William Blake  (1757-1827)

William Blake was a mystic poet and graphic artist whose main themes centered around the power of divine love even in the presence of evil.  He did not believe in any dualistic conception of good and evil, but tried to solve the conflict between reality and the ideal here on earth in the living person of man.  He was a Christian who hated the churches and materialism, but obsessively sought the idea of God in man.  Blake lived an isolated, meditative life with Buddha-like thoughts of the mankind's true child-nature and the possibilities of disciplined naivety.  He fought against the literal acceptance of symbols and showed their metaphorical use like no other.  An independent tradesman who lived life by his own hands at the bottom of the social hierarchy, Blake knew life better than most and that it is up to each individual to resolve the contraries of life from moment to moment.  (Source:  Alfred Kazin's introduction to The Portable Blake)
 

He who sees the Infinite in all things, sees God.  He who sees the Ratio only, sees himself only.  Therefore God becomes as we are, that we may be as he is.
--from There Is No Natural Religion
 

Eternity
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
--from Auguries Of Innocence
 
 
 

Friedrich Nietzsche was a philosopher whose great metaphorical artistry of writing was misinterpreted and misunderstood until half a century after his death, and thus only recently havewe been graced by the true quality of his thoughts.  His ideas center on the "will to power" of mankind, that all external Gods are dead and self-aggrandizement is called for to develop the mind in the individual as well as in society.  His thoughts were also Buddha like in that he sought a philosophy of living in life with all its sufferings along with prophetic lens of the future.  His criticism of the Western world's ignorant acceptance of false morals, values, and doctrines was sharp and cut deep; he called for a "revaluation of all values" and attempted to critique Christianity into its rich metaphorical meaning.  His thoughts have been the most honest ever dared by anyone.
 

Even the most courageous among us only rarely has the courage for that which he really knows.
--from Twilight Of The Idols
 

What?  Is man merely a mistake of God's  Or God merely a mistake of man's?
--from Twilight Of The Idols
 

My formula for the greatness of a human being is amor fati:  that one wants nothing to be different--not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.
--from Ecce Homo
 

A very popular error:  having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!!
--from On The Genealogy Of Morals
 
 
 

Carl Jung was a psychologist who studied with Sigmund Freud and later broke away from Freud's demand for the establishment of a sexual theory dogma.  He identified basic archetypes that are shared by all mankind and make up a "collective unconscious".  These archetypes and the symbols they manifest externally via the psyche were seen by Jung to beused in a "transcendent function" to break free from the literalism of the external world.  He was therefore one of the first people to identify a science of mythology (a base and functionof psychology)that studies how mankind can achieve command over the quality of life's meanings.  No other person has had such a deep understanding of symbolism in its dynamic role between the unconscious and conscious.
 
 

Mythology gives a ground, lays a foundation.  It does not answer the question "why?" but "whence?"

The divinity of everything mythological is as obvious as theoriginality of everything divine.

Psychology therefore translates the archaic speech of myth into a modern mythologem...
--from Essays On A Science Of Mythology
 

Our souls as well as our bodies are composed of individual elements which were already present in the ranks of our ancestors.

As a rule, however, the individual is so unconscious that he altogether fails to see his own potentialities for decision.  Instead he is constantly and anxiously looking around for external rules and regulations which can guide him in his perplexity.

Our psyche is set up in accord with the structure of the universe, and what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the infinitesimal and most subjective reaches of the psyche.
--from Memories, Dreams, Reflections
 

Consciousness, no matter how extensive it may be, must always remain the smaller circle within the greater circle of the unconscious, an island surrounded by the sea; and, like the sea itself, the unconscious yields an endless and self-repleneshing abundance of living creatures, a wealth beyond our fathoming.
--from The Psychology Of The Transference
 

A myth is essentially a product of the unconscious archetype and is therefore a symbol which requires psychological interpretation.
--from Flying Saucers, A Modern Myth Of Things Seen In The Skies
 
 
 
 

Joseph Campbell was a mythologist who compared the world's myths to eachother and discovered common themes and ideas.  He worked like Jung, moving from the outermost symbols inward to find their unconscious and shared archetypes.  Campbell obtained a view of what he called the "monomyth" which is a pattern that all myths from all over the world share.  He broke free from all the historical bonds that have restricted a true world view of mankind.  His incredible amount of work spans the time and space of mankind to such an incredible epiphany that it has become nothing less than absolutely spiritual.
 
 

The myths and rites constellate a mesocosm--a mediating, middle cosmos, through which the microcosm of the individual is brought into relation to the macrocosm of the universe.
--from Flight Of The Wild Gander
 

...there is dawning today a realization of the relativism of all measures.
--from  The Mythic Dimension
 

The way to become human is to learn to recognize the lineaments of God in all the wonderful modulations of the face of man.
 

For when scrutinized in terms not of what it is but of how it functions, of how it has served mankind in the past, of how it may serve today, mythology shows itself to be as amenable as life itself to the obsessions and requirements of the individual, the race, the age.
 

Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology.
--from Hero With A Thousand Faces
 

Follow your bliss.
 

Without a sense of metaphor, we are inclined to confuse the meal with the menu.  And so we end up munching on cardboard.
--from  lectures
 

The metaphor is the mask of God through which eternity is to be experienced..
 

Are you the bulb that carries the light, or are you the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
 

When you're on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey.
--from Power of Myth
 
 

"The Kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it."
--one of Campbell's favorite quotes from the Gospel according to Thomas.
 
 
 

...and then, there, in the shadows of the forrest stood an ancient man who strangely and wisely seemed to know all about the mission of the Four Horsemen, even before they set out...

Goethe   (1749-1832)
 

Everything transitory is but a metaphor.
 

What is important in life is life and not a result of life.
 

If God you want to find,
First divide and then combine.
 

He only earns his freedom and existence,
Who daily conquers them anew.
 
 
 
 

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