Reinvigorating Innovation: Theory, Myth, and the Campbell Critics
By John Knight Lundwall
The problem with comparative myth studies does not lie in a lack of theory. Indeed, myth theory has been a library unto itself. No, the problem with comparative myth studies is the task itself, or I should say, the sheer volume of the task in question. Walking upon the ancient field of myth one sees a horizon-less expanse of possibility and material. Not only does every culture have a mythos, but such mythos is vast and complex within indigenous regions, geographic as well as historic. The smallest tribe on every continent has a fully exploded mythology equal to the most advanced ancient and prolific civilizations. These mythologies in turn are connected, despite criticisms to the contrary, to a host of historical, ritualistic, cultural, and cosmological matrixes in which and from which every tribe and civilization grew. To tackle myth, then, is to tackle history, biography, geography, geology, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy, ritual, religion, and the list goes on. Authentic myth studies, without a doubt, requires a Herculean will and a Titanic effort that crosses a plethora of academic boundaries.
With so much work to do, with so much discovery still to be seen, with so much mystery yet to be confronted, it is a marvel, as Alan Dundes laments, that myth and folklore studies are in serious decline. Numerous myth and folklore programs have been subsumed under cultural studies or eliminated altogether (Dundes 385). Further, the subject matter at hand has been determined by other departments as soft and tangential (Dundes 387, 393). Dundes gives four reasons why folklore (and with it myth studies) is declining: first and principally, a lack of innovation in “grand theory”; second, an incursion in the field by amateurs who are disconnected from the Herculean will and scholarship required; third, a fear to offend sources and an un-academic spirit of political correctness; and fourth, a loss of knowledge from experts who have done so much but who are read so little (Dundes 387-393, 402-406).
If this is the state of myth studies on academic campuses then the only proper reaction by true mythologists should not be fear or defeatism, nor should it be, as is more often the case, an incursion of amateur theoretical scope or subjective, post-religious adaptation where myth and legend is subsumed under “personal myth and memoir.” Rather, the reaction should be a heroic journey of scholarship equal to the opposition exerted upon this field of study. Mythologists may well remember the words of Tennyson: “We are not that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, one equal temper of heroic hearts, made weak by time and fate, but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Again, the principal reason for declining myth and folklore studies, according to Dundes, is a lack of innovative grand theory (either new theory or innovation in old theory). Ironically, introducing the very innovation needed in this field (or any field) is more difficult to achieve than sustaining even the most outdated theories that have long been absorbed in the academic body. I suppose volumes could be written on this very subject, and I cannot help but to impose a few important examples of the difficulty inherent in innovation.
In the late 19th century Olaf Ohman, an immigrant living in Douglas county, Minnesota, discovered a stone (called the Kensington stone) carved with what appeared to be archaic Scandinavian runes strongly suggesting that there were European explorers (Vikings) in the New World far before Columbus. Judging from the runes and linguistic style, the stone dated to the mid 14th century, well over a hundred years prior to Columbus’s own travels. Upon publication of this find the academic response was immediate, universal, and global: the stone was a fraud! Further, this conclusion was made without examining the stone or the inscriptions themselves. Ohman, disgusted with the publicity, used the stone, face down, as a doorstep in his barn (Carlson 33). Nearly a century later, in 1972 in Phippsburg, Maine, three more stones were uncovered with similar style runic inscriptions. These stones eventually made their way to Einar Hagen, a professor of Scandinavian languages at Harvard. He immediately decried them as hoaxes, “a few Norse words in a sea of gibberish” (Carlson 35). The majority of academia followed suit with the pronouncement. Only until recently have these authoritative pronouncements been seriously challenged. One contender, Suzanne Carlson, has spent eleven years examining the inscriptions on these stones, plainly stating: “The evidence of runic style and language use weighs heavily on the side of the stones being authentic 14th century artifacts deposited in Maine” (Carlson 37). Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, most scholars concur there was a Viking presence in New England several hundred years prior to Columbus, but the scope of this earlier incursion is indeterminate.
