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As I was running through my usual pre-departure check list to make sure I had everything I needed, I discovered that, somehow, I had mislaid my key-card for the room. I knew the card must be somewhere in the room since I would not have been able to enter my suite without it.

Yet, after searching the desk, beneath the bed, in the folds of the chairs, and the bathroom, I had come up empty. I knew of washing machines and dryers that seemed to hunger for, and consume, items of clothing, but I had never encountered a hotel room with a sweet tooth for key-cards.

Since I was too far north for the Bermuda Triangle to be a factor - unless, of course, it had signed on to the Free Trade Agreement and was exporting its alleged weirdness to other localities, I decided enough time had been wasted on looking for the card. Most likely the card would turn up at some point, maybe when the cleaning staff arrived in the morning.

In the meantime I would try to obtain a back-up card from the registration desk. I was fairly certain that for a slight extra charge added onto my bill the hotel would be quite accommodating with respect to my request.

Upon arriving in the lounge area with a new key-card for my room, I found Vince Ardello, Melanie Teasdale and Tammy Winthrop already seated in the area which the group had occupied in the afternoon. Aside from the four of us, the lounge was empty.

No sooner had I greeted everyone and sat down, then Ben Blake and Colby Shaw entered the area and slowly made their way over to us while engaged in conversation with one another. Approximately five minutes later, Andrea Myers arrived.

As we waited for Art Carmichael to show up, we began exchanging general sorts of biographical data with each other. Following roughly ten to fifteen minutes of this sort of interaction, Art still had not made an appearance.

The topic of conversation changed to wondering where Art was and whether any of us knew of any reason for the delay. When the response to these inquiries provided no useful information, we decided to nominate Vince as our designated investigator into Art's absence.

Conceivably, Art may have been less interested in continuing the discussion than his earlier, expressed willingness to meet with us in the evening would have suggested. Possibly, not wishing to be embarrassed by being the lone dissenter, he had given his verbal assent to the idea without really being committed to the proposed program in his heart and mind.

On the other hand, something more important or more urgent may have arisen that required his attention, and he simply was not able to let us know what was happening. If this were the case, there was no way of telling whether Art would be a no-show or merely delayed in his arrival.

Vince went off to fulfil his duties. Some ten minutes later, Vince returned with nothing new to report other than that he had been able to find out Art's room number from one of the symposium's organizers and, therefore, had asked one of the people at the hotel's registration desk to phone up to see if Art was at home - which he wasn't or, at least, if he was, then, for whatever reason, he wasn't responding to the phone.

After discussing the situation for a few moments, we decided to proceed without Art. Hopefully, somewhere along the line, he would join us.

Melanie Teasdale started things off by wanting to return, if only briefly, to the subject of Joseph Campbell's approach to mythology in order to address what she felt was some unfinished business in our earlier conversation. The issue concerned certain aspects of Campbell's treatment of the roles of matriarchy and patriarchy in mythology.

"One of the things that always bothered me about The Hero with a Thousand Faces," observed Melanie, "is its preoccupation with the quest of the hero at the expense of any discussion about the journey of the heroine. Moreover, this marginalization of the heroine seems rather inexplicable given that Campbell supposedly is operating out of, and giving expression to, an Eastern perspective in his book that, unlike Occidental Mythology, has a strong matriarchal orientation.

"If one takes a look at Bachofen's work in the 19th century, an historical account, of sorts, is given with respect to the origins and influence of matriarchal and patriarchal traditions. Bachofen believed the observance of matriarchy or the honoring of the right of the mother was predominant in Greece, Africa, the Near East, and Asia prior to the ascendency of patriarchy or the right of the father in Israel and classical Greece, especially Athens.

"According to Bachofen, following the emergence of patriarchy in classical Greece and Israel, this tradition really took root during Rome's rule. Patriarchy marched and spread with the armies of the Roman emperors.

"As far as Campbell is concerned, what I find interesting in all this is that, unlike Bachofen, Campbell seemed to want to restrict his interest to the psychological significance of matriarchy and patriarchy and leave their political implications aside. One of the reasons I find this interesting is because Campbell tended to indicate elsewhere in his writing that mythology was not just about psychology but about ontology as well, so his desire to pursue an exclusively psychological approach to the matriarchy/patriarchy issue seems somewhat inconsistent to me."

"Perhaps," Vince Ardello replied, "Campbell felt the political aspect or implications of myths would take him to far afield from his primary interest of delineating their symbolic meaning and significance. Furthermore, didn't he devote a fair amount of time in the first two volumes of The Masks of God praising, and showing a preference for, the values of matriarchy relative to those of patriarchy?

"Besides," Vince added, "aren't most of the qualities of the hero - such as selflessness, sacrifice, sharing and egalitarianism - aren't these qualities really more reflective of what are considered, traditionally, to be expressions of a matriarchical approach to things rather than properties normally associated with patriarchy? Moreover, isn't the idea of union with the Divine also in keeping with the perspective of matriarchy, and in opposition to the supposed tendency of patriarchy to insist on a hierarchical separation between Divinity and the human realm?"

"If what you say is true, Vince," responded Melanie, "then why not give symbolic expression to this by talking about a heroine rather than a hero? If the model being extolled in The Hero with a Thousand Faces is an Eastern one and if, as Campbell states explicitly in many places in his writings, that Oriental mythology reflects a matriarchical orientation, then I'm puzzled why the exploits of the hero are being explored to the exclusion of the exploits of the heroine.

