MythBlast | The Tiger King
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...
Category: MythBlast
MythBlast | You Are It And It Is Nothing
“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:...
MythBlast | The Air We Breathe
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...
MythBlast | Our Global Movement
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...
MythBlast | The Secret Cause
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’...
MythBlast | Searching For The Pimander In The Midst Of Coronavirus: Redefining Relationships in This Dark Night
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...
MythBlast | Forsaking the Easy for the Harder Pleasures
In his book, The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance, Joseph Campbell discusses artists who have had monumental impacts on the world of dance. To a person, these artists unflinchingly blazed new trails in...
MythBlast | The Grateful Dead, Adult Entertainment, and Native Tongues
Recently, I engaged in verbal combat with a friend over whether Joseph Campbell would have liked the TV show Game of Thrones. Imagining great thinkers interacting with the cultural phenomena of contemporary life is...
MythBlast | The Ancient Craft of the Beautiful
In his book The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance, Joseph Campbell demonstrates not only his insatiable curiosity and wide-ranging, omnivorous mind, but also, in his exploration of mythology and dance, I am reminded...
MythBlast | The Quest of Creative-Being Itself
It is easy to glamorize the gifts and benefits of artistic creativity, the unique sense of transcendence it brings to mind, a kind of panacea to cure all the ills of life. To be...
MythBlast | Mythic Imagination: The In-Between
Soul seeks a life that is not purely driven by ego centered desires, societal demands, or cultural norms, but a life that is connected to Psyche or Spirit. Spirit lives in the In-Between, it...
MythBlast | Separation, Initiation, and Return
According to Joseph Campbell, how many stages are there in the Hero’s Journey or monomyth — and why does it matter? What is the Hero’s Journey, really? I talk to writers and others...
MythBlast | Strictly Platonic: The Clash Between Education and Sports
In 2015, Time Magazine ran a piece exploring why student athletes struggled to maintain their grades and the numerous factors surrounding the problem. The article was in response to a report from The Chronicle...
MythBlast | Myth as Fictional Fabrication
Published by New World Library for the Joseph Campbell Foundation in 2012, Mythic Imagination: Collected Short Fiction witnesses many of Campbell’s favorite themes encasing myth spread out through seven stories ranging from 1931 to...
MythBlast | Beyond the Moonshine
“Get up!” Through his sleep, Freddy Bliss vaguely heard the agitated voice, but he was unwilling to open his eyes. “Up! Up! Up! Up!” (Mythic Imagination, 3) For readers of Joseph Campbell, the name “Freddy...
MythBlast | Political Matters
“Politics.” It is the word of the moment. One might even say it’s the word that exemplifies the age we live in. With a presidential election just a few months away, we find ourselves...
MythBlast | There and Stuck Again: The Creative Darkness of the Soul
Writer’s Block by Isabelle Gallino (used through a Creative Commons license) Time and again, as artists and writers we come to a point in our development where that proverbial “block” on the road of...
MythBlast | Joseph Campbell, Angela Gregory, and a Future Awaiting All of Us
The art of letter writing has been significantly threatened since e-mails and text messages brought about faster and more efficient ways to communicate with words. Once human relationships depended heavily on written correspondence. This...
MythBlast | Joseph Campbell: A Normal, Beautiful, Standard Life
The text we’re highlighting this month is Correspondence: 1927-1987, which offers selections of Joseph Campbell’s correspondence over the last 60 years of his life. I have long loved reading the correspondence of people who...
MythBlast | The Known and the Unknowable: A Meeting of Light and Dark
The Dream of Joy (from The Sleep of Sorrow and the Dream of Joy) by Raffaelle Monti (marble, England, 1861. Photo by Chris Beckett; used through a Creative Commons license). Having read and reread...
MythBlast | Why Symbols?
“We speak of the symbolism and metaphor of myth – but why? Why do myths have to use symbols to communicate? Can’t they just be clear about what they mean?” This frustration was voiced...
MythBlast | Dancing with the Unknown
A Journey into the Unknown by Bastian Schmidt. Used through a Creative Commons License How do we know what we know? When does an introduced idea cross that threshold from something encountered to something...
MythBlast | The Dark Light of the Goddess
I love those moments in which Joseph Campbell, the world-class scholar of myth, also becomes a story-teller, often drawing a line of Native American wisdom. In The Flight of the Wild Gander, he opens...