We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea. To say that divinity informs the world and all things is condemned as pantheism. But pantheism is a misleading word. It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but that is not the idea at all. The idea is trans-theological. It is of an indefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being.
Joseph CampbellIt is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph CampbellDragons, you know, we have a good deal of biology and zoology about the dragon; we know their habits. The dragon tends to guard things, and he usually has these guarded in a cave... Now dragons don't know what to do either with beautiful girls or gold, but they just hang on. There are people like this. We call them creeps.
Joseph CampbellMythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion.
Joseph CampbellYou must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you donโt know what was in the newspapers that morning, you donโt know who your friends are, you donโt know what you owe anybody, you donโt know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.
Joseph Campbell