This write-up won’t be as thorough as I would like. I found quotes I wrote down from the book that I liked, and since I stopped on page 202 or so, this will serve as a reminder to finish it when I get the opportunity.
Why did I stop? I found it getting redundant; I was also a bit lazy, as it’s sometimes laborious reading, and I wanted to move on to other books. The truth, however, is that it is absurdly dense.
One of the biggest reasons I enjoyed this book was that it fired up a deep urge inside of me to live a more scholarly life. There is so much time I waste on non-scholarly things. The beautiful articulation of Mr. Campbell’s words and his marvelous depth and breadth of sourcing and references is awe-inspiring. Almost every page was a reminder to add this and this to my long queue of books and research.
Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.
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In the absence of an effect general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream.
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Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream; both myth and dream are symbolic in the same general way of the dynamics of the psyche. But in the dream the forms are quirked by the peculiar troubles of the dreamer, whereas in myth the problems and solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind.
Are you having fun yet? 