One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of it.

A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself... The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises... If you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing... The demon that you swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.

My writing is of a very different kind from anything I've heard about. All this mythological material is out there, a big gathering of stuff, and I have been reading it for some forty- or fifty-odd years. There are various ways of handling that. The most common is to put the material together and publish a scholarly book about it. But when I'm writing, I try to get a sense of an experiential relationship to the material. In fact, I can't write unless that happens ... I don't write unless the stuff is really working on me, and my selection of material depends on what works.

What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.

Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end.

And if there was no Fall, what then of the need for Redemption? What god was offended and by whom? Some especially touchy cave bear whose skull had been improperly enshrined?