Mitologia primitivă

Joseph Campbell asks how myths began and shaped our lives. He links early worship with later tribal rites. He asks how myths shape beliefs about worlds seen and unseen. He also traces their role in each person's life. The book compares myths from different cultures. It is the first of four volumes in Măștile Zeului.

The book has four parts. The first looks at the mind and what we learn through life. It also looks at responses we inherit. It covers beliefs held in childhood, group feelings, and old age. The second turns to early farmers and their myths. It looks at sacred kings and sacrifice. It also looks at rites that link love and death. Did shared myths arise on their own? Or did they spread from one culture to the next? Campbell asks both questions. He draws on Persephone and rites from the Americas before Columbus.

The third part looks at hunters, shamans, and animal myths. It also looks at cave sites. The fourth traces myths through early human life and farming cultures. It then turns to the Near East's first civilizations. The last section looks at local forms of myth. It weighs these against patterns that cultures share.

Campbell argues that myths and rites bind people to their groups. Shared rites help carry childhood beliefs into adult social life. He stresses the roots that humans share in their spiritual lives.

Campbell was an American writer and teacher born in New York. At Columbia, he studied texts from the Middle Ages. He then studied in Paris and Munich. He taught at Sarah Lawrence College for nearly forty years. Cristina Jinga translated this edition. It also has forewords and an index.