New Church Life May/June 2016 | Page 59

Emanuel Swedenborg and the Popol Vuh: The Myth of the Ancient Word Dylan C. Odhner (Note: This paper was written as part of Dylan Odhner’s MA/PhD program, Mythological Studies With an Emphasis in Jungian Depth Psychology.) A s a discipline, mythological studies have long since left the highly romantic Campbell-Era behind. Whether this represents a necessary maturation of the field, or an overall degradation of the culture at large, is a question worthy of consideration in its own right, but that is not my focus. I do not believe it is an overstatement to refer to Joseph Campbell’s memorable career as an “era,” for his personal charisma and unabashed universality put mythology back into popular consciousness, and placed the term “comparative mythology” into the collective lexicon. But though his talents were many, his real contribution was singular: he popularized the Jungian hero archetype, and packaged it in such a way that for the first time it broke out of academia and into pop culture. Campbell was able to do this by giving the modern masses their first taste of universality. We learned – with eyes and mouths open wide in amazement – of the myths of Paradise and The Flood which, whether from Ancient Greece, contemporary China, or remote societies of the Congo, had eerie and exhilarating consistency. Most of all, we learned of the Hero with a Thousand Faces, and just enough Jungian jargon to picture this archetypal hero springing up from the collective unconscious – ready to save whichever society he happens to be born into. In this way, Campbell’s celebrity served as a delivery mechanism for both Jungian depth psychology and mythology as a whole. But after feasting on the universal, society was left with the subtle yet distinct aftertaste of oversimplification and eurocentrism. There is an innate lack of sophistication, not in Campbell himself, but in the consumer-friendly version of him. 261