In this installation, created from materials in the Joseph Campbell Collection at OPUS Archives and Research Center, the mythologist has stepped away from his desk, allowing us a glimpse of work-in-progress – the research notes, reference books, artistic images, ceremonial artifacts, and other objects that were an essential part of Joseph Campbell's creative process.

Click on the image above for details and anecdotes related to the items on Campbell's desk.

Join us for Joseph Campbell: Nature, Myth and Art, from April 18 - May 31, as we delve into Campbell's world of myth in a series of programs that will be held on the Monterey Peninsula. In partnership with Celadon Arts, OPUS Archives & Research Center, and the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, we will explore timeless and timely myths through art exhibits, panel discussions, films, salon style dinners, lectures, performances and more.

EVENTS INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

Preview to Joseph Campbell: Nature, Myth & Art
April 18, 6:30-8:30pm
Carl Cherry Center, Carmel, CA
Register Now $35 

Come out for an early viewing of the art exhibit Joseph Campbell: The Artist’s Way and the installation Work of Art: Joseph Campbell at His Desk, along with discussions about Joseph Campbell's philosophy, his Monterey experiences, his influence on artists, and to learn more about mythological events from April 19-May 31.  

Joseph Campbell: The Artist’s Way
Opening Night Reception: April 19, 5 - 7 p.m.
The Cherry Center for the Arts
4th and Sepulveda
Carmel, CA
Exhibition Dates: April 19 - May 31
Weekdays 11am-4pm

This gallery exhibition highlights the work of nine contemporary artists influenced by Joseph Campbell. Also included is the installation Working Art: Joseph Campbell at His Desk.

Mythological Conversation with Dinner at Deetjen’s
May 2, 7-9:30pm
Deetjen’s, Big Sur, CA

Bring your myth to the cozy family room dining table in this intimate gathering of 12. Enjoy the culinary creations of Chef Domingo Santamaria while discussing personal, social and global myths facilitated by Stephen Gerringer from the Joseph Campbell Foundation. For reservations, contact Deetjen’s at 831.667.3219

Other events include a panel discussion with the artists, Thursday night screenings of Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, a presentation on new myths, a film and discussion of Japanese myths, a discussion of Joseph Campbell's time on the Monterey Peninsula, and more.

 For details of these events, please visit http://celadonarts.org/events/event/

A spiritual symbol, a religious symbol, a mythic symbol is valid and true here, now and for always. It is not a reference to something that happened somewhere else at another time. —Joseph Campbell

The five lectures in "The Myths & Masks of God" (Series I, Volume 3 of the Collected Lectures of Joseph Campbell), recorded early in Campbell’s career as a public speaker, explore the original sources of various images of divinity in religions around the world. They were among those Campbell kept in his study and used as the basis for later investigations of myth, symbolism, the psyche, and spiritual awakening. Provocative and exhilarating, full of wit and wisdom, they are windows into one of the greatest minds of our time.

You may now download Volume 5 as our Thank You with a donation of $25 to JCF. Click on the title or album cover above to learn more and request your download. 

JCF's Mythological RoundTable® (MRT) Group of Ojai, CA, recently became a chartered RoundTable. They meet under the renowned Teaching Tree at the Ojai Foundation; Krishnamurti, Aldous Huxley, Black Elk, Thich Nhat Hanh, Houston Smith, Joan Halifax, and Joseph Campbell are among the many profound teachers who have spoken in the shade of the Teaching Tree.

The next meeting will take place on March 17. Dr. Evans Lansing Smith, a former student of Campbell's and current Chair of the PhD Program in Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, will guide the members of the Ojai MRT through An Archetypal Arboretum: The Mythology of Trees.

In addition to presentations designed by MRT members and several from fellow PhD mythology students, numerous guests have led roundtables in Ojai. These include Julie Tumamait (a Chumash Elder), Richard Buchen (Special Collections Librarian at the Pacifica Graduate Institute), and now Dr. Evans Lansing Smith - an impressing series of mythic gatherings!

Learn more about the JCF Mythological RoundTable® Program>

GERALD McDERMOTT

1941 - 2012

It is with the deepest sorrow that we announce the death of Gerald McDermott – author, artist, filmmaker, raconteur, and the first Fellow of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. In declining health the past few years, McDermott was nevertheless an intensely private individual reluctant to share details of his medical condition; news of his passing comes as a shock to many of his closest friends.

