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Chapter IV is entitled “Sacrifice and Bliss” and begins with the claim that many primitive peoples, originating from the plains and the forests, who engage in hunting and farming, saw the surrounding landscape to be sacred land located in a transcendental cosmic order. Forest peoples, for example, very often worshipped old trees, experiencing what Campbell described as a state of bliss whilst doing so. We moderns, he notes, have few sacred places and to the extent that these are not available to us, and we have no means of experiencing bliss, we are lost in our world. Campbell further claims that with the establishment of the metropolis, sacred buildings and locations become of secondary importance compared to the financial skyscrapers and political buildings that surround and fill our city-landscapes.
He returns to the experience of walking into a Cathedral in Chartres and examines the idea of the cosmic significance of such a Cathedral, insofar as the Metaphysics of man was concerned:
“Yes, The Cathedral is in the form of a cross, with the altar in the middle there. Its a symbolic structure. Now many churches are built as though they were theatres. Visibility is important. In the cathedral there is no interest in visibility at all. Most of what goes on goes on out of your sight. But the symbol is what is important there, not just watching the show. Everybody knows the show by heart.” (page 119)
The rituals we see performed in the Church appear to overshadow the logos contained in the sermons, the prayers, the psalms etc., but these rituals too may contain symbolic language that is both cosmic and theatrical. (for exampe, at funerals: “Ashes to ashes, Dust to dust. Dust thou art and to dust thou shallt return…..”)
Many visit the church or the cathedral to experience the silence, the peacefulness. Moyers, the interviewer, emphasises the great silences that we encounter in such buildings which of course contrasts with the organisation of sound we experience in the theatre. Campbell elaborates upon this theme:
“All final spiritual reference is to the silence beyond sound. The word made flesh is the first sound. Beyond that sound is the transcendent unknown, the unknowable. It can be spoken of as the great silence, or as the void, or as the transcendent absolute.” (Pages 120-121)
Campbell in other works such as “The inner reaches of outer space” referred to the idea of a transcendental “sound”, located in the cavity of the mouth: a sound which strictly speaking does not fit the definition of a sound which Campbell defines in terms of two substances physically colliding or interacting. The breath circulating in the cavity like the wind in a cave, is more like a spirit than a substance: a spirit that seems to spring up from nowhere from hidden forces. Words(logos) are born in this cave.
Mythology does not deal with supernatural phenomena, Campbell argues, but with “natural” phenomena experienced innocently. Indeed in referring to the supernatural aspect of religion, he discusses how in the Middle Ages, the clergy and their supernatural references contributed to the creation of a “Waste-land” citing the title of one of T S Eliots most famous extended poems. These references to the supernatural, week after week, were a spiritual killer, Campbell argues. The myth of the Garden of Eden and the Fall from the Grace of God, was used in many sermons to view the spontaneity of man as something sinful: a very different approach to the mother earth religions in which mans nature and all of nature are sacred.
In answer to the question relating to the disappearance of the shamans, Campbell insists that it is the task of the artist to preserve what is important in Mythology, and perhaps also contribute to the creation of what Campbell calls a Planetary myth: a myth that can be embraced by the whole world. Moyers asks Campbell what the ordinary man can do to assist in this task, and he receives the answer, that we can all read the right books by the right people.
Reading, writing and examination are rituals that we engage in throughout our schooling, and when we leave school and university, we are then burdened with the responsibility of increasing our awareness of what is sacred about ourselves and the world we dwell in. Our reading and writing, that is, must occur in the spirit described by the Ancient Greek terms, psuché, arché, areté, epistemé and logos.
Campbell argues that religion begins with the psychological transformation of an individual. Such individuals inevitably attempt to communicate something about their transcendent experiences by creating rituals. The rituals of reading, writing and examination woud then be an answer to the earlier question Campbell posed in relation to the initiation rituals of the youth who were joining gangs. These rituals, are of course, less dramatic than the primitive rituals Campbell referred to , for example, circumcision, or physical beatings, but the long process of studying does correspond positively to the fact of our long childhoods. A long initiation into maturity may be appropriate given these strange circumstances.
