Find The Pregnant Virgin

BILL MOYERS: What about the virgin birth? Suddenly the goddess reappears in the form of the chaste and pure vessel chosen for God’s action.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, in the history of Western religions, this is an extremely interesting development. The virgin birth comes in by way of the Greek tradition. When you read your four gospels, the only one with the virgin birth in it is the gospel according to Luke, and Luke was a Greek.

BILL MOYERS: And there was in the Greek tradition images, legends, myths of virgin births?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All of them. I mean, Leda and the swan, and Persephone and the serpent, and this one and that one and the other one. The virgin birth is represented throughout.

BILL MOYERS: This was not a new idea, then, in Bethlehem and…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: No. What is the meaning of the virgin birth? In India, there is this system of the kundalini, as it’s called, the idea of the centers, psychological centers up the spine. And they represent the psychological planes of concern and consciousness and action. The first is at the rectum, and this is that of alimentation. The serpent represents this, you know, a traveling esophagus going along just eating, eating, eating, eating. And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t eating. And then the second, the second center is at the sex organ center, and that’s the urge to procreation. The third center’s called, is at the navel, and this is where you eat and want to consume. And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s the mastering and smashing and trashing of others, do you see? This is the aggressive mood.

Now, the first is an animal instinct, the second is an animal instinct, the third is an animal instinct, and these three centers are located in the pelvic base, do you see. The next one is at the level of the heart, and this is the opening of compassion. And there you move out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual. Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form. At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction. At the heart chakra, there is again the male and female organs in conjunction, but in gold. This is the virgin birth. It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man. Do you understand?

BILL MOYERS: And it happens?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: When you are awakened at the level of the heart to compassion and to suffering with the other person. That’s the beginning of humanity. And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, the heart level.

BILL MOYERS: You say it’s the beginning of humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born, the virgin birth, it’s a god who emerges from that chemistry.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, and you know who that god is? It’s you. All of these symbols in mythology refer to you. You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all; what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you. Have you been reborn? Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?

BILL MOYERS: Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it is that the begetter is the spirit. It is a spiritual birth. The virgin conceived of the Word, through the ear.

BILL MOYERS: The Word came like a shaft of light.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes. And now, the Buddha was born from his mother’s side, at the level of the heart chakra. 

That’s a symbolic birth; he wasn’t born from his mother’s side, but symbolically he was.

BILL MOYERS: 

But the Christ came the way you and I come.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, but of a virgin.

BILL MOYERS: 

Which is a power greater than…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And then, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, her virginity was restored. So nothing happened physically, you might say. It’s not a physical birth. It’s symbolic of a spiritual transformation, that’s what the virgin birth is about. And so deities are born that way who represent beings who act in terms of compassion, and not in terms of the lower three centers.

BILL MOYERS: If you go back into antiquity, do you find images of the Madonna as the mother of the savior child?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, what you have as the model for the Madonna actually is Isis, with her child Horus at her breast. This was the actual model for the Madonna symbol.

BILL MOYERS: Isis? Tell me that story.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: This is a prime myth in this period of the Goddess as the redeemer, the one who goes in quest of the lost spouse or lover, and through her loyalty and descent into the realm of death, recovers him. Isis and her husband Osiris were twins who were born of the goddess Nut. And their younger relatives were Seth and Nephthys, who were also twins born from Nut. Seth planned to kill his brother Osiris, and he took Osiris measurements secretly and had a wonderful sarcophagus built that would exactly fit Osiris. So there was a hilarious party in progress one time among the gods, and Seth trots in this sarcophagus, and he says, “Anyone whom this perfectly fits can have it as his sarcophagus.” And everybody at the party tried, and when Osiris got in, of course he perfectly fit. Just at that time, 72 accomplices come rushing out and they clap the lid on, strap it together and throw it in the Nile.

Now, this is the death of the god. Whenever you have a death of an incarnation, a god like this, you’re going to have a resurrection, you can wait for that. So he goes floating down the Nile and is washed ashore in Syria. And a beautiful tree grows up and incorporates the sarcophagus in its own trunk. So this is this wonderful tree with a glorious aroma. And the local king has just had a son born to him, and he is also at the same time going to build a palace. The aroma of this tree is so wonderful, he cuts it down and brings it in to be a central pillar in the main room of the palace.

Poor little Isis, whose husband has been thrown into the Nile, starts this wonderful quest for Osiris, So she comes to the place where the palace is, and learns of the wonderful aroma and she suspects this is Osiris. And she gets a job as nurse to the just-born little child. Well, she lets the child nurse from her finger. And she loves the little child, and she decides to give it immortality. So she does this by placing him in the fireplace in the fire, to burn away gradually his mortal body. But being a goddess she could keep that from killing him, you understand. And when that would happen, she would convert herself into a swallow, and fly mournfully around the pillar where her husband is.

Well, one evening the child’s mother came in to this room while this scene was in progress, saw her child in the fireplace, let out a scream, and that broke the spell, and they had to rescue the child from incineration. Meanwhile the swallow had turned into this gorgeous nurse, Isis, and the nurse gave an explanation of the situation, and she said, “By the way, it’s my husband that’s in that pillar there, and I’d he grateful if you could just let me take it home.” So the king came in and he said, “Certainly.” So he removes the pillar, gives it to Isis and it’s put on a barge. So on the way back to the Nile, she removes the lid, the cover of the sarcophagus and lies on top of her dead spouse and conceives of her dead spouse this is an image that occurs in Egyptian art all the time, out of death comes life and all this kind of business and when they land she in the papyrus swamp gives birth to her child Horus with the dead Osiris beside her.

