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What would you like me to do?This is an answer to a question that was asked in the beginning about an hour and a half ago.It was about rites in primitive societies.I went from primitive to oriental in a very quick jump.
We have been talking about the sacraments and I hope it's one of the experiences... You and me were talking the other day, yeah, about the virgin birth, the incarnation, just showing the meaning of these in our own lives.
what it means to us, not as something out here, not as some historical event.
And you asked me for something.Do you know what it is you'd like me to talk to?
Yeah, you started into it this morning, just before we broke up.
It was this question of the original female-based mythology, which was overcome by a male-based mythology.
And I was wondering what was happening now. where what was going on now.There seems to me to be a change.
I think I'll speak to this first and then come to that, because this is something more complicated, and we might hide it over for the next time even.Just the historical matter here.First, on the first order of myths,
the order of the non-literate peoples.And I think of these in terms of two totally different categories.
The people in the northern hunting plains whose food is animal food, whose life is sustained by killing, killing, killing animals all the time, and whose food is brought to them by the men.They have a psychology of killing all the time.
On a primitive level, the animal is not separate from the human level as they are in the biblical tradition.So killing an animal is like killing a human being.And also, the animal has powers of revenge.
And so rituals having to do with the reconciliation of the killer to the killed and the killed to the killer are basic.The typical myth and typical ritual lore of the hunting people
has to do with this reconciliation or covenant between that which is killed and eaten and the people who kill it.There's a charming little story that I've told in one of my books which epitomizes this whole thing.
It's a Blackfoot story of a time when the winter was coming and the Indians couldn't get the buffalo to go over the buffalo fall.You know, they used to drive them over a fall and then kill them at the bottom.
the animals would run to the fall and then break and turn, so they were gonna starve that winter.
And one of the young women, getting up early in the morning to go get the water for her little wigwam, sees the animals up on the cliff, and she says, oh, if you'll only come over, I'll marry one of you.
And to her surprise, they all start coming over. Well, that was kind of joyous for a moment, but when one of them comes over and says, all right, girlie, we're off, she said, oh, no.And he said, oh, yes, you look what's happened.
So he takes her by the arm.You never know how these figures do this.They're semi-human, semi-animal things, and goes off with her.Family wakes up.Where's Minnehaha?
Well, you know how Indians are, they can read footprints, and my gosh, he's gone off with a buffalo.So her father gets his bow and arrow, and he goes following this trail.
Then he comes to, after a long walk, a buffalo wallow, you know, where the buffalo like to roll around in the drinking place there, and he sits down today.
And a beautiful magpie comes and flies down and starts picking around, and he says, beautiful bird, When you fly around, if you happen to see my daughter along the Buffalo, will you tell her her father's waiting for her at the Buffalo Wow?
And the magpie takes wing, and sure enough, there she is.And the old boy is asleep beside her, and the whole herd is asleep, but there she's doing her crochet or whatever the little girls like to do.Porcupine quill.
Magpie goes picking along and he comes closer and he says, your father's over at the wall.Well, she says, she looks at him, tell him to wait.So, the thing goes back.The bull wakes up, get me some water.
Plucks off one of his horns and she goes over to the wall.Daddy.Daddy, I don't want you with these buffaloes, you know. We've got to wait until they go back to sleep and then I'll come on."
So she goes with the water and hands it to her buffalo spouse.And he takes a drink and he sniffs it and he says, you know, fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an idiot.And she says, oh no, and he says, yes.
Then he gets up and he roars, and all the buffaloes get up and they start to dance. And when they're finished that, they go, wow, to the wallow, and they tread the old man right into the dust.He disappears.They just knock him to pieces.
The girl starts to cry.And the buffalo says, so you're crying?She says, yeah, daddy.Well, he says, think of us. fathers, mothers, children, everything for you to eat.And here, your daddy, yes, your daddy."
Well, he was this compassionate kind of buffalo.And he said, she continued to cry.He said, if you can bring your daddy back to life again, I'll let the two of you go.