Dream weaver, tale spinner, portrayer of visions, interpreter of the human spirit – Gerald McDermott was all these and more.  Through his bold, graphic renderings of timeless tales from around the world, Gerald communicated his deep understanding of the transformative power of myth. His work remains an evocation of the human quest for unity and completeness, combining ancient imagery with contemporary design.

Gerald was fond of telling audiences he never held a job a single day in his life. Creator of over twenty-five books and films, Gerald was one of those fortunate few who discovered his bliss early in life. Admitted at the age of four to class at the Detroit Institute of Arts, he continued to pursue his passion throughout his school years, eventually attending Cass Tech – a public high school for the gifted with an art curriculum.

Upon graduation, Gerald was awarded a National Scholastic scholarship to New York's Pratt Institute. While at Pratt, he designed and directed his first animated film, The Stonecutter, based on a Japanese tale he’d loved as a child.  After earning his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1964, Gerald produced and directed a series of acclaimed animated films on folklore, each film consisting of roughly 6,000 separate drawings!

While working on his second film, Sunflight: The Flight of Icarus, his producer introduced him to Joseph Campbell – a meeting that marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Gerald recalls the effect of that encounter:

"Suddenly, thanks to my discussions with Campbell, the stories I’d been fascinated with all my life began to resonate in a new way; I could see deeper levels in them. This had an impact on my illustrations. I began to look for graphic, visual ways to communicate the psychological levels of the stories." 

Joseph Campbell served as consultant on four of Gerald McDermott's films. Far more significant from Gerald’s perspective, Joe and his wife, Jean Erdman, embraced Gerald as a member of their extended family. Campbell’s generosity of spirit made a deep impression on the young artist – a generosity he passed on to others many times over.

Gerald McDermott eventually adapted his films into children’s picture books, and created new stories drawn from the oral traditions of multiple cultures. Over time, he zeroed in on the Trickster motif, explaining his fascination as follows:

"Storytellers have delighted their listeners with animal tales throughout the ages. Across the world these stories have entertained and instructed as parables of human nature. The heroes – and villains – of this earliest and most widespread form of the folktale were often mischief-making rogues known as tricksters. The comic nature of the trickster as troublemaker, resourceful champion, and sometime fool is explored in these tales from different cultures.

"The trickster has special appeal for children because of his ability to triumph over larger foes not by physical strength, but by wit and cunning. In addition, tales of the trickster still speak to us in a gentle, humorous way about the strengths and weaknesses of humankind."

Gerald McDermott’s body of work has earned numerous awards. Two of the most prestigious – Anansi the Spider: A Tale from the Ashanti, and Raven: A Trickster Tale from the Pacific Northwest – were each named a Caldecott Honors Book; a third, Arrow to the Sun: A Tale from the Pueblo, won the coveted Caldecott Medal.

Gerald has been a popular presenter at Mythological RoundTable® meetings, and has long been one of the leaders of JCF’s Mythological Toolbox® playshop each spring at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur – this annual retreat continues to bring people together to explore the mythological aspects of their lives (no surprise that Gerald orchestrated activities in the Art Barn, and often shared a bedtime story to end the day). Gerald has also been a prime mover behind JCF’s efforts to support the development of myth-based curriculum in public education. His tireless, volunteer efforts on behalf of Joseph Campbell and JCF, along with his advocacy of the relevance of myth in contemporary life, inspired the Foundation to name Gerald McDermott its first Fellow.

On a more intimate note, Gerald’s friends – those of us who have experienced firsthand his thoughtful wit, personal charm, and sheer delight in all that life has to offer – lack the words to describe the hole left in our hearts.

Gerald, you are much loved, and much missed.

At year end, we at the Joseph Campbell Foundation pause to review completed projects, thank our donors who have generously shared the vision, and introduce plans for the coming year.

We ponder, how would the world be impacted had Joseph Campbell’s work not infused our culture with an awareness of the power of mythology?

The Hero With A Thousand Faces would never have expanded understanding of myth and literature. 

