There is what I would call the hero journey, the night sea journey, the hero quest, where the individual is going to bring forth in his life something that was never beheld before.

The two greatest works of war mythology in the west ... are the Iliad and the Old Testament... When we turn from the Iliad and Athens to Jerusalem and the Old Testament we find a single-minded single deity with his sympathies forever on one side. And the enemy, accordingly, no matter who it may be, is handled... pretty much as though he were subhuman: not a "Thou" but an "It."

Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message.

Gods suppressed become devils, and often it is these devils whom we first encounter when we turn inward.

If you want to see what a society really believes in, look at what the biggest buildings on the horizon are dedicated to.

No one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and possibilities.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.