Joseph Campbell, LE DISTESE INTERIORI DEL COSMO, 2020

Journey between soul and reason, psyche and universe, science and legend – Le distese interiori del cosmo –  the last book that Joseph Campbell brought to completion before his death, is a collection of essays in which history, anthropology, analysis of myth, Spirituality and analytical psychology converge in a richly documented and always current speculation. Beliefs, rites, myths, practices and artistic and literary expressions of peoples, figures and cultures that can be traced back to distant eras and geographical areas are here analyzed and interpreted as a universal expression of the mythical imagination – the faculty, in the conception of the author, by which the human mind overcomes its own limits and spatial boundaries and puts the inner dimension in direct relation with the infinity of the cosmos. Following a path aimed at capturing similarities, divergences, references and elements of continuity, Campbell ranges with great openness from Nietzsche to Blake, from Hindu texts to classical Greek civilization, from Navaho rituals to Egyptian cults, showing how in each culture the myth is always a creative metaphor that comes from the universal need to explain reality and demonstrating, consequently, that a reasoned study of mythologies allows to overcome the differences and contrasts between distant conceptions and traditions and to explore new worlds.