Uncle Joe

March 26, 2008 at 7:20 am | Posted in books, religion | 10 Comments

I’ve been doing a bit of pleasure reading this spring break, and I came across this piece of wisdom from Uncle Joe.

“[In] mythology — if you have a mythology in which the metaphor for the mystery is the father, you are going to have a different set of signals from what you would have if the metaphor for the wisdom and mystery of the world were the mother. And they are two perfectly good metaphors. Neither one is a fact. These are metaphors. It is as though the universe were my father. It is as though the universe were my mother. Jesus says, ‘No one gets to the father but by me.’ The father that he was talking about was the biblical father. It might be that you can get to the father only by way of Jesus. On the other hand, suppose you are going by way of the mother. There you might prefer Kali, and the hymns to the goddess, and so forth. That is simply another way to get to the mystery of your life. You must understand that each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work.”

— Joseph Campbell, The Power Of Myth