Returning the Keys

OK, so the next sections were:

Chapter III: Return
It's time for the hero to return to the world with his prize.

1. Refusal of the Return
Buuut sometimes he'd rather stay.

2. The Magic Flight
Other times there's something chasing him, and he has to cleverly escape.

3. Rescue from Without
And other times, someone has to come in there and get him.

4. The Crossing of the Return Threshhold
So he crosses back into the world, charged with otherworldy energy.

5. Master of two Worlds
He appears to his followers dressed in the horrible majesty of the other world.

6. Freedom to Live
I really don't know what Campbell is trying to say here.

Chapter IV: The Keys
Campbell draws us a picture of the monomyth. He says that the myths have changed over time, and so the core, powerful, monomythic symbols are often buried under a mountain of "secondary anecdote and rationalization."



And that's basically all there is to it. As far as reflection on these sections ...

I drove back from a concert in Dallas today, and during the drive spent a while thinking about symbol and reference. Note this editorial by Campbell, in the section "Master of the Two Worlds":

Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor, of their reference. No matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they remain but convenient means, accomodated to the understanding. Hence the personality or personalities of God -- whether represented in trinitarian, dualistic, or unitarian terms, in polytheistic, monotheistic or henotheistic terms, pictorially or verbally, as documented fact or as apocalyptic vision -- no one should attempt to read or interpret as the final thing. The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey.

I like this sentiment, but I also find myself kind of skeptical of it. Sure, I'll buy that God, whatever God is, is so immense that it will overflow any set of symbols we use to represent it. But at the same time, there seem to be issues of logic and paradox that can't be simply whitewashed with an appeal to "mystery". To use examples that appears frequently in this book: is God light, or is God darkness? Is God creator, or destroyer, or both ... and if both, how is that possible? Does the ego survive death, or does it not? If the mythical symbols point to real things, then where the symbol deviates from the thing it references, it would seem to become obfuscating, and possibly deceptive or downright false.