Books like Watership Down, musical compositions from John Cage to the Flying Lotus, and films like Big Fish, Happy Feet, and Star Wars would likely not have been inspired.

Countless individuals would not have had their lives changed on viewing Joseph Campbell’s Mythos or The Power of Myth.

The world en masse would miss the richness of cultural motifs shared across traditions.

Click here to help ensure that never happens and Campbell’s work continues to be made available.

To that end, during 2012 the Joseph Campbell Foundation has:  

Completed the digital release of all of Series I and part of Series II of the lectures in the Joseph Campbell Audio Collection—including many not heard since they were first recorded! —Download affordably at JCF.

(Did you know that, 20 years following his death, Joseph Campbell remains one of the top-ranked spoken word artists on iTunes®?)

Co-sponsored a Voyage of Aloha conference exploring socially responsible dialogue and sharing personal and collective heroic journeys through Hawaii’s rich indigenous cultural lens.

Co-hosted the Symposium for the Study of Myth with OPUS Archives and Research Center and Pacifica Graduate Institute, bringing together over 200 scholars from 6 countries intent on expanding the field of mythology.

Published Mythic Imagination, a collection of short stories by the young Joseph Campbell.

In order to keep Campbell’s legacy alive and available to ALL—
OUR CONTINUED WORK DEPENDS ON YOUR HELP!

> Do you attend one of the 63 thriving Mythological RoundTable® groups meeting in 17 countries from Ireland to Australia, from Brazil to Berlin?

> Have you engaged with hundreds of threads in JCF’s online forum, “Conversations of a Higher Order”?

> Are you a fan on Facebook? Join the nearly 100,000 who "Like" Joseph Campbell and receive status updates.

Through your GENEROSITY we will

Develop for grades 9-12 supplemental myth-focused modules, aligned with national Common Core State Standards and available online as an open source, “living” curriculum, for forthcoming generations.

Continue to add previously unavailable lectures to the Joseph Campbell Audio Collection.

Continue the conversion of Joseph Campbell’s work into eBook format for wider availability.

Roll out, online, a digital formatting of Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology (revised edition) that includes unpublished material.

Install a critical web platform to create an online research archive containing Campbell’s papers, correspondence, and hundreds of hours of unedited lectures.

$25, $100, $500, $1,000—whatever your capacity—

Join this myth-minded community so that the world continues to be enriched. Become a part of something important at this time in this world!

Just click on the link below:

Donate Now

Or mail a check to:

Joseph Campbell Foundation
P.O. Box 36
San Anselmo, CA 94979-0036

JCF is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt not-for-profit working foundation, and not an endowed organization. Only together can we insure Joseph Campbell’s work will thrive.

In Gratitude,

Robert Walter, JCF President
David Kudler, JCF Publications
Stephen Gerringer, JCF Community

Check out our new "Follow Your Bliss" Series on a wide range of affordable products, from cups, shirts and bumper stickers to greeting cards, mobile phone covers, and JCF's 2013 "Follow Your Bliss" Calendar, and more, created by designer Clare Ultimo. Don't forget to browse the rest of the store, and help support the Foundation with every gift you buy.

New on the MythNow Blog: JCF Associate Brad Olson, Ph.D., psychotherapist and author of the acclaimed blog, Falstaff Was My Tutor, contributes an entry that examines Petrarch's mind-expanding "peak" experience to reveal a surprising resonance between disturbance and discovery.

Brad has been nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize in Nonfiction for "One Must Forget Much to Live Here," which appeared in the Mythopoetry Scholar e-zine at Stephanie Pope's Mythopoetry.com (a site worth a close look).

Read the MythNow Blog>>

JCF and New World Library are pleased to announce the publication of Joseph Campbell's Mythic Imagination.

Before he was the engaging professor who brought mythology into people’s living rooms through his Power of Myth conversations with Bill Moyers, Joseph Campbell was a young man who tried his hand at fiction, publishing his first short story at age 29.

Compelling in their own right, these six stories and one novella are essential reading for longtime Campbell fans and the many who continue to discover him afresh.

(Order through JCF's online bookstore, and everything else you place in your Amazon shopping cart and purchase within  24 hours, even if not a book, generates a small fee for the Foundation)

 Order Mythic Imagination>>  

MICHELLE OBAMA PRESENTING THE NATIONAL ARTS AND HUMANITIES YOUTH PROGRAM AWARD TO KWAME SCRUGGS, Ph.D., OF ALCHEMY, INC.

