Lesson 2 – Part 5: The Gifts of the Goddess – Tales of Love and Marriage
Original journal entry from May 31, 2025 (edited June 20, 2025) – Response to Lesson 2: The Gifts of the Goddess – Tales of Love and Marriage. This was my reflection on Joseph Campbell's discussion of different kinds of love, their historical evolution, and how they apply to modern marriage — with thoughts on Agape commitment, Eros intimacy, and a critique of the church's role in historical tales like Tristan & Isolde.
In this interview, Campbell lays out the different kinds of love that each had their place in history and he is very adamant that the best kind of love is what the troubadours began to emphasize in the 12th and 13th centuries. He explains how this is the kind of love relationship that people today would probably describe as love at first sight. Or the process of meeting, exchanging numbers and cultivating a dating relationship that eventually leads to falling in love. I think that maybe another description for it is “infatuation.” Campbell points out that before that time in history a different kind of love was more prominent; the Eros kind of love. I suppose this could be borderline infatuation as well but with Eros it’s really not love at first sight as much as it is lust at first sight. Lust, in terms of following bodily urges, or wanting to be with someone purely for sexual pleasure. And then there is Agape love on the other end of the spectrum. Campbell refers to this as the biblical model for love.
While he merely describes it as the neighborly love, as in “love thy neighbor,” like following the golden rule, for example, though biblically speaking, it’s way more than that. Agape love is the choice and commitment to love. This is the stuff that wedding vows are made of and the very essence that keeps a marriage together. Because marriage partners will always be challenged to say that they’ve had enough and to just walk out on the marriage. But agape love says, “I choose to continue. I choose to love, even if I don’t want to, even if I have every right to leave.” So don’t just get married because of love at first sight or Eros love, put some thought into it and then commit. It’s a big decision and shouldn’t be made with someone you just met.
And I’ll add another thing that I think Campbell left out. That every marriage should have each of the different types of love in it. The foundation is of course agape. That’s the glue that keeps it together. But without the person to person relationship, as Campbell describes it in regard to the troubadours, it’s dead. And the same goes for the Eros love… without physical intimacy the marriage will die too. And engaging in each of these strengthens the others. This is what Campbell hinted at concerning arranged marriages. The commitment might be there out of duty for the family or the kingdom that arranged it but without the romance and the sexual attraction that relationship is hell. Thankfully, partners in arranged marriages eventually find romance and even fall in love with each other over time, as Campbell confirms.
Speaking of hell, the story of Tristan and Isolde is an interesting one. So the two of them essentially get bound together by a spell but she is promised to another man in an arranged marriage. I suppose that I need to go read the story in detail to understand better why this is a problem for the church. I mean, if Isolde doesn’t marry King Mark and marries Tristan instead then unless anyone had sex before the marriage then no adultery has been committed. Sure, Isolde was engaged to King Mark but they were not married, and, if the church was so concerned, they would not have had sex before the marriage either, or else that would have been seen as adultery by the church as well. Then again, there’s a reason why the church needed the reformation. The only possible problem that I can see that the church had in this case, other than not even bothering with the fact that witchcraft was involved (where’s the exorcism!?), is that they were the ones who arranged the marriage and they had something to gain politically from it. In other words, greed. This is not agape love. The church was too busy trying to run things instead of presenting God’s unconditional love.
Umalohókan
House of Twin Suns
TM: Carlos Martinez
"You don't have to see the whole staircase just to take the first step."
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Last edit: 20 Jun 2025 20:58 by Yelt97 IPTC
Looking back now: This entry shows how the lessons were prompting me to think critically about love, commitment, and even institutional history through a spiritual lens. Balancing Campbell's historical/mythological view with biblical Agape added depth to my understanding of relationships and sacrifice.