Why the shift in thinking? It is true evidences have built up over the past century to lend support to an earlier transoceanic voyage by the Vikings to the new world. Orthodox academia, however, claims that no civilization was capable of making a transoceanic voyage before Columbus (with but just a few exceptions that are seen as historical footnotes). So entrenched is this thinking, that no matter what evidences pop up, such evidences are immediately ruled as substandard, un-academic, or simply just fakes. Thus, in 1861, when David Wyrick discovered a stone (called the Decalogue Stone) in a berm constructed by the ancient Mound Builders in Ohio, and this stone covered in Hebrew-like lettering, he was immediately vilified by the “authorities.” Their attack, not only on the item discovered, but upon Wyrick’s own integrity, was brutal and sustained. Wyrick would eventually despair, telling a friend that he wished he had never discovered the stone. Eventually Wyrick committed suicide. Robert Alrutz, a professor at Denison University, has reclaimed all the information surrounding the Wyrick discovery, astonished to find no evidence of forgery whatsoever, and commenting that the stone box within which the Decalogue Stone had been buried was more sophisticated and of ancient type than was known at the time of the discovery. Nevertheless, at present not only is the Decalogue Stone considered a hoax, but not even worth discussing, leaving Alrutz to remark:
It is a story that succinctly portrays the often forgotten fact that science is as much influenced by individuals, by their prejudices, and their bigotries, as any other human endeavor. It [the Decalogue Stone] may very well be a small vignette of history that in a cameo way illustrates how, even in science, myoptic adherence to a doctrine, even a correct one, may result in the refusal to admit the validity of nonconforming evidences. (Alrutz 2)
Nonconforming evidences, it turns out, exist in nearly every grand theory. In the early 20th century the “one big galaxy” theory believed by academia asserted that the universe was just one big galaxy. When the janitor at the Mount Wilson Observatory pointed out discrepancies in photographic plates indicating galaxies beyond our own, Harlow Shapley, a leading American astronomer, wiped the photographic plates clean and explained to the janitor the accepted theory was in fact reality (Teresi 161-162). Several years later, when Edwin Hubble discovered redshift, that stars and galaxies were moving away from our own galaxy at stupendous speeds–the Big Bang theory was born. Curiously, no academic text book I have ever read mentions that Hubble never believed in the Big Bang theory; Hubble always stressed redshift could be caused by other means than an expanding universe. Meanwhile, Halton Arp, one of Hubble’s proteges, discovered high-redshift quasars next to low redshift galaxies in the same portion of the sky, an apparent contradiction. Arp published his nonconforming evidences which did not change academic debate, but did lead to his termination at the Carnegie Observatories (Teresi 191).
There are thousands of such occurrences within academia, including the hard sciences. I bring these up for a specific purpose: the first examples show how resistant the idea of dispersionism still is in academic circles--and even when accepted, only certain kinds of dispersion patterns can be considered (Vikings yes! Hebrews no!); the second example reveals the stubbornness of cosmological pundits clinging to theory aside from all the facts. Today, nobody believes in the one big galaxy theory, but just try to reinvigorate innovation in the Big Bang theory and see what you get. The point is, innovation in grand theory requires either nonconforming evidences or nonconforming interpretations of old evidences, and this immediately brings about stark opposition from the entire armada of theory, systems, and people who have something to gain by leaving things status-quo. “For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order of things [...]” wrote Machiavelli, who was writing about religion and politics. Max Planck concurs, and this even in the sciences: “Great scientific theories do not usually conquer the world through being accepted by opponents who, gradually convinced of their truth, have finally adopted them. [...] What happens is that opponents of the new idea finally die off and the following generation grows up under its influence” (West, qtd. 234).
The field of mythology, in many ways, is much more difficult for the reinvigoration of innovation because of its very nature–myth is metaphysics, often attached to religion and philosophy. Because positivists cannot tolerate metaphysical baggage, myth studies in a wholly secular culture is sure to decline; and mythologists themselves have responded in a defensive and positivist manner, attempting for decades to show a rather ultra-physical/sociological approach to myth. Claude Levi-Strausse’s structural approach, with its enormous collecting and comparing mythological components and tale types, is an effort to show humankind’s natural and biological tendency to mediate opposition within the self and culture. It must be observed, however, that structural theory itself is a natural consequence of modern, secular, society–it is a positivistic imprint upon myth.
Enter Joseph Campbell. Campbell’s approach is grand theory, but it is also wholly metaphysical. From the beginning Campbell took on the positivist approach, writing: “The intent of the old mythologies to integrate the individual in his group, to imprint on his mind the ideals of that group [...] and to convert him thus into an absolutely dependable cliche, has become assumed in the modern world by an increasingly officious array of ostensibly permissive, but actually coercive, demythologized secular institutions” (Campbell, Creative, 86). Rather, Campbell insists, mythology is “[...] an organization of metaphorical figures connotative of states of mind [...]. Metaphors only seem to describe the outer world of time and place. Their real universe is the spiritual realm of the inner life. The Kingdom of God is within you” (Campbell, Thou, 6-7). In modern culture, Campbell’s declaration is certainly a nonconforming interpretation of the evidences!