JCF has invited Kwame Scruggs, Ph.D., founder of Alchemy, Inc., and his co-facilitator Jerry Kwame Williams (two Kwames!) to join us at Esalen this spring. Alchemy, Inc., uses myth and ritual primarily from African traditions to provide at-risk youths with a sense of purpose and community through an initiation experience.

The other Kwame (Jerry Kwame Williams) is co-facilitator, artist, and drummer at Alchemy, Inc., with 25 years of social work and experience as an Upward Bound instructor, specializing in rites of passage. Both men (pictured above) have been initiated into the Akan System of Life Cycle Development (African-based rites of passage).

To balance out the masculine focus the Kwames provide, we have also invited percussionist Judy Piazza to join us again. Judy has been exploring music and sound for over thirty years as educator, researcher, music therapist, performer, workshop presenter and recording artist. Judy plays drums from around the world (including tar, riqq, bodhran, kanjira, daf, tambourine, djembe, and doumbek), alternative dulcimer, didgeridoo, native flute, and guitar, lacing vocal and songstyles in unique sonorous soundscapes and rhythmsongs.

In addition to participating in our Mythological ToolBox™ Playshop, Judy and "the Kwames" will present the Wednesday Evening Program on March 27 - an evening that will include story and rhythm.

Don't miss it - reserve your spot now!

For more information on this year's Mythological ToolBox™ Playshop, visit this page>>

Online Lecture
Mythology, Health, and Healing
by Robert Walter

The Jung Platform is offering a video presentation by JCF Founding President Robert Walter. Watch the recording of the event online at the Jung Platform 

Jung Platform is offering a 40% discount to Associates and friends of JCF: use this code to receive the discount: CAMP99 

RESOURCES

 BOOKS

Unlikely Friendships

The Decision Tree: Taking Control of Your Health in the New Era of Personalized Medicine

CLIPS

 Alan Watts - The Myth of Myself ("Appling")

TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor: A Powerful Stroke of Insight

 Mammalian Behavior - Lioness and Baby Antelope

IMAGE - The Tri-Partite Brain 

"MYTH IS" QUOTES

 “Mythology is a function of Biology.”  — Joseph Campbell

“In common parlance, a myth is an ‘old wives’ tale,’ a generally accepted belief unsubstantiated by fact.”
—David Adams Leeming, The World of Myth (3)

“Mythology is the womb of mankind's initiation to life and death.”
—Joseph Campbell ("Bios & Mythos," in Flight of the Wild Gander)

“Myths describe the various and sometimes dramatic breakthroughs
of the sacred.”   —Mircea Eliade

“A mythology is a system of affect-symbols, signs evoking and directing psychic energies. It is more like an affective artwork than a scientific proposition.” —Joseph Campbell 

“Myth is ... art and must be studied as such.”  —Richard Chase

“Mythologies and religions are great poems, and when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a presence or eternity that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poems and all mystic traditions are in accord.”
—Joseph Campbell (Myths to Live By) 

The great poet Stanly Kunitz, who died in 2006 at the age of 100, made this observation:
“Poetry is ultimately mythology, the telling of stories of the soul. The old myths, the old gods, the old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need of them, for in their sum they epitomize the wisdom and experience of
the race.” —obituary,The New York Times on 16 May 2006

“Myth is the penultimate truth, of which all experience is the temporal
reflection.”    —Ananda K, Coomaraswamy

“Myth has become a reflection on life without need for the literal en-actment of the reflection.“ —Sophia Heller

“Myth, like science, is at once a method and a body of ordered
experience.”   —William Troy

“Myth is the central informing power that gives archetypal significance to the ritual and archetypal narrative to the oracle. Hence the myth IS the archetype.”  —Northrop Frye

“Myths are like the beams in a house: not exposed to outside view, they are the structure which holds the house together so people can live in it.”    —Rollo May

“Mythology is the study of whatever religious or heroic legends are so foreign to a student's experience that he cannot believe them to be true.”
     —Robert Graves, "Introduction," New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (v)

