Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine

(Hardback)

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Joseph Campbell brought mythology to a mass audience. His bestselling books, including The Power of Myth and The Hero with a Thousand Faces, are the rare blockbusters that are also scholarly classics.

While Campbells work reached wide and deep as he covered the worlds great mythological traditions, he never wrote a book on goddesses in world mythology. He did, however, have much to say on the subject. Between 1972 and 1986 he gave over twenty lectures and workshops on goddesses, exploring the figures, functions, symbols, and themes of the feminine divine, following them through their transformations across cultures and epochs.

In this provocative volume, editor Safron Rossia goddess studies scholar, professor of mythology, and curator of collections at Opus Archives, which holds the Joseph Campbell archival manuscript collection and personal librarycollects these lectures for the first time. In them, Campbell traces the evolution of the feminine divine from one Great Goddess to many, from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. He sheds new light on classical motifs and reveals how the feminine divine symbolizes the archetypal energies of transformation, initiation, and inspiration.

Reviews

Praise for Joseph Campbell:

No one in our centurynot Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Lvi-Strausshas so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness.
James Hillman

Campbell has become the rarest of intellectuals in American life: a serious thinker who has been embraced by the popular culture.
Newsweek

Author Bio

Joseph Campbell (19041987) is widely credited with bringing mythology to a mass audience. His works, including the four-volume The Masks of God and The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers), rank among the classics in mythology and literature.