The Masks of God Volume 1: Primitive Mythology

---

The Masks of God Volume 1: Primitive Mythology
by Heinrich Zimmer; edited by Joseph Campbell

---

Table of Contents

Foreword: On the Completion of The Masks of God

Prologue: Toward a Natural History of Gods and Heroes

1. The Lineaments of a New Science
2. The Well of the Past
3. The Dialogue of Scholarship and Romance

PART ONE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MYTH

Introduction: The Lesson of the Mask

Chapter 1. The Enigma of the Inherited Image

1. The Innate Releasing Mechanism
2. The Supernormal Sign Stimulus

Chapter 2. The Imprints of Experience

1. Suffering and Rapture
2. The Structuring Force of Life on Earth
3. The Impairments of Early Infancy
4. The Spontaneous Animism of Childhood
5. The System of Sentiments of the Local Group
6. The Impact of Old Age

PART TWO: THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE PRIMITIVE PLANTERS

Chapter 3. The Culture Province of the High Civilizations

1. The Proto-Neolithic: c. 7500-5500 B.C.
2. The Basal Neolithic: c. 5500-4500 B.C.
3. The High Neolithic: c. 4500-3500 B.C.
4. The Hieratic City-State: c. 3500-2500 B.C.

Chapter 4. The Province of the Immolated Kings

1. The Legend of the Destruction of Kash
2. A Night of Shehrzad
3. The King, and the Virgin of the Vestal Fire

Chapter 5. The Ritual Love-Death

1. The Descent and Return of the Maiden
2. The Mythological Event
3. Persephone
4. The Monster Eel
5. Parallelism or Diffusion
6. The Ritual Love-Death in Pre-Columbian America

PART THREE: THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE PRIMITIVE HUNTERS

Chapter 6. Shamanism

1. The Shaman and the Priest
2. Shamanistic Magic
3. The Shamanistic Vision
4. The Fire-Bringer

Chapter 7. The Animal Master

1. The Legend of the Buffalo Dance
2. Paleolithic Mythology
3. The Ritual of the Returned Blood

Chapter 8. The Paleolithic Caves

1. The Shamans of the Great Hunt
2. Our Lady of the Mammoths
3. The Master Bear
4. The Mythologies of the Two Worlds

PART FOUR: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF MYTH

Chapter 9. Mythological Thresholds of the Paleolithic

1. The Stage of Plesianthropus (ß 600,000 B.C.à)
2. The Stage of Pithecanthropus (ß 400,000 B.C.à)
3. The Stage of Neanderthal Man (c. 200,000-75,000/25,000 B.C.)
4. The Stage of Cro-Magnon Man (c. 30,000-10,000 B.C.)
5. The Caspian-Microlithic Style (c. 30,0000/10,000-4,000 B.C.)

Chapter 10. Mythological Thresholds of the Neolithic

1. The Great Serpent of the Earliest Planters (c. 7500 B.C.?)
2. The Birth of Civilization in the Near East (c. 7500-2500 B.C.)
3. The Great Diffusion

Conclusion: The Functioning of Myth

1. The Local Images and the Universal Way
2. The Bondages of Love, Power, and Virtue
3. The Release from Bondage

---

[This Table of Contents was originally posted to YouAreThat.org. I may have omitted some of the scholarly apparatus from this table of contents, such as Acknowledgements, the Index, etc.]

[[Return to Joseph Campbell Works Index]]