This is a red-blooded book from a man who lived a very full life. Campbell was essentially a storyteller, spending his days uncovering and telling old stories that he felt had the power to soak up the alienation of technological society. Though he was a respected academic mythologist, Campbell also played a key role in the creation of a definitive modern tale, Star Wars. Director George Lucas said that Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces (1949) was the catalyst in dreaming up the film, and that the inspiration for Yoda, the ancient and wise one, was Campbell himself.

The Power of Myth is a sort of campfire dialogue between Campbell and writer/journalist Bill Moyers, covering the stories and symbols of civilisation. Filmed for a television series at George Lucas' Skywalker ranch, the series caught the American public's imagination, and the book became a bestseller.

Campbell's big question was: 'How can myth be powerful for a person living today?' Are our lives really comparable to the amazing characters that appear in these old stories? He believed that mythical characters act as archetypes of human possibility; they are confronted with problems, and their ensuing action gives us an idea about how life might be handled. To identify ourselves with, for instance, the young warrior Arjuna in the Bhagavad-Gita, is not an inflation of our ego, but is an acceptance that this figure has something to teach us. In mythology we could never really feel alone, for within it were guides for the human spirit belonging to everyone, providing a map for every cycle of life or experience we may go through. He called mythology 'the song of the universe', put into tune by a thousand different cultures and peoples. With myth, all experience can be empowering; without it, life can seem just a meaningless series of ups and downs.

The Power of Myth calls us to 'follow our bliss'. Our bliss is an activity, work or passion with the power to endlessly fascinate. It is unique to us, yet may come upon us as a total surprise, and we may resist it for years. In modern psychological phraseology, bliss is the state of 'flow' (see Cziksentmihalyi) that we experience when we are doing what we are best at; time seems to stand still, and we feel effortlessly creative. This is about joy , as distinct from merely pleasure. Campbell portrays bliss as the track that has always been waiting for you, with 'hidden hands' seeming to help you attract the right circumstances for the fulfilment of your work. In mythological terms, bliss is represented by the Cosmic Mother, who guards an inexhaustible well offering solace, joy and protection from mundane life.

The more he read of the world's stories, the clearer it became to Campbell that there was an underlying template which most followed: the 'hero's journey' - a sequence of experiences that both tests and proves the person-cum-hero. Myths typically begin with the protagonist on home turf, living a quiet but unfulfilled life. Then something happens, and he or she gets the 'call' to leave on an adventure with some specific goal or quest. In Arthurian legend, Arthur begins a search for the grail; in The Odyssey , Odysseus simply tries to return home; in Star Wars , Luke Skywalker must rescue Princess Leia. Following numerous smaller trials, the hero endures a supreme ordeal in which all seems lost, followed by a triumph of some sort. The hero must then try to bring his 'magic elixir' (some secret knowledge or thing) back home, to reality. (There are many subtleties and variations to the pattern, but these are the basic stages.)

Campbell's resurrection of the idea of the hero has given people a template onto which they can mount their own experiences and dreams; being present in all human myths, it knows no national boundaries. The 'human potential' movement of the 1960s and 70s may have been important, but it took Campbell to remind us what myths have been saying for thousands of years: that we are all heroes-in-waiting.