So she turns to the magpie, this is a typical story, and the magpie says, let's see if you can find something of Daddy anyhow, any little thing.
So he finds a little bit of Daddy's backbone and brings it back, she puts it down, puts her robe over it, she starts chanting a song, and here's an important thing, Daddy comes back. Presently there's somebody lying under there.
She looks under the blanket.Yes, he's there, but he's not breathing yet.So she goes on with her song and takes it off the next time.He stands up.The buffalo are astounded.The buffalo says, well, why don't you do something like this for us?
And so we'll make a pact.Here's our dance.And they dance their slow majestic dance.And they say, when you dance the dance, you have to wear a buffalo.
heads and so forth, and when you kill the buffalo, you are to return their blood to the soil in this ritual, and they will be born again.
Now this is a basic hunting notion, that there is no such thing as death, that they simply pass through the wall and back, if you return the essence to Mother Earth from which it comes. They cancel death for themselves, do you see?
And you have this notion of accord, and the marriage is the right by which it is rendered in the myths almost always between a human girl and the animal master.That was a shaman animal, just as the magpie was a shaman bird.
These are shamanistic powers.There are shaman mountains, even. This is the pattern of the hunting societies.Now, hunting makes a difference, whether you can kill the animal or not, whether you're a dub or somebody who's a really good hunter.
So there's a celebration of masculine prowess, there is a celebration of masculine pride, a totally masculine orientation here.
When you turn, then, to the tropical zone, where the principal landscape is not animal but plant... She's not just following her, she divides her... Yeah, but so what?
So she has more magic power than the masculine.
Yes, but what I'm saying is what they're trying to do is to flatter the masculine.I mean, sure, she can bring Buffalo back to life, but she doesn't go out and kill the buffalo.But we wanted something to eat.
the males are the ones who bring the food and they also protect the tribe because in nomadic tribes where it clashes, two of them want the same herd and so there's this masculine protection and masculine furnishing of food and the male has to be flattered and he is flattered and what the women do is carry bundles and it's a totally different situation when you get to the tropical zone where the principle food supply is
plant food, and where since women give birth to children and nourish, they have the same magic as the earth.And so the principle magic is woman magic there, planting and reaping magic.And the male has almost no function whatsoever.
Now it's in those societies that you get a very strong masculine inferiority complex. And the compensation for that, you know, men do have an advantage.They do have an imagination.
The compensation for that is the men's society where no women are allowed.And in that male society, anybody can pick a banana.So you don't have to flatter anybody for his prowess at all.One dope is as good as another.
Here in the masculine secret society, very important spiritual work is accomplished so that you achieve prestige that way.
For example, in Melanesia, which is the place where this can be best studied, the men's societies in Melanesia, they're still surviving and they're still studied.
The big spiritual operation, I think I mentioned this to a couple of you yesterday, is raising pigs.
The pig is the first sacred animal, and consequently the first sacrificial animal in this tradition, just as the cow and the bull and the horse later on.The men knock out the upper canine teeth of the pig that is to be the great pig.
Each man has his own little pig herd and so forth.And that allows the tusks, the lower tusks, to grow.They don't get worn off.So they grow in a complete circle.And then they come back through the jaw.
Now the pig is in great pain, so he does develop flesh.This is a spiritual pig.It comes back through and goes around again.And you can get, if you're lucky, as many as three loops.
At each important stage, the man sacrifices hundreds of other pigs that he has raised so that this big Parker is worth thousands of pigs by the time he's got the three loops.
And at each stage, an initiation ceremony of the man, the man's name is changed.He gains the power that is the pig's power.And when he's reached the final thing, he's a kind of 32nd degree mason.
And he's allowed in the ceremonies to stand with his arms out like this.And he's got the name He Who Walks Above Clouds or something like that.And when he dies,
That pig goes with him and is offered to Zedzev, the goddess who guards the fiery path to the volcano heaven where everybody dances joyously in fire forever.No women there, nobody who wasn't a member of the club.
