NEEDLING

by Joseph Campbell


I’ve started re-reading this wonderful book. Here’s a whole passage that blew me away. It’s right at the beginning of the book (page 8 in the Princeton University Press paper-back edition).

“The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the mind—whether in dreams, broad daylight, or insanity; for the human kingdom, beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves. There not only jewels but also dangerous jinn abide: the inconvenient or resisted psychological powers that we have not thought or dared to integrate into our lives. And they may remain unsuspected, or, on the other hand, some chance word, the smell of a landscape, the taste of a cup of tea, or the glances of an eye may touch a magic spring, and then dangerous messengers begin to appear in the brain. These are dangerous because they threaten the fabric of the security into which we have built ourselves and our family. But they are fiendishly fascinating too, for they carry keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of the built and in which we live, and of ourselves within it; but then a wonderful reconstruction, of the bolder, cleaner, more spacious, and fully human life—that is the lure, the premise and terror, of these disturbing night visitants from the mythological realm that we carry within.”

(I’m at work—copying this passage as I’m checking people out—so excuse me if I make any mistakes … I’ll fix it all up sooner than later.)