The Institutions of Schooling and the University assume important roles, but the Principle of Specialisation in the University system which may have been modelled on the role of the specialised Guilds in Society, works against the universal mission of initiating students into the kind of maturity envisaged by Aristotle, and perhaps also Campbell. This aspect of the Ancient institutions of the Academy and the Lyceum has been lost.
Training individuals to occupy certain roles in the community appears to have become the priority of the educational system as a whole. If we continue down the path of discontentment with society, reflected in Eliots “Waste Land”, the Delphic prophecy of ruin and destruction looms large as a possible telos for our civilisation.
Campbell claims that the role of the shaman was more important in hunting cultures than in the more settled form of life we call civilisation. In the transition from one form of life to another, shamans are looked upon as entertainers (clowns, magicians), as priests take on the role the shamans once occupied. In our Western Societies, the maxim of “The name of the Father” slowly eclipses the ethos of, in “The name of the mother”, as we move away from an attitude where the land and people are regarded as sacred, toward an attitude in which we see everything around us instrumentally, as means to ends in the spirit of specialisation: the land, for example, is for the growing crops, building railways, creating real estate, etc. People must be “useful” to the society. The landscape and people in this scenario lose their transcendental and metaphysical significance.
Resources are multiplied and accumulated like standing reserves, and as a result new institutions emerge, for example, the University operating on the principle of specialisation which neutralises the heritage from Ancient Greece, a heritage that urges us to lead the examined life on the basis of knowledge of ourselves. For the Ancient Greeks epistemé (knowledge), is sacred, and not the root of all evil as the Garden of Eden Myth may have suggested.
The personal transformations that occur in relation to the rituals of reading, writing and examinations, are of course less dramatic than our ancient traditional rituals of primitive societies, and even less dramatic than the more modern rituals of sacrificing, praying, and lamenting our flawed natures. Yet three years of Unversity may well have produced a more significant transformation than three years of engaging in these older rituals, for example, attending Church where attention is focused upon one ancient text, the Bible, which we know has been subject to multiple interpretations by mutiple sects. Knowledge is the means the University uses to assist in a self actualisation process that moves the individual toward maturity or the condition of life the Greeks called eudaimonia (the good spirited flourishing life). In this context we need to recall that it was eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that caused mans exit from the Garden and the fall from the Grace of God. From the point of view of the Church, then, the secular institution of the University is not sacred in the sense that it is not specifically concerned with the central task of the Church which involved obeying the will of God, the Father.
The Humanism of the University system since the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant has shifted more decisively in the Kantian direction of the Idea of Freedom which was more important for Kant than the Philosophical idea of God. The idea of Freedom together with the idea of the importance of epistemé (knowledge) created a position which in turn distanced itself from the supernatural aspects of the Biblical texts. The Processes of Secularisation and globalisation have favoured the University over the Church, and whilst the University has in a sense contributed to the globalisation process, there are signs that the principle of specialisation is not fully contributing to the Enlightenment Aim of the Kantian Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends where all persons freely treat each other and the law as ends in themselves.
Given the obvious limitations of the attitude of treating the earth as a means to the ends of Humanity without concern for the effect, this is going to have for future generations, the attitude of the the future citizen of the Kingdom of Ends toward the earth, must be one of Respect. The Socratic debate with Euthyphro is enlightening in this context. Euthyphro comes to the court to indict his father for the death of a slave. His motivation is that his action is in the name of what is holy and sacred. Socrates counters with the argument that something is right not because the Gods love it, but rather that the gods love what is right because it is right. This is a strong argument for Justice being the more important issue, and initiates the Ancient Greek commitment to Humanism. Respect for what is right is the foundation of the Law and this is reflected in the Ancient Greek idea of areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). It ought also to be pointed out that for the Ancient Greeks, the organisation of the polis was conducted in the spirit of it not being a mechanical entity like a watch, requiring an understanding of technological mechanical laws, but rather a living organism like Psuché. For Socrates the polis was merely “the soul writ large”.
