foreign the animal envoys of the Unseen power no longer serve as in primeval times to teach and to guide mankind Bears Lions elephants and gazelles are in cages in our zoos man is no longer the newcomer in a world of unexplored planes and forests and our immediate neighbors are not wild beasts but other human beings contending for goods and space on a planet that is whirling Without End around the fireball of a star neither in body nor in mind do we inhabit the world of those hunting races of the Paleolithic millennia to whose lives and lifeways we nevertheless owed the very forms of our bodies and structures of our minds [Music] memories of their animal envoys still must sleep somehow within us for they wake a little and stir when we venture into wilderness they awaken Terror to thunder and again they wake with a sense of recognition when we enter any one of those great painted caves [Music] whatever the inward Darkness may have been to which the shamans of those caves descended in their trances the same must lie within ourselves nightly visited in sleep [Music] foreign listening to Joseph Campbell described those ancient cave paintings I found myself understanding for the first time how profoundly human it is to contemplate our mortality animals obviously experience death too they watch each other die but as far as we know they don't imagine something beyond that we do somewhere around 250 000 to 50 000 BC our earliest ancestors left us the first tangible evidence of mythological thinking they buried their debt as if they were going somewhere evidence of food tools and sacrificial animals has been found in those burial caves as if to wish the dead bon voyage Neanderthal man also seems to have thought that some Godly beings from another world like to drop in for a visit disguised as animals primitive humans depended on those visitors for food and clothing but after killing them either from gratitude for their sacrifice or guilt over their murder the hunters appear to have prepared them for the trip back home high mountain caves have been found with bare skulls preserved ceremoniously and placed in symbolic settings these early humans were obviously disposed to the possibility of another plane of existence one they had to reckon with because their lives were bound to it in some mysterious essential way the very idea gave them hope maybe this difficult Hardscrabble life is not all there is they also had to do some serious thinking how do we get ready for the next one they began to defy stories to bridge the gulf between what they could see and what they could only imagine our first myths perhaps about this world and the world of the Gods Joseph Campbell was fascinated with these first storytellers their Mythic stories were not simply entertaining Tales to be told for amusement around the campfire they were powerful guides to the life of the spirit myths helped our ancestors explain the movement of the sun across the sky the changing of the seasons even the mystery of creation through the Millennia they became what he called the wonderful song of the souls high adventure in this conversation one of the many I taped with Joseph Campbell at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch during the last two years of his life we talked about these first stories and the people who told them like them we too have to come to terms with our immortality and anticipate our destiny with death what do you think our souls owed to ancient myths well the ancient myths were designed to put the minds the mental system into a card with this body system with this inheritance a Harmony of the body to harmonize the mind can ramble off in strange ways and want things that the body does not want and the myths and rights were means to put the mind in accord with the body and the way of life in accord with the way that nature dictates so in a way these old stories live in US they do indeed and the stages of a human development are the same today as they were in the ancient times and the problem of a child brought up in a world of discipline of obedience and of his dependency on others has to be transcended when one comes to maturity so that you are living now Not independency but with self-responsible authority and the problem of the transition from childhood to maturity and then for maturity and full capacity to losing those powers and acquiescing in the natural cause of uh you might say the Autumn time of life and the passage away myths are there to help us go with it accept Nature's Way and not hold to something else the stories are sort of to me like messages in a bottle from Shores someone else has visited first yes and you're visiting those Shores now and these myths tell me how others have made the passage and how I can make them pass and and also what the Beauties are of the way uh I feel this now moving into my own last years you know the the myths helped me to go with it what kind of myth give me a one that has actually helped you well the uh tradition in India for instance of actually changing your whole way of dress even changing your name as you pass from one stage to another when I retired from teaching I I knew that I had to create a new life a new way of life and I changed my manner of of thinking about my life just in terms of that notion of moving out of the sphere of achievement into the sphere of enjoyment and appreciation and relaxing Into The Wonder of it all and then there is that final Passage through the dark gate that well that's no problem at all the problem in middle life when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to lose it is to identify yourself not with the body which is falling away but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle and when you can do that and this is something I learned from my myth what am I am I the uh the bulb that carries the light or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle and this body is a vehicle of Consciousness and if you