Prologue, Section 3 Summary and Analysis

"The World Navel" Campbell writes in this section that throughout all the myths and stories of the world there is a central image - that of a center, a core, a source from which all truth flows, life affirming as well as life destroying. This is "the world navel," the center of existence - in various myths a fountain, a mountain, a tree or, as a Native American priest quoted by Campbell describes, the absolute middle of the land beneath the sky where the four directions (north, south, east, and west) all join and from which all four can be seen. Campbell writes that the great cities of the ancients were built around a symbolic representation of "the navel," usually a religious temple of some sort. He adds that many contemporary religions are spiritual manifestations of this same system...