Joseph Campbell

It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.

It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.

In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dream.

the symbols of mythology are not manufactured; they cannot be ordered, invented, or permanently suppressed

Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new.

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream

HAPPY families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

separation—initiation—return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.

the adventure of the hero normally follows the pattern of the nuclear unit above described: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life-enhancing return.

Typically, the hero of the fairy tale achieves a domestic, microcosmic triumph, and the hero of myth a world-historical, macrocosmic triumph