This is the motif for the Madonna, actually, it becomes the Madonna. In Egyptian symbology, Isis represents the throne, the Pharaoh sits on the throne of Isis, as the child sits on the mother lap. And when you look in the cathedral of Chartres in the west portal, you will see the Madonna as the throne with the little child Jesus as the world emperor on her lap: That is the same image that’s come over.

BILL MOYERS: And you say the Christian fathers took this image?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Definitely, and they really say so. You read the second letter of Peter, and he says those forms which were merely mythological forms in the past, are now incarnate and actual in our savior. There was a mythology of the savior, the dead and resurrected god, and it’s associated with the moon, which dies and is resurrected every month. And you have the three nights dark, and you have Christ three nights in the tomb, and three days in the tomb, and all this kind of thing. It’s an intentional saying, that which was merely talked about is now fact. And no one knows what the date of Christmas ought to be, but it’s put on the date of the winter solstice, when the nights begin to be shorter and the days longer, the birth of light. And so there is an idea of death to the past and birth to the future in our lives and in our thinking all the time. Death to the animal nature, birth to the spiritual, and these symbols are talking about it one way or another.

BILL MOYERS: So when the…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: And the goddess is the one who brings it about. The second birth is through the second mother. Notre Dame de Paris, Notre Dame de Chartres, our mother church, we are reborn by entering and leaving a church.

BILL MOYERS: And it doesn’t mean physically, it means…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: That there’s a power that’s unique to the feminine principle.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It can be put that way. You can… it’s not necessarily unique to her, you can have rebirth through the male, also. But using this system of symbols, the woman becomes the regenerator.

BILL MOYERS: There’s that wonderful saying in the New Testament of Jesus. “In Jesus there is no male or female.” In the ultimate sense of things there is neither.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That would have to be. I mean, if Jesus represents the source of our being, we are all as it were thoughts in the mind of Jesus. He is the word that has become flesh in us, too.

BILL MOYERS: You and I would possess characteristics that are both male and female.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, actually the body does, And in that Yin-Yang figure from China, you know, in the dark fish or whatever you want to call it, there’s a light spot and in the light one there’s a dark spot. That’s how they can relate; you couldn’t relate at all to something that, of which you did not participate, into which you did not participate at all. That’s why the idea of God as the absolute other is a ridiculous idea, there could be no relationship to that which is absolute other.

BILL MOYERS: The question arises, in discussing the male-female principle, the virgin birth, the spiritual power that gives us the second birth. The wise people of all time have said that we can live the good life if we learn in fact to live spiritually. But how does one learn to live spiritually when one is of the flesh? Remember, Paul said, “the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh.” How do we learn to live spiritually?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that was the in ancient times and in primitive times, the business of the teacher. He was to give you the clues to a spiritual life, that was what the priest was for. Also, that was what the ritual was for. A ritual can be defined as an enactment of a myth, by participating in a good, sound ritual, you are actually experiencing a mythological life. And it’s out of that that one can learn to live spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: These stories of mythology actually point the way to the spiritual life.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. You’ve got to have a clue. You’ve got to have a road map of some kind, and these are all around us. They’re here.

BILL MOYERS: And the road map to which the goddess stories are pointing is the map of elevating the spiritual to an equality with the physical, so that you live in union with those two.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes. There you’ve come to the real sanctity of the earth itself, because that is the body of the goddess. When Yahweh creates, he creates the earth and breathes his life into it. He’s not there, she’s there. Your body is her body. And there’s that kind of identity.

BILL MOYERS: Well, that’s why I’m not so sure that the future of the race and the salvation of the journey is in space. I think it is well right here on earth in the body, in the womb of all of our being.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it certainly is. I mean, when you go out into space what you’re carrying is your body and if that hasn’t been transformed, space won’t transform it for you. But thinking about space may help you to realize something.

BILL MOYERS: You certainly thought about space in this wonderful passage. You were describing a page out of the National Geographic Atlas of the World, but you read this and something happened to you.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: “What these pages opened to me was the vision of a universe of unimaginable magnitude and inconceivable violence. Billions upon billions, literally, of roaring thermonuclear furnaces scattering from each other, each thermonuclear furnace being a star and our sun among them. Many of them actually blowing themselves to pieces, littering the outermost reaches of space with dust and gas, out of which new stars with circling planets are being born right now. And then from still more remote distances beyond all these there come murmurs, microwaves, which are echoes of the greatest cataclysmic explosion of all, namely, the Big Bang of creation, which, according to recent reckonings, must have occurred some 18 billion years ago.”

That’s where we are, kiddo. And if you realized that, you realize how really important you are, you know, one little microbit in this great magnitude. And then out of that must come the experience that you and that are in some sense one, and that you partake of all of that

BILL MOYERS: And it begins here.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: It begins here.

I Was an ARTIST, Stupid...!!

BILL MOYERS: 

So the courage to love became the courage to affirm against tradition, whatever knowledge stands confirmed in one’s own experience.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: 

Why was that important in the evolution of the West?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it was important in that it gives the West this accent, as I’ve been saying, on the individual, that he should have faith in his experience, and not simply mouth terms that have come to him from other mouths. I think that’s the great thing in the West. The validity of the individual’s experience of what humanity is, what life is, what values are, against the monolithic system.

BILL MOYERS:

Was there some of this in the legend of the Holy Grail?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

 Yes. Wolfram has a very interesting statement about the origin of the Grail. 

He says the Grail was brought from heaven by the neutral angels. 

