The magic ring of myth...................

     Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished;  and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and  mind.   It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation.  Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth.

-Joseph Campbell,  The Hero With A Thousand Faces