can identify with the Consciousness you can watch this thing go like an old car there goes the fender there goes this but it's expectable you know and then gradually the whole thing drops off and Consciousness rejoins Consciousness I mean that's it's no longer in this particular environment and the myths the stories have have brought this consciousness well I live with these myths and they tell me to do this all the time and this is the problem which can be done metaphorically understood as identifying with the Christ in you and the Christ in you doesn't die the Christ and you survives death and resurrects or it can be with Shiva Shiva hun I am Shiba and this is the great meditation of the of the the yogis and the Himalayas and one doesn't have even to have a metaphorical image like that if one has a mind that's willing to just relax and identify itself with that which moves it you say that the image of death is the beginning of Mythology what do you mean how is that well all I can say to that is that the earliest evidence we have of anything like mythological thinking is associated with grave burials and they suggest what that men women saw life and then they didn't see it and they wondered about it it must have been I mean it has only two you know imagine what one's own experience would be the person was alive and warm before you and talking to you he's now lying there getting cold beginning to rot something was there that isn't there and where is it now animals have this experience certainly of their companions dying and so forth but there's no evidence that they've had any further thoughts about it also before the time of Neanderthal man it's in his period that the first burials appeared that of which we have evidence the people were dying and they're just thrown away but here there's a concern [Music] have you ever visited any of these burial sites I've been to La mustier that was the one of the earliest burial caves that were found and you find there what they buried with the dead yes these grave burials with grave gear that is to say weapons and sacrifices round about certainly suggest the idea of the continued life beyond the visible one first one that was discovered personally put down resting is over asleep a young boy with a beautiful hand ax beside him now at the same time we have evidence of shrines devoted to animals that have been killed the shrine specifically are in the Alps in very high caves and they are of Cave Bear skulls and there is one very interesting one with the long bones of the Cave Bear in the caves jaw what does that say to you burials my friend has died and he survives the animals that I've killed must also survive I must make some kind of atonement relationship to them the indication is of the notion of a plane of being that's behind the visible plane and which is somehow supportive of the visible one to which we have to relate I would say that's the basic theme of all mythology that there is a world that there is a visible pla an invisible plane supporting the visible one now whether it is thought of as a world or simply as an energy that differs from time and time and place to place what we don't know supports what we do know that's right the basic hunting myth I would say is of a kind of Covenant between the animal world and the human world where the animal gives its life willingly they are regarded generally as willing victims with the understanding that their life which transcends their physical entity will be returned to the soil or to the mother through some ritual of restoration and the principal rituals for instance and the principled divinities are associated with the main hunting animal the animal who is the master animal and the sends the flux to be killed you know the Indians of the American Plains it was the Buffalo you go to the northwest coast it's the salmon the great festivals have to do with the Run of salmon coming in when you go to South Africa the island the big magnificent Antelope is the principal animal for the Bushmen for example and the principal animal that is the one that furnishes the food the food so they're they're grew up between human beings and animals a bonding as you say which required one to be consumed by the other that's the way life is do you think this troubled the early early man absolutely so that's why you have the rights because it did trouble them what kind of Rights rituals of appeasement to the animals of thanks to the animal very interesting aspect here is the identity of the hunter with the animal you mean after the animal after the animal has been killed the hunter then has to fulfill certain rights in a kind of participation mistake a Mystic participation with the animals whose deaths he has brought about and whose meat is to become his life so the killing is not simply Slaughter at any rate it's a ritual act it's a recognition of your dependency and of the voluntary giving of this food to you by the animal who has given it it's a beautiful thing it turns life into a mythological experience the Hut becomes what it becomes a ritual The Hunt is a ritual expressing a hope of Resurrection that the animal was food and you needed the animal to return and some kind of respect for the animal that was killed that's the thing that gets me all the time in this uh hunting ceremonial system respect respect for the animals and more than respect I mean that animal becomes a messenger of divine power you see and you wind up as the hunter killing the message killing the god does what does this do does it does it cause guilt does it cause the kill this one is wiped out by the myth it is uh it is not a personal act you are performing the work of nature for example in Japan and uh Hokkaido Northern Japan among the ainu people whose principled Mountain deity is the bear when it is killed there is a ceremony of feeding the bear a feast of its own flesh foreign and he is present he served his own meat for dinner and there's a conversation