Creative Mythology (Audio: Lecture II.2.5)

Description

It is impossible to communicate an experience to someone who has not had the experience. Try to communicate the experience of skiing down a wonderful mountain slope to someone who has never been on skis. Try to communicate the experience of being in love when it happens to people who have never known this experience. It cannot be done. You can speak only by analogy. For a system of mythological symbols to work it must be operating in the field of a community of people who have essentially analogous experiences otherwise nothing is happening there.
— Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell was often asked how a new mythology was going to develop. His answer was that it would have to come from poets, artists, and filmmakers. In this talk, Campbell explores what he called creative mythology — the way in which artists can and do give a sense of the transcendent in a universe apparently empty of meaning.

This lecture was recorded at Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin in 1969.