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For those of you who are unfamiliar with Joseph Campbell, know that he was a renowned mythologist endowed with the ability to make myth accessible and appealing to all. It is a true pleasure to read his works and to receive his knowledge of the spiritual principles ingrained in all legends.

This book is a compilation of lectures given by Joseph Campbell on the subject of the feminine divine. Campbell traces the evolution of the concept of the Great Goddess from Neolithic Old Europe to the Renaissance. I very much enjoyed reading it and I recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in the subject.

The following quote, at the very beginning of the volume, touched an inner sensitive cord. It is both surprising and amazing to me that he had such deep understanding of our feminine energies.

“Many of the difficulties that women face today follow from the fact that they are moving into a field of action in the world that was formerly reserved for the male and for which there are no female mythological models. The woman finds herself, consequently, in a competitive relationship with the male, and in this may lose the sense of her own nature. She is something in her own right, and traditionally (for some four million years) the relationship of that something to the male has been experienced and represented, not as directly competitive, but as cooperative in the shared ordeal of continuing and supporting life. Her biologically assigned role was to give birth to and to rear children. The male role was to support and protect. Both roles are biologically and psychologically archetypical. But what has happened now—as a result of the masculine invention of the vacuum cleaner—is that women have been relieved, in some measure, of their traditional bondage to the household. They are moving into the field and jungle of individual quest, achievement, and self-realization, for which there are no female models. Moreover, in pursuing their distinct careers they are emerging progressively as differentiated personalities, leaving behind the old archetypal accent on the biological role—to which, however, their psyches are still constitutionally bound. The grim prayer of Lady Macbeth before her deed, “unsex me here!� must be the unspoken, deeply felt cry of many a new contender in this masculine jungle.

There is no such need, however. The challenge of the moment—and there are many who are meeting it, accepting it, and responding to it, in the way not of men but of women—the challenge is to flower as individuals, neither as biological archetypes nor as personalities imitative of the male. And, to repeat, there are no models in our mythology for an individual woman’s quest. Nor is there any model for the male in marriage to an individuated female. We are in this thing together and have to work it out together, not with passion (which is always archetypal) but with compassion, in patient fostering of each other’s growth.�

If only he was still alive�. I would have loved to read his thoughts on “The Hunger Games� and “Fifty Shades of Gray�.