between the mountain God the bear and the people they say if you will give us the privilege of entertaining you again we'll give you the privilege of another bear sacrifice if the Cave Bear were not appeased the animals wouldn't appear and these primitive Hunters would starve to death so they began to perceive some kind of power on which they were dependent greater than their own and that's the power of the animal master now when we sit down to Neil we thank God you know our idea of God for having given us this these people thanked the animal and is this the first evidence we have of an act of worship yes of power Superior to man yeah and and the animal was Superior because the animal provided food well now in in contrast to our relationship to animals or we see animals as a lower form of life and in the Bible we're told you know we're the Masters and so forth uh early hunting people don't have that relationship to the animal the animal is in many ways Superior he has powers that the human being doesn't have and then certain animals take on a Persona don't they the Buffalo The Raven and the eagle very strongly well I was up in the northwest coast back in 1932 they have a wonderful trip and the Indians along the way were still carving totem poles The Villages had new totem poles still and there we saw the Ravens and we saw the Eagles and we saw the animals that played roles in the midst and they had the character the quality of these animals that are very intimate knowledge and and friendly neighborly relationship to these creatures and then they killed some of them you see [Music] the animal had something to do with the shaping of the midst of those people just as the Buffalo for the Indians of the Plains paid an enormous role they're the ones that bring the tobacco a gift the mystical pipe and all this kind of thing it comes from a buffalo and when the animal becomes The Giver of a ritual and so forth they do ask the animal for advice and the animal becomes the model for how to live you remember the story of the buffalo's wife that's a basic legend of the of the Blackfoot tribe and is the origin Legend of their buffalo dance rituals by which they invoke the cooperation of the animals in this play of life wouldn't you realize the size of some of these tribal groups to feed them required a good deal of meat and one way of acquiring meat for the winter would be to drive a buffalo herd to Stampede it over a rock's cliff [Music] well this story is of a Blackfoot tribe long long ago and they couldn't get the uh Buffalo to go over the cliff the Buffalo would approach the cliff and then turn aside so it looked as though they weren't going to have any meat for that winter well the daughter of one of the houses getting up early in the morning to draw the water for the family and so forth looks up and there right above the cliff Where the Buffalo and she said oh if you only come over I'd marry one of you and to her surprise they all began coming over that was surprise number one surprise number two was when one of the old buffaloes the shaman of the herd comes and says all right girly off we go oh no she says it oh yes she said you made your promise we've kept our side of the bargain look at all my relatives here dead off we go well the family gets up in the morning and they look around and wear as many haha you know with the father you know how Indians are he looked around he said she's run off of the Buffalo [Music] you could see about the footsteps so he says uh I'm gonna get her back so he puts on his walking moccasins bow and arrow and so forth and goes out over the plains he's gone quite a distance when uh he's he feels he better sit down and rest and he comes to a place that's called a buffalo wallow Where the Buffalo like to come and roll around get the lice off and roll around in the mud so he sits down there and is thinking what he should do now when Along Comes a magpie that's a beautiful flashing bird and it's one of those clever birds that has shamanic qualities magical magical and the man says to him oh beautiful bird said my daughter ran away with a buffalo um uh have you seen would you hunt around see if you can find her out on the plane somewhere and The Magpie says well there's a lovely girl with the Buffaloes right now over there just a bit away well they said the man will you go tell her that her her daddy's here her father's here at the Buffalo wallow Magpie flies over and uh the girl is there among the Buffalo they're all asleep I don't know what she's doing knitting or something that's kind and The Magpie comes over close to her and he says your father's over at the wallow waiting for you oh she said this is terrible this is dangerous I mean he these Buffalo they'll kill us you tell them to wait I'll be over I'll try to work this out so her Buffalo husbands behind her and he wakes up and takes off a horn he says go to the wallow and get me a drink so she takes the horn and goes over and there's her father he grinds up by the Army says come see no no no this is real dangerous the whole herd they'll be right after us I have to work this thing out now let me just go back so she gets the water and goes back and he fight for fun I smell the blood of an Indian you know that sort of thing and she says no nothing of the kind he says yes indeed so he gives a buffalo Bellow and they all get up and they all do a slow Buffalo dance with their tails raised and they go over they trample that poor man to death so that he disappears entirely he's just all broken up to pieces and all gone the girl's crying and her Buffalo husband says so you're crying this is my daddy he said yeah but what about us there are children our wives our parents and you crying about your daddy well apparently he was a kind of sympathetic compassionate Buffalo and he said well I'll tell you if you can bring your daddy back to life again I'll let you go so she turns to The Magpie and says see Peck around a little bit and see if you can find a bit of Daddy and The Magpie does so and he comes up finally with a vertebra just one little bone and the little girl says that that's plenty now we put this down on the ground and she puts her blanket over it and she sings a revivifying song a magical song with great power and presently yes there's a man under the blanket she looks Daddy all right but he's not breathing yet a few more stanzas of Whatever the song was and he stands up and the Buffalo are amazed and they say well why don't you do this for us we'll teach you now our buffalo dance and when you will have killed our families you do this dance and sing this song and we'll all be back alive again that's the basic idea through the ritual that Dimension is struck which transcends temporality and out of which life comes back into which it goes and it goes back to this whole idea of death burial and Resurrection not only for human beings but for the animals too so the story of the buffalo's wife was told to confirm the reverence that's right what happened when the white man came and slaughtered this animal of reverence that was a sacramental violation I mean the in the 80s when the buffalo hunt was undertaken 1800 years ago and so far uh when I was a boy whenever we went for sleigh rides we had Buffalo robe buffalo buffalo buffalo robes all over the place this was the the sacred animal to the Indian these Hunters go out with repeating rifles and then shoot down the whole hood and leave it there take the skin to sell and the body's left to rot this is a sacrilege and it really is a sacrilege it turned the it turned the Buffalo from a thou doing it the Indians addressed the Buffaloes an object of reverence it is addressed life is it now I mean trees and Stones everything else you can address anything as a thou and you can feel the change in your psychology as you do it the ego that sees a thou is not the same ego that sees and it your whole psychology changes when you address things as an it whether it's away and when you go to war with the people the problem of the newspapers is to turn those people into its so that they're not dolls that was an incredible moment in in the evolution of American society when the Buffalo was slaughtered that was the final exclamation point behind the destruction of the Indian civilization because you were destroying can you imagine what this experience must have been for people within 10 years to lose their environment to lose their food supply to lose the object of the central object of their ritual life so it is in your belief that that it was in this period of hunting man and woman the time of hunting man that that human beings begin to sense a stirring of the Mythic imagination The Wonder of things that they didn't know uh there is this burst of magnificent art and all the evidence you need of a Mythic imagination in full career he visited some of the great painted caves oh yes tell me what you remember when first you looked upon those underground well you didn't want to leave here you come into an enormous chamber like a great Cathedral with these animals painted and they're painted with a Life Flight the life of a ink on silk in the Japanese painting and when you realize the darkness is inconceivable we're there with electric lights but in a couple of instances the concierge the man who was showing us through turned off the lights and you were never in Darker darkness in your life it's like a I don't know just a complete knockout of you don't know where you are whether you're looking north south east or west all orientation is gone and you're in a darkness that never saw the sun then they turn the lights on again you see these gloriously painted animals a bull that will be 20 feet long and painted so that the haunches will be represented by a swelling in the rock you know they take account of the whole it's incredible do you ever look at these primitive art objects and think not of the art but of the man or woman standing there painting or creating I find that's where I speculate oh this is what hits you when you go into those caves I can tell you that what was in their mind when they were doing that and that's not an easy thing to do and how did they get up there and how did they see anything and what kind of light did they have the little flashing torches throwing flickering things in it to get something of that Grace and Perfection and with respect to the problem of beauty is this beauty intended or is it something that is the natural expression of a beautiful spirit you know what I mean when you hear a bird sing the beauty of the bird's song is this intentional in what sense is it intentional but it's the expression of the bird the beauty of the bird's Spirit you might almost say and I think that way very often about this art to what degree was the intention of the artist what we would call aesthetic or in what to what degree expressive you know and to what degree something that they simply had learned to do that way it's it's a to her point when a spider makes a beautiful web the beauty comes out of the spider's nature you know it's instinctive Beauty and how much of the beauty of our own lives is of our the beauty of being alive and how much of his his conscious intentional that's a big question you call them Temple caves why why Temple the temple with images and stained glass windows cathedrals odd a landscape of the Soul you move into a world of spiritual images that's what this is when Gene and I my wife and I drove down from Paris to this part of France we stopped off at chart Cathedral there is a cathedral when you walk into the cathedral it's the mother womb of your spiritual life mother Church all the forms around are significant of spiritual values and the imagery is in anthropomorphic form a God and Jesus and the Saints and all in human form he went forward then we went down to Alaska the images were in animal form the form is secondary the message is what's important the message of