Joseph CampbellGoddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)

Joseph Campbell is a well known scholar of mythology who has taught a number if years at the University level and has authored numerous books. His material is gold  as far as I am concerned . AT the same time as being scholarly his style is also highly readable and enjoyable. Read this and you will get lots of information. Beware though because this book may well change your perspective on things.Change it did. Many scholars such as Margaret Murray and Marija Gambutas have stated that in man kinds beginning there was a whorl wide religion that revered the Goddess. Now perhaps that was an overstatement but there were places that venerated the Goddess. Three such areas were identified  South Eastern Europe plus Greece and Mesopatamia, South East Asia and part of Central AMerica. THese three areas had mastered agriculture and planting. THe societies tended to be settled into communities and there was at the time no threat of invasion or violence. THe Goddesses reign lasted from the Paleolithic to Neolithic times.The Earth was seen as the mother. From her came all life and at the end all life returned to her. You did not have to be awesome to pick some fruit. Women were cultivators, admired for their beauty. Men were idolized based on how they performed their tasks. In the houses one would find figurines or Venus statues, These could be goddess statues or fertility votives. Men had their rituals in underground caves which were highly representative of the Goddesses womb. The sun was a feminine sign as was the lion and the cat and the snake. The sun radiated on the earth and represented freedom from time and space. Lions were royalty and serpents represented wisdom and life force.For the male representation it was the bull. The bull was lunar. It's horns represented  the crescent of the moon. The male figure was the child of the goddess who grew into her lover and then dies only tobe born again much like the moon.During the Iron age when the feminine world was being invaded by Indo Europeans in the north and Bedouin tribes from the south things began to change. The Indo- Europeans were semit nomadic warrior who cultivated livestock mostly cows. THe Bedouin cultivated sheep and goats. As was tendency once these warrior tribes took over the feminine lands they did not eradicate the goddess but rather had there moveable gods move and and marry them. Of  course this would change the whole mythology Joseph Campbell covers these ideas and their evolution by going over Hindu Culture, heavy emphasis on Greco=Roman myth and Middle Eastern Mythology.  Carefully showing how three once powerful Goddess was reduced to a subordinate undeeer the ancient paganism to how she was merely venerated under monotheism. But you cannot keep a good woman down. SHe rises up during the romantic period of courtly love and she is making her voice heard again. This book is a must read

alot more technical, nothing like his other stuff that really examined the myth. this gives alot of historical context

One of the best books I've read on the subject of Goddesses and the Divine Feminine. Arrived quickly and in perfect condition!

Arrived in excellent condition. Looks like it had not been read. Very pleased.

As someone who is doing research on the goddess and understanding the portrayal of women in culture, I was a bit disappointed in this book.There is very impressive literature circulating about the Goddess, despite biases, which I feel covers much better the subject than Campbell. I find that his writing covers only as much as the surface might bring back - it doesn't seem that he tried to challenge himself to see if this information connected, or even if it made sense in this interpretation. I am aware he mentioned that, at the time, very little scholarship had been done on the feminine in history outside of the stereotypical 'man was hunter and superior, woman was pregnant sex-baby machine and thus inferior' mode of thinking in archaeology, etc.Campbell's infatuation with myths is both positive and detrimental. In a world that is struggling out of the cultural desecration and dehumanization of 'prehistoric people' thanks to Christian dogma, Campbell's dedication to myths are a welcome respite when you are attempting to understand the evolution of faith and the continual borrowing/amalgamation of beliefs over time. Yet, where Campbell fails is in his inability to separate himself and his message from his myth. He makes grand generalizations and has a negative, perplexing tendency to say that X means Y without really showing the in-between or X process of how he got there. During reading, I wondered if he was trying to create a link between Judeo-Christian beliefs and 'pagan' religion/cultures, as while he does note the Semitic cultural desecration of the neighboring deities as troubling, did not seem to go further than was necessary into understanding how far-ranging this mentality became in Western civilization.I can see why many say that Campbell has a bit of sloppy scholarship. I know it's harsh, but in reality I couldn't use this book as a legitimate resource in an academic setting. The subject matter is intensely fascinating, and it's a good jumping off point for more serious analysis on the figure of the goddess in both the past and the present. Yet, that does not eliminate the flaws in this book. I would use Campbell's writing only for getting ideas on where to focus your attention, images, names, that sort of thing.

This is a collection of his essays on goddess-related myths. They were collected after his death and placed in one volume. I am mainly interested here in the history of feminine deities being suppressed by male-dominated religions and there is excellent material on that in some of the essays. Some essays dealing with other aspects of goddesses in mythology were of less interest to me, but someone whose focus is less feminist-centered than mine would probably enjoy them.

I enjoyed the flow of Joseph Campbell's narrative and as always, I learned a lot about the history of human religion, this time in its pre- Abrahamic aspect. I very much enjoyed the analytical way that Mr. Campbell broke down and compared ancient beliefs to the beliefs of today.

Product arrived in timely manner and in perfect condition.

🖤 Excellent 🤍 As Described

Incredible work

impeccable

Quite good

This book has inspired me beyond belief. It is full of amazing symbology, mapping continuity of cultural patterns between cultures as old as the Neolithic and now. The understanding of the Divine Feminine fits in with what I already knew but took it to another level as I am able to see the continuity throughout global culture rather than seeing it through a comparative lens.