“Myths are early science, the result of men's first trying to explain what they saw around them.  But there are many so-called myths that explain nothing at all.  These tales are pure entertainment, the sort of thing people would tell one another on a long winter's evening. … But there’s religion here, too.    —Edith Hamilton, Mythology (19)

“Myth is a traditional tale with secondary, partial reference to something of collective importance.”
—Walter Burkert, Structure & History
in Greek Mythology & Ritual (23)

“The Myth, in a primitive society … is not just a tale.  It is a reality. These stories are of an original, greater, more important reality through which the present life, fate, and mankind are governed.  This knowledge provides man with motives for rituals and moral acts.”
—Veronica Ions, The World's Mythology (6)

“By knowing the myth, one knows the 'origin' of things and hence can control and manipulate them at will. “
—W. Taylor Stevenson, History as Myth (17)

“Myth purports to offer an adequate explanation for everything—for the elements and laws of nature, for social structure, ethics and the dynamics of the individual psyche.”
—Norman Austin, Meaning & Being in Myth (2)

“Myths are public dreams.” —Joseph Campbell

“Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence.”
—Rollo May

from “The Holy in the Ordinary,” by Gertrude Mueller Nelson, in The Joseph Campbell Phenomenon: Implications for the Contemporary Church):

When (my daughter) Annika was five, she underwent the standard tests that the public school required to find out if she was ‘ready for kindergarten.’ The psychologist had asked her:
 ‘Annika, do your parents read to you?’
 ‘You mean, tell stories?’ she replied.
 ‘Okay, tell stories. Do your parents tell you stories?’
 ‘Sure. My papa tells us Piggle-Wiggle stories and my mama tells us Greek myths.’
 ‘Really? Greek Myths?’
 ‘Yea, you know—mythology?’
 ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘do you know what a myth is? Would you like to tell me?’
 She thought a moment. ‘Well, a myth is a story that’s not true on the outside. But it is true on the inside.’”

“Myths are things that never happened but always are.”
—Sallustius, 4th century AD
(in Carl Sagan's Dragons of Eden)

“We still like to make up stories, just as our ancestors did, which use personification to explain the great forces of our existence.  Such stories … we call myths.  Mythology is a natural product of the symbolizing mind; poets, when not making up myths of their own, are still commanding ancient ones.”
—John Frederick Nims, Western Wind:
An Introduction to Poetry (41-42)

“Myths concern us not only for the part they play in all primitive, illiterate, tribal, or non-urban cultures…; not only for the grip that versions of ancient Greek myths have gained through the centuries on the literary culture of the Western nations; but also because of man's endearing insistence on carrying quasi-mythical modes of thought, expression, and communication into a supposedly scientific age.”      —G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning & Functions (2)

“Mythologies and religions are great poems.”  —Joseph Campbell

“Myths are metaphors.” —Joseph Campbell

POEMS

No Map

How close the clouds press this October first
and the rain—(it’s) a gray scarf across the sky.
In separate hospitals my father and a dear friend
lie waiting for their respective operations,
hours on a table as surgeons crack their chests.
They were so brave when I talked to them last
as they spoke of the good times we would share
in the future. To neither did I say how much
I loved them, nor express the extent of my fear.
Their bodies are delicate glass boxes
at which the world begins to fling its stones.
Is this the day their long cry will be released?
How can I live in this place without them?
But today is also my son’s birthday.
He is eight and beginning his difficult march.
To him the sky is welcoming, the road straight.
Far from my house he will open his presents—
a book, a Swiss army knife, some music. Where
is his manual of instructions? Where is his map
showing the dark places and how to escape them?

 —Stephen Dobyns

[from Good Poems, selected & introduced by Garrison Keillor; “as heard on The Writer’s Almanac” (Viking Penquin, 2002), p.378; originally from Velocities; copyright © 1994 by Stephen Dobyns; used by permission of Viking Penguin.]

The Three Goals by David Budbill

The first goal is to see the thing itself
in and for itself, to see it simply and clearly
for what it is.
 No symbolism, please.

The second goal is to see each individual thing
as unified, as one, with all the other
ten thousand things.
 In this regard, a little wine helps a lot.

The third goal is to grasp the first and second goals,
to see the universal and the particular,
simultaneously. 

Regarding this one, call me when you get it.

