Editor's Note

We're excited to be able to bring you this third installment in Joseph Campbell's Masks of God series (both the third title in the series, and the third we've released), which stands alongside The Hero with a Thousand Faces and the sadly unfinished Historical Atlas of World Mythology as Campbell's most important and enduring writing.

The Masks of God sprang out of Campbell's experiences during his year-long sabbatical in India and East Asia (chronicled in Asian Journals — India and Japan). As he traveled through the lands about which he had been teaching, he was struck both by how different it was to experience the mythic realms in person, but also how little visitors from the West — even educated professionals and diplomats — understood about the cultures of the countries to which they were journeying.

While he was staying in Japan, contemplating his own career, Campbell realized that while his work centered around the ways in which humanity's myths spring from universal sources, it was essential to look at the ways in which mythologies and cultures varied over time and across continents. He began to plan a single-volume work that he gave the working title The Basic Mythologies of Mankind. Here is the manifesto that he laid out for himself:

1. Beginning from the beginning, I am to follow motifs objectively and historically. Also, I am to record interpretations objectively and historically, on the basis of contemporary texts.

2. As a contemporary Occidental faced with Occidental and contemporary psychological problems, I am to admit and even celebrate (in Spengler’s manner) the relativity of my historical view to my own neurosis (Rorschach formula).

3. The historical milestone represented is that of the recognition of the actual unity of human culture (the diffusion and parallelism of myths) together with the relativity of the mores of any given region to geographical and his- torical circumstance (Bastian, Sumner, Childe). The time has come for a global, rather than provincial, history of the images of thought.

4. The moral object of the book is to find for Western Man (specifically, the post-Christian Occidental) suggestions for the furtherance of his psychological opus through a transformation of unconscious into conscious symbols, a confrontation of these with the consciously accepted terms of the present period, and a dialogue of mutual criticism. This, however, is to be the minor aim, subordinated strictly to 3.

5. Make no great cross-cultural leaps, and even within a given culture, do not try to harmonize what the philosophers of that culture itself have not har- monized. Stick to the historical perspective and all will emerge of itself.

   —Sake & Satori, p. 103.

This work, which would take up Campbell's time from his return home in 1955 until 1969, took on the title The Masks of God and grew from one to four volumes: Primitive Mythology, Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mythology, and Creative Mythology.

In preparing this digital edition of one of Campbell's masterpieces, we have come up against the same challenge that has slowed our new release of The Historical Atlas of World Mythology: while Campbell's writing on historical cultures remains factually relevant, science has made many of his statements about pre-history less accurate. In the quarter-century since Campbell's death, paleontology has undergone a radical transformation, making the dates and even species names that Campbell used in Primitive Mythology and in the early chapters of the Atlas out-of-date.

For both projects, we have engaged the help of academic volunteers, who are assisting us in bringing these important pieces of Campbell's oeuvre into the twenty-first century.

In the mean time, we have decided that, rather than let this bottleneck continue to hold back these two important projects, we will release the pieces of each series that don't require the same level of up-dating. This is why the ebook that you are reading, Occidental Mythology, is the third title in the series, but we are releasing it digitally before Volume I, Primitive Mythology. We are moving forward on the rest of The Masks of God — and on the Atlas — and know that you will enjoy the complete works when we have brought them to you. 

We are confident that we will be able to release the remainder of Primitive Mythology in 2018, and look forward to completing the digital edition of the Historical Atlas of World Mythology in the coming years.

For news about these and other projects, please visit us at JCF.org, or at our Facebook page.

If you have feedback or questions about any aspects of this book, please contact us at [email protected].