Customer Reviews

Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth, Vol. 5 - Love & The Goddess [VHS]

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This video is divided into two sections.

First, Moyers and Campbell discuss the idea of courtly love as sung by the European troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Campbell asserts that prior to that time, the idea of marriage solely for personal love, "marriage as a person-to-person thing", did not exist "as a social system". There had always been isolated incidences of it, but after the troubadours person-to-person love became "the ideal, at any rate, of love in the Western world". And Campbell points out that this is what makes the West unique: The individual is taught to have faith in the validity of his own experience "against the monolithic system".

In the last half, the notion of the Goddess and goddess mythologies is discussed. Campbell retells the Egyptian myth of Isis in search of her dead spouse Osiris. (Note the parallel between this and similar motifs in classical paganism, alchemy, and even Star Wars - Demeter and Persephone, the adept's search for the drowned King, and Skywalker's rescue of Darth Vader.)

Campbell points out that there is something unnaturally extreme about Biblical mythology, in which the male Creator not only occupies a dominant role, but "takes over [the Goddess'] role", so that she is "wiped out". "The Hebrew term for the Canaanite goddess was 'the Abomination'". Campbell points out that typically agrarian societies have female gods, while nomadic hunters, eg, the Hebrews, worship male deities. Despite this banishment of the Goddess figure, "she came back in the Virgin". Campbell implies either that there is something in the human psyche which requires a female Goddess, or that this archetypal figure was intentionally reintroduced into the religious worship of the West under the guise of the Virgin Mary, or that there is built into the fabric of spiritual reality a feminine principle.

A very enjoyable film with great visuals, as is each episode in this Moyers-Campbell series. Highly recommended.

This is the fifth tape in the Joseph Campbell's the Power of Myth series. It contains two subjects.

The first is "Love" describing the emergence of the concept of "love between two people" which explains the above statement that in an eye to eye meeting that makes each welcome to the heart. Personal love between two people is the backbone of western thinking when it comes to marriage.

The second part describes the fundamental differences in approaching the concept of "The Goddess" at different times and places from prehistory to today. Fundamentally the differences are that we are part of the Goddess but separate from God.

I am not going to go into great detail, as that is why you purchase the tape and Joseph Campbell can explain it well. What I can tell you is watching this film makes you realize that what most people know of mythology is just the surface stories and do not tie the stories back to themselves.

You will have to repeat viewing of the film as it is packed with ideas and barely give you time to digest one concept when they dive into the next. Also watch the end of the film to pickup on reference materials from "Mystic Fire." Remember that this was recorded before the Internet so newer references have emerged.

You do not have to view the series in volume order as each volume can stand-alone.