Grown out of Myth (feat. Joseph Campbell)

All Of the high cultures And low cultures And primitive cultures And charming simple cultures And great big enormous ones Have grown out of myths They are founded on myths And what these myths have given Has been inspiration For aspiration Now where do these aspirations come from? They come from A very wonderful Childlike thing Fascination You know if you wanted to make money Today I'm no economists But I'll bet The thing to do Would be to invest your money in something like cameras Things that people play with Things that they are fascinated by These Fascinations Are the creations of new Activities And when we look at the old cultures We can see All Cultures Have grown out of myths I said all Cultures They are founded on myth And what these myths have given Has been inspiration For aspiration And some of it is very strange To see Indeed What is most fascinating to begin with Is one's neighbor Particularly If the neighbor is a very strange looking creature Now think of man In the old days He was a minority On - on - on the planet And when he looked at his neighbors They had four feet They had horns They had great woolly bodies They were very strange playmates Furthermore He was eating Certain of them And They were Rather dangerous He had to Arrange Some kind of arrangement With his neighbors And we know That the first religious rites And the first religious address So to say Was to animals Their neighbors These Were the images of God All Cultures Have grown out of myths I said all Cultures They are founded on myth And what these myths have given Has been inspiration For aspiration Aspiration The animal world Was the first inspiration And the divinities Were animal divinities And not only that But just as kids When they identify with something When they are fascinated by something They Act like it They play it So The original rituals The Hunting people Danced buffalo dances They were in covenant With the animal world That through this covenant The animals gave their bodies Willingly To be eaten Because Only the body dies The being Comes back If you return the blood Of the animal to the earth The life is in the blood The earth Is the mother of life And the animal Will be back next year All Cultures Have grown out of myths I said all Cultures They are founded on myth And what these myths have given Has been inspiration For aspiration Aspiration People who lived Then In the plant World The world of the tropics Where nature was a plant world They saw something else They saw That out of rot Out of decay There comes life There comes life And this notion That out of death Comes life Becomes a very important thing In the tropical cultures And it led to what to us Is A very Horrible Pattern of rituals Rituals of human sacrifice Killing people Letting them rot Burying them With the Notion that out of this death There would come life All Cultures Have grown out of myths I said all Cultures They are founded on myth And what these myths have given Has been inspiration For aspiration Aspiration All Cultures Have grown out of myths I said all Cultures They are founded on myth And what these myths have given Has been inspiration For aspiration Aspiration