There was the war in heaven between God and Lucifer, and the angelic hosts that sided one group with Lucifer, and the other with God. Pair of opposites, good and evil, God and Satan. 

The Grail was brought down through the middle, the way of the middle, by the neutral angels.

BILL MOYERS: 

What is the Grail representing, then?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, the Grail becomes the, what we call it, that which is attained and realized by people who have lived their own lives. So the story very briefly is of this — I’m giving it now as Wolfram gives it — but this is just one version. The Grail King was a lovely young man, but he had not earned that position. And the Grail represents the fulfillment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness. And he was a lovely young man, and he rode forth from his castle with the war cry, “Amor!” And as he’s riding forth, a Moslem, a pagan warrior, a Mohammedan warrior, comes out of the woods, a knight. And they both level their lances at each other, they drive at each other, and the lance of the grail king kills the Mohammedan, but the Mohammedan lance castrates the Grail King.

What that means is that the Christian separation of matter and spirit, of the dynamism of life and the spiritual, natural grace and supernatural grace, has really castrated nature. And the European mind, the European life, has been as it were, emasculated by this; true spirituality, which would have come from this, has been killed. And then what did the pagan represent? He was a person from the suburbs of Eden. He was regarded as a nature man, and on the head of his lance was written the word, “Grail.” 

That is to say, nature intends the grail. Spiritual life is the bouquet of natural life, not a supernatural thing imposed upon it. 

And so the impulses of nature are what give authenticity to life, not obeying rules come from a supernatural authority, that’s the sense of the Grail.

BILL MOYERS: 

And the Grail that these romantic legends were searching for is the union once again of what had been divided? 

The peace that comes from joining?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The grail becomes symbolic of an authentic life that has lived in terms of its own volition, in terms of its own impulse system, which carries it between the pairs of opposites, of good and evil, light and dark. Wolfram starts his epic with a short poem saying, “Every act has both good and evil results.” Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, that is to say, intend the light, and what the light is, is that of the harmonious relationships that come from compassion, with suffering, understanding of the other person. This is what the Grail is about.

BILL MOYERS: 

When we say God is love, does that have anything to do with romantic love? Does mythology ever link romantic love and God?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s what it did do. Love was a divine visitation, and that’s why it was superior to marriage. That was the troubadour idea. If God is love, well, then, love is God, okay.

BILL MOYERS: There’s that wonderful passage in Corinthians by Paul, where he says “Love beareth all things, endureth all things.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s the same business. Love knows no pain.

BILL MOYERS: And yet, one of my favorite stories of mythology is out of Persia, where there is the idea that Lucifer was condemned to hell because he loved God so much.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, and that’s a basic Muslim idea, about Iblis, that’s the Muslim name for Satan, being God’s greatest lover. Why was Satan thrown into hell? Well, the standard Story is that when God created the angels, he told them to bow to none but himself. Then he created man, whom he regarded as a higher form than the angels, and he asked the angels then to serve man. And Satan would not bow to man. Now, this is interpreted in the Christian tradition, as I recall from my boyhood instruction, as being the egotism of Satan, he would not bow to man. But in this view, he could not bow to man, because of his love for God, he could bow only to God. And then God says, “Get out of my sight.” Now, the worst of the pains of hell insofar as hell has been described is the absence of the beloved, which is God. So how does Iblis sustain the situation in hell? By the memory of the echo of God’s voice when God said, “Go to hell.” And I think that’s a great sign of love, do you agree?

BILL MOYERS: Well, it’s certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: That’s why I’ve liked the Persian myth for so long. Satan as God’s lover.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah. And he is separated from God, and that’s the real pain of Satan.

BILL MOYERS: You once took the saying of Jesus. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” You once took that to be the highest, the noblest, the boldest of the Christian teachings. Do you still feel that way?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, I think the main teaching of Christianity is, “Love your enemies.”

BILL MOYERS: Hard to do.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I know, well, that’s it — I mean, when Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant’s ear there, in the Gethsemane affair, and Jesus said, “Put up your sword, Peter,” and put the ear back on, Peter has been drawing his sword ever since. And one can speak about Petrine or Christian Christianity in that sense. And I would say that the main doctrine of Christianity is the doctrine of Agape, of true love for he who is yours, him who is your enemy.

BILL MOYERS: How does one love one’s enemy without condoning what the enemy does, accepting his aggression?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, I’ll tell you how to do that. “Do not pluck the mole from your enemy’s eye, but pluck the beam from your own,” do you know?

Now, I have a friend whom I met by chance, a young Buddhist monk from Tibet. You know, in 1959 the Communists crashed down and bombed the palace of the Dalai Lama, bombarded Lhasa, and people murdered and all that kind of thing. And he escaped, he escaped at the time of the Dalai Lama. And those monasteries, I mean, there were monasteries with 5,000 monks, 6,000 monks, all wiped out, tortured and everything else. I haven’t heard one word of incrimination of the Chinese from that young man. There is absolutely no condemnation of the Chinese here. And you hear this from the Dalai Lama himself. You will not hear a word of condemnation. This recognition of the way of life through which that vitality of the spirit is moving in its own way. I mean, these men are sufferers of terrific violence, and there’s no animosity. I learned religion from them.

KING MOB

Third Citizen

Your name, sir, truly.

CINNA THE POET

Truly, my name is Cinna.

First Citizen

Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.

CINNA THE POET

I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

Fourth Citizen

Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.

I Never Knew You Wrote Such Bloody Awful Poetry....

