Joseph Campbell and Hagiography
6 July 2012
This post is hypothesising more than anything. Please keep that in mind, in case you place great stock in Late Antique/Early Mediaeval hagiography.
In Authority and the Sacred, Peter Brown writes:
In large areas of eastern Christianity (and, if in a more diffident and spasmodic manner, also in the West) the holy man was thought to have brought back to the settle world, from his long sojourn in the wilderness, a touch of the haunting completeness of Adam.
This is a very well written post from a blog titled, "The Pocket Scroll." It is about the connection between Mythology, Fairy Stories, and Hagiography and what it might mean for us. Myths use untruths – made-up stories – to tell profound truths about what is real. I highly recommend it to you. The author makes this observation:
"What if, then, the mythological impulses of hagiography are real? This would presuppose the staying power of God’s presence in the world after Christ’s ascension. This would also mean that myths can be acted out in real life. Indeed, could not the appeal of Campbell’s cycle tug on the heartstrings of real men and women? Could they not live out the myth for real? It strikes me as plausible. Perhaps we should all live out the myth. Hagiography was written to remind us that we, too, should be holy. Let us leave the familiar and combat the forces of darkness that we may return to the world of the known, bestowing the gifts of the divine upon our fellow humans."
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