[from Good Poems, selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor; “as heard on The Writer’s Almanac” (Viking Penquin, 2002), p.225; originally in Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse; copyright © 1999 by David Budbill; reprinted with permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend WA 98368-0271.]

The Story of Ig & Og

It is the year 100,000 B.C., and two hunter-gatherers are out hunter-gathering. Let’s call them Ig and Og. Ig comes across a new kind of bush, with bright-red berries. He is hungry, as most hunter-gatherers are most of the time, and the berries look pretty, so he pops a handful in his mouth. Og merely puts some berries in his goatskin bag. A little later, they come to a cave. It looks spooky and Og doesn’t want to go in, but Ig pushes on ahead and has a look around. There’s nothing there except a few bones. On the way home, an unfamiliar rustling in the undergrowth puts Og in a panic, and he freezes, but Ig figures that whatever is rustling probably isn’t any bigger and uglier than he is, so he blunders on, and whatever was doing the rustling scuttles off into the undergrowth. The next morning, Og finally tries the berries, and they do indeed taste O.K. He decides to go back and collect some more.

Now, Ig is clearly a lot more fun than Og. But Og is much more likely to pass on his genes to the next generation of hunter-gatherers. The downside to Ig’s fearlessness is the risk of sudden death. One day, the berries will be poisonous, the bear that lives in the cave will be at home, and the rustling will be a snake or a tiger or some other vertebrate whose bite can turn septic. Ig needs only to make one mistake. From the Darwinian point of view, Og is the man to bet on. He is cautious and prone to anxiety, and these are highly adaptive traits when it comes to survival.

We are the children of Og. For most of the time that anatomically modern humans have existed—a highly contested figure, but let’s call it a million years—it has made good adaptive sense to be fearful, cautious, timid.

John Lancaster, “Pursuing Happiness,” 02/26/12 New York Times review of Happiness: a History by Darren McMahon & The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

Bob Walter: In 1979 Bob “retired” from the professional theater and became editorial director of Joseph Campbell’s Historical Atlas of World Mythology. When Campbell died, Bob completed portions of his Atlas and oversaw the publication of Volumes I and II. In 1991, Jean Erdman Campbell and Bob created the Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF). He has presented papers, seminars, and/or workshops on four continents, and has served since 2002 as a Trustee of the Tamalpais Union High School District (Marin County, California).

Cost: Normally $14.99, but through JCF with the 40% discount code CAMP99, only $8.99
Watch this program live on JungPlatform (DVD will be released shortly).

These lectures were recorded at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, during the summer of 1969, immediately following the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Pictured are JCF Working Associate Timothy Hallford (standing) and Mythological RoundTable® Leaders Catherine Svehla, Ph.D. (Joshua Tree, CA), Allison Stieger (Seattle, WA), and Tony Dolan (Dublin, Ireland), leading one of 54 different sessions at the Symposium. (Image by Cheryle Van Scoy) 

The following description of the Symposium for the Study of Myth is by Beth Anne Boardman, Ph.D. (Mythological Studies) and founder of JCF's Mythological RoundTable in San Clemente, California:

The recent Symposium for the Study of Myth unfurled an amazing array of speakers, panelists, and uniquely mythic presentations in the midst of its celebratory three-day run. The festive atmosphere welcomed over 200 participants from all over the country, all over the world, in fact! From Ireland to Japan to Australia and the United States, the study of myth revealed its epic reach, warming hearts, stimulating minds, and fostering connections.

The conference also marked the first joint project of Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Public Programs, the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and Opus Archives and Research Center. The gathering positively budded, blossomed, and burst with the excitement of the chance to immerse oneself in myth for three entire days! Goodwill and generosity of spirit perfused the event, and participants engaged in a robust array of observations, experiences, and opinions as the weekend progressed.

My experience at this conference differed in nature from others I have attended, because this time I served in the capacity of a volunteer “room-tender,” aka “myth-tender” for the event, assisting with room set-ups and assuring that all presenters got their full allotment of time in the spotlight by keeping a hawk-eye on the clock. Wearing this robe still allowed me to take in many wonderful offerings: from mythic poetry, to myth as group process; from depth psychological case studies, to story-telling rocks; from group discussions, to keynote and plenary speakers and performers.

