The Mythic Experience

Paul F. McDonald ~ June 26 2002

Myth has come to be known as a great many things to a great many people. Before Campbell got a hold of it, people used the word "myth" to almost exclusively refer to stories from ancient Greece and Rome. Naturally, they had come to be regarded as falsehoods, at best primitive attempts at providing answers for the mysteries of the universe. After Campbell, they took on much greater significance, and became metaphorical expressions of the experience of human life in the universe - at least this is the case among the more literate academics and theologians. For the public at large, the message was garbled up, dumbed down, and more or less spun into little more than eloquent banality.

 

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