MythBlast | Where Do Stories Come From?
For every profession, there’s a question people ask that isn’t the real question. When I was an actor, the question audience members asked was, “How do you learn all those lines?” when what they...
Category: MythBlast
MythBlast | Tat Tvam Asi: The Blessing of Compassion
For the month of November, we at the Joseph Campbell Foundation are exploring the theme of blessings. The comfortable blessings of bounty, family, and health are certainly likely to spring to mind, but there...
MythBlast | Wearing the Mask of God
“Who was that Masked Man?” A childhood memory, televised in black and white––yet I still feel chills up my spine in anticipation of the weekly revelation, followed always by the sound of thundering hooves,...
MythBlast | Creative Mythology: Revelation of the Real
Let’s play a game of mental association. I say “Joseph Campbell.” You say, “Hero with a Thousand Faces.” If I ask, “Which of Campbell’s ideas is the most influential?” There’s a good chance you’ll...
MythBlast | Campbell, Virtual Reality, and Artificial Intelligence
In this fall season, when masks are donned in the celebration of our collective shadow, we may naturally consider Campbell’s own discussion of divine masks. However, when I revisit Campbell’s Masks of God, vol....
MythBlast | The Human Symphony: Notes From Asia
In this, the month of October, we at Joseph Campbell Foundation are celebrating the theme of masks; a theme apropos, I think, for October and Halloween. After all, it is the time of the...
MythBlast | What’s Old Is New Again: Primitive Mythology
When I was asked to lead the team of academics responsible for fact-checking and updating the archaeological discoveries, anthropological theories and migration patterns presented in the Primitive Mythology, the first volume in Joseph Cambpell’s...
MythBlast | The Rules of Enchantment
As we at the Joseph Campbell Foundation wrap up our celebration of the month of September with the theme of Timeless Tales, I want to return to an exploration of the Grail Romances and...
MythBlast | The Flowering of the Feminine Divine
In “On the Great Goddess,” the introduction to Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, Joseph Campbell addresses “the challenge of the moment” for women, which is to “flower as individuals, neither as biological archetypes nor...
MythBlast | Mysteries of the Feminine Divine
Six years ago I was literally elbow deep in the Joseph Campbell archives, retrieving dozens of audio cassette tapes on whose delicate ribbons were etched hours of Campbell talking about goddess myths. Between 1972...
MythBlast | The Magic of Timeless Tales
The Romance of Tristan and Iseult – Artist’s representation of a 14th Century Tapestry The theme for the month of September at the Joseph Campbell Foundation is “Timeless Tales,” and what tales are more...
MythBlast | The Song of the Quest
Editor’s Note: After a year and a half of editing this MythBlast series for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, the time has come to hand the editorial pen to the next set of writers and...
MythBlast | The Radiant, Reordering Force of Art
MythBlast | The Radiant, Reordering Force of Art In a 1907 letter to his wife, Clara (a fine artist and sculptor in her own right, who had studied with, among others, Auguste Rodin), Rainer...
MythBlast | Bliss is not Found in Faithfulness to Forms, But in Liberation From Them
I’ve been thinking a lot about this month’s theme at JCF, the theme of independence, reflecting on Joseph Campbell’s often bold, independent nature, and what it means to become an independent human being. As...
MythBlast | The Audacity of Independence
Happy Independence Day! For Americans, this day falls on July 4th every year, celebrating a terrifying and exhilarating moment when thirteen colonies ratified their declaration to come together as a new nation. I think...
MythBlast | A Joycean Affair in June. Or July.
Editor’s Note: We promised Joyce in June. Well, it’s July. And we had one more piece to share! But what is time, really? Enjoy. And stay tuned for our month of independence, ecstasy, and bliss…all...
MythBlast | Almosting It: The Paradox of James Joyce
As you know, this month JCF is celebrating James Joyce, who was an important influence on the work of Joseph Campbell, and continues to be an important influence for many of my colleagues and friends...
MythBlast | Mythic Mavericks
For years I have been intrigued with what I perceive as a particularly Celtic sensibility, an ability to dance on the knife’s edge between insight and nonsense, tragedy and comedy, sacred and profane. Not...
MythBlast | Worlds Above, Worlds Beneath – There is No One in the World Like Me
Today, May 29, 2018, the date of the first full moon in May, is the day of celebration for the birth of the Buddha called Vesak. Mythology has it that on the night the...
MythBlast | Foreword to Myths of Light
Editor’s note: This week we are sharing editor David Kudler’s forward to Campbell’s collection of essays Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, in honor of its new release as an eBook and...
MythBlast | The Paradox of the Outsideness of Myth
I have been rediscovering Campbell’s collection of essays on Asian mythology, Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, as the Joseph Campbell Foundation and publishing partners have preparing to release it as an audio book and eBook.These...
MythBlast | Myths of Light
The Joseph Campbell Foundation will soon be releasing an ebook publication of Campbell’s Myths of Light, an utterly charming little book in which the attentive reader will be able to discern Campbell’s joy and...
MythBlast | Mythopoetry in April
This month, in honor of the re-releases of Mythic Dimension and Primitive Mythology in eBook and audiobook forms, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating how we use mythology in our lives.As a form of knowing that is deeply...
