Lyrics What Is This Mystery? - Akira the Don, Joseph Campbell

What Is This Mystery?

Many of you I’m sure
Have heard the saying that
Mythology is other people’s religions
Now I am going to ask you
To put yourself in other people’s shoes
And have a look at your own
As mythology
As mythology
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
Nietzsche
Has said;
«This is the age of comparisons.»
It works on all levels
And in the realm of
What I’m calling «mythology», which many people call «religions»
There are cross-influences
Operating today
That would have been thought
Impossible
A hundred years ago
Furthermore, it is good to recall
To remember
That our cultures
And our races
Are very, very late arrivals
In the history of the human species
And we already have
Very interesting
Evidence
Of religious, or mythological practices
In races long antedating
Ours
For instance
In the high Alps
There were discovered in the (19)20s
In
Very small caves
Right below
The ice level of the glaciers
Little shrines
Containing the skulls of cave bears
Now during the course of the last glaciation, the Würmglacial period
Those caves were covered with ice
No one could have gone there
And after The time of that glaciation, there were no cave bears in the world
So these little shrines
With these cave bear skulls
And little fires
And
Little
Instruments of
Showing that there had been worship practice there
Date from 200,000 years ago
200,000 years ago
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
What is this mystery?
Each of us
Has been brought up
In some tradition
That has its imagery
Of that mystery
But the point I want to
Start out with
Is that in the human heart
And in the human mind
No matter what
The race
The culture
The language
The tradition
There is this
Sense
Or at least the possibility of experiencing the sense
Of a mystery
And an awesome mystery
And a very
Terrifying mystery
Inhabiting the whole
Universe
The very
Mystery
Of being
Itself
And here in these very early little signs
These very early shrines
We have the evidence
Of man 200,000 years ago
Bowing
And asking for something
And devoting themselves to something
In this way of religion which we continue
To know
In this aspect
That inflection
And that other
Throughout the world today
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
That makes the
Human species bow
Before some sign of mystery?
What is this mystery?
What is this mystery?