The First Storyteller #3

1. Stories are powerful guides to harmonize the needs of the mind with the needs of the body. (Mind and body dualism).
2. Myths assist not only in active living but in preparation for death.
3. Earliest burial rituals found among the Neanderthals. A. Human burial ritual B. Animal ritual of restoration for sustenance.
4. The hunt as ritual respect and worship of the animal killed.
5. Blackfoot Buffalo Ritual A. The buffalo bride B. The Buffalo Dance of resurrection.
6. The psychological power of personalization and depersonalization.
7. The destruction of culture.
8. The caves of Lescaux (France) What was the aesthetic intention, if any?
9. Chartres Cathedral, mother womb of your spiritual life. The form is secondary, the message important.
10. Initiation Rituals- Young boys inducted into the hunting society.
11. A ritual is the enactment of a myth. 1. Catholic Confirmation. 2. Jewish Bar Mitzva
12. Woman as a giver of life and nourishment- a miracle of nature.
13. Myth transforms itself, or is transformed, to respond to pressures of the environment. Planting and Hunting cultures.
14. Artists are the keepers and developers of myths. James Joycel, Thoma Mann, Paul Clay, Picasso- inspirations for Campbell.
15. Shamans and artists are inspired and inspirers of myth. Priests are functionaries of the social sort; Shamans of psychological experience.
16. Myth must make the local, universal The experience of the eternal in the temporary.