The Revolutionary Shelley

“ All these people that you read and people read in schools and universities and all those people that were writing at the same time, in just about that period: in those twenty or thirty years, all these people were infected with enthusiasm for the French Revolution, and wrote about the revolutionary upsurge. Even Wordsworth in his youth used to write about the menace of gold and the power of reason. People used to talk about how reason could be used to undermine superstition; how individual working people are as good as the people who dominate them and so on and so on. And those things happened because of the French Revolution. And the French Revolution, of course, terrified people in England, particularly as it went on and developed, and as the left in the French Revolution began to seize power and consolidate it.

           And what happened in the British ruling class was a great terror took them, seized them with terror. They were terrified that the Jacobin ideas, the revolutionary ideas, the ideas of reason as opposed to superstition would start to grip people in Britain. And therefore, they moved troops into the cities, and they unleashed the most terrible repression right across the whole country. All different kinds of spies were put into the cities; put into workplaces in order to detect whether or not there was any evidence of any Jacobin or revolutionary ideas of one kind or another.

Commemoration to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in Manchester.

Commemoration to the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in Manchester.

           And Shelley developed in that atmosphere. 

This is the point even at Eton where he refused to take part in the fagging[38]operation. Even at Oxford where he challenged the rights of people to tell him whether he should believe in God or not. Those ideas developed in his mind because of the French Revolution. And what comes out of all his poetry? 

The first thing that comes out of all his poetry is a deep, intense hatred and contempt for authority. For people who put themselves in authority without any responsibility for the people over whom they put themselves in authority. A contempt for those who have become masters of other people, not because the people have chosen them but as a result either of some superstition or most of all because of their wealth. All of his poetry is about that. 

Queen Mab, which is the poem that he wrote when he was eighteen, bursts with rage and fury at all the drones, the sycophants, the parasites and the people who were in charge. I can’t read these poems out to you in full. I might one day have to have a meeting about eight or nine hours long, and then all these poems can be read out in full. 

But the whole purpose of this meeting is to get you to go back and get hold of Queen Mab and read it—particularly the central cantos. It’s a story of a young woman asleep and a faerie coming from above, a great spirit coming and taking her so that she can look upon the world. He takes her right out into the stratosphere so that she can look down upon the world and see all the things that go on: all the kings and priests and statesmen and parasites that operate there.

The whole of his poetry bursts out in rage. All the way through his life, he couldn’t stand the idea of illegitimate authority.

           And then there is his greatest poem of all: The Mask of Anarchy, the poem that he wrote about the massacre at Peterloo in 1819 when the trade unionists who were meeting in the fields outside Manchester were mowed down by the yeomanry on the orders of the local magistrate.

           Shelley wrote in this poem about the Tory government that was in power at that time; about Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary; about Sidmouth the Home Secretary; about Eldon, the Lord Chancellor.[39] He wrote about these people in language which is so furious and so simple that it has come down to us all the way through the ages. Quoting Mask of Anarchy:

"And the little children, who

Round his feet played to and fro,

Thinking every tear a gem,

 Had their brains knocked out by them.

 Clothed with the Bible, as with light,

 And the shadows of the night,

 Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy

 On a crocodile rode by.

 And many more Destructions played

 In this ghastly masquerade,

 All disguised, even to the eyes,

 Like Bishops, lawyers, peers, or spies.”[40]

 

“I met Murder on the way—

He had a mask like Castlereagh—

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven blood-hounds followed him:

All were fat; and well they might

Be in admirable plight,

For one by one, and two by two,

He tossed them human hearts to chew

Which from his wide cloak he drew.

Next came Fraud, and he had on,

Like Eldon, an ermined gown;

His big tears, for he wept well,

Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

           He hated the whole damn lot of them. Every single one of them that fell into any one of those categories or any other category which are parasitical, in one way or another, upon the working people. He loathed and hated them. The whole of his poetry reeks with that hatred. But the other point is this: that it wasn’t just a simple hatred of authority. He understood the reasons for that authority—he understood the central cause of that authority.”

“And I should say this, just in case anyone thinks at any stage that I think Shelley was a saint or a marvelous creature that was blameless in his own life or in his writings. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, that little bit of drivel and doggerel that I quoted earlier about the kisses and the seductions. That type of thing runs through not only his poetry but also through a lot of his life. I think from time to time, and the fellow was prepared to “help himself,” he wasn’t prepared to assume responsibility. It was easy enough for him to say: “the answer is separation,”[59] but the problem is, do both parties want to be separated?—that often is the problem. And he didn’t always apply his mind to that, in the terms of the equality of people. And therefore, I think that when you look at his life, and the way he lived his life, there is none of the perfection and the stringency of the ideals that appear in his poetry.[60] And although there is some of it in his life, he certainly doesn’t live up to it.

          But the point really is this, that the poetry and the writings and the things that he believed in, were there. There is a guide and a marker as to how people should determine their lives and how people could determine their lives if society wasn’t founded on constraint right the way through—all those economic restraints and domestic constraints that exist. And then people say, and they say it often with a lot of justifications, that there is a lot of talk about Shelley as a great revolutionary poet that doesn’t fit the facts; it doesn’t fit a lot of the things that Shelley wrote about. There were many, many aspects of Shelley’s writing, which appear to us to be quite crudely reformist, revisionist, if you want to use that kind of language, or even elitist if you want to use that kind of language. But there’s a whole number of things that he wrote, which indicate a rather different kind of approach when compared to the one that I have been talking about. Can I find it?

An early printing of Shelley's  Prometheus Unbound.

An early printing of Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.

