The Flight of the Wild Gander by Joseph Campbell

One of the things that I like most about reading Joseph Campbell is the way he draws on so many different disciplines in his writing. In his explorations about myth and meaning he introduces the reader to ancient history, anthropology, art, psychology, world literature, philosophy, biology, geography, and more. Every essay is filled with rich content that encourages the reader to draw on this wealth of knowledge and contemplate it deeply.

The Flight of the Wild Gander was published in 1969 as his first collection of essays which was followed later by The Mythic Dimension. Here, Campbell describes the symbolic content of stories, how they are linked to human experience and how they have changed over time. He explores the function of mythology and how myths are born and how myths, old and new, continue to influence our lives today.

“What is intended by art, metaphysics, magical hocus-pocus, and mystical religion is not the knowledge of anything, not Truth, or Goodness, or Beauty but an evocation of a sense of the absolutely unknowable. Science, on the other hand, will take care of what can be known.

Art and science, then constitute a “pair of aspects” system. The function of art is to render a sense of existence not an assurance of some meaning: so that those who require an assurance of meaning, or who feel unsure of themselves and unsettled when they learn that the system of meaning that would support them in their living has been shattered, must truly be those who have not yet experienced profoundly, continuously, or convincingly enough that the sense of existence --of spontaneous and willing arising -- which is the first and deepest characteristic of being, and which is the provence of art to awaken.

What -- I ask -- is the meaning of a flower? And having no meaning, should the flower, then, not be?”

The Flight of the Wild Gander - The Symbol without Meaning – pages .151-152