#148 - The Grail Quest: Joseph Campbell on the Arthurian Legends, the Adventure of Gawain, Parsifal’s Quest for the Holy Grail, the Three Ages of the Church, and the Elementary Ideas of Mythology

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“The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form - all symbolizations, all divinities: a realization of the ineluctable void.”

-Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, 1949

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00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:16 - The Origins of Western Mythology

00:52:42- The Mythology of Love

01:40:07 - The Arthurian Tradition

02:33:025 - The Grail Legend

03:45:46 - The Forest Adventure of Parsifal

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These talks, entitled "The Western Quest" were delivered in November 1978 at Washington University by Joseph Campbell in front of a live audience.

In the complete works of Joseph Campbell, they are delineated in the catalogue as the Lecture II, 6.1-6.5.