So far we've covered three functions: participatory awe, science-rules, and society-rules. The fourth is pretty easy to glom onto: lifespan-rules. How do you move from infancy to adolescence to adulthood to old age and then death? A good myth holds your hand for you.

There's two main aspects to this function, and both deal with adulthood: the entrance and the grand egress. It's crucial that kids learn to disengage their obedience, to say, "thanks for the help, parents; I'll take it from here." Though hopefully they will not adopt an approach as terminal as Malcolm MacDowell's:

Imagine how things would go to pieces if all the grownups were looking around at each other for permission. No, instead, there is a certain age at which, if everything has gone according to plan, we have gathered sufficient information and experience to make wise choices; and we begin to do just that. And then after fifty or so years, when we're getting a bit wobbly, we get ready to sit back and let the young people with flashier shoes take over. There's something impossibly weird about old people acting like they're not about to rest:

The interesting thing about the move from dependence to independence is that traditionally, kids were expected to take over their parents' rules without question -- but nowadays, there's a lot of judging and adjustment that goes on. You can either take over exactly where your parents left off like the villain in an 80s teen sex comedy; or you can blow things up completely, like Malcolm MacDowell. Or you can swim somewhere in between. That in-betweeny swimming is a fairly new option, which is why it makes for such an interesting theme in modern stories. In fact, it's so interesting that Joseph goes into much greater detail, which is what I'll start doing in the next section.

So we've gotten through function one (the rules) and function two (the science), and now it's time for function three: society.

A good mythology wraps up the social structure in the same wallpaper as the science and the rules: you can't change you station in life any more than you can delay a sunrise or decline to die. The social laws govern what's right and wrong, and who's responsible for what, and they're as divine and ineffable as anything else.

Joseph describes the Pope's position as being "absurd" when it comes to contraception -- the rules are obviously a little silly, but there's simply no method of appeal.

This is a bit of a worry if you're going to believe Dante's vision of Heaven -- when he gets to the heavenly auditorium of the heavenly rose, Beatrice points out that the place is nearly filled to capacity. We're coming up on a millennium having passed since those words were written; what sort of state can the place be in these days?

This conflict came to a head in India around the time that Joseph was lecturing -- "if you want to be British, break caste. If you want to be Hindu, obey scriptures." Well, what are you going to do? If your position in the caste is to live in the dirt on the outskirts of town, suddenly tea and crumpets sound like a nice idea. Of course, the higher-ups don't want their assistants to quit, so they've got to build up the majesty of the system. Some are better at this than others.

This one's easy -- unlike function one, which is a little woo-woo-spiritual, function 2 is simply to present a functioning model of the natural world. The Earth is at the center of so-and-so, or all matter is comprised of four elements, or prehistoric souls were blown up in volcanoes -- it's whatever sciencey machinery feels right.

"Feels right" is the crucial part here -- it doesn't need to be correct, just gratifying.

Alas, our myths haven't kept pace with our science; and while the old models feel very nice -- God is a magic spaceman who lives in the clouds and loves you! -- it's harder to suspend your disbelief than it was in the old days. Something new will probably come along eventually; but until then, there's a lot of speculative mythology jostling for attention.

"Explain" is the primary goal with Function Two -- "here's how the universe works, and with this knowledge you will understand all with which you may come into contact."

This is where things get interesting.

We're out of the Introduction at last and on to Chapter 1, "The Necessity of Rites" -- and even better, the first section is "The Functions of Mythology," which I've found to be one of the most useful passages in the book. (It's drawn from a 1968 lecture at Amherst and a 1969 lecture at the University of Vermont.)

This stuff is a bit dense, so in this post I'll only tackle Function of Myth Number One: evoking a sense of awe. As it happens, this is my favorite function.

Life is pretty nasty, as we all know; everyone who plays the game will eventually succumb, with disaster and misery along the way. It's not all bad, of course; but it's just unpleasant enough. If you're not horrified now and then, then you're not really alive.

So, what do you do about the scary stuff? Well, you can retreat -- but that's not easy to do. Instead, the reaction that emerged in primitive cultures was to affirm all that rottenness. To say, "oh yes, this is all very dreadful; but also very grand." The religious rites of early human are really monstrous -- as was life, back in those days -- and they reaffirmed that that horribleness was mandatory and necessary, and if you could bear to withstand it, on the other side you'll find pleasure and grandeur and wonder.

Then everything changes around 8 BC. People start to find it impossible to participate in these rites anymore -- they're just not rewarding or fulfilling. So what did they do? They got out of the game, like seriously out: Joseph cites Jainism (which is all about ending the circle of "transmigration") and early monastic Buddhism as examples. Get rid of your food, your enthusiasm for living, even your ability to move; the idea is that your death coincides with your loss of desire for life.