          What he wrote in the Preface was that he was interested in reform and change in society. And he said he wanted to write only for an educated and intelligent group of people so that they can understand his intentions.[61] There’s a whole lot of his writing which talks about the dangers of the mob and dangers of doing things too fast. For example: the pamphlet that I mentioned earlier, A Philosophical View of Reform, and another one very similar to it which he wrote in 1817 called A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote. As a matter fact in these writings, Shelley comes out against universal suffrage, against the thing which many other reformers were advocating; reformers who were much less revolutionary in my opinion than Shelley. He comes out against universal suffrage on the ground that no one wants to move too fast, that you can’t be quite sure about what the mob will do because they are not educated people and they’re not intelligent or sensitive people and they might make nonsense of universal suffrage and therefore, we ought to be careful about it.

          And it is no good talking about Shelley in an idealistic or utopian matter—hagiography, writing about the man as though everything that he said fitted into the proper Socialist Workers Party line. In fact a lot of things go right against the kinds of things that I’ve been supporting. How can such clearly contradictory ideas such as those he espouses in the Preface to Prometheus Unbound, for example opposing universal suffrage, how can they be reconciled with the rest of his radical philosophy. Let me put it this way: a number of people, and particularly people who come to the revolutionary cause out of the ruling classes—a species, with which I have some familiarity[62]—people such as this are like Shelley, who was all his life, or most of his life, very much isolated from the working people about whom he wrote and for whom he wanted to change the world. Such people, according to the degree to which they’re isolated from the working class, can have a “fear of the mob.”[63]

          Now, I don’t know, but there may be one or two people here that have not read a novel by George Eliot[64] called Felix Holt. Now, some people have boils and some people have piles, and that’s very unfortunate. And some people haven’t read Felix Holt and that is also unfortunate [laughter]. The good news is that you can put that right. You can read it; but you don’t have to tell anyone that you haven’t read it before, and you can read it and pretend you read it ten years ago [laughter]. I know that’s what most you should have done because it’s a marvelous novel, a wonderful radical novel. 

          Felix Holt is about a man who is perhaps the nicest man ever written about in the whole of literature. You can’t help reading Felix Holt without feeling a fantastic affection for him. He was lovely. Everybody loved him. He wanted to change the world. He wanted to be with the workers, and he didn’t like all the hypocrisy of the society, and he was wonderful. There was one thing about him and there is also one thing about George Eliot, and that was they both had this “fear of the mob”; uncertainty about unleashing the mob. The same uncertainty Shelley expresses in A Philosophical View Reform.  Shelley was uncertain about universal suffrage and had debates with Willian Godwin about universal suffrage. Godwin being a Methodist minister was in favour of universal suffrage. Like Felix Holt, Shelley was afraid of the mob. And if there is one nightmare, the traditional nightmare of the bourgeois novelist or poet, or for that matter the average Labour Member of Parliament [laughter], it is the nightmare of the mob in action. There is a passage in Felix Holt I want to point out. It is a Saturday, and he’s sitting there thinking about his ideas, and he realizes there is an election underway and that there is a riot[65] [laughter]!  He thinks, “Oh my God, there’s a riot!,” and he leaves home to keep the people in check, and he talks to them about what they should do. But a lot of people are stampeding, demanding and picketing, and kicking Clive Jenkins in the balls[66] [laughter] and all that kind of thing. Shouting down Albert Booth.[67] All these things are happening and he’s telling the people, “For god’s sake, watch it, don’t do it. You can’t do this! It’s the mob!” And he’s standing there and here come the yeomanry, and they shoot him because they think he’s the leader [laughter]!

An early edition of Eliot’s  Felix Holt: The Radical , first published in 1866.

An early edition of Eliot’s Felix Holt: The Radical, first published in 1866.

            That’s the terror of every bourgeois radical. That's the nightmare that they have: they wake up sweating in the night [laughter]. All the Labour MPs, all the reformers, they wake up and think, “My god, have we unleashed the mob by what we’re doing? [Laughter.] Shelley! You’re preparing the sea of blood! Remember what Godwin said? Perhaps that’s what’s gonna happen. The mob! We’ve got to watch out for the mob! The mob aren’t intelligent!” And all these prejudices sank in to the ruling class mind, that sensitive, intelligent and ruling class mind, the one that doesn’t go along with his class’ ideology. But then that sort of person comes to some other ideology, some reforming or radical ideology, and then he finds he’s worried about what he unleashes. Just like the people who 40 years later read Felix Holt. Nice, radical bourgeois people read George Eliot, read Felix Holt and thought oh it’s the nightmare! The mob, the election riot and Holt who is shot through the shoulder and then put in prison, by the way, for leading the riot in the first place[68] [laughter].

          And that sort of idea is in some of Shelley. People aren’t—they aren’t perfect. And they don’t have ideas which are pure. And there’s some part of Shelley all the time forging its way out, here and there, in some of his poems. You know, there’s a passage in The Mask of Anarchy where he says the answer to violent oppression is to fold your arms when the yeomanry come next time.[69] He’s talking about the people that had been mowed down at Peterloo, women and children, murdered at Peterloo. And he says, “next time, fold your arms resolutely, thinking about the laws of England, the good old laws of England. Stand there and talk about the law of England, and stand there and let them mow you down and then maybe everything will be all right but whatever you do, don’t unleash yourself.”

          And that was one part of him. Of course, there was another side of him, the side that I talked about already, the side of him that says, “Yes. You’ve got to get them [laughter]. You’ve got to move and get them.[70]” There are two sides to his personality, constantly coming out. 

