Category: MythBlast

This month, we at JCF are highlighting Joseph Campbell’s Romance of the Grail, and I’m reminded once again of the very careful reader Campbell was, and his love for innovative literature. Medieval romances are...

Anniversaries mark the important events of one’s life; they invite reflection on the past, why it’s mattered, and where we’ve come from. Simultaneously, anniversaries stimulate thinking about the future, where we want to go,...

Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes“And he turns his mind to unknown arts.” Metamorphoses (Ovid, Book VIII, l. 188) As this pandemic rages on, exposing the structural flaws of an economic system bent on...

Here on the anniversary of the Joseph Campbell Foundation I got to musing about the service Joseph Campbell’s work has done for our world. My first thought was that bumper sticker. You’ve seen it:...

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, a comic series called Forbidden Worlds made waves on newsstands, at dinner tables, and even in the Halls of Congress. In 1954, a Senate sub-committee holding hearings on the...

This September marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. One of the reasons I am so proud and honored to be a part of this organization is that JCF...

In Sake and Satori (being the second volume of Asian Journals), Joseph Campbell provides an account of his travels in the Far East during the spring and summer of 1955. Addressing his time in...

In the Northern Hemisphere, much of July and August is commonly referred to as the “dog days” of summer. Swelteringly hot, heavy, stuffy days tint life with lethargy, ennui, or larghetto. The phrase, dog...

When Penelope tells her story to the stranger, who is Odysseus in disguise, she reveals how the loom strategy she used to keep the suitors at bay came from a divine source: “A god...

Joseph Campbell’s volume Asian Journals includes an essay called “Hinduism,” in which Campbell shares a mythological overview of this ancient Indian religious tradition. In one Hindu creation myth, the god Viṣṇu sleeps on the...

Although famous for stressing the psychological and metaphysical dimensions of myth, Joseph Campbell also had a grasp of myth’s historic foundations, including its sociological and ethnological inflexions in specific environments. When discussing Hinduism, for...

Joseph Campbell thought a lot about the differences between Eastern and Western mythologies, and one of the key distinctions he identified lies in the degree to which the absolute truths that condition, guide, and...

This is a very strange time we find ourselves in. Many mythologists are taking on the myths and meaning behind our sudden isolation and how it has driven us into our homes and away...

Joseph Campbell often told a story that he recounts near the end of his book, Myths of Light. In the fable, a baby tiger’s mother is killed while hunting goats. The young tiger is...

“Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle?” (Shakespeare, King Lear, 1.4.658) Lear may not have been able to make use of nothing, but Joseph Campbell certainly did. In Campbell’s book, Myths of Light:...

As I write, the globe remains in the grip of the pandemic. There is so much that is unknown about the novel coronavirus––and what is unknown breeds fear. Within that bubble of uncertainty events...

There is no doubt: we have entered unprecedented times as a global community, brought together by an ingenious virus which, biologically speaking, does not like to discriminate among race, class, or gender, although it...

Each month, we explore a theme through weekly MythBlasts, curated works, quotations, etc. This month’s theme is Our Global Community. Featured Video From the JCF YouTube channel Featured Audio Audio clip II.2.2.03 – Odysseus’...

The myths of the Sámi people speak of Beaivi, a sun goddess that brings healing to those whose mental and psychological health has been damaged by the long winter season of darkness. She brings...