For Joseph Campbell mythology had four primary functions, the first and foremost being the aligning of “[...] waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum of this universe, as it is” (Campbell, Thou, 2, italics his). That is to say, elemental being itself is unknowable, but contains infinite potential. Campbell believes that human consciousness emerges from the unplumbed depths of the self which is a mysterium tremendum, a fundamental mystery. However, this universal matrix of being (Jung’s collective unconscious) emerges into consciousness by authentic symbols of the imagination, not fancy or even fantasy, but symbolic manifestations of nature which root the individual to the universe around him:
For the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed. They are spontaneous productions of the psyche, and each bears within it, undamaged, the germ power of its source. [...] It has always been the prime function of mythology and rite to supply the symbols that carry human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back (Campbell, Hero, 4,11).
Again, according to Campbell, because the symbols of mythology are rooted in a physical universe which is fundamentally united with the mysterium tremendum, symbols of myth “put the society in accord with nature” (Campbell, Thou, 45). Indeed, the imagery of so much myth is of transcendent gods accomplishing extraordinary tasks, oft times ascending and descending between planes of the universe: “The imagery is necessarily physical and thus apparently of outer space. The inherent connotation is always, however, psychological and metaphysical, which is to say, of inner space. [...] there is a beautiful saying of Novalis: ‘The seat of the soul is there, where the outer and the inner worlds meet’” (Campbell, Inner 31).
For Joseph Campbell the relationship between nature, myth, spirit, and consciousness is of primary concern. Campbell spends an enormous amount of time compiling a vast amount of data showing these relationships, such as the link between the human beating heart and the beating heart of the Earth’s axis (precession) which remarkably is recorded in world myth (Campbell, Inner, 30-39); or the physiological make up of the human body, with its nerve clusters and organic centers which correspond to the Hindu chakras and surprisingly to an enormous amount of ancient myth and liturgy (Campbell, Inner, 63-65, 83-92). Campbell is not embarrassed in the least to bring up so much metaphysical psychology in his approach, in fact he argues that his theory is ultimately the most human approach–man is a metaphysical creature (Campbell, Flight, 61-76) whose primary concern is the mysterium tremendum. Campbell writes:
No amount of learned hairsplitting about the differences between Egyptian, Aztec, Hottentot, and Cherokee monster-killers can obscure the fact that the primary problem here is not historical or ethnological but psychological–even biological [...] no amount of scholarly jargon or apparatus can make it seem that the mere historian or anthropologist is dealing with the problem [of myth] at all. (Campbell, Flight, 48)
In the context of this paper, one can imagine how the academic orthodoxy received Campbell’s grand theory. Campbell entered the horizon-less expanse of myth not only with an enormous amount of metaphysical baggage, but as a self-proclaimed metaphysician; where others saw baggage, Campbell claimed he was carrying with him the temple of myth. For secular academics, this approach was heuristic anathema–Campbell might as well have walked into a den of hungry wolves wearing a raw sirloin. As expected, the erupting criticism has been universal and unrelenting.
The already mentioned Alan Dundes calls Campbell an amateur: “I believe there is no single idea promulgated by amateurs that has done more harm to serious folklore study than the notion of archetype” (Dundes 397). Robert Segal labels Campbell as “unabashedly elitist,” a self proclaimed bard assuming “[...] the sole correct interpretation of all myths is symbolic, a-historical, universalistic, mystical, and matriarchal. Both the East and all primitive peoples correctly decipher their own myths. Only the West misconceives its myths” (Segal 42). While Mary Lefkowitz refers to Campbell as “a priest of a new appealing hero cult--the religion of self-development” (Manganaro 151). And these are the nicer criticisms. A general perusal over the material and one soon runs into such remarks as Harry Oldmeadow’s, whose judgements on Campbell’s theory include such words as “facile,” “tedious,” “simplistic,” “glib,” “limited,” “cultural imperialis[tic],” “prejudice,” “fluctuating,” and “anti-Semit[ic]” (Oldmeadow 111). What is amazing about this last critique is the fact that Oldmeadow was able to get all those descriptives in one solitary sentence!