I suppose that clip isn't entirely appropriate for what we're talking about it. But I like it, so there it is anyway.

So, two approaches: to say yes to life, horror and all; or to say no to the horror, and with it life.

And then along comes Zoroastrianism, somewhere between 11 and 7 BC. Now you've got good gods (Ahura Mazda) and bad gods (Angra Mainyu) fighting each other, and you can pick a side and help. The attitude is, "well, life isn't perfect, but maybe we can fix it up a bit." This seems a little optimistic to me; there's only so much fixing up that one can do.

And so no matter which outlook you pick (yes, no, or maybe), you're participating in the game. Humans can't just live, like houseplants; we have to live meaningfully, to say, "aha, this universe works a certain way, and I'm working within it." And that's the first function of mythology: to acknowledge that we're alive and an organism of all of life's amazing rules ... which, by the way, we just made up.

What I've often found when talking about Joseph Campbell (or life-planning in general) is that people don't feel quite comfortable talking about "bliss." And I don't know exactly why that is. But it's important, because it's a giant blinking neon sign that's telling you exactly what to do, and it's never wrong.

This video should answer any questions you might have on the subject:

There's an excellent project going on over at Shadowplay -- "Euphoria," it's called, and although different people will respond to different clips, you get the idea.

In fact, it's important that if a clip doesn't evoke something in you, you come to terms with the idea that maybe it never will. "You can't wear another man's hat," says Joseph. "What you have to do is translate the myth into its eloquence, not just into the literacy." That clip from The Fisher King isn't about berets and earflaps.

Joseph mentions Heinrich Zimmer here ("my old mentor," he calls him, though they only knew each other for a year). H.Z. used to say "the best things can't be told," they're simply beyond words; the second-best are metaphors and signposts and invariably misunderstood; and the third-best are facts and figures. The only kind of thing that you can really understand is the fourth kind, the last kind: plain old conversation, which employs type #3 to create type #2 in an attempt to evoke type #1.

I'll summarize a brief story that Joseph tells at this point in the book, and then we're finally done with the introduction and can move into the exciting first chapter.

In La Queste del Saint Graal, a 13th-century Arthurian romance, the knights all propose to obtain the Holy Grail. But it would be a disgrace to ride out together; and so each of them, one by one, enters the unexplored forest of his own choosing, without regard to boundary or pathway.

It's ultimately futile to walk in someone else's footsteps (as I am attempting with this very journal); you must push your way through the underbrush in the direction from which only you can hear a song, because that song reveals itself only to you.

Here's a theme that's frequently repeated in this book: it used to be that a mythological system would nurture us from birth; but these days, there's much less of that. You're not necessarily assumed to be under the protection of so-and-so, or forbidden from doing such-and-such. So it's hard to center yourself and unscramble your labyrinth into an orderly mandala. Or in other words: the feeling that used to be called a mid-life crisis has expanded to encompass our entire lives.

But, Joseph says, it's still possible to figure out what it is that fulfills you. All you have to do is listen very carefully to what's happening in your head, watch for certain telltale signs, and then pounce.

The first guide to watch for: "a personality in your youth who seemed to you a noble and great personality." I personally think it's a bit narrow to only look for personalities; in fact, I find it more useful to examine books and movies and fictional characters. The things that called to you as a kid do generally call to you still.

But what about the stuff that you revisit as an adult, only to be disappointed? I had that experience with Count Duckula, which I loved when I was 8 but was not so excited about when I was 20. In those cases, I think it's important to think about them not necessarily as you currently perceive them, but as you remember them. When I was 8, there was something that I loved and remembered -- in the case of Count Duckula, it was simultaneous exploration and mayhem and silliness; and even though the show wasn't quite sophisticated enough to age with me, I still love silly exploratory mayhem.

The second guide to watch for is a bit more vague: bliss. Er, okay, what exactly does bliss mean? Well, it's like art or porn; you know it when you see it. Joseph calls it "doing what you absolutely must do to be yourself." For me, it's stuff like cooking dinner for the person I love, or Mario Kart, or explaining, or putting things in alphabetical order. You have to avoid the trap of thinking about what bliss means to you, because then you unavoidably start thinking about what you think bliss should be. Instead, think about your happy happy feelings, and then bask in them for a while, and then snap yourself out as suddenly as you can and look around and see what you were actually doing.

Following this guide requires a certain vigilance. It's hard to find; but give it some time and it'll come to you. And the moment you catch yourself doing that perfect thing, you have to seize it and never let go, no matter where it drags you. That's how I wound up in San Francisco, and thank God I did.

At this point in the introduction, there's a bit of a tangent relating to Hindu Vedantic tranditions and the Taittiriya Upanisad. I can't figure out how it relates to what we were just talking about; but since this book is a heavily edited compendium of talks and papers, I'm just going to chalk it up to a weird editorial segue. Anyway, it's interesting stuff, so let's take a look.

