The Masks of God, Volume 3: Occidental Mythology by Joseph Campbell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This third volume of Campbell's expanded mythological examination starts out with a good grounding in Sumerian, Babylonian, and other Near East influences and pulls the themes effortlessly forward through Greek and Roman and all the way into the Christain. If that isn't enough, we also get a huge amount of exploration in the Jewish, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Muslim traditions.

We get a very thorough if not utterly exhaustive look into all of these. I enjoyed the rather obvious and fascinating connections between all of these. All these mythos travel, reincarnate and evolve.

While this may be rather obvious to the rest of us now, let's put this all in perspective: it's 1964.

Campbell is rocking the world to a very thorough Jungian analysis of all the world's mythologies and religions, breaking them all down to their fundamental archetypes and underlying similarities.

And he's DESTROYING EVERYONE'S RELIGIOUS TOYS.

And he's doing it with ruthless logic, impeccable research, and encyclopedic knowledge of all traditions. :)

Cool. Right?

Campbell ushered in a brand new world. :)


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