Grown Out of Myth - Akira the Don, Joseph Campbell

All

Of the high cultures

And low cultures

And primitive cultures

And charming simple cultures

And great big enormous ones

Have grown out of myths

They are founded on myths

And what these myths have given

Has been inspiration

For aspiration

Now where do these aspirations come from?

They come from

A very wonderful

Childlike thing

Fascination

You know if you wanted to make money

Today

I’m no economists

But I’ll bet

The thing to do

Would be to invest your money in something like cameras

Things that people play with

Things that they are fascinated by

These

Fascinations

Are the creations of new

Activities

And when we look at the old cultures

We can see

All

Cultures

Have grown out of myths

I said all

Cultures

They are founded on myth

And what these myths have given

Has been inspiration

For aspiration

And some of it is very strange

To see

Indeed

What is most fascinating to begin with

Is one’s neighbor

Particularly

If the neighbor is a very strange looking creature

Now think of man

In the old days

He was a minority

On — on — on the planet

And when he looked at his neighbors

They had four feet

They had horns

They had great woolly bodies

They were very strange playmates

Furthermore

He was eating

Certain of them

And

They were

Rather dangerous

He had to

Arrange

Some kind of arrangement

With his neighbors

And we know

That the first religious rites

And the first religious address

So to say

Was to animals

Their neighbors

These

Were the images of God

All

Cultures

Have grown out of myths

I said all

Cultures

They are founded on myth

And what these myths have given

Has been inspiration

For aspiration

Aspiration

The animal world

Was the first inspiration

And the divinities

Were animal divinities

And not only that

But just as kids

When they identify with something

When they are fascinated by something

They

Act like it

They play it

So

The original rituals

The

Hunting people

Danced buffalo dances

They were in covenant

With the animal world

That through this covenant

The animals gave their bodies

Willingly

To be eaten

Because

Only the body dies

The being

Comes back

If you return the blood

Of the animal to the earth

The life is in the blood

The earth

Is the mother of life

And the animal

Will be back next year

All

Cultures

Have grown out of myths

I said all

Cultures

They are founded on myth

And what these myths have given

Has been inspiration

For aspiration

Aspiration

People who lived

Then

In the plant

World

The world of the tropics

Where nature was a plant world

They saw something else

They saw

That out of rot

Out of decay

There comes life

There comes life

And this notion

That out of death

Comes life

Becomes a very important thing

In the tropical cultures

And it led to what to us

Is

A very

Horrible

Pattern of rituals

Rituals of human sacrifice

Killing people

Letting them rot

Burying them

With the

Notion that out of this death

There would come life

All

Cultures

Have grown out of myths

I said all

Cultures

They are founded on myth

And what these myths have given

Has been inspiration

For aspiration

Aspiration

All

Cultures

Have grown out of myths

I said all

Cultures

They are founded on myth

And what these myths have given

Has been inspiration

For aspiration

Aspiration