There are lots of myths about levels of consciousness; in this case, the metaphor is of "sheaths," five of them surrounding the "atman," the fundamental element of the individual.

1. Annamaya-kosa: the food sheath. This refers to physical bodies; that which eats food, that which becomes food, and the process by which one becomes the other.
2. Pranamaya-kosa: The sheath of breath. I'm a little fuzzy on what this is supposed to be, but the general sense that I get is that it's the spark of life that distinguishes a living body from a dead one.
3. Manomaya-kosa: The consciousness sheath; your inner monologue
"Then there is a big gap," writes Joseph.
4. Vijnanamaya-kosa: the "wisdom of the transcendent" sheath. This refers to how natural processes appear to have a "wisdom" -- the immune system, reproduction, the tendency of a tree to wrap around rocks or fences as it grows.
5. Anandamaya-kosa: bliss and transcendence -- the sheath that your conscious sheath should strive toward, rather than toward the more immediately attractive food sheath.

So, the key in this system is not to be tricked by the seductive food-sheath that tethers us to the lowest of life functions; but to give all that up for the blissful sheath, which looks empty and nonexistent but is secretly blissful. It's one of those "give it all away" religions.

Joseph illustrates this system by describing Tutankhamen's burial coffins: three boxes, one inside the other; then a stone coffin; then the beautiful sarcophagus; then a solid gold coffin -- an amazing achievement, considering the technology of the time -- and inside that, the body.

What's interesting about this is that I had imagined the sheaths progressing in the other direction -- the food sheath closest to the atman, and the anandamaya-kosa furthest away. But in this example, the food and breath is external, and the bliss squeezed right up against the individual like golden spandex.

Joseph explains this as a "mistake," that the Egyptians mistook the preservation of the physical body as achieving immortality. Hindus, in contrast, keep the body at as great a distance from bliss as possible, and this seems to be regarded favorably by Pathways to Bliss. I'm not totally sold on that evaluation. Yet. I suppose it makes sense that placing importance on grandeur and magnificence is spiritually preferable to survival instincts.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more logical it seems to call the Egyptians mistaken in formulating their mythology. If we're going to be using those Vedantic sheaths -- and why not, since they seem to be a rather good system of looking at things -- then you need to facilitate a discourse between sheath 3 and sheath 4; between your inner monologue and the "wise" processes of life. It's easy to have thoughts about food and self-preservation; but understanding The Way That Life Goes takes some serious contemplation.

I wonder what Egyptians thought about when their minds wandered? Did they think about the eternal as some far-off cloudy non-corporeal peace, or a gross corpuscular spa? Ah, the internet tells me that it's a bit more complicated than that. Apparently the post-mortem Egyptian ideal was a state called "Akh," and interestingly, it required cultivation through physical offerings. This is quite different from the Hindu divorcement of body and bliss.

Paul said, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal 2:20). That is, we live to reflect the eternal. But in this Egyptian system, it seems like bodies are prepared so that the eternal will reflect our lives.

I wonder which is better.

So, yesterday, I was writing about how in the introduction to "Pathways to Bliss," Joseph says that you can really crack up if you hear that siren song. So, what do you do when you hear it?

Follow it. Duh.

In olden days (which are the days with which the book is primarily concerned) people had shamans to enact rituals and rites that would release the tension of the calling. Nowadays, we're not lucky enough to have traditions like those simply handed to us. But fortunately, we have the sum of all human knowledge at our fingertips, so when we're feeling tugged, we can go out and explore and find someone else's rituals that work for us.

Next time, I'll write a bit about the five sheaths of the atman, the body, as described in the Taittiriya Upanisad. Joseph felt it significant enough to mention in the introduction, so it must be really important.

"Make your god transparent to the transcendent, and it doesn't matter what his name is," says Joseph. (Good grief, we're still just in the introduction.) In other words, make your myths emotionally permeable.

Luke Skywalker's an easy example; he's the God (or the Hero, at least) of a science fiction film that's enjoyed even by people who don't enjoy science fiction. Which is to say, it doesn't matter that his name is sci-fi; he's transparent. (Haven't we all identified with some aspect of Luke from time to time? Or Lindsay Weir? There's moments where they're hard to tell apart.)

Of course, you have to wade through the sci-fi before you get to the Luke, or the 80s before you get to Lindsay. But what is all that junk? Adolph Bastian called it "local," in contrast to the "elementary" emotional resonance of the characters and plot. If you shine an x-ray through the local stuff (which, I pointed out, could be a religion, or World of Warcraft, or gays in the Castro) you see something there on the other side that means something. The "magnificence" that K. G. Durkheim talked about; that basic human need to slip ourselves into a bigger-than-us stream.

