William Irwin Thompson

In his best-selling The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, William Irwin Thompson intrigued readers with his thoughts on mythology and sexuality. In his newest book, Coming into Being: Artifacts and Texts in the Evolution of Consciousness, he takes the reader on a journey from the preverbal communications of early stone carvings to the writings of Marcel Proust and around the monumental wrappings of Christo to the rebirth of interest in the Taoist philosophy of Lao Tsu. Owing as much to the rhythmic constructions of jazz as to established methods of scholarship, Thompson riffs on biology and culture, seeing the birth of the mind in Proust's madeleine, the displacement of humanity in Christo's wrappings of the Reichstag, and the path forward into a new planetary culture in the Tao Te Ching. In Coming into Being, William Irwin Thompson presents a fascinating vision of our past, our present, and our future that no one will want to miss.

In the opening passages of his classic book, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light, William Irwin Thompson asks the question, "But what is myth that it returns to mind even when we would most escape it?" Acknowledging the pervasive power of myth to create and inform culture, Thompson answers this question by weaving descriptions of the human abilities to create life and to communicate through symbolic myths based on male and female forms of power. Taking us from the earliest periods of prehistory through the time of female goddess worship to the rise of the male-dominated warrior state, Thompson shows the passage of humankind's relationship to nature from initial awe to persistent conquest. At the end of his journey, Thompson finds an answer to his original question: myth is the history of the soul; its creation is ongoing and its power is never-ending. This is a beautiful and fascinating book now being reissued for a new generation of readers, as well as for those it inspired originally.