Part 1 - Prologue. Of the will in nature: agricultural origins and dispersals. Diffusion, convergence, and parallelism in the formation of cultures. Two ways to rapture. Part 2 - The sacrifice: the prime symbol. The myth. The festival. The offering. The historical forms.

'...Joseph Campbell continues his recounting of humankind's "One Great Story" by focusing on events that began to transpire some 11,000 years ago (the exact date is a matter of dispute), when the concerns of our earliest hunting and gathering forebears turned from the transient mysteries of the Animal Powers to the regenerative potential of the Seeded Earth. At virtually the same time, he argues, throughout the tropical and temperate regions, as planting techniques improved and became more efficient, primitive agricultural communities began to flourish, a new social order arose to supercede the old that centered around mobile bands of hunter-gatherers, and a new mythology was born.''

Hardcover