"The Power of Myth" -- Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

[IrateCitizen]

Is anyone else out there familiar with this? During the snowstorm on Saturday, NYC's channel 13 was running this for their pledge drive. It's a six-part series from the mid 1980's in which Bill Moyers interviews Joseph Campbell, a former professor of Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY. For anyone who appreciates stimulating discussions of religion and myth and mankind's search for meaning, this series is indispensable! Campbell died in 1987, which makes this series even more important as a preservation of a very in-depth and unique perspective.

I only caught pieces of it here and there, but many of the pieces gave me "WOW!" moments -- like when Moyers and Campbell are discussing how early religions of agrarian communities were centered around female dieties -- for the purpose of elevating fertility in the soil and person as the source of life. The Abrahamic traditions turned this notion on its head, by portraying God as a "father" -- one that even took away the more "female" aspects of creation and life. As such, it has evolved into a diminished appreciation of the earth -- because these traditions teach that God is separate from nature, and even that the world itself is "evil", while the earlier traditions were intertwined with respect for the earth.

A lot of pretty heavy stuff, but for any of you out there who are at all familiar with it, I'd appreciate your thoughts on it.