pieces. The Ecstasy of Being brings  together seven of Campbell’s previously uncollected articles on dance,  along with “Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts,” the  treatise that he was working on when he died, published here for the  first time. In this new collection Campbell explores the rise  of modern art and dance in the twentieth century; delves into the work  and philosophy of Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham, and others; and, as  always, probes the idea of art as “the funnel through which spirit is  poured into life.” This book offers the reader an accessible, yet  profound and provocative, insight into Campbell’s lifelong fascination  with the relationship of myth to aesthetic form and human psychology.

At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting  fascination with the cultures of the Far East, and explorations of  Buddhist and Hindu philosophy later became recurring motifs in his vast  body of work. However, Campbell had to wait until middle age to visit  the lands that inspired him so deeply. In 1954, he took a sabbatical  from his teaching position and embarked on a yearlong voyage through  India, Thailand, Cambodia, Burma, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and finally Japan. Asian Journals combines the two hardcover editions of Campbell’s journals, Baksheesh & Brahman and Sake & Satori,  into one paperback volume, an edited day-to-day travel diary of the  people he met and the historical places he visited on his trek through  Asia. Along the way, he enlivens the narrative with his musings on  culture, religion, myth, and politics, describing both the trivial and  the sublime. As always, Campbell’s keen intellect and boundless  curiosity shine through in his lucid prose. From these pages, Campbell  enthusiasts will come away with a deeper understanding of the man, his  work, and his enduring legacy.

Joseph Campbell - A Joseph Campbell Companion Reflections on the Art of Living

A prize-winning historian reveals how Stalin—not Hitler—was the animating force of World War II in this major new history. World  War II endures in the popular imagination as a heroic struggle between  good and evil, with villainous Hitler driving its events. But Hitler was  not in power when the conflict erupted in Asia—and he was certainly  dead before it ended. His armies did not fight in multiple theaters, his  empire did not span the Eurasian continent, and he did not inherit any  of the spoils of war. That central role belonged to Joseph Stalin. The  Second World War was not Hitler’s war; it was Stalin’s war. Drawing on ambitious new research in Soviet, European, and US archives, Stalin’s War revolutionizes  our understanding of this global conflict by moving its epicenter to  the east. Hitler’s genocidal ambition may have helped unleash  Armageddon, but as McMeekin shows, the war which emerged in Europe in  September 1939 was the one Stalin wanted, not Hitler. So, too, did the  Pacific war of 1941–1945 fulfill Stalin’s goal of unleashing a  devastating war of attrition between Japan and the “Anglo-Saxon”  capitalist powers he viewed as his ultimate adversary. McMeekin  also reveals the extent to which Soviet Communism was rescued by the US  and Britain’s self-defeating strategic moves, beginning with Lend-Lease  aid, as American and British supply boards agreed almost blindly to  every Soviet demand. Stalin’s war machine, McMeekin shows, was  substantially reliant on American materiél from warplanes, tanks,  trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, fuel, ammunition, and explosives, to  industrial inputs and technology transfer, to the foodstuffs which fed  the Red Army. This unreciprocated American generosity gave  Stalin’s armies the mobile striking power to conquer most of Eurasia,  from Berlin to Beijing, for Communism. A groundbreaking reassessment of the Second World War, Stalin’s War is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the current world order.

The national bestseller, now available in a non-illustrated, standard format paperback edition The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people--including Star Wars creator George Lucas. To Campbell, mythology was the “song of the universe, the music of the spheres.” With Bill Moyers, one of America’s most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit. This extraordinary book reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. From stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome to traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, a broad array of themes are considered that together identify the universality of human experience across time and culture. An impeccable match of interviewer and subject, a timeless distillation of Campbell’s work, The Power of Myth continues to exert a profound influence on our culture.