          Shelley wrote a whole series of letters to a woman called Elizabeth Hitchener when he was a young man. He had a long correspondence with her. And I’ll just read out one section of it but this is typical of his other side, a side that was different from the reformist side, the side that was worried about the mob. There was another side to him as well. Shelley wrote: “They may seethe and they may riot, and they may sin at the last moment. The groans of the wretched may pass unheeded till the latest moment of this infamous revelry (of the rich), till the storm burst upon them and the oppressed take ruinous vengeance on their oppressors.”[71] “Ruinous vengeance”? What the hell is that? That’s Felix Holt saying exactly what you shouldn’t do! [laughter]. In Shelley’s poem Swellfoot the Tyrant, which is a wonderful poem, which has been sneered at by a lot of people who think it isn’t funny,[72] what he has, is a lot of pigs. [laughter]. The pigs are snorting away and doing everything they are told and then suddenly the pigs turn into people and all the oppressors, all the priests and the parasites and speculators and industrialists and people of that kind and commercialists, they turn into pigs. And the pigs turn into people. And then you have a fantastic scene at the end of the poem in which he has the pigs driven out and killed. What happened to all this talk that you must never take people’s lives, that you mustn’t be a retributionist and you mustn’t seek revenge?[73] And then he goes completely out of school, and now he’s ultra-left in his attitude to what they should do to the pigs[74]: get them out, drive them out, pin them down and stick them in the back! Anything! Just get them! When Shelley is aroused to fury by what he sees going on around him, you see a very different attitude to violence.

          And really it comes to a climax, this division, this contrast between the way in which he thought about revolutions and oppressions and the mob: all these things come to a climax when he writes Prometheus Unbound. Now that’s a very difficult poem to read. I have lots of people who’ve come up to me since we had the meeting at Skegness[75] last year and they say, “Well, I tried to read this thing, this Prometheus Unbound, but it is very difficult to read.” And so it is. It is very difficult to read. But the most important thing about it in my view, is that it brings that contradiction—between his fear of the mob and the need for revolution—to a head and forces it through to some kind of conclusion.

          And this is the story of Prometheus. I was a Greek scholar. I’ll admit it [laughter]. I was a Greek scholar at school. I was very, very good at Greek; we didn’t have to be good at anything else. And, well, I’m not actually all that good at it [laughter]. But anyways, I was a Greek scholar, and we were taught this about Prometheus[76]: we were taught that it was a Greek legend. And it was simply this: that there was a man, Prometheus, who dared to say that Jupiter was not god of the Earth. We were taught this was an absolute scandal, and that Prometheus was a really revolting, subversive figure. And he was treated in a way in which subversive figures ought to be treated. He defied Jupiter, he dared to invent fire, and he had the idea that the science of this invention might advance the cause of mankind instead of advancing the cause of Jupiter. Jupiter’s view was that the science was really a radical idea in the first place, that we would be better off without science of any kind in order that his rule could be more secure. But Prometheus disobeyed Jupiter, invented fire and gave science to humanity and he was treated in a way in which all naughty school boys ought to be treated, which is to be chained to a rock for seven million years [laughter]. And every evening a vulture came and gnawed out his liver which would grow again by the following morning and then the vulture would come again and gnaw it out again. And it was extremely painful. I understand the Turkish authorities in Cyprus are looking into this form of dealing with recalitrants of one kind or another [laughter].

          And the whole thing was taught to us in that way. The original story was written, as a matter of fact, by a man called Aeschylus and it was called Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound.[77] And he did have an idea about how people should rebel against authority. But we were not taught that. I read the whole bloody thing in Greek.[78] I never came to that conclusion; I never even started to come to that conclusion. But anyways, there we are. Here is a man in revolt against authority and he’s chained to a rock.

          Shelley writes a poem about this man chained to the rock and how his lover Asia seeks to get him off the rock. He represents oppressed mankind. Now Asia loved militants. Richard Holmes, whose book is the only one worth reading on the subject,[79] describes her love as militant. She is trying to get him out of there. That’s the point: how the hell do you get him out of there? What do you do to get him out of that situation?[80]

It’s very interesting the way in which critics write about Prometheus Unbound. Because there is another character in this play; in this play/poem.[81] Prometheus Unbound contains some of the most beautiful poetry ever written in the whole history of English literature. But you have here another character called Demogorgon.[82] But what is Demogorgon? You can read all the books you want. You can try looking him up in the index. Everybody discusses it. Who is this Demogorgon? They tell you it is a spirit, some kind of weird thing that Asia goes to and appeals to, to help her save Prometheus. You see her man is in trouble [laughter]. And in the same way you would go to an altar or to some deity and say: “now who can help me save my man” [laughter].

          But actually the original Greek actually assists us here. Because the word “Demogorgon,” as I understand it and as Richard Holmes understands it and as no one else has yet understood it [laughter], comes from two words in Greek: demos, that means “the people” and gorgon, which means “the monster.” He is the “people monster” [laughter].

          Now where does Asia go to save Prometheus? She goes to the “people monster.” She goes down to his cave in Act 2, Scene 4 of Prometheus Unbound which is one of the most fantastic passages in the whole of literature. I am going to find this even if it takes me half an hour to find it. I bloody well got to find this. Act 1 is extremely difficult to read and I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t read it and if I were you I would go straight to Act 2, Scene 4 [laughter]. Quoting Prometheus Unbound:[83]

“Act 2, Scene 4—The Cave of Demogorgon. Asia and Panthea.

            Panthea: What veiléd form sits on that ebon throne?

            Asia: The veil has fallen.