As he goes through these initiations, he learns of a certain labyrinth design, which is the design of the voyage to the underworld. And as he approaches Sevsev, the guardian, she draws a labyrinth and cuts off part of it.
And then he has to complete the labyrinth, which he can do only because he's a member of that social club, and give the pig to be eaten.So he has identified himself with the pig, and yet the pig is the god.The main deity is a pig deity here.
Christ is God and our vicarious offering. This is the earliest stage of this whole tradition of the vicarious sacrifice through whose power we achieve our redemption.
And I can go through them stage by stage, the linking lines between these two traditions and the Buddha also.
The great sacrificial gods of the Mediterranean area, Adonis was killed by a boar, Tamwuz was killed by a boar, Osiris was killed by set out hunting the boar, and in Ireland, Gemma Dodine was killed by a boar.
The great prefigurements of the Christ were killed by pigs. And as Fraser points out in The Golden Vow, the power that kills the god is an aspect of himself, so that these are pig gods.
Dionysos, all of this, what I've talked about here is the beginning of this thing, and also the spiritual rank idea, so that you gain prestige.
It's of no use to the society, but it is of use to your own self-confidence, at any rate, to be able to do this.
Also the owning, like the Minotaur.
There it's moved up to the bull.You see, when the herding people come in, the bull takes over the role of the pig, and the pig is used for sacrifices downward, and the bull for sacrifices upward.
The pig's tusks turn down, the bull's horns turn up, and these are the equivalents, and both are related to the moon.The tusk and the horns are the horns of the moon, and the animal between is that uniting power which unites birth, and death.
This is all in these symbols.This is the power that transcends death.Well, so much for the early primitive cultures, but there is another thing in the planting culture, which I mentioned this morning.
When you see rotting vegetation and life coming from it, then you realize that from death comes life.If you want to increase life, increase death, hence the weak sacrificial systems.Then we come
to the period of the rise of the great planting cultures.The earliest date for these is around 9000 BC.Little settled villages with agriculture as their life support.And this brings onto a new stage the whole mythology of the planting culture world.
The rights of Mother Earth who supports us all. The great early traditions are out of that.
Early Egypt, early Mesopotamia, all of the rise of the first cities and the equivalence between the signals in the sky and the seasons in the earth are all worked out very formally.Then come these invasions from north and south of the warrior people.
The warriors were originally hunters.They became herders. And they're still fighters.And they don't plant, they take.So you have now the peasant and the aristocrat group.These are the exploiters.
In the Old Testament, it says, fields that you did not plant, you shall reap.Houses you did not build, you shall inhabit.It's right there.And this is the attitude.
Here you have a deity who is a masculine deity, whereas in the earlier tradition is the feminine. The feminine deity is always associated with a masculine fecundator or enlivener of her fertility, but that is an inferior figure usually.
She will be represented in human form, the male in an animal form, serpent form, goat form, bull form, so that the bull that is sacrificed is the fructifier of the mother and is her child. And Osiris was called the bull of his own mother.
And the image here is of, well to use one of the images, the setting sun which sets into the west and is born in the east.It goes into the mother's mouth in the west and comes from her womb in the east so that it is his own begetter.
And here we get the image of the Virgin Mary who is the mother of God, who is the begetter of God.And it is one, the father and the son.And that's one of the oldest image of this that we have is from a place called the Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey.
And the date is 6,000 BC.And it shows a feminine figure back to back with herself, two images of her. in sexual intercourse with a male figure here holding the child.It's the same figure, the begetter and the born is the one deity.
Now these are symbolic forms.These are what underlie the sacramental images of our own heritage in, let's say, Christianity or Judaism. The virgin birth, is this a biological problem?
I mean, when you think of it historically, it's a biological problem.When you think of it spiritually, it's something else.The first birth, the birthrights that I spoke of in the rites of passage, that's the physical birth of a little being.