"I'm not sure if the problem lies with Campbell or with a possible alteration of some of the myths about heroism that occurred down through the ages in order to be consistent with the burgeoning influence of patriarchy, or with something else. Nevertheless, whatever the explanation, I find the trend troublesome."

"What I find troublesome in Campbell," said Andrea Myers," is what appears, at least to me, to be the forced character of the logic that Campbell sometimes employed in developing his position. I'll try to outline what I mean by this.

"In volume one of The Masks of God, which deals with primitive mythology, Campbell goes through what are, in my opinion, some rather intricate conceptual contortions. More specifically, on the one hand, hunter and planter societies are very much distinguished, respectively, by their patriarchal and matriarchical orientations, and, yet, on the other hand, these societies also are considered by him to be masked expressions of one another since they both, purportedly, are rooted, each in its own way, in beliefs of mystical union, immortality and self-sacrifice.

"However, what mystical union, immortality and self-sacrifice mean in these two societies is not at all the same sort of thing. So what is, ultimately, a superficial similarity really disguises a fundamentally different approach to themes of existence that is a reflection of the divergent values of matriarchical and patriarchical societies.

"One of the central motifs throughout the four volumes of The Masks of God is that despite the differences of the story lines in primitive, oriental, occidental and creative mythology, underlying them all is a belief in, or an acceptance of, the mystical oneness of all things. Although there may be a general sense in which Campbell could be quite correct in this contention, the argument also is quite misleading because one is talking about very different ideas concerning, theories on, and conceptions of, just what the nature of the mystical is, or what sacrifice involves, or what immortality entails.

"Freud, Jung and Campbell all talked about the unconscious, so one can say, correctly, that underlying all of their theories is a belief in the unconscious. Yet, all three of these individuals are engaged in very, very different kinds of hermeneutical activities with respect to the uses to which they put the notion of the unconscious.

"Consequently, just as one is not necessarily saying anything very interesting or important when one suggests these three individuals are bound together by their common interest in the unconscious, so, too, one may not be saying very much that is useful when one argues all forms of mythology are, at heart, or in essence, about the mystical oneness of all manner of being. If anything, one is obscuring the fact that these various modalities of mythology actually are giving expression to competing theories of symbolism, metaphysics and ontology.

"Matriarchy and patriarchy are not disguised versions of one another unless one can demonstrate that matriarchy and patriarchy, ultimately, are describing, explaining and engaging reality in, more or less, the same way. I don't think Campbell accomplishes such a demonstration in a very plausible fashion.

"These are competing mythologies which are not so many masks that give differing expression to the same underlying Divine reality. They are conceptual glass slippers in search of some ontological foot capable of fitting snugly into the structural parameters of the proffered wearing apparel.

"Furthermore, which, if any, of the slippers constitutes a proper fit with respect to the Reality on which human beings are trying to hang them is a separate issue. Not only are we unsure whether, or not, the respective mythologies are being offered to the ontological counterpart to the fair Cinderella, rather than her ugly stepsisters, we are not even sure if the slipper may be, after all, merely a figment of our imagination with no ontological referent to which it actually applies.

"Interestingly enough, in the volume on Oriental mythology, Campbell, at least in certain places, gets away from the idea of trying to treat matriarchy and patriarchy as disguised or masked versions of one another. Instead, he suggests there is a fundamental dichotomy between, on the one hand, those peoples, such as in the East, who advocate the unity of the human and the Divine, and, on the other hand, those peoples, such as in the West, who tend to insist on a separation between the human and the Divine.

"Campbell argues that this essential psychological and metaphysical orientation concerning the issue of accepting or rejecting distinctions between the human and the Divine is a fundamental shaping factor in the structural character of the mythology that arises out of any given people. He believes all other distinctions and differences, including those between matriarchy and patriarchy, are secondary to, and derivative from this inclination to make, or reject, distinctions involving the human and the Divine.

"What is not clear to me is why there seems to be a tendency in cultures influenced by patriarchy to accept such distinctions, whereas amongst peoples under the sway of matriarchy, there often appears to be a tendency to reject such distinctions. One possibility is that, somehow, the original decision concerning the acceptance or rejection of distinctions between the Divine and the human is, perhaps, biologically driven, but this doesn't necessarily explain why men would be willing to accept a matriarchical orientation or why women would be willing to accept a patriarchical orientation.

"Another possibility is that the original decision to accept or reject such distinctions was purely a matter of metaphysical preference concerning what various people believed to be the true character of ontology or reality. However, the further choice of patriarchy or matriarchy could have been a function of considering which of the two underlying metaphysical possibilities was most conducive to supporting a certain kind of psychological and social life-style - i.e., patriarchy or matriarchy.

"If the latter possibility is the case, then each kind of psychological/social orientation would have gravitated toward the metaphysical system that best reflected its way of looking at, or responding to, the themes of existence. Yet, once again, there is still the problem of why some men would be inclined to matriarchy or why some women would be inclined to patriarchy.

"One could, I suppose, make everything just a matter of the socialization process that occurs in the kind of society into which one happens to be born. However, I'm not sure this really would account for how either matriarchy or patriarchy came into being either.

"If, as many believe is the case, planter societies tend to exhibit qualities of matriarchy, whereas hunter societies tend to be characterized by properties of patriarchy, then the values of matriarchy and patriarchy don't necessarily reflect biology so much as they may reflect the social arrangements that, to some extent, are forced upon a people by the contingencies associated with survival. On the other hand, I'm not really certain there is anything inherently contradictory about having a patriarchical planting society or a matriarchical hunter society, so, once again, we face the problem of origins in relation to matriarchy and patriarchy and why different people become influenced by these orientations."

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