The 1988 best-seller The Power of Myth relates
a series of interviews with famed 20th Century comparative mythologist
Joseph Campbell. It's a coffee table book, oversized, with lots of
pictures. Campbell speaks eloquently on many "artifacts of culture,"
including Parsifal, the Garden of Eden story, the Greek myths etc.
He deciphers the hidden meanings in these stories, and leads us to understand
their symbolic relevance and power for our modern lives.
Symbolic relevance? Power?
I can see Joseph Campbell standing at the gates of Heaven:
"You have to let me in," he says. "I wrote The
Power of Myth, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Myths to Live By.
I showed people how to enrich their lives by drinking from the pool of
our common heritage of mythological motifs…"
"Joseph," they interrupt, "In your opinion, was the Garden
real? Is Jesus really God?"
"Well, no..." Campbell stammers, "but..."
SLAM.
The problem with myths , it seems to me, is that, by
the time a story which was once the root of a living religion becomes "mythological"
(read "not factual; symbolic" ), it has lost its power. When we can
read in any religion our "common human heritage of mythological motifs,"
then the gods and heroes whose stories make up said religions have, at
least to us, died; they have become powerless. The Icelandic handmaids
who volunteered to be buried alive with their dead masters, that they might
continue to serve them after death in Valhalla, did not regard the Norse
gods as charming "mythological motifs." Bodhidarma did not
rip out his eyelids that he might better analyze the hidden psychological
patterns behind Buddha's fascinating hero-myth. Millions of present
day Christians, Muslims and Jews do not consider their Holy Books collections
of "cultural artifacts," or even of stories in the sense of spiritual allegory
or fiction, however "symbolically relevant."
Odin, Buddha, Christ, Allah, Yahweh are real, concrete,
actual gods, or they are nothing. Either they actually exist(ed),
or they are powerless to light the kind of fire in individuals that changes
lives, that demands and receives deep commit-ment, that establishes real
moral order, sets political and cultural agendas, that forms the central
pillar around which a civilization can form and grow.
Myths are "symbolically relevant." Gods are real.
Which leads me to the actual inspiration for this essay,
Douglas Curran's In Advance of the Landing: Folk Concepts of Outer Space.
It, too, is a coffee table book, oversized, with lots of pictures.
It is, at first glance, a book about UFOs, about alien beings and their
spaceships, their teachings and agendas for Humanity. But on closer
examination, In Advance of the Landing is the chronicle of a religion being
born, of the individuals and groups for whom UFOs are not only real, they
are powerful. It is the story of sacrifices made to these new gods,
of real human lives changed forever by real, physical contact with them,
of the cosmologies and cosmogonies these gods have delivered, the high
priests and priestesses they have called and anointed, and of the faithful
who await the landing – the victorious revelation of the gods, concretely,
on Earth.
It is not a book about myth. Joseph Campbell, and
Carl Jung before him, wrote about UFOs in terms of "mythological motifs."
UFOs, they felt, are expressions of Archetypal patterns in the human psyche,
20th Century projections of the same common human need for gods, miracles,
heroes who command the skies and bring order to the Earth. UFOs are, from
this learned perspective, a way of seeing ourselves. They are symbolically
relevant. They are not, in other words, real. They are not, in and
of themselves, powerful.
Neither Jung nor Campbell, at least to their public admission,
were ever abducted by space aliens, as was Betty Andreason. They
never went on a voluntary joyride in a flying saucer, as did George Adamski.
They were never commanded to speak for the Interplanetary Parliament, as
was Sir George King. They were never, as was George Van Tassel, given
schematics for a rejuvenating age-reversal machine they'd spend a lifetime
laboring to hand-build, board by board, in the California desert.
And that's too bad. Jung's Depth Psychology and
Campbell's comparative cultural mythol-ogies, even if they are concretely,
factually accurate, have robbed us of our gods. They have stolen
from us the ability to, perhaps naively, experience our gods as physically
and externally real. One trip to Venus, one fiery visitation, one
glimpse of Klingsor's castle actually physically vanishing as Parsifal
commands, "By this sign I abolish your magic..." by either of these men
(or their brethren in a myriad of disciplines) and contemporary Western
culture might be a very different place, indeed.
And I, for one, am not convinced we got the long end
of the stick. I miss real gods. I miss Thor's hammer and Yahweh's
pillar of fire. I miss Ezekiel's wheel and the goddess Athena popping
full-formed from Zeus's forehead. I am disap-pointed in Humanity's
acceptance of so lame a substitute for these living, powerful deities as
"symbolic relevance."
"Yes, indeed," we'll say at the Heavenly gates, "that
story sure made me think..."
SLAM.
Joseph Campbell tells us that we live in a post-mythological
era, a time in which the myths of the past no longer successfully define
for us who we are, our place in the universe, our destiny as individuals
and as a species. The artists of our day, Campbell insists, must create
new myths, symbolically relevant stories of heroes and gods for our times,
draped in the imagery of life in the 20th Century and beyond. This,
he assures us, will define who we are to become as we turn the corner into
the 21st Century.
I disagree. Whether concretely or Archetypally
projected, the religions, cosmologies, cosmogon-ies, heroes and gods of
the future will arise as they have, in my understanding, always arisen
– out of the real experiences of real people, and the expression and embellishment
of their stories within the boiling cauldron of popular culture.
Our emerging 21st Century relationship with the gods is being defined far
less by the authors of "great literature" than by the hacks who lay out
the front pages of supermarket tabloids. The transmigration of Elvis
Presley has more raw power to change lives and foster real commitment than
the complete literary works of all our novelists combined. The epic
life and death of Jim Morrison has more power to inspire heroism than have
even his own songs and poetry. The mysterious death of John F. Kennedy
has had a more lasting and formative effect on American culture than his
presidency ever had. Talk show host Joan Rivers did a show a while
back on people who's lives had been profoundly changed by their love for
Madonna – the singer, not the Blessed Virgin...
We are by no means living in a post-mythological era.
The gods are neither dead nor powerless. They are, however, I believe,
in transition. They are evolving ahead of us, leading the way, calling
us to follow, as they have at every stage of our human journey on this
planet.
No one, it seems to me, need bring the gods of the 21st
Century to the people like stone tablets from Mt. Sinai. They walk
among us every day, in reports of alien contacts and abductions, in Marian
apparitions, Elvis sightings, the twisted tangle of conspiracy theories,
and on an on. We need only pay attention. We need only look,
listen, learn.
In Advance of the Landing reminds us that the gods are
both real and powerful, and that they continue to reveal themselves daily,
all around us. Our job as enlightened observer's and creative communicators
is to listen closely and to interpret their revelation to our cultures
in ways that reveal, rather than impose, meaning. Our job is not
to mythologize, but to accurately and open-mindedly describe a new, emergent
reality as it surfaces in our time. Our job is to meet the gods half-way,
to evolve along with them, and to drag Humanity, kicking and screaming
if necessary, along for the ride.