Then we have the initiation where he is born as a man. And he's born into the myth.He's born spiritually.He no longer acts simply as a little animal with the desires of sex and food, but he acts in terms of certain principles, of certain moral order.
And surely he still lives on the physical plane, but through that there is manifest this moral order.And that second birth is the virgin birth.We are born as... human spirits.
I don't want to try it now, but tomorrow, if we're going to have a little session like this, I'd like to get that board over here and do the Kundalini of the Indian system, and you'll see how the virgin birth works there.I can do it very
But the virgin birth is the second birth, the spiritual birth, and the figures that are – it's a universal mythic theme, you find it everywhere in the world – but figures that represent, that are born through virgin birth represent the spiritual man, the spiritual level of life.
The Buddha, for example, Christ. To be reborn in Christ means to have become one who lives not in terms of physical need and physical passion, but in terms of spiritual or moral principles, and is motivated by these.
Or, on the highest plane, as in Paul's word, I live thou not I, but Christ in me, you are living always in terms of the illumination.A very interesting little thing is the Buddha's birth. He was born from his mother's side.
The deities came down and received him, placed him on the ground, and no sooner born than he takes seven steps, and he points upward with his right hand, downward with his left, and he says in a voice of thunder, worlds above, worlds beneath, there's no one in the world like me.
I heard a little lecture by Dr. Suzuki on that very theme, and he was a tiny little man.He looked like a ceramic figurine himself.He says, that very funny thing, baby just born say a thing like that.
He said, you'd think he would have waited for a second birth, his spiritual birth.But he said, we in Orient all mixed up.We make no big distinction between spirit and matter.Matter is a precipitation of spirit.
But we're not eligible to say what the Buddha said, even though we have been born just as he was.Why?Well, then he went through a long, long talk.And at the end he said, they tell me when baby is born, baby cries.What does baby say when baby cries?
No one in the world like me.All babies, Buddha babies.But what is the difference between your little one and Queen Maya's Buddha baby?The difference is that he knew he was a Buddha baby, and yours doesn't.
And what the word Buddha means is he who has waked up, waked up to the fact that he was an incarnation of Buddha consciousness.
And he didn't let the eyes, which see the passing reflexes of phantasmagoria of the consciousness, seduce him from the knowledge of the eternal presence of consciousness.And so he was simply one who, from birth, knew he was a Buddha baby.
And he didn't just cry.He said it the big way, do you see?Our babies have to learn. that they are Buddhas, Buddha babies.So he was born from his mother's side.He was already second birth, virgin birth.That's one of the prime symbols.
There's no problem at all biologically.I mean, these things, I love to kid priests when I meet them, because I was a Catholic myself and know a good deal about the priestly mind. And I'd like to ask of these things and just hear them roll around.
One got out of it by saying, that's not the kind of thing you ask a lady.I don't know if that seemed to be belching.Then, of course, the Eucharist.The God eating himself. Let me tell you a story about a god eating himself.This is a story from India.
They have all the good ones.Shiva, the great lord of the universe, the lord of lords, whose consort is Parvati, is approached by a demon who has conquered all the gods. And now he comes to threaten the god of gods.Now that's impudence gone wild.
And he comes with the demand that Shiva turn the goddess over to him.Shiva simply opened the middle eye here in his forehead, and a thunderbolt came out, poof, and hit the earth.And when the splash cleared,
There was standing a monster with a lion mane that reached to the four quarters and lean as it can be, just hunger, sheer hunger.And he was there to eat up the monster. Well, now, what do you do if you're that other monster in a situation like that?
There's only one thing you can do is throw yourself on the mercy of God.So he did.He threw himself on the mercy of Shiva.When you do that, the God has to show mercy.So Shiva shows mercy, and he says, OK.
Well, that leaves this other starving thing without anything to eat.And he says, well, what about me?And Shiva thinks a minute, and he says, What am I going to eat, he says.He says, eat yourself.So he starts to work.He starts on his feet.
