First in a set of 4 works. All of which are an indispensible resource if you have any ambition to understand Mythology and comparative religion.

nothing schematic in this series (perhaps unlike the more famous texts), which concerns more the working out of historical particulars--though one might discern readily enough the monomyth thesis working in the background. this volume concerns an antiquity that is barely evidenced, and tries to trace hunter-gather religion, the beliefs of late troglodytes, and other things found under upturned stones.

I read every Joseph Campbell book I could get my hands on. He charismatically brings stuffy church teachings, zany mythology events or stories, historical events in cave man time, inner conflict and all the diverse religions in the world to one concept. Joseph explains the abstract so that the reader 'gets' the symbolism without having to interpret it; he shows one how to experience the real and points out when and why the masks go on. I just love his teachnigs~~~

Like a lot of generalists, he probably overreaches, but still, there are riches here. I haven't anything like "finished" this book, or the others in the series, and don't expect to in my lifetime. But they will be an ongoing source of reference and inspiration.

What a delight! I've had my eyes on these four doorstoppers of mythology every since I read Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. And like that other classic, Campbell mixes an enthusiastic and encyclopedic knowledge of everything from Australian Aborigines to Sumerian to African to Egyptian belief systems in an attempt to find all the core recurring concepts in the same way that Frasier did in The Golden Bough, only MORE SO.This is beyond impressive. Even if we criticize some of the conclu...

OK, wow. No way in hell im gonna explain everything that was exposed in this gem-of-a-book.Myth is an instrument that is still used, no matter what we do, human beings, due to their cognition, are prone to myth.The book is the right attempt to understand myth, and it is important to mention that this book is so old, that by the time it was written, not even DNA was discovered; that happened three years later. However, without these tools (evolutionary psychology will have been a science forty ye...

I have a goal to read all 4 of Campbell's Masks of God series, and i started in the beginning. I like other cultures myths. I like finding out what sustains other groups of people. What stories give them their identities. This is a book i could put down and pick back up again at any time and dip into any one of the chapters. Specifically the different cultures puberty rites where interesting to me in this book. As a 24 year old american male i am still trying to find out how to transition from b...

Staggering book. In a similar vein to Frazer's Golden Bough, an attempt to find underlying mechanisms to the various world mythologies. Campbell examines the prevelence of some very specific motifs, across all varieties of unconnected cultures: Ghosts, "voodoo dolls", the power of hair/nail clippings of victims in magic, the use of totem figures in hunting societies, and birth/rebirth gods in planting cultures. For myself, I was frustrated by some of the lengthy debate over whether Meso-American...

Joseph Campbell was a veritable demigod of comparative mythology. He was brilliant at discovering connections in seemingly unrelated myths across the globe, illuminating the ways in which beliefs moved from culture to culture over thousands of years.However: If you haven't read Campbell before I suggest you take The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Masks of God Lite) out for a spin first. It's only one book, and far less of a commitment. You'll be able to tell immediately if Campbell's dense & astoun...

An excellent and promising opening to this four volume work, Primitive Mythology gets to work quickly, setting out its task and framing the importance of mythology, even (if not especially) for we who are of the time whose mythology is an absence of mythology. For despite centuries of philosophers and thinkers attempting to explicate Man as the rational animal, and the constructs based on the import and majesty of reason as the supreme aspect of human existence, it is myth that digs into the aby...

Exactly right book to start reading about comperative mythology and religion.

Campbell is an incredible source of knowledge and for the first 350 pages he really shows it, it's almost awe inspiring the way he links and dances between different schools of thought and cultures and how they naturally link metaphysically and literally.This book isn't perfect though. Specifically his use of psychoanalysis in the Freudian vain which is sex obsessed and boring and really brings no insight, but he's a product of his time, so this isn't a real criticism but something that bothered...

Re-reading. This is bk 1 of 4 vol work. I read the 1st time as a graduate student yrs ago and find myself drawn back to this 4 vol work every 10 yrs or so. Stunning, stoking, how one man could hold the sum total of world mythology and religious tradition in his head, chelate and analyze thru the lens of modern psychology and archeology, and tell us all abt it in a way that is accessible and makes sense.

In graduate school, when I asked my beloved mentor, Freudian/Lacanian David Wagenknecht about Carl Jung, his response was, "I dunno: a little too Joseph Campbell for me." There is no better or smarter human on earth than David and so I didn't read either Jung (who I worship) or Campbell (who I now really, really love) for many years. I think the wait was just fine for me (sorry Dave) but I know I will be reading at least Campbell's Masks of God for the rest of my life (and perhaps also his Skele...

What Joseph Campbell lacks in objectivity he makes up for in his enthusiastic endorsement of his own personal myth, his unified psychological theory of myths. He stretches his interpretations of the myths so far that they fall apart. I am left incredulous. I would like to find a more objective work on historical and comparative mythology. One with a more clear and concise writing style.I could only manage to make it half way through the first volume before I considered his work a waste of time.

Well, it's again a repetitive review of Joseph Campbell's book- It's so good! I weirdly started from the last one of this series, and ended up reading the Primitive Mythology last. Detailed, funny, insightful, as always. Again Campbell deeply yet entertainingly pulls together all the threads. I found really interesting the history of the switch from feminine/matriarchal beliefs to patriarchal. It's worth to read for everybody. Also the myths of the serpent an the maiden in relation to the Christ...

The material is verbose, dry, and dated at times; however, the detail is profound . . . a wealth of information. Recommended for anyone interested in mythology.

Updated: July 2020 (Inclusive for all four volumes of the series)The Masks of God is Joseph Campbell's principle work, and it represents the core model of his entire approach to comparative religions and mythology. The term "mythology" is imprecise and carries a lot of baggage, but in Campbell's usage it refers to any creative, symbolic, expressive art or act that deals at its core with man's central domain of concern, such as the structure and destiny of the cosmos, the origin of humanity, or t...

This was one of the best books on mythology I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I only say it is "one of the" because I've started reading some others of Campbell's that are just as awesome. I've been a fan of mythology for as long as I can remember but this was the first time I was able to read a book by someone who shares my enthusiasm with the topic. I was enthralled by his re-tellings and his explanations. I was going to read all three of Masks of God Volumes but I decided to hold off on

These are the books which introduced me to Joseph Campbell - the single most serious influence in my intellectual life.These books are exhaustive, but maybe because of that reason, not as readable as his other books. In this first volume, Campbell takes us to the very origin of myth, before it became institutionalised as religion.