The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Abstract Since its release in 1949, this book has influenced millions of readers by combining the insights of modern psychology with Joseph Campbells revolutionary understanding of comparative mythology. New World Library Joseph Campbell Foundation. Whereas, the teaching is much less flattering: 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.' The World Savior's cross, in spite of the behavior of its professed priests, is a vastly more democratic symbol than the local flag. The hero with a thousand faces (3rd ed.). One would think that we had been called upon to decide or to know whom, of all of us, the Father prefers. And this, of course, is what has happened throughout the Christian world. Indeed, where not so kept, they have the regressive effect: they reduce the father image back again to the dimensions of the totem. Such comparatively trivial matters as the remaining details of the credo, the techniques of worship, and devices of episcopal organization (which have so absorbed the interest of Occidental theologians that they are today seriously discussed as the principal questions of religion), are merely pedantic snares, unless kept ancillary to the major teaching. The good news, which the World Redeemer brings and which so many have been glad to hear, zealous to preach, but reluctant, apparently, to demonstrate, is that God is love, the He can be, and is to be, loved, and that all without exception are his children. “Once we have broken free of the prejudices of our own provincially limited ecclesiastical, tribal, or national rendition of the world archetypes, it becomes possible to understand that the supreme initiation is not that of the local motherly fathers, who then project aggression onto the neighbors for their own defense.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell