Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II
    Unavailable
    Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II
    Unavailable
    Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II
    Audiobook21 hours

    Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II

    Written by Joseph Campbell

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Explore the power of myth as it flowered in Asia

    In this second volume of "The Masks of God"—Joseph Campbell's major work of comparative mythology—the preeminent mythologist looks at Asian mythology as it developed over the course of five thousand years into the distinctive religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Japan.

    "The Masks of God" is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell's masterworks. On completing it, he wrote: "Its main result for me has been the confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed, amplified and turned about, distorted, reasserted, and today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 9, 2018
    ISBN9781543662627
    Unavailable
    Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II
    Author

    Joseph Campbell

    Dr. Joseph Campbell has a doctor of ministry degree in Christian Leadership from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri. He is the senior pastor of Cross Creek Church in Lebanon, Missouri, and the executive vice president of Intercessory Prayer Ministry International (IPMI). His ministry focuses on equipping, empowering, and releasing people to fulfill their purpose and destiny in God. He and his wife, Caroline, a pediatrician, are the proud parents of two children.

    Related to Oriental Mythology

    Related audiobooks

    Social Science For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Kabbalah

      Feb 28, 2020

      Think of the mystical religion Kabbalah, and many will immediately picture the singer Madonna. As one of a number of celebrities to embrace its ancient wisdom in recent years, she has sought to study and understand Kabbalah’s deep teachings, often in

      5 min read

    • Article

      Dick Frizzell

      Oct 10, 2021

      The veteran artist and author’s latest book is THE SUN IS A STAR: A voyage through the universe, a guide to the wonders of the galaxy, with artworks (Massey University Press, $45 hb). I’m currently researching the history of religion, so I’m thinking

      1 min read

    • Article

      Word Search

      Aug 26, 2022

      Word Search
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Iľja Rákoš

      Dec 23, 2020

      I’d been out of the hospital following (let’s call it) treatment for COVID-19 about a month. My hospital ward of 50 patients had one oxygen concentrator. Despite my blood-oxygen saturation levels of 90%, that device wasn’t coming my way anytime soon.

      6 min read

    • Article

      YOUNG & EMERGING

      May 1, 2018

      YOUNG & EMERGING
      4 min read

    • Article

      How To Be: Lessons From The Early Greeks By Adam Nicolson Review – Ancient Wisdom For Today’s World

      Jul 18, 2023

      There was a wonderful, revelatory moment in Adam Nicolson’s last book, Life Between the Tides, where he suddenly telescoped out from the Scottish rock pool he was describing in order to meditate on the work of the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus,

      3 min read

    • Article

      The History Of Yōkai

      Nov 4, 2021

      The History Of Yōkai
      9 min read

    • Article

      Beyond “Survival Of The Fittest”

      Oct 15, 2021

      If you learned about Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory in school, most likely it was presented as a straightforward explanation for how species have evolved to become what they are today. Individuals with different traits competed, and the stronge

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Way Out OF OUR Fragmented LANDSCAPE

      Mar 18, 2023

      A REVIEW OF THREE RECENT BOOKS ON the Himalaya earlier this month opened with the provocation: ‘Whose Himalaya is it?’ Surveying writing on the Himalaya from the earliest colonial encounters to the present day, Amish Raj Mulmi (Himal Southasian, Marc

      2 min read

    • Article

      Faith For Troubled Times

      May 18, 2021

      Faith For Troubled Times
      4 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Sep 1, 2022

      In my job, travelling the world making films on history and culture, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring religion in its many manifestations. Religion, after all, is a gift for the camera: full of colour, action and often moving rituals. It’s also a c

      3 min read

    • Article

      Love Is Not a Destination: The Millions Interviews Kaveh Akbar

      Jul 21, 2021

      Without some physiological sublimation of the inert font into a living poem—whether via breath or the movement of ocular muscles along a line, fingers across Braille—the poem remains ink on a page. If a poem augurs any holiness, it begins in the body

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Wide Question

      Aug 18, 2021

      The Wide Question
      15 min read

    • Article

      Better With Butter

      May 18, 2021

      IN MARCH OF LAST YEAR, just after San Francisco started sheltering in place, my teaching position came to an abrupt halt. The school would finish the spring semester, but there’d be no fall 2020 incoming class. The adjunct faculty? We were all being

      2 min read

    Reviews for Oriental Mythology

    4/5

    156 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      From the beginning I liked Oriental Mythology quite a bit more than the first volume Primitive Mythology, even if like that first book, it could be rather dry and scholarly and somewhat rambling in its arguments. I think part of that is I felt I could trust his arguments more. So much of Primitive Mythology is based on archeological finds it made me continually wonder how many of his "facts" had been overtaken by new discoveries in the over 50 years that passed since the 1959 publication of that first volume. In this volume, however, covering the mythologies of Egypt, India, China and Japan he's on more solid ground, with written scripture forming the basis of his study rather than archeological finds or the fluid rituals of indigenous peoples. I found the first part of this book comparing and contrasting Oriental (Hindu, Buddhist) and Occidental (Judeo-Christo-Muslim and Classical Greek) mythologies fascinating and illuminating. He sees the two cultures, though joined at the root, "branching off" into divergent and distinctive worldviews. What is key in oriental theology Campbell believes, is the "myth of eternal return" i.e. reincarnation until and unless you can break through the unending cycle to find the divinity within. He further sees a distinction between Hinduism ("let it go") and Far Eastern Buddhism ("let it come."). Western mythologies in contrast have a vision of creation/fall/restoration in a cosmic conflict where sides must be chosen. The role of the individual in the two different worldviews are also very different. Campbell states of the Western view: Not life as a good soldier, but life as a developed, unique individual, is the ideal. And we shall search the Orient in vain for anything quite comparable. There the ideal, on the contrary, is the quenching, not the development, of ego.I'm not sure I'd describe the Western tradition as so different in those terms. Certainly the Christian mystical and monastic tradition emphasizes self-sacrifice, renunciation of the world and quenching of the ego as well. Although Campbell also mentions the idea of another strain in Western mythology distinct from the monotheistic "People of the Book." The Greek idea of theology as poetry and play rather than dogmatic scripture, and the Greeks in the conflict between Man and God are on Man's side--as encapsulated in the myth of Prometheus. I have to admit, if I'm aligned with any mythological school as described in the book, it's this rebellious one I find most attractive, and it's an interesting way of looking at the various mythologies. I'm curious how he'll further develop those themes in the next volume, Occidental Mythology.But most fascinating was Campbell's demonstrations of the connections between and elucidations of Asian religions, mythology and philosophy. I don't think I've yet squeezed all I can out of his survey of Indian, Chinese and Japanese history and culture. I'll need to reread this book someday after further reading on the subject. Parts were so dry I admit I did some judicious skimming, and wished to skim more. Yet it's rare that I read a book that both makes me understand better other ideas and books I've come across and leaves me hungry for more. In the course of reading this book I put together for myself a 14-page timeline of history and was busy each night after reading chapters of Oriental Mythology googling articles on Indian and Chinese history and Hinduism and Buddhism and was browsing the Religion and History section of my neighborhood bookstore recently looking for more to read on the subjects Campbell touched upon. The book made me want to reread Lao-Tzu and Confucius and delve into Sanskrit literature--hopefully after reading Oriental Mythology with more understanding. Right to the last sentence Campbell was offering up piercing insights.
    • 3/5
      After examining the mythology of "primitive" societies in his previous volume, here Joseph Campbell turns his examination of mythology to the East, the Orient. He begins with ancient Egypt, before devoting the bulk of his text to the development of various movements (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism) in India, concluding with relatively short chapters on China, Japan, and Tibet.Egypt being included in this volume, while the Middle East is included in the succeeding volume on occidental mythology, shows that Campbell is not above glossing over the finer details in pursuit of making the case he wants to make. In this case, the second volume of Masks of God is where Campbell begins to make his argument that Eastern religion drives its adherents to turn away from the world, accepting one's place in the social strata while seeking to end the cycle of death and rebirth by detachment. That Campbell thinks Western religion drives its adherents to focus on what they can achieve with their single life, and is therefore ultimately superior to Eastern religion, isn't laid on super thick but is definitely obvious.But what we get through that sometimes distasteful bent is a well-researched and interesting examination of the development of Eastern religion. The largest portion of the text is devoted to Buddhism and reading about how it developed, grew in India, and then was pushed out to China, Japan, and Tibet (with mutations in each culture that reflect its unique perspective) is genuinely compelling. The chapter regarding Tibet does not shy away from the atrocities committed against the monks there by the Chinese, but one of Campbell's strengths is that he's not afraid to be critical. He certainly has no problem puncturing the ideals that religions would like you to believe about them by discussing the historical realities of how they actually functioned.There is a similar psychoanalytic frame of reference here as in the first volume, but it's not as prominent (probably because there's more substance here to work from than there was with the first) and so it's not as problematic. Indeed, this volume is superior to the first all around. It's still thick, and fact-dense, and reads like a textbook, but Oriental Mythology is a more rewarding read, both in information and readability (it's still very slow, though) than its antecedent.
    • 4/5
      Excellent information, not crazy about the delivery.Really not crazy about it.I remember liking the Masks of God series a lot more when I was a teenager, but on a recent 2nd run-through I found it somewhat less satisfying. It made me feel unclean for liking Campbell in the first place, actually.Why?For one thing, Oriental Mythology is replete with massive amounts of information and anecdotes concerning various Eastern religions, but Campbell makes it quite clear where his personal judgments reside. This is where Comparative Mythology becomes something more like "Competitive Mythology". Apparently some religions are simply better than others. Some are more sophisticated. Some are more mature. (According to Campbell, these would be the religions of the West.) And the man gets very patronizing when he describes some of the quaint 'Oriental' myths that fail to measure up, so to speak.The part I liked: as usual, I did enjoy some of the material taken directly from sacred texts. Good stuff, although where Campbell takes his interpretations is often a different matter.Note: This is also the volume where I invented the Joseph Campbell Masks of God drinking game.(You are strongly advised not to try it. I'm fairly sure it leads to fatal alcohol poisoning.)Anyway, it's fairly simple. Every time Joseph Campbell mentions one of the following, you must take a drink: The Decline of the West by Oswald Spengler, Thomas Mann, or Nietzsche.*One final thought: Joseph Campbell fervently fondled the words of great men (not women, never any women!) men like Nietzsche, Spengler, and company.. and he was NOT sorry. He was possibly their greatest fan. They are the glorious shining bricks in this pompous monolith of mythological dissection.This series is the sort of thing that begs to be read aloud at your next DMV visit or on public transport of your choice. Make a fun game out of it. Who will beat you to death with their shoe first?* For total obliteration, add James Joyce and Freud.
    • 2/5
      the space given to india versus china, japan is outrageous; and why even include tibet, w the space given to it?this is not to mention the exclusion of so many other literary mythic cultures of (jfc) "the orient" (korea, vietnam, burma, thailand, mongolia being the major ones)do i even have to call this orientalist? given the fucking title? but it is orientalist, just to b cleargod the reductionism and stereotyping is HORRIBLE, and all follows the colonial logics laid out by the likes of mircea eliade, jung, and durkheim; ofc, campbell lacks the analytic insight of any competent structuralist
    • 2/5
      the space given to india versus china, japan is outrageous; and why even include tibet, w the space given to it?this is not to mention the exclusion of so many other literary mythic cultures of (jfc) "the orient" (korea, vietnam, burma, thailand, mongolia being the major ones)do i even have to call this orientalist? given the fucking title? but it is orientalist, just to b cleargod the reductionism and stereotyping is HORRIBLE, and all follows the colonial logics laid out by the likes of mircea eliade, jung, and durkheim; ofc, campbell lacks the analytic insight of any competent structuralist