The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of t… - Joseph Campbell

The Hindus, for example, don’t believe in special revelation. They speak of a state in which the ears have opened to the song of the universe. Here the eye has opened to the radiance of the mind of God. And that’s a fundamental deist idea.

Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words — in short, what we call transcendence. Without that you don’t have a mythology. Any system of thinking, ideologies of one kind or another, that does not open to transcendence cannot be classified or understood mythologically.

(...) we today (in so far as we are unbelievers, or, if believers, in so far as our inherited beliefs fail to represent the real problems of contemporary life) must face alone, or, at best, with only tentative, impromptu, an not often very effective guidance. This is our problem as modern 'enlightened' individuals, for whom all gods and devils have been rationalized out of existence.