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.
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