The Mythic World of Joseph Campbell

Topic Gaia Nature As Divinity

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother. The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath--the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will make one condition: The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.....Chief Seattle

List of Topics:	The Function of Myth	Myth and Dreams	The Hero's Adventure in Myth
Metaphor and Transcendence	God and Metaphor	The Importance of Myth	Gaia-Nature as Divinity

From The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers: Don't you think modern Americans have rejected the ancient idea of nature as a divinity because it would have kept us from achieving dominance over nature?
How can you cut down trees and uproot the land and turn the rivers into real estate without killing God?

Campbell: Yes, but that's not simply a characteristic of modern Americans, that is the biblical comdemnation of nature which they inherited from their own religion and brought with them, mainly from England. God is separate from nature, and nature is condemned of God. It's right there in Genesis: we are the masters of the world.
But if you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth, rather than having been thrown in here from somewhere else, you see that we are the earth, we are the conscious of the earth. These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth.

Bill Moyers: Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle.

Campbell: There you are, the whole planet as an organism.

Bill Moyers: Mother Earth. Will new myths come from this image?

Campbell: Well, something might. You can't predict what you're going to dream tonight. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from the realizations of some kind that have then to find expression in symbolic form. And the only myth that is going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet, and everybody on it. That's my main thought for what the future myth is going to be.
And what it will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have dealt with - the maturation of the individual, from dependency through adulthood, through maturity, and then to the exit; and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos. That's what the myths have all talked about, and what this one's got to talk about. But the society that it's got to talk about is the society of the planet. And until that gets going, you don't have anything.

Bill Moyers: So you suggest that from this begins the new myth of our time?

Campbell: Yes, this is the ground of what the myth is to be. It's already here: the eye of reason, not of my nationality; the eye of reason, not of my religious community; the eye of reason, not of my linguistic community. Do you see? And this would be the philosophy for the planet, not for this group, that group, or the other group.
When you see the earth from the moon, you don't see any divisions there of nations or states. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.

Bill Moyers: No one embodies that ethic to me more clearly in the works you have collected than Chief Seattle.

Campbell: Chief Seattle was one of the last spokesmen of the Paleolithic moral order. In about 1852, the United States Government inquired about buying the tribal lands for the arriving people of the United States, and Chief Seattle wrote a marvelous letter in reply. His letter expresses the moral, really, of our whole discussion.
"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land? The idea is strange to us....
Read the entire letter from Chief Seattle to President Grant

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List of Articles:	The Function of Myth	Myth and Dreams	The Hero's Adventure in Myth
Metaphor and Transcendence	God and Metaphor	The Importance of Myth	Gaia-Nature as Divinity