The Arts, of course, have a place in our Universities, and have a place in relation to other institutions such as libraries, theatres, opera houses etc. The arts have their rituals too which extend back to Ancient Greece. A tragic play, for example imitates life with the purpose of a catharsis of the emotions of fear and pity : a catharsis that is organised rationally by the artist who understands for example that the polis is the soul(human psuché) writ large. These principles can be related to the idea of the beautiful or the sublime and relate to the Metaphysics of Man.
Campbell claims that Society (in the West?) is patriarchal, whilst nature is matrilineal (Page 125). In the context of this discussion it is important to point out that when we think of the University or schools we attended , we refer affectionately to them, using the term “Alma Mater”(our bounteous mother). This indicates, given the presence of Gaia in Greek Mythology, the female goddesses and the femal oracles, that these institutions have more in common with the Platonic Academy where there were female scholars studying, than with Patriarchal Clerical institutions. In Ancient Greece, the “priestesses”, the oracles, were closer to the Philosophers than the clergy of the the Christian Curch who believed Philosophy to have been corrupted by its “pagan” roots.
Campbell claims that the transition from hunting to agriculture favoured the Goddess-based religions, because women played an important role by working in the fields etc., but with the invention of the plough the balance of work shifted back to the males. This, and many other technological innovations over the centuries, reinforced the return to patriarchal patterns. Campbell also claims that geography was a significant factor determining the nature of the gods and goddesses: forests, plains, deserts, mountainous terrain could significantly influence the character of the pantheon of the deities. The shift, however, from hunting animals to growing of crops was a significant change in the Mythologies and the forms of life associated with these life sustaining activities:
“There is a dramatic and total transformation, not just of the myths but of the psyche itself, I think. You see, an animal is a total entity, he is within a skin. When you kill that animal, he’s dead—that’s the end of him. There is no such thing as a self-contained individual in the vegetal world. You cut a plant and another sprout comes. Pruning is helpful to a plant.” (Page 127)
This is an interesting observation that ought to be connected to the Aristotelian distinctions between the plant form of psuché and the animal form of psuché, where it is noted that we and the animals share more with each other than animals share with the plants. This has consequences for our attitude toward death:
“So, in the forest and planting cultures, there is a sense of death as not death somehow, that death is required for new life” (Page 127)
Life and death on such a view is on the continuum of psuché, a continuum where the event of death is less traumatic and dramatic than the event experienced by the hunter killing the animal and described by our poets (“passing through the gates of darkness”). Socrates, conceiving of death as a long dreamless sleep, gives us one philosophcal view which stoically accepts ones fate as a natural consequence of the beings we are (“All men are mortal”) : a view which refuses to deny that life comes to an abrupt, sudden and dramatic end one day.
Campbell also claims that in the patriarchal religions :
“The death and resurrection of a saviour figure is a common motif in all these legends.” (Page 131)
Our Christian religion may be an “Our father” religion but it nevertheless contains vegetal images:
“Jesus is on the Holy Rood, the tree, and he is himself the fruit of the tree. Jesus is the fruit of eternal life which was on the seond forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden. When man ate of the fruit of the first tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he was expelled from the Garden. The Garden is the place of unity, of nonduality of male and female, good and evil, God and human Beings. You eat the duality and you are on the way out. The tree of coming back to the Garden is the tree of immortal life, where you know that I and the father are one.” (Page 133)
It is interesting to add a footnote relating to the Philosophical idea of unity and reconciliation of the opposites of a duality. Heraclitus, we know thought he had achieved divine status when he discovered not just that the world is in flux (one can never step into the same river twice) but that it was logos that helped us to reconcile opposites, for example, the road up is the same road as the road down. Aristotle we know invented the discipline of logic and “discovered” its principles, but compared to Heraclitus, brought us down to earth with the claim that an understanding of logos was part of the human contemplative life where we do not become divine, but rather activate the divine part of our minds, noos. It is noos that provides us with access to transcendence and the Metaphysics of Man and Nature.
