Metaphor As Religion

Metaphor As Religion names the thesis — developed most insistently by Joseph Campbell and resonating across the depth-psychological corpus — that religious language is irreducibly metaphorical in character, and that the failure to recognize this constitutes the primary source of spiritual pathology in the modern West. For Campbell, whose 1986 volume The Inner Reaches of Outer Space bears the subtitle ‘Metaphor as Myth and as Religion,’ mythological figures are not factual reports but ‘metaphors poetically of that which cannot be told’; to read them as literal history is to commit what he calls the cardinal error — taking denotation for connotation, the messenger for the message. The same argument structures Thou Art That (2001), where the Judeo-Christian tradition is rehabilitated not despite its symbolic character but because of it. Patricia Berry, from an archetypal standpoint, reinforces the critique of literalism by distinguishing it from the ‘concrete’ proper: literalism robs images of their ‘metaphorical value, i.e., soul significance.’ McGilchrist brings neurological evidence to bear, arguing that religion at its best engages the right hemisphere’s mode of knowing, which is precisely the mode that cannot represent its objects in fixed propositional language. Derrida, from the philosophical margin of this corpus, complicates the entire project by showing that metaphor itself cannot achieve stable ground — that philosophical language is always already a ‘system of catachreses.’ The productive tension in the corpus thus runs between Campbell’s therapeutic confidence that metaphors can be recovered and Derrida’s suspicion that no metaphor finally escapes its own self-erasure.

In the library 18 passages

A mythology is, in this sense, an organization of metaphorical figures connotative of states of mind that are not finally of this or that place and time… The second best are misunderstood because, as metaphors poetically of that which cannot be told, they are misread prosaically as referring to tangible facts.

Campbell defines mythology as an organization of metaphors pointing to inner states, and identifies the literal misreading of those metaphors as the root of spiritual misunderstanding.

Campbell, Joseph, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986thesis

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It all comes of misreading metaphors taking denotation for connotation, the messenger for the message; overloading the carrier, consequently, with sentimentalized significance and throwing both life and thought thereby off balance.

Campbell identifies literalism — mistaking denotation for connotation — as the source of religious violence and spiritual imbalance, the direct consequence of failing to treat religious language as metaphor.

Campbell, Joseph, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion, 1986thesis

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The metaphors perform their function of speaking to these deep levels of human beings when they arise freshly from the contemporary context of experience… the metaphors of the past, such as the Virgin Birth and the Promised Land, misread consequently as facts, lose their vitality and become concretized.

Campbell argues that religious metaphors are psychologically efficacious only when understood as metaphors, and that their literal misreading drains them of spiritual vitality.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis

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In any of the orthodox biblical traditions, one cannot identify oneself with God. Jesus identified himself with God in this sense. But God is a metaphor, as he also is a metaphor for that which we all are.

Campbell’s most condensed theological claim: ‘God’ is a metaphor for the ground of being within each person, and mystical identification is the proper metaphorical reading of that claim.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis

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The End of the World comes every day for those whose spiritual insight allows them to see the world as it is, transparent to transcendence, a sacrament of mystery… The End of the World is, therefore, metaphoric of our spiritual beginning rather than our harsh and fiery ending.

Campbell demonstrates metaphorical hermeneutics in practice, showing how an apocalyptic religious image is transformed from literal threat to daily spiritual invitation.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis

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For Campbell, our central confusion lies between literal and metaphorical interpretations of religious stories. Campbell re-examines the rightful function of Judeo-Christian symbols: as keys to spiritual understanding and mystical revelation.

The editorial introduction to Thou Art That frames Campbell’s entire project as the restoration of metaphorical reading to a tradition that has suffered from its own literalism.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001thesis

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It is in this aura — that is, in the connotations that by their nature blossom out of metaphors — that the deepest significance of the stories of Jesus’ life and work are to be found.

The editor Eugene Kennedy locates religious meaning in the connotative ‘aura’ of metaphors rather than in their denotative surface, affirming Campbell’s core hermeneutical principle.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001supporting

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Religion, at its best, is a cultural expression of that enquiring impulse; of an awareness of and openness to a God or gods… religion cannot, unfortunately, escape the problem of language.

McGilchrist defines religion as an orientation of enquiry toward the transcendent while acknowledging that its necessary encoding in language perpetually threatens to falsify the very experience it seeks to convey.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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time as experienced cannot be represented and still be time; that space cannot be represented and still be space… These elements are not further clarified by language, but rather become something else in its clutches — a derogation of what can be known only through direct experience.

McGilchrist applies the general epistemological limit of representational language to religion, supporting the claim that religious truth can be approached only through modes — including metaphor — that exceed literal propositional statement.

McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting

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This I would regard as the essentially religious function of mythology — that is, the mystical function, which represents the discovery and recognition of the dimension of the mystery of being.

Campbell identifies the ‘mystical function’ of mythology — inducing awe before the mystery of being — as religion’s essential purpose, a function carried exclusively by metaphorical rather than doctrinal language.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001supporting

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Presence disappearing in its own radiance, the hidden source of light, of truth, and of meaning, the erasure of the visage of Being — such must be the insistent return of that which subjects metaphysics to metaphor.

Derrida argues that metaphysics is always already subject to the play of metaphor, implying that any attempt to ground religious or philosophical truth in literal language is undermined from within.

Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting

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Philosophical language, a system of catachreses, a fund of ‘forced metaphors,’ would have this relation to the literality of natural language… it transforms its functioning, producing, with the same material, new rules of exchange, new values.

Derrida’s analysis of catachresis shows that all philosophical — and by extension, theological — language is constituted by forgotten or forced metaphors, challenging any sharp distinction between literal religious doctrine and metaphorical myth.

Derrida, Jacques, Margins of Philosophy, 1982supporting

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The determining force (God) operating from these depths is reflected by the soul, that is, it creates symbols and images, and is itself only an image. By means of these images the soul conveys the forces of the unconscious to consciousness.

Jung frames ‘God’ as itself an image — a symbol arising from the unconscious — providing the depth-psychological foundation for treating all religious language as inherently figurative.

Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychological Types, 1921supporting

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The equating of the savage with the poetic in Mailer’s statement — and each as equally representative of a needed metaphoric vision — is already an intriguing one.

Noel situates the call for metaphoric vision as a shared requirement of archaic, poetic, and contemporary consciousness, contextualizing Campbell’s project within broader cultural criticism.

Noel, Daniel C., Paths to the Power of Myth: Joseph Campbell and the Study of Religion, 1990supporting

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The material on metaphor as the native tongue of myth is drawn from four lectures presented at the University of Beloit, Beloit, Wisconsin, in January 1969.

A source note identifying the provenance of Campbell’s core lectures on metaphor as myth’s ‘native tongue,’ providing bibliographic context for his theoretical position.

Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001aside

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