the Cave the message of the cave is of a relationship of time to Eternal powers that is somehow to be experienced in that place now I can tell you when you're down in those caves it's it's a strange transformation of Consciousness you have you feel this is the womb this is the place from which life comes and that world up there in the sun with all those food that's a secondary world this is primary I mean this just overcomes you you had that feeling I had it every time now what were these caves used for the speculations that uh are most common of Scholars interested in this is that they had to do with the initiation of boys into the hunt uh you go in there it's dangerous uh it's very dangerous it's completely dark it's cold and dank you're banging your head on projections all the time and it was a place of fear and the boys were to overcome all that and go into the womb of the earth and the shamans or whoever it was that would be helping you through would not be making it easy and then there was a release once you got into that vast torchlet chamber down there what was the tribe what was the tradition trying to say to the boy that is the wombland from which all the animals come right and the rituals down there have to do with the generation of a situation that will be propitious for the hunt and the boys were to learn not only to hunt but how to respect the animals and what rituals to perform and how in their own lives no longer to be little boys but to be men because those hunts were very very Dangerous Hunts believe me and these are the original men's right sanctuaries where the boys became no longer their mother's sons but their father's Sons don't you wonder what effect this had on a on a boy well you can you can go through it today actually and and cultures that are still having the initiations with young boys they give them an ideal a terrifying ideal that the youngster has to survive makes a manner you know what would happen to me as a child if I went through one of these rights as far as well we know what they do in Australia I want a boy I guess to be you know a little bit uh on uh governable um One Fine Day the men come in and they're naked except for Stripes of white down that have been stuck on their bodies and stripes with their men's blood they use their own blood for glue gluing this on and they're swinging the bull drawers which are the voice of the spirits and they come as spirits the boy will try to take the Refuge with his mother she'll pretend to try to protect him the men just take him away and mother's no good from then on you see he's no longer a little boy he's in the men's group and then they put him really through an ordeal these are the rights you know of circumcision sub-incision and the whole purpose is to turn him into a member of the tribe and a hunter and a hunter because that was the way of life yeah but most important is to live according to the needs and values of that tribe he is initiated in a short period of time into the whole culture context of his people so myth relates directly to ceremony and tribal ritual and the absence of myth can mean the end of ritual a ritual is the enactment of a myth by participating in a ritual you are participating in a myth and what does it mean you think to young boys today that through absent these myths well the confirmation ritual is the counterpart today of these rights as a little catholic boy uh you uh choose your confirmed name the name you're going to be confirmed by that and you go up but instead of having them uh scarify you knock your teeth out and all the the bishop gives you a mild slap on the cheek it's been reduced to that nothing's happened to you the the Jewish counterpart is the bomb it's from and whether it works actually to affect the psychological transformation I suppose will depend on the individual case there's no problem in these old days boy came out with a different body and he'd gone through something what about what about the female I mean it did most of the figures in the in the temple caves are are male was this was this a kind of secret society for males it wasn't a secret society it wasn't the boys had to go through it now which the we don't know exactly what happens with the female in this period because we have very little evidence to tell us in primary cultures today the girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation it happens to her I mean nature does it to her and so she has undergone the transformation and what is her initiation typically it is to sit in a little Hut for a certain number of days and realize what she is how does she do that she sits there she's now a woman and what is a woman a woman is a vehicle of life and life has overtaken her she is a vehicle now of Life woman's what it's all about the the the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment she's identical with the Earth goddess and her powers and she's got to realize that about herself the boy does not have a happening of that kind he has to be turned into a man and voluntarily become a servant of something greater than himself the woman becomes the vehicle of nature the man becomes a vehicle of the society the social order and the social purpose so what happens when a society no longer Embraces powerful mythology what we've got on our hands as I say if you want to find what it means not to have it to have a society without any rituals read the New York Times and you'd find well the news of the day or young people young people who don't know how to behave in a civilized society after I imagine 50 of the crime is by young people in their 20s and early 30s that just behaved like barbarians Society has provided them no rituals in which they become members there's been a reduction or reduction reduction of ritual even in the Roman Catholic Church my God they've translated the mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations so that uh I mean every time now that I I I read the Latin of uh