He eats his feet, goes right up, up to his belly and all, from chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, and there's nothing left but his face.And Sheba looks on absolutely ravished by this wonderful display of the nature of life, which lives on eating itself.
It's a horrendous thing. And Shiva, when this triumph lay there before him in this space, he said, I call you face of glory, kirtimukha.
And you'll notice in the Indian shrines and in many Buddhist shrines also, that is up there at the keystone, the face of glory.You will be the gate to me.And no one who refuses to bow before you can ever come to the knowledge of me.
That means, before you can experience the divine, you must reconcile yourself to the fact of life that I've been talking about right along, that horrendous nature of life.
Among the Ainu people of Japan, the bear is their favorite deity, the mountain deity.They sacrifice bears.The bear sacrifice is the great Ainu sacrifice. When they find little bears in the forest, they bring them home.
The women nurse them, actually, and the bears play with their children until they get to be a little bit tough, then the bears put in a little cage.When the bear's about four years old, he is to be returned to his heaven.
The Ainus have the idea that this life is better than the heaven world of the gods.The gods like to visit us.They can visit us only by putting on animal costumes, but they can't take them off again.
And so we do them a favor by releasing them from their costume, eating the costume, and sending them home.So it's time to send the little bear home.And he is told, this may be a little bit rough, but it's all meant very well, and we're going
let you go home now to your parents and tell them how well you've been treated here.And if you will do us the honor of visiting us again, we'll give you the honor of another bear ceremony."
So they kill the little thing and take his skin off with the head and the feet, and they put that on a kind of rack.And they give him a meal of his own bear meat.So here is that same thing again.The god eats the god.
Christ at the Last Supper, this is my body, this is my blood, take ye and eat.This is one of the most thrilling things, I think, about these cross-cultural studies of symbology.
You find the highly sophisticated, sublimated symbols of the high religions, and you can run right back to these crude meals.
Now, that horrendous thing I spoke of this morning, where the young pair are killed and taken out and eaten, they are the God who is androgyne, beyond pairs of alters.Christ is really androgyne.Jesus may not be, but Christ is.
The second person of the Blessed Trinity is male, female, and transcendent of both.So is the bodhisattva.And that pair that were in union and killed and then eaten, this is the background of that meal.And what does it mean?
It means you must recognize that you are living on a divine gift.We recognize it in grace before and after meals.
But there's a saying that I've recited many, many times with the monks in India, which is from the Bhagavad Gita, which is the graceful four meals in India.Brahman, transcendent mystery, is the sacrifice.Brahman is the sacrificer.
Brahman is the sacrificial knife.Brahman is the sacrificial fire.He who recognizes Brahman in all processes and things is on the way to realizing Brahman.That's the grace before you eat a meal.
And it's the same thing that's rendered in this right here.Also, you are now eating spiritual food instead of simply
physical food, that is to say, you're eating food with the understanding of its divine spiritual nature, and the communion meal becomes simply a model for every meal.
Every meal is eaten in a secular way, but this sacrament tells you what the whole thing is.Then, of course, baptism. That's the second birth again.Until you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
That's your own virgin birth.You are now to be born.And the font, the baptismal font, is regarded as the womb of the Church, Mother Church.
And on Holy Saturday, it is sanctified by having the great Easter candle ignited, plunged into it three times, as though there were a sexual act being performed with the prayer.
Before that is done, the water is blessed and crossed and clarified and purified so that it is the virgin font and the divine font.Now that is precisely the symbol of the lingam and yoni in India.There's a tremendously important symbol.
It is the most common worshipped object in India.The lingam is the male organ which is represented as penetrating the female organ from beneath.
And so when you're contemplating that, it's as though you were within the womb of the goddess, which is where you are.
Pathways with Joseph Campbell is a production of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the Myth Maker Podcast Network.It is produced by Tyler Lapkin, executive producer, John Booker.All music exclusively provided by APM Music.
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