The beginning of a mythic world or a mythic tradition is a seizure – something that pulls you out of yourself, beyond yourself, beyond all rational patterns. It is out of such seizures that civilizations are built. All you have to do is look at their monuments, and you’ll see that these are the nuttiest things that mankind over thought of. Look at the Pyramids. Just try to interpret them in terms of rational means and aims or economic necessities; think of what it meant in a society with the technology of Egypt – which is to say practically nothing – to build a thing that massive. The cathedrals, the great temples of the world, or the work of any artist who has given his life to producing these thing – all of these come from mythic seizure […]. That awakening of awe, that awakening of zeal, is the beginning, and curiously enough, that’s what pulls people together.
Joseph Campbell – Pathways To Bliss