Rich and far-reaching, the materials and experiences at the Study of Myth stirred the group psyche into passionate discussion of both shadow and light, and posed the essential and urgent question, “Where do we go from here?” A final conference-wide participation session in Barrett Center resulted in the production of proposed goals for the global future of the Study of Myth, so stay tuned to Pacifica, the JCF, and Opus for news of how, who, and what will carry the dream onward!

Below is an excerpt about Joseph Campbell from AND LIVE REJOICING: Details of a Charmed Life

THE POWER OF MYTH

Joseph Campbell was a lifelong friend of mine. His epical achievement was to point out, in The Power of Myth, the six-part television series he did with Bill Moyers, that myths have two sides. They can be inspiring and true, but they can also be destructively false. During World War II, Hitler’s myth of a super race had all but derailed the word myth itself, and Joe’s great accomplishment was to get the word back on track and remind us of the psychological truths that myth offers.

One incident centering on Campbell illustrates his contribution.

After Elmer Greene made his reputation on developing biofeedback, he became interested in fringe phenomena. A number of Asian gurus were offering workshops on how their brand of yoga could increase a person’s energy. Elmer invited a number of them to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, where he mounted a five-day symposium on the subject of human energy. For reasons that escape me, Joseph Campbell and I were both invited.

During the conference people began to notice that Joe seemed to have more energy than the vaunted yogis. On the evening he spoke, his lecture began at 7:00 p.m., and he didn’t let the audience off the hook until 11:00. His parting remark was that he was good for another four hours if anyone in the audience was interested. There were no takers.

The next day someone asked Campbell what his yoga was. They wanted to know what gave him so much energy. Joe brushed the question aside, saying that he had no traditional yoga. His yoga was reading books. But then he did a double take.

“Come to think of it,” he said, “I guess I do have a yoga. It has three parts: eating nearly raw roast beef, drinking good Irish whiskey, and swimming twenty-two laps a day in an Olympic-sized swimming pool in forty-four minutes.”

Someone groaned at the strenuousness of the exercise.

“The hardest part,” Campbell added, “is keeping track of how many laps I’ve swum. So I hit on a method. I visualize in succession the twenty-two cards in the major arcana of the Tarot deck.”

Some years later Joe and I nearly collided in one of the corridors at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Glancing at our watches we decided that we had time for a sandwich before proceeding to our connecting flights, and during the lunch he recounted an incident I’ll never forget.

Campbell told me that he was on his way from a lecture tour in the Bay Area, and he told his hosts not to meet him at the San Francisco Airport, for he had many friends in the area and would be renting a car. He just wanted to be told where his first appearance would be.

His hosts told him the event would be held in a synagogue in Marin, and to make sure he would be on time Campbell arrived a half hour early. Spotting the synagogue, he parked his car a decent distance from the entrance, got out, and started walking away, when a small boy about six years old said to him, “You can’t park here.”

Joe glanced around and said, “Why can’t I park here? There’s no NO PARKING sign, and no red stripe on the curb, so why can’t I park here?”

The boy said, “Because I’m a fire hydrant.”

Joe said he told the boy, “Oh, thank you! I could have gotten a parking ticket!”

With that he walked back to his car, unlocked it, and reparked it fifty feet away from the boy.

When we parted I found myself thinking that if there was anyone on the planet who could understand that a small boy could be a fire hydrant, that person would be Joseph Campbell.

From the book AND LIVE REJOICING. Copyright ©  2012 Huston Smith. Reprinted with permission from New World Library. www.NewWorldLibrary.com

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OPUS Archives and Research Center announces the second New Mythos Research Grant, which focuses on JAMES HILLMAN, one of the most spirited, radical and brilliant individuals of our time.  Inspired by his courageous, deep questioning of so many key aspects of  our culture, OPUS encourages New Mythos II grant applicants to follow Hillman's lead in searching out the New Stories of our time, shining a mythological, archetypal and depth psychological light on critical social, artistic, cultural, environmental or artistic issues. 

 Learn more about applying>>

In yet another Huffington Post contribution, Derek Beres, author of Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music, focuses on Burning Man through the lens of Joseph Campbell's "Four Functions of Myth."

 Read this article on Huffington Post>>