In olden times -- like, when we lived in caves -- there were shamans who could step over boundaries and see freely through the local stuff. They were crazy. Such is the effect of passing through your local commitments. Young people often tiptoe up to the cusp of that craziness; there's what Joseph calls a "shivering, neurotic sickness." You remember what it was like to be 16. Everywhere you went, it felt like there was a song calling you further.

And then, still in olden times, they'd go through rites and rituals to reconnect themselves to the magnificence of the society, so that they wouldn't go completely off the deep end or run away forever. Ignore the call of the song, says Joseph, citing suicides among shamanism-called indigenous Siberians, and you'll fall to pieces.

Here's a trailer for a movie that's basically about the different ways that people can crack up:

So when you find yourself gripped by that distress, whether a shaman or a teenager, how do you re-center yourself? I'll write about that next.

There are a couple of key concepts in the Introduction to the book. (Can you believe we're still on the Introduction? The real show hasn't even started yet.)

First, there's a little anecdote about how there are businesswomen in our society, but they have no mythic role model. In olden days, there'd be a female homemaker myth; and there'd be a male hunter myth; but now there's new jobs that have never had, for example, patron saints. And that's a challenging state of affairs, to have to make a life for yourself without the roadmaps that myths provide. It's up to the mythwriters of today to make new stories out of our contemporary situation, stories that grip us and also feel familiar.

The reason this is necessary is because myths -- stories -- are like a set of instructions. Or at least, a set of suggestions. Here Joseph uses the metaphor of a mandala: a maze that has been unscrambled and made orderly, with symbols all around and YOU there in the center, the universe within arm's reach. Without the arrangement of the mandala, you're living in a labyrinth, with no idea where to turn or what's waiting for you. Of course this sort of life can be very fun, if you've got enough money to bribe the minotaur into not hurting you too badly.

So, to summarize:
- Maze = Self-myth in disarray; what am I? Where am I going? We've all felt this way at some point.
- Mandala = All is clear. Hopefully we'll feel a great deal more of this than the maze going forward.

Another author for the reading list: Karlfried Graf Durkheim (a fascinating Wikipedia subject, and not to be confused with Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist). K.G. Durkheim continued the work of Jung and Neumann (ack, more authors to read!); his position, as described here, sounds like a lot of poofiness to me. Some words about manifestations of mythic power appear, and my eyes glaze over as they roll.

But here's the good part: humans have a sense of belonging to something MAGNIFICENT, though we have a hard time defining exactly what that magnificent thing is. I have a sense that we tend to pin that feeling on a god or a cult or World of Warcraft or gays in the Castro (or whatever) because we like to have a name for that feeling. Joseph refers to that as our energy being bound to a "commitment."

And apparently that's a problem, because we become fixated on that local commitment. (I'll write more later about his very specific use of the word local; it would be more accurate to use Adolph Bastian's term volkergedanken, meaning the concrete, of-the-moment imagery of a single time and place. But "local" is easier to type.)

Anyway: becoming occupied with our "commitment" is precisely what we do not want, as it is not actually what is meaningful to us. "The psychological problem," Joseph says, "is to make yourself -- and here is the phrase -- transparent to the transcendent."

Ugh, I can't tell you how long it took me to figure that out. "It's as easy as that," the book goes on, but what does it mean? Well, think about the word transparent: it means see-through. You need to become see-through, so to speak, so that transcendence passes into you like sunlight into a fishtank. That Magnificent power (the one that we all like, but can't quite name) needs to be able to move all the way through your skin into your very center, instead of bouncing off, deflected by a local commitment like algae on the glass.

Confusing, I know. The more you think about it, the more it makes sense. I hope.

Another handy analogy is that of a compass -- the kind that you use to draw circles. The sharp point of the compass sits on a very fine point indeed, and the outer leg orbits in a distant arc. You can think of your myths as having one foot on something transcendent, and the other on something familiar. And your job, as a transparent compass, is to make sure that point and the circle can see through you to each other. Or as Joseph nicely puts it, "one leg in the field of time and the other in the eternal." Pretty.

This "transparent to the transcendent" business in kind of important, so make sure you've got it.

One problem with the phrase is: what exactly is this "transcendent" business? It's kind of a hard word to relate to. I tend to think of it, from a storytelling perspective at least, as a synonym for "emotionally meaningful." That is, if it makes the audience feel something, then it's probably transcendent.

"Feeling something" is the trick, though -- it's something that you either know how to do for an audience, or you don't. A good rule of thumb for determining whether your story is "feely" is how well it fulfills the four functions of a myth. I'll write more about those later, but to sum them up, they are:

- Inspiring a sense of awe
- Describing a model of the cosmos
- Organizing a sociological order
- Guiding us through the phases of our lives

And now it's getting a bit late, so I'll leave it there for now.