Joseph Campbell's The Mythic Dimension

A year has passed, and I've managed to read more than a dozen books since my last blog entry in November 2010. (Note to self: Reading only a dozen or so books in a year is a hideous all-time low record.  Must improve in 2012!)

So.

Here's what I'm plowing through right now.  Not the most accessible sort of reading out there, but Joseph Campbell will always be a favorite of mine. The Mythic Dimension is a collection of Campbell's essays on myth (as always!) and serves as a precursor to the heftier yet more elegantly-written four-volume The Masks of God. So if you're a fan of the latter, then reading Mythic Dimension is like going through Campbell's early musings.

The cover of the book is a detail taken from Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, which is an amazing 15th century painting housed in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.  I feel lucky to have seen this painting up close when I visited the Gallery back in March 2010.

Side note: I've just downloaded a copy of Werner Herzog's documentary 'Cave of Forgotten Dreams', which I think will be perfect complementary viewing while I read Mythic Dimension at this point.  Was reading Campbell's Primitive Mythology (volume one of The Masks of God) around 5 or 6 years back and I remember thinking to myself at that time how good it would be to see those Chauvet caves--which contain the oldest known cave art--in a NatGeo documentary or something. Hooray for wishes that come true eventually.