Editing Joseph Campbell (section)

===Evolution of myth===
Campbell's view of mythology was by no means static and his books describe in detail how mythologies evolved through time, reflecting the realities in which each society had to adjust.{{efn|The schema laid out in the following text was one that Campbell explored in many of his works, including ''[[The Masks of God]]'' series; it was the explicit structure of his unfinished masterwork, ''[[Historical Atlas of World Mythology]]''.}} Various stages of [[cultural development]] have different yet identifiable mythological systems. In brief these are:

; The Way of the Animal Powers: ''Hunting and gathering societies''
: At this stage of [[evolution]], religion was [[Animism|animistic]], as all of nature was seen as being infused with a spirit or [[divine]] presence. At center stage was the main hunting animal of that culture, whether the [[American bison|buffalo]] for Native Americans or the [[Common eland|eland]] for South African tribes, and a large part of religion focused on dealing with the psychological tension that came from the reality of the necessity to kill versus the [[divinity]] of the animal. This was done by presenting the animals as springing from an eternal [[archetypal]] source and coming to this world as ''willing victims'', with the understanding that their lives would be returned to the soil or to the Mother through a ritual of restoration.<ref>Campbell J. (1988) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. Interview by Bill Moyers. Episode 3: The first storytellers</ref> The act of slaughter then becomes a [[ritual]] where both parties, animal and mankind, are equal participants. In ''[[Mythos (film)|Mythos]]'' and ''[[The Power of Myth]]'',<ref>{{YouTube|UucgwRupTd4}}</ref> Campbell recounts the story he calls "The Buffalo's Wife" as told by the Blackfoot tribe of North America. The story tells of a time when the buffalos stopped coming to the hunting plains, leaving the tribe to starve. The chief's daughter promises to marry the buffalo chief in return for their reappearance, but is eventually spared and taught the [[buffalo dance]] by the animals themselves, through which the spirits of their dead will return to their eternal life source. Indeed, Campbell taught that throughout history mankind has held a belief that all life comes from and returns to another dimension which transcends [[temporality]], but which can be reached through ritual.

; The Way of the Seeded Earth: ''Early [[agrarian societies]]''
: Beginning in the fertile grasslands of the [[Levant]] and the [[Fertile Crescent]] of [[Mesopotamia]] in the [[Bronze Age]] and moving to Europe, the practice of agriculture spread along with a new way of understanding mankind's relationship to the world. At this time the earth was seen as the Mother, and the myths focused around Her life-giving powers. The plant and cultivation cycle was mirrored in [[religious ritual]]s which often included human sacrifice, symbolic or literal.<ref>Campbell J. (1988) The Way of the Seeded Earth, Part 1: The Sacrifice. Interview by Bill Moyers. Episode 3: The first storytellers</ref> The main figures of this system were a female Great Goddess, Mother Earth, and her ever-dying and ever-resurrected son/consort, a male God. At this time the focus was to participate in the repetitive rhythm the world moved in expressed as the four seasons, the birth and death of crops and the phases of the moon. At the center of this motion was the Mother Goddess from whom all life springs and to whom all life returns. This often gave Her a dual aspect as both mother and destroyer.

; The Way of the Celestial Lights: ''The first high civilizations''
: As the first agricultural societies evolved into the high civilisations of [[Mesopotamia]] and [[Babylonia]], the observation of the stars inspired them with the idea that life on earth must also follow a similar mathematically predetermined pattern in which individual beings are but mere participants in an eternal cosmic play. The king was symbolised by the Sun with the golden crown as its main metaphor, while his court were the orbiting planets. The Mother Goddess remained, but her powers were now fixed within the rigid framework of a [[clockwork universe]].
: However, two barbarian incursions changed that. As the Indo-European (Aryan) people descended from the north and the Semites swept up from the Arabian desert, they carried with them a male dominated mythology with a warrior god whose symbol was the thunder. As they conquered, mainly due to the superior technology of iron smithing, their mythology blended with and subjugated the previous system of the Earth Goddess. Many mythologies of the ancient world, such as those of Greece, India, and Persia, are a result of that fusion with gods retaining some of their original traits and character but now belonging to a single system. Figures such as [[Zeus]] and [[Indra]] are thunder gods who now interact with [[Demeter]] and [[Dionysus]], whose ritual sacrifice and rebirth, bearing testament to his pre-Indo-European roots, were still enacted in classical Greece. But for the most part, the focus heavily shifted toward the masculine, with Zeus ascending the throne of the gods and Dionysus demoted to a mere demi-god.
: This demotion was very profound in the case of the biblical imagery where the female elements were marginalized to an extreme. Campbell believed that Eve and the snake that tempted her were once fertility gods worshipped in their own right, with the tree of knowledge being the [[Tree of Life]].<ref>Campbell J. (1964) The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology</ref> He also found significance in the biblical story of Cain and Abel, with Cain being a farmer whose agrarian offering is not accepted by God, while herder Abel's animal sacrifice is. In the lecture series of [[Mythos (film)|Mythos]], Campbell speaks of the [[Eleusinian Mysteries|Mysteries of Eleusis]] in Ancient Greece, where Demeter's journey in the underworld was enacted for young men and women of the time. There he observed that wheat was presented as the ultimate mystery with wine being a symbol of Dionysus, much like in the Christian mysteries where bread and wine are considered to incarnate the body and blood of Jesus. Both religions carry the same "seeded earth" cosmology in different forms while retaining an image of the ever-dying, ever-resurrected God.

; The Way of Man: ''Medieval mythology, romantic love, and the birth of the modern spirit''
: Campbell recognized that the poetic form of courtly love, carried through medieval Europe by the traveling troubadours, contained a complete mythology in its own right.<ref>Campbell J. (1988) Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth. Interview by Bill Moyers. Episode 5: Love and the Goddess</ref> In'' The Power of Myth'' as well as the "Occidental Mythology" volume of ''The Masks of God'', Campbell describes the emergence of a new kind of erotic experience as a "person to person" affair, in contrast with the purely physical definition given to Eros in the ancient world and the communal agape found in the Christian religion. An archetypal story of this kind is the legend of [[Tristan and Isolde]] which, apart from its mystical function, shows the transition from an arranged-marriage society as practiced in the Middle Ages and sanctified by the church, into the form of marriage by "falling in love" with another person that we recognize today. So what essentially started from a mythological theme has since become a social reality, mainly due to a change in perception brought about by a new mythology{{snd}}and represents a central foundational manifestation of Campbell's overriding interpretive message, "Follow your bliss."
: Campbell believed that in the modern world the function served by formal, traditional mythological systems has been taken on by individual creators such as artists and philosophers.{{efn|This is the central thesis of the last volume of ''[[The Masks of God]]'' series, ''Creative Mythology''.}} In the works of some of his favorites, such as [[Thomas Mann]], [[Pablo Picasso]] and [[James Joyce]], he saw mythological themes that could serve the same life-giving purpose that mythology had once played. Accordingly, Campbell believed the religions of the world to be the various culturally influenced "masks" of the same fundamental, transcendent truths. All religions can bring one to an elevated awareness above and beyond a dualistic conception of reality, or idea of "pairs of opposites" such as being and non-being, or right and wrong. Indeed, he quotes from the [[Rigveda]] in the preface to ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces'': "Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names."