and uh the mass or something that I I get that pitch again that it's supposed to give a language that throws you out of the field of your Domesticity you know the ultimate's turned so that the priest is backished to you and with him you address yourself outward like that now they've turned the altar around it looks like junior junior child giving a demonstration and and it's all homey and cozy and they play a guitar they play guitar listen they've forgotten what what the function of a ritual is is to pitch you out not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time so ritual that once conveyed an inner reality is now merely formed and that's true in in in the rituals of society the and the personal rituals of marriage and religion well with respect to Ritual it must be kept alive and uh so much of our ritual is dead it's extremely interesting to read of the Primitive Elementary cultures uh how the the folk tales the myths they uh transforming all the time in terms of the circumstances of those people people move from an area where let's say the vegetation is the main support out into the plains most of our Plains Indians uh in the period of the horse riding Indians you know had originally been of the Mississippian culture along the Mississippi in uh is settled dwelling uh towns and agriculturally based Villages and then they received the horse from the Spaniards and it makes it possible then to venture out in the planes and handle a great hunt of the the Buffalo herds you see and the mythology transforms from vegetation to Buffalo and you can see the structure of the earlier vegetation mythologies under the mythologies of the the Dakota Indians and the Pawnee Indians and the Kiowa and so forth you're saying that the environment shapes the story they respond to it do you see but we have a tradition that comes from the first millennium BC somewhere else and we're handling that it has not turned over and assimilated the qualities of our culture and the new things that are possible and the new vision of the universe it must be kept alive the only people that can keep it alive are artists kind or another that the artist is his function is the mythologization of the environment and the world the artist being the poet the musician the author exactly the writer yes and I think we've had a couple of greats in the recent times I think of James Joyce's as such a revealer of the mysteries of growing up and becoming a human being and for me he and Thomas mon were my my principal gurus who might say as I was trying to shape my own life I think in the visual arts there were two men whose work seemed to be to handle mythological themes in a marvelous way and one was Paul clay and the other Picasso these two men really knew what they were doing all the way I think and had a great versatility in there Revelations I mean our artists are the myth makers of our day the myth make is in earlier days over the counterparts of our artists they drew the paintings on the walls they performed the rituals there's an old romantic idea uh in German Das folk District I'd say that they uh poetry of the traditional cultures and the ideas come out of the folk they do not they come out of an elite experience the experience of people particularly gifted whose ears are open to the song of the universe and that they speak to the folk and there is their answer from the folk which is then received as an interaction but the first impulse comes from above not from Below in the shaping of folk Traditions so who would have been in these Early Elementary cultures as you call them the equivalent of The Poets today the shamans the shaman is the person who has been his late childhood early youth could be male or female had a overwhelming psychological experience that turns them totally inward the whole unconscious has opened up and they've fallen into it and it's been described many many times and it occurs all the way from Siberia right through the Americas down to Tierra del Fuego it's a kind of schizophrenic crack up the shaman experience what kind of experience dying and resurrecting you know being on the brink of death and coming back actually experience the death experience people who have very deep dreams dream is a great source of the spirit and then people who in the woods have had mystical encounters well let me let me try to be specific about it the shaman becomes some person in in a society who is drawn by experience from the normal world into the world of the gifted that's right most of us think of Shaman as a magician but they play a much more important role than simply being uh oh no they played a role that the priesthood plays in our society these are the first priests well there's a major differences I see it between a shaman and a priest a priest is a functionary of a social sort the society worships certain deities in a certain way and the priest becomes ordained as a functionary to carry on that ritual and the deity that to whom he is devoted is a deity that was there before he came along the Shaman's powers are symbolized in familiars deities of his own personal experience and his authority comes out of a psychological experience not a social ordination do you understand what I mean and the one who had this psychological experience this traumatic experience this ecstasy would become The Interpreter for others of Things Not Seen he would become the interpreters of a Heritage of mythological uh life you might say yes and ecstasy was a part of it very often in the show Money the transdance for example in the in in the Bushman Society now there's there's a fantastic example of something the little Bushman groups uh their whole life is one of great great tension uh the male and female Sexes are uh when we say in in a disciplined way separate the the men have a certain field of uh concerns their weapons and the poisons and the hunt and all that and the women have a certain field of concern they're bringing up the children the