![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But the Campbell of The Power of Myth has much still-relevant wisdom to offer, even for those who feel plunged into a despair unique to our moment. “Follow your bliss,” he said, thinking of the Hindu Upanishads, and the New Age made into a cliché. Though formed by the Depression rather than the Age of Aquarius, he could adapt his teachings about ancient myth, as if by instinct, for listeners hoping to raise their consciousness. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, this created the most opportune of conditions for Campbell’s rise as a public intellectual. The inability to trace a mythological arc in their own lives has driven people in various directions: toward cults, toward health fads, toward therapy, toward pop culture. At that time, Moyers says in an updated introduction, “when millions of people were yearning for a way of talking about religious experience without regard to a religious belief system, Campbell gave them the language for it.” For decades - for centuries, really - once-inviolable narratives of the world and man’s place in it had been breaking down. ![]()
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