The above quote outlines an abstract image of the meaning of this complex parable relating to the Garden of Eden and the fall from the Grace of God. It is clear from this myth that it is our fears and desires that prevented us from enjoying eternal life and immortality. Aristotles adherence to the rituals of reading, writing, and lecturing becomes then, the foundation stone of new form of existence where maturity only comes after the age of 30 years at the end of a long self-actualisation process which probably included a broad understanding of reality as determined by the Greek framework of psuché, arché, areté, diké, epistemé, logos and eudaimonia. Aristotles essence-specifying definition of man, we ought to recall in this context, was “rational animal capable of discourse”. It is important to remember that hylomorphic theory does not claim that as a matter of fact man is rational, but only that he ought to be. Part of the complex task of actualisation involves the catharsis or transformation of our animal-like desires and fears into contemplative objects.
Campbell further maintains that if one dies for a good cause this is a moment we ought to celebrate. He considers the example provided by Schopenhauer of one human being sacrificing their life to save the life of another human being. This, he argues, transcends the instinct for self preservation which reflects itself in the Freudian first task of the ego to protect ones body. The life instinct and the death instinct, for Freud became an important part of what he considered his “mythology of the instincts”, and both were involved in an actualisation process that depended upon a transformation of instincts into various vicissitudes which provided us with sources of satisfaction. Included in this process was the vicissitude of “sublimation”, a defence mechanism which many artists used to channel their creativiity in the right direction. Non-literary Artistic activity also had its own rituals which initiated the artist into their respective art-forms. These forms were in the name of creating something beautiful with perhaps sublime moments in the case of Great Theatrical Art such as that of Shakespearean plays.
In the sphere of spontaeous voluntary action–the sphere of ethical action– Campbell elaborates upon the sacrifice Schopenhauer refers to by recalling a happening from his own personal experience in which a policeman risked his own life to save someone attempting to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff. When the policeman is asked why he risked sacrificing his own life, he gave a Socratic reply, claiming that he would not be able to live with himself if he did not do what he did (Socrates claimed that he would never be able to murder anyone because he would not be able to live with the knowledge that he was a murderer). This is one source of our Ethical Principles and Kant’s ethical categorical Imperative—Life is an end-in-itself. In accordance with this law we must preserve all human life, if we can. It is not clear that we, who have not chosen to serve the community in the form of being a police officer, are called upon in the name of the moral law to risk our own life in order to save someone else. If we do, this may be something that is not merely ethical but sublimely so, because we are ignoring our most basic fear of death in order to do something in the Abstract name of The Good. The idea of a saviour dying for large numbers of people may also be a sublime ethical action, and is of even greater significance. Hence the importance of the death of Jesus who, it was claimed, was dying for the sins of mankind. On those grounds we might include Socrates in the category of “saviours”, dying as he did in the name of “Philosophy” and the right to lead an examined life which might include criticising existing religious opinions (on what constitutes the ideas of the Holy and Justice, for example)
It has been maintained that the roads leading from Athens and Jerusalem to our present-day civilisation are very different roads, leading in very different directions and there is something that rings true in this claim. On the road from Athens lie Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Academy, Lyceum, the Universities of the Renaissance , Reformation, and Enlightenment. On the road from Jerusalem we find the Middle Ages, the closing of the Philosophical schools, the persecution and torturing of heretics and the burning of women at the stake, everything , that is, we might exprect to find on the road leading to a “Waste Land”. These roads are opposites that cannot be reconciled in thought and require a choice, where we use Aristotelian ideas of psuché, arche´, areté, diké, epistemé, and eudaimonia as well as the Kantian ideas of Freedom, the good-will, and the Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends.