“And since in human traditional rites also a certain psychological readiness to respond to certain specific sign stimuli is to be remarked—particularly among primitives—the earliest individual creators of myths and rites must not have been merely freely inventive fantasists, but inward-gazing, inward-listening seers (shamans), responding to some inner voice or movement of the species.”—Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

  Two quotes summarizing succinctly what has been gradually dawning on me over a great many years and what I am attempting to transmit in turn here at the Omphalos Cafe. 

  One on the role of the Shaman-Type in myth and ritual and the second on the role of myth and ritual in our lives yesterday and today…

  “One of the chief concerns of the ritual lore of primitive and developed human groups, therefore, has always been that of guiding the child to the adult state. The infantile response system of dependency must be transformed to responsibility, and specifically in terms of the requirements of the local social order. The son has to become father, and the daughter, mother, passing from the sphere of childhood, which is everywhere essentially the same, to that of the variously offered social roles, which radically differ according to the modes of human life.”—Joseph Campbell, Creative Mythology

  For anyone who would seek to delve into the ‘mystery of Life’ today the variability and evolution of ‘the local social order[s]’ throughout time and space across the globe necessitates a sort of relativistic view of what Campbell termed the ‘Masks of God’.’ 

  Studied from the outside there are a great many ‘mysteries of Life’ each with its own unique mask, but looked at from the viewpoint of relativity the many masks gradually merge into one underlying ineffable Awe and Wonder. 

  The innumerable masks of the past dissolve…

  And a new relativistic mask is called for…