Wade Davis is interested in all of it from his ethnobiological viewpoint. Shamanistic and indiginous use of bio-med agents in influencing medical healing and spiritual and inner personal insights, especially in the Amazon basin and in all other parts of the world. These are his workshops.---He and others are looking at local plants for the cure for cancer and solving the problems of not enough rubber in the world due to leaf blight in production areas -- and the shortcomings of synthetic rubber in solving these very real problems. And so much more. But he has great insight, I think, into the folklore and other practices of these people that have saved this knowledge for them (and for him).

But JOSEPH CAMPBELL delves into all of the peoples of the world throughout time and is interested in tracking how the motifs of folklore and dogma the world over and throughout time (what we know of it historically) repeat over and over. In showing those things we can infer that he is saying that nobody has the correct way -- but that we all do. That, I think, recently prompted a friend of mine to say he was an antisemite. Another friend told me that they thought he was against Christianity. Personally, I think that Mr. Campbell had feelings more toward those found in the song "MASTER OF THE SHEEPFOLD". (see other threads on that song and in the database.) He saw the value in ALL and he also saw the places where folks' dogmas and too literal interpritations often missed the point of where their favorite things in their religion possibly/probably sprang from. As I'm fond of saying, "Some people have tact; others tell the truth."

(Maybe I know more about these guys than I thought.)

Art Thieme