Joseph Campbell – Mythos II : The Shaping of Our Mythic Tradition

Joseph Campbell – Mythos II : The Shaping of Our Mythic Tradition / 2008 Acorn / 282 Minutes / http://www.acornmedia.com /

This PBS documentary culls together a number of speeches that Joseph Campbell presented around a number of topics dealing with eastern religions and mythology. Each of these talks provides individuals with a number of facts and musing about these facts by one of the most respected scholars in the field. While the presentation of these talks – done here by Susan Sarandon – is a little bit on the extraneous side – the breaking of Campbell’s speeches by a softer and less verbose individual is nice at points. PBS did a great job in using Sarandon and Peter Kater’s music to gradually ease lay people in to the ore nuanced, nitty-gritty types of discussions that Campbell has during these five talks.

The speeches are oriented well on this film as well: “The Inward Path”, the first speech, provides individuals with the most basic myths and beliefs of each of the major eastern religions. After that, “Enlightend One” and “Our Eternal Seves” are essential to understand “The Experience of God” and “The Way to Illumination”, respectively. This iss because “Enlightened One” deals with information about Buddha and the stage of enlightenment, while “The Experience of God” focuses in further on Tibetan Buddhism and explaining the transitory state that is death. In much the same way, “Our Eternal Selves” provides viewers with the first cut about how yoga could be used to achieve a state of transcendence, while “The Way to Illumination” builds off f that by focusing in on a specific subset of yoga (Kudalini) and breaks down the seven chakras that individuals are said to have in/on their body.

For those individuals that want to go further into the field of eastern religion and mythology, Campbell mentions a number of terms and other authors that could conceivably be referenced. While these references are at least twenty years old, what individuals could do is reverse citation search the authors, to see which contemporary authors referenced what were in Campbell’s time current works and are likely now “modern classics”. These speeches are informative without being too dry, and provide individuals with a great deal of what they need to know about the eastern religions. Twenty years after eir death, Joseph Campbell still has a lot to say to scholars of religion and lay people alike; purchase this DVD and see exactly what one can learn from a master of the religion / mythology field.

Rating: 8.0/10