            Panthea:         I see a mighty darkness

              Filling the seat of power, and rays of gloom

              Dart round, as light from the meridian sun.

              — Ungazed upon and shapeless; neither limb,

              Nor form, nor outline; yet we feel it is

              A living Spirit.

            Demogorgon: Ask what thou wouldst know.

            Asia: What canst thou tell?

            Demogorgon:              All things thou dar’st demand.

             Asia: Who made the living world?

             Demogorgon:              God.

             Asia:                                        Who made all

              That it contains? thought, passion, reason, will,

              Imagination?

            Demogorgon:              God: Almighty God.

 Asia: Who made that sense which, when the winds of Spring

              In rarest visitation, or the voice

              Of one belovéd heard in youth alone,

              Fills the faint eyes with falling tears which dim

              The radiant looks of unbewailing flowers,

              And leaves this peopled earth a solitude

              When it returns no more?

            Demogorgon:              Merciful God.

            Asia: And who made terror, madness, crime, remorse,

              Which from the links of the great chain of things,

              To every thought within the mind of man

              Sway and drag heavily, and each one reels

              Under the load towards the pit of death;

              Abandoned hope, and love that turns to hate;

              And self-contempt, bitterer to drink than blood;

              Pain, whose unheeded and familiar speech

              Is howling, and keen shrieks, day after day;

              And Hell, or the sharp fear of Hell?

            Demogorgon:              He reigns.

            Asia: Utter his name: a world pining in pain

              Asks but his name: curses shall drag him down.”

And Asia whips him with agitation, whips him with it. She asks a simple question first: “Is it God who done it? Well, then, what about all the dirty things that are going on? What are you gonna do about that?” All the way through this passage she is whipping him and agitating him.

“Asia: Whom calledst thou God?

          Demogorgon: I spoke but as ye speak,

            For Jove is the supreme of living things.

           Asia: Who is the master of the slave?”

Asking the question, “who is the master of the slave?” And on and on and on until she says:

            “Prometheus shall arise

            Henceforth the sun of this rejoicing world:

            When shall the destined hour arrive?”

Richard Holmes, author of  Shelley: The Pursuit.

Richard Holmes, author of Shelley: The Pursuit.

          And what happens after all of her agitation, her constant agitation?  What happens after Asia demands that Demogorgon bring new ideas to her that he come out of his old religious superstitions and backward ideas, his old racist ideas? What happens? What happens is that two cars emerge out of the cave. Two cars representing change, representing the powers that are going to go after Jupiter and who? deal with him. In one way or another, they’re going to deal with him. I’m not gonna read that out to you. I’ll leave that for you to read. But what I will read is Richard Holmes’ description of what those two cars mean, what they represent. And here is the synthesis, if you like, the coming to grips with the problems that he had all his life about the masses. Would the masses respond and what would happen if they did? What was the problem of the mob? All these things. [Quoting Holmes]:

“There are two chariots mentioned: the one that brings Demogorgon to Jupiter is undoubtedly terrible and violent: Jupiter, authoritarian government, is to be overwhelmed by massive force, and the process in society is to be like a volcanic eruption and an earthquake which “ruins” cities. The etymological reading is surely relevant here. It is the eruption of ‘Demogorgon,’ the ‘people monster.’

         Yet there is also the second chariot with its “delicate strange tracery,” and its gentle charioteer with “dove-like eyes of hope.” This is the chariot which carries Asia and Panthea back to Prometheus, and it seems to indicate that political freedom transforms man’s own nature and substitutes an ethic of love for the ideology of revenge and destruction represented by Prometheus’s curse. The end of Act II leaves both those possibilities open historically. Revolution will come, but how it will come depends on man himself. There are always two chariots. In either case it is inevitable, and it is to be celebrated.”[84]

From the 1813  Queen Mab  edition published by Shelley himself. Foot no doubt has a beautifully bound copy from a later time.

From the 1813 Queen Mab edition published by Shelley himself. Foot no doubt has a beautifully bound copy from a later time.

         Now we don’t say that it is inevitable. But the point is this: that in either case the synthesis there, the dialectic if you like, of the argument about the mob—that the mob might go and supersede itself—is really met in that great passage there. Everyone says that it is the greatest passage ever, but nobody understands what it’s about! They don’t understand what’s going on in his head because they have separated Shelley from his ideas. They don’t understand what the imagery is about. They say: “this is a very beautiful passage; learn it off by heart and shut up.” If you ask any questions they’ll tell you: “Demogorgon, yes that’s all very interesting, Demogorgon’s rather like Mary, the mother of Jesus, that’s the sort of creature Demogorgon is.” They unleash all kinds of fanciful ideas about what Demogorgon stands for.[85] But the fact of the matter is, that you do have a synthesis there coming out of the dialectic of the argument. The fact of the matter is that when you rise up, you can have civil war, bloody revolution and all kinds of violence on the one hand. On the other hand, if you’re strong enough, powerful and forceful enough, you can do it by cutting down on the amount of violence and do it with that gentle “dove-eyed charioteer.”[86] Either way, probably, if the truth be known, it will be a mixture of both. But either way it is to be celebrated. Either way it has to be supported. And the point about Shelley is this: that although there is his statement about writing for elites that aren’t gonna do the job,[87] there is no conclusive proof that whenever he came to test the two ideas.[88] that he came out on that side.[89] There is no evidence at all for this. You read for instance Stephen Spender. Oh, Stephen Spender [laughter]. Stephen Spender, you know, that old Stalinist hack from the thirties who couldn’t even bear to be a Stalinist and who gave that up and then just sort of driveled on in the Times Literary Supplement. And he writes that there’s lots of proof that Shelley at the end of his life gave up his revolutionary ideals.That’s not what happened at all. Prometheus Unbound was written right at the end of his life. There are also all the great poems of 1819 including The Mask of Anarchy and other shorter poems including one that starts off, “An old mad, blind, despised and dying king.”[90] That’s not the line of a man who’s giving up the struggle. His attacks on the Castlereagh administration comes right at the end of his life. Those things happened. And the people that understand Shelley, understand that he would have gone on to develop these themes. The tragedy is that he did die when he did, otherwise he would have gone on to develop his ideas among the rising working-class movement that was taking place.