nourishing of the children and so forth and so on only in the dance do the two come together and they come together this way the women sit in a circle or a group and they then become the center around which the men dance and they control the dance and what goes on with the men through their own singing and beating of the thighs what's the significance of that that the woman is controlling the dance well the woman is life and the man is the servant of life and during the course of this circling circling is a very tense style of movement the men have uh suddenly that one of them will pass out he's entrance now and this is a description of an experience [Applause] [Music] when people sing I dance I enter the Earth I go in at a place like a place where people drink water I travel a long way very far when I emerge I'm already climbing I'm climbing threads I climb one and leave it then I climb another one then I leave it and I climb another when you arrive at God's place you make yourself small you come in small to God's place you do what you have to do there then you return to where everyone is you come and come and come and finally you enter your body again all the people who have stayed behind are waiting for you they fear you you enter enter the Earth and you return to enter the skin of your body and you say that is the sound of your return to your body then you begin to sing Masters are there around they take hold of your head and blow about the sides of your face this is how you manage to be alive again friends if they don't do that to you you die you just die and are dead friends this is what it does this that I do this and tum here that I dance [Music] this is an actual experience of Transit from the Earth to through the realm of mythological images to to God or to the seat of the of power it becomes something of the other mind of us it is exactly the other mind and and the way God is imaged God is transcendent of finally of anything like a name of God as the Hindus say Beyond names and forms Beyond names and forms no tongue has soiled it no word has reached it but Joe can can westerners grasp this kind of mystical trans theological experience it does transcend theology it leaves theology behind I mean if you're locked to the image of God in a culture where science determines your perceptions of reality how can you experience this ultimate ground that the shamans talk about the best example I know in our literature is that beautiful book by John nyhot called Black Elk speaks Black Elk was blackout was a young Sioux or Dakota is it also called a boy around nine years old before the American Cavalry had encountered the suit they were the great people of the Plains and this boy became sick his psychologically sick his family and telling the typical Shaman Story the child begins to tremble and his uh immobilized and the family is terribly concerned about it and they send for a shaman who had had the experience in his own youth to come as a psychoanalyst you might say and pull the youngster out of him but instead of relieving him of the deities he is adapting him to the deities and the deities to himself you might say this it's a different problem from that of psychoanalysis where you you remember I think it was Nietzsche who said be careful less than casting out your devil you cast out the best thing that's in you uh here the deities who have been encountered of the powers let's call them uh are retained the connection is retained it's not broken and uh and these men then become the spiritual advisors and gift givers of their people well what happened with this young boy he was about nine years old was he had a vision and the vision is described and it's a vision prophetic of the terrible future that his tribe was to have but it also spoke of the possible positive aspects of it it was a vision of what he called The Hoop of his Nation realizing that it was one of many hoops which is something that we haven't all learned well enough yet and the cooperation of all the Hoops of all the nations and Grand processions and so forth but more than that it was a experience of himself as going through the Realms of spiritual uh imagery that were of his culture and assimilating their import and it comes to one great statement which for me is a key statement to the understanding of myth and symbols he says I saw myself on the central mountain of the world the highest place and I had a vision because I was seeing in a sacred manner of the world and the sacred Central Mountain was Harney peak in South Dakota and then he says but the central mountain is everywhere that is a real mythological realization why it distinguishes between the local cult image Harney Peak and it's connotation the center of the world the center of that of the world is the Hub of the universe axis Mundi you know the Central Point pole star around which all revolves the central point of the world is the point where Stillness and movement are together movement is time Stillness is eternity realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal that moment but uh forever is the sense of Life realizing how this moment in your life is actually a moment of Eternity and the experience of the Eternal aspect of what you're doing in the temporal experience is the mythological experience and he had it so so is the central mountain of the world Jerusalem Rome benarus lhasa Mexico City you know Mexico City Jerusalem is symbolic of a spiritual Principle as the center of the world so this little Indian was saying there is a shining point where all lines intersect that's exactly what he said he was saying God has no circumference God is an intelligible sphere that's a sphere known to the mind not to the senses whose Center is everywhere and circumference nowhere and the center bill is right where you're sitting and the other one is right where I'm sitting and each of us is a manifestation of that mystery [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]