Despite the spewing Typhon of negative criticisms Campbell’s grand theory and his prolific work has found growing popularity, especially amongst non-academics. I should make clear, however, my own view of Joseph Campbell’s grand theory. Campbell writes “Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology. The modern psychologist can translate it back to its proper denotations and thus rescue for the contemporary world a rich and eloquent document of the profoundest depths of human character” (Campbell, Hero, 256). This is a proposition I reject; some myths are in fact historical, no doubt biographical, and most certainty cosmological. Further, Campbell does position himself and/or his theory to be the only arbiter of myth. In viewing the wide, horizon-less expanse of myth one sees not so much the mysterium tremendum as much as the quantus tremendum of material--shattered remnants of vast millennia of percolating memory that in modern times we divide up between “history,” “cosmology,” “natural philosophy,” “psychology,” etc., but in ancient times no such divisions existed–science was religion, religion was psychology, psychology was cosmology, etc. For an ancient, high priest, mathematician-astronomer to calculate the orbit of Venus in relation to both Sun and Earth and attach such observations to highly sophisticated calendars and rituals requires an adept amount of ingenuity, mathematics, cosmology, and scientific rationalization. To call all this psychology (or for that matter structural biology or sociology) is to miss the boat. The very fact that no such title as “high priest mathematician astronomer” exists today should tell us that any grand theory focusing on just one approach to explain all the data and that seeks to subsume all myth under its theoretical wings is doomed to fail.
This thesis is neither a pro or con argument on Campbell. Rather, it is an observation that what is needed in the field of myth is a reinvigoration of innovation. Campbell introduced innovation, the kind that can only inspire the anathema orthodox academia will always give when its most believed and adhered-to theories are challenged. Yet Campbell did not enter the field of myth just with a unique angle, or with a highly desirable, metaphysical, self-help religion. Campbell entered the field of myth with a Herculean will exerting a Titanic effort. In rereading Campbell’s work I am most awed by his ability to quote a remarkable range of sources, at one moment he is recounting an Indian myth, at the next he shows correspondences from Native American, African, Japanese, and European mythologies, quoting Goethe, Shakespear, Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel, and a dozen other poets, philosophers, and scientists along the way.
If mythologists are going to revive the field of myth studies, one need not discard Campbell theory, nor hide from the onslaught of criticism regarding it. But to study only Campbellian theory is to make a fatal mistake, one Campbell himself would not make. Nonconforming evidences or nonconforming interpretations must be backed by Herculean scholarship in a vast variety of disciplines, theories, and sources, and not just by personal feelings, dream tendings, or poetic imaginations. In this regard, we mythologists, and especially we Pacifican mythologists, must do better. In fact, we must meet Campbell at the closing door, and take the lightning hammer from his hand, wielding it into new areas of the horizon-less expanse of myth unencumbered by prejudice and unafraid of orthodoxy; ultimately, this is the only way to reinvigorate innovation.
Works Cited
Alrutz, Robert W. The Newark Holy Stones: The History of an Archaeological Tragedy. Denison University: Journal of the Scientific Laboratories, 1980, pp. 1-57 & 58-72.
Campbell, Joseph. The Flight of the Wild Gander. Chicago, IL: Regnery Gateway, Inc., 1958.
– The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Princeton: Princeton U P, 1973.
–The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and as Religion. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
–Masks of God: Creative Mythology. New York: Arkana, Penguin Publishing Group, 1991.
–Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001.
Carlson, Suzanne O. North Atlantic Rim, Barrier or Bridge? Newark “Holy Stones”: Context for Controversey, Public Symposium, Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum. Coshocton, OH: Saturday, November 6, 1999.
Dundes, Alan. Folkloristics in the Twenty-First Century (AFS Invited Presidential Plenary Address, 2004). U of California, Berkley: Journal of American Folklore 118 (470), 2005, pp. 385-408.
Manganaro, Marc. Myth, Rhetoric, and the Voice of Authority: A Critique of Frazier, Eliot, Frye, and Campbell. New Haven: Yale U P, 1992.
Oldmeadow, Harry. Journeys East: 20th Century Western Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions. Bloomington IN: World Wisdom Inc., 2004.
Segal, Robert. “Myths Versus Religion for Campbell.” Uses of Comparative Mythology: Essays on the Work of Joseph Campbell. Ed. Kenneth L. Golden. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992, pp. 39-51.
Teresi, Dick. Lost Discoveries: The Ancient Roots of Modern Science–from the Babylonians to the Maya. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
West, John Anthony. Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1993.
Posted by john at March 24, 2006 12:38 PM
