"The Occult in Myth and Literature" is one of the twelve eclectic, far-ranging, and brilliant essays exploring myth in all its dimensions from the collection The Mythic Dimension. Written at the height of Joseph Campbell's...

This is an excerpt from Campbell's collection Romance of the Grail. Throughout his life, Joseph Campbell was deeply engaged in the study of the Grail Quests and Arthurian legends of the European Middle Ages. In...

My wife, Jean Erdman, who is a dancer and choreographer, discussing one day the relevance of an appreciation of the psychological connotations of myth to the practice of an art, remarked: “The way of the...

The dates for the emergence of the European spirit in its own terms in this secular literature and mythology are between 1150 and 1250. That’s the crucial century here. It’s the century, as I’ve said, of the building...

  In these entries from the journals that Joseph Campbell kept during his life-changing trip to South and East Asia in 1955–56, the mythologist experiences firsthand a Shintō fire ceremony, discusses Asian philosophy, religion, and...