Mythogenesis of the Individual

The thesis of Creative Mythology (1968), the fourth volume of the Masks of God, is that in the modern West the office of myth-making — formerly the property of the tribe, the priesthood, and the inherited ritual order — has devolved upon the individual, and most concentratedly upon the individual artist. Campbell traces the inward turn from the medieval Grail romances forward: the moment at which the spiritual life ceases to be carried by a public mythology and begins to be carried by a private one is the moment at which “creative mythology” emerges as a category.

The diagnosis converges with carl-jung‘s claim about modern symbolic poverty without depending on Jung for its premise. Where Jung arrives at the diagnosis through the analytic encounter with the patient who has lost the supporting symbols, Campbell arrives at it through the comparative-literary observation that the European canon, from the troubadours through Joyce and Mann, is the record of individuals taking up the symbolic burden the collective once bore. The fourth function of myth — the pedagogical — must, in this condition, be performed by each soul on its own behalf.

This is the mythogenetic-zone thesis applied at cultural scale and to the present. It is also the point at which Campbell’s project becomes most directly continuous with the seba.health register: the recovery of the symbolic life is not optional cultural enrichment; it is the work the modern individual is required to undertake because the collective scaffolding is no longer there to carry it.

Relationships

• joseph-campbell
• mythogenetic-zone
• individuation
• four-functions-of-myth

Primary sources

• Creative Mythology (Campbell 1968)
• Pathways to Bliss (Campbell 2004, posthumous)