The Power of Myth

Campbell depicts how both mother and father figures in mythology help the individual to meditate on the origin of their being. In life, the mother is the most immediate and unquestionable parent. Campbell describes why various mythologies use mother figures to represent the entire earth: “The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants. She gives nourishment, as the plants do. So woman magic and earth magic are the same” (209). In contrast, the father is the distant parent and so represents the parts of the self that are unknown, such as the unconscious. Campbell argues that the mythological father quest, which includes Luke Skywalker’s journey, symbolizes “finding your own character and destiny” (209). Campbell notes that Mother Goddess figures were the most prominent divine figures in the early planting cultures of Mesopotamia, India, Europe, and Egypt.

Campbell explains that many Mother Goddess cultures were forced to change their mythologies when male-oriented hunting societies conquered them. The conquering tribes wanted to have their “own local god dubbed big boy of the whole universe”, and so they would manufacture stories about their god’s right to supremacy over the Goddess (213). Campbell uses the example of the conquest of Babylon, where the conquering tribe established the male god Marduk as the supreme god. In this new myth, Marduk kills the goddess Tiamat and uses her body to form the universe, transferring the credit for creation to him. Campbell notes that, with this change from a female to a male divine creator, the matriarchal society changed to a patriarchal society.

As Chapter 6 centers on women in mythology, Campbell and Moyers discuss the particularly common motif of virgin births. A Western audience would be most familiar with the virgin birth of Jesus, but Campbell suggests that this story comes to the biblical tradition from earlier Greek myths, like Leda and the swan and Persephone and the serpent. In both stories, mortal women give birth to a child by the divine Zeus, a pattern that Campbell argues influences the story of God’s ability to have a son, Jesus, “without a goddess” (217). Campbell believes that early Christians were also influenced by Egyptian mythology, specifically the story of the goddess Isis giving birth to Horus—another virgin birth. The imagery of Isis as the throne that the supreme ruler sits upon directly influences the “image of the Madonna as the throne upon which the child Jesus sits” (222). Through these comparisons, Campbell places the virgin birth of Jesus within a shared tradition to expand potential connections across cultures and to explore the universality of certain myths.

Another example of a virgin birth is the Buddha, who was said to be born from his mother’s side. The side of the body is significant because it is at the physiological center of energy nearest the heart, which is the compassionate center that moves one “out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual” (218). The lower three energy centers—at the rectum, the sex organs, and the navel—represent the animal instincts of eating, procreation, and aggression. Birth from the side rather than the pelvic basin symbolizes a spiritual birth—of this savior in particular but also of all humans. Virgin birth stories like this describe why a savior figure is different from other hero figures in myth: they are those who are “motivated by compassion and not mastery, sexuality, or self-preservation” (220).

Unlike anthropomorphized male and female divinities, symbols in myth like the brahman—the neutral life energy from Hinduism—and the yin/yang—the Chinese symbol of dark and light halves with dots of each in the other—represent the androgyny of transcendent life energy. Moyers and Campbell agree that there are “characteristics that are both male and female” in each person, which these symbols convey, but we often suppress one or the other in our ordinary lives (226). Campbell and Moyers speak more about the usefulness of attuning oneself to suppressed male or female qualities in Chapter 7 when they explore the marriage relationship.