Love and the Goddess/Audio Cassette

Campbell talks about romantic love, beginning with the 12th century troubadours, and addresses questions about the image of woman—as goddess, virgin, Mother Earth. Moyers: "In the middle ages amour was celebrated by wandering minstrels who sang of what the eyes have made welcome to the heart. It helped create a distinctive Western consciousness that exalted the individual experience of men and woman over the authority and traditions of the church and state." Campbell: "Virgin birth is the birth of spiritual man out of animal man.... When you are awakened at the level of the heart to compassion and suffering with the other person, that is the beginning of humanity.... It is the suffering that evokes the humanity of the human heart. Love, you might say, is the burning point of life and since all is sorrowful, so is love. And the stronger the love, the more that pain-that love bears all things. Love itself is a pain, you might say-that is, the pain of being truly alive."