Nothing is Real if You Don't Believe in Who You Are

I want Balboa. I want Balboa.

You hear that, old man? You tell Balboa.

Nobody can beat me. Tell him what I said.

And he's next. I'm gonna kill him.

Nobody can stop me.

You tell Balboa that. I'm comin' after him.

I want a shot at the title if Balboa's got the guts to meet me in the ring.

My whole life's been directed towards this title.

I live alone. I train alone.

I'll win the title alone. I want him.

He can't duck me forever.

He can run, but he can't hide.

““One time, sparring with another white belt, I was choked out with a ‘guillotine’ choke, where one arm is round your head like a playground headlock and the other under your throat pulling upwards. 

Because it was another beginner, not Chris or another warlord from the control end of the room, the sparring was competitive and – this is interesting – my ego was suddenly invited back into the equation. 

When I’m sparring with Chris the relationship has explicit and implicit safety built into it, I’m not competing, I couldn’t compete, I’m learning. When it’s against Dave, Smasher, my ego would do just as well to pit itself against the hydraulic jaws of a garbage truck. 

Against another white belt, my ego sees a little chance for glory and sidles in where it would best be left out. As the choke took hold and I felt beaten and submitted it were as if the wrench on my neck had opened a valve to an inaccessible cellar where my bruised adolescent self lay hiding. 

I sat quietly afterwards, uncertain of what I felt. 

My wife remarked that I was quiet that evening and I, reluctantly (ego, again) told her what had happened.

She almost thought it funny, not in a derisory way or in a way that made me feel more ashamed and defensive, but in a way that highlighted the idiosyncrasy of my feeling. 

I spoke about it to someone else who doesn’t drink and does Jiu Jitsu and he explained that it’s a contact sport and that these feelings are normal and have to be accepted. I learned an important lesson through that particular experience. 

I had avoided an entire aspect of my nature because of an unwillingness to confront the vulnerability, no, the shame, that is inhered within physical defeat. 

It came to me in this way, this may not be historically true, but mythically it is: 

I.

As a boy I could fight, I had no fear. 

II.

As an adolescent I was not initiated. 

III.

As I awoke, I was not shown how to live at the new frequency, I had only women to observe and ‘role model’. 

• When violence came, as it does to all teenage boys, I was not equipped and the shame killed a part of me, it put it ‘underground’. 

• I was too afraid to try and revive it; it was in adolescence of course that I became a drug addict. 

• I did not become willing to go into The Underworld until I killed the person I had to become to survive my youth. 

• When I finally went there, in my middle years, through the means of Jiu Jitsu, I needed a mentor, in this case Chris, to hold the space for me.”

Russell Brand,

“Mentors.” 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What is the meaning of the virgin birth? 

In India, there is this system of the kundalini, as it’s called, the idea of the centers, psychological centers up the spine. 

And they represent the psychological planes of concern and consciousness and action. The first is at the rectum, and this is that of alimentation. 

The serpent represents this, you know, a traveling esophagus going along just eating, eating, eating, eating. 

And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here if we weren’t eating. 

And then the second, the second center is at the sex organ center, and that’s the urge to procreation. 

The third center’s called, is at the navel, and this is where you eat and want to consume. 

And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s the mastering and smashing and trashing of others, do you see? This is the aggressive mood.

Now, the first is an animal instinct, the second is an animal instinct, the third is an animal instinct, and these three centers are located in the pelvic base, do you see. 

The next one is at the level of the heart, and this is the opening of compassion. 

And there you move out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual. 

Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form. 

At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction. 

At the heart chakra, there is again the male and female organs in conjunction, but in gold. 

This is the virgin birth. It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man. Do you understand?

BILL MOYERS: 

And it happens?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

When you are awakened at the level of the heart to compassion and to suffering with the other person. 

That’s the beginning of humanity. And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, the heart level.

BILL MOYERS: 

You say it’s the beginning of humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born, the virgin birth, it’s a god who emerges from that chemistry.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, and you know who that god is? 

It’s you. 

All of these symbols in mythology refer to you. 

You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all; what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you. Have you been reborn? 

Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?

BILL MOYERS: 

Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it is that the begetter is the spirit. 

It is a spiritual birth. 

The virgin conceived of the Word, through the ear.

BILL MOYERS: 

The Word came like a shaft of light.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes. And now, the Buddha was born from his mother’s side, at the level of the heart chakra. 

That’s a symbolic birth; he wasn’t born from his mother’s side, but symbolically he was.

BILL MOYERS: 

But the Christ came the way you and I come.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, but of a virgin.

BILL MOYERS: 

Which is a power greater than…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And then, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, her virginity was restored. 

So nothing happened physically, you might say. 

It’s not a physical birth. 

It’s symbolic of a spiritual transformation, that’s what the virgin birth is about. 

And so deities are born that way who represent beings who act in terms of compassion, and not in terms of the lower three centers.