MythBlast | Dancing in the New Year
For those of us following the Julian calendar which probably includes most anyone reading an e-mail on the Internet, I imagine, a new year has just begun; an opportunity to turn the page, to...
Category: MythBlast
MythBlast | The Hearth of Community
In the birth of a new year and in the darkness, and for a lot of us in North America right now, serious cold of winter, I am struck by how people have for...
MythBlast | The Coming of the Light
The title of this MythBlast is borrowed from the title of this Mark Strand poem: ______ Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of the light. You wake and the...
MythBlast | The Divine Wisdom of Play
Editor’s Note: This week, a very special message on the divine wisdom of play in a holiday season from philosopher, theologian, and founder of A Network for Grateful Living, Brother David Steindl-Rast, who for many years at...
MythBlast | Attitudes of Gratitude
Meister Eckhart, a German theologian born in the mid-13th century, once remarked that if the only prayer one ever uttered was “thank you,” that would be enough. Eckhart reminds us of how important it...
MythBlast | Play and The Ecstasy of Being in Times of Sorrow
Animal exuberance, this mystery of play, is very close to (if not identical with) the basic impulse of genius in the arts. The power of great art to purge us—to release us, for a...
MythBlast | The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance
Our theme at the Joseph Campbell Foundation this month is gratitude. We are celebrating both Campbell’s ideas and works, and all of the people around the world who have brought their own particular genius...
MythBlast | Wizards and Warriors Camp
Note: We continue our theme of gratitude this November, with an article written by former teacher and JCF Rights and Permissions wrangler, Michael Lambert. As we do, we thank all of the people who bring...
MythBlast | Practical Campbell: Original Campbell
Editor’s Note: This month, we are celebrating gratitude…our gratitude for Campbell’s ideas and work in the world, and for all of the thousands of people who are a part of JCF’s mythological community around the...
MythBlast | Samhain: Sympathetic Magic
If you peel back the frivolous mask of a holiday that inspires $8.4 billion in candy; decorations; and costumes sales for little kids, grownups looking for a moment of escapist fantasy, and long-suffering pets; you’ll find...
MythBlast | Art as Revelation
The Joseph Campbell Foundation is releasing a new e-publication entitled Art as Revelation, one of the last pieces that Campbell wrote and finished before his death. As David Kudler remarks in his Editor’s Note at the end...
MythBlast | The Fortunate Fall
In Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery wrote, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” I understand her sentiment; oaks, maples, sumac are everywhere ablaze, the morning air is...
MythBlast | Practical Campbell | The Mythologist & the Muses
Editor’s Note: We are delighted to share one of the essays in the Practical Campbell series as this week’s MythBlast. Practical Campbell essays search for areas where we can follow Joseph Campbell’s insights off the page...
MythBlast | From the Great Mother to the Age of Belief: Campbell on the Mythologies of Europe & the Middle East
Over the last several months, we have been sharing MythBlasts with you: tastes of a mythic idea framed in not only Joseph Campbell’s work, but together with historic and contemporary mythologists. We are so...
MythBlast | This Day, the Beginning of Works; Remembrance of the First Day
Tomorrow, Wednesday, September 20th, Rosh Hashana begins at sunset. Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year marks the time for inner reflection, atonement, and renewal. Rosh Hashana literally means head (or beginning) of the year, and on this day it...
MythBlast | The Labor of Following Your Bliss
Like many Americans, I spent the day yesterday dancing between celebrating Labor Day and, well, laboring. I was editing an interview I did a couple of weeks ago with dance icon Twyla Tharp for...
MythBlast | The Giver of Gifts Who Destroys Obstacles
This year, Ganesha’s birthday is celebrated in the Hindu month of Bhadrapada, which on the Gregorian calendar falls on August 24th. A festival of celebration, called a Chaturthi, lasts for eleven days ending on...
MythBlast | Eclipse: It is in Darkness One Finds the Light
Yesterday, on August 21, Americans living within the “umbral cone” had a ring side seat to the latest total solar eclipse visible from the U.S. for the first time in 26 years. As you...
MythBlast | Mine and Yours: Wandering into Story
We tell stories about who we are, to understand what makes us different – what makes us alike – what connects us what our families might be and look like – and who our...
MythBlast | Telling Big Stories: Paradox & Personal Myth
“Tell me your myth that the whole world may turn to myth.” — Nikos Kazantzakis The Talking Heads were right. We can’t truly know where we are going without reflecting upon where we have...
MythBlast | The Boon of a Well-Furnished Mythic Toolbox
This past week, from Sunday, July 23rd through Friday, July 28th, Joseph Campbell Foundation President Bob Walter led a workshop called, Your Hero’s Journey® Redux: A Mythological ToolBox® PlayShop. Bob is a theatrical playwright and...
The MythBlast: The Word Divine
‘In the beginning, there was the Word.’ While this is obviously a prominent phrase in the Judeo-Christian psyche, it is not an idea unique to one culture. In origin stories from around the world, a...
MythBlast | Hopi Kachinas: The Essence of Everything
Every year in Northeastern Arizona, around July, the Hopi Tribe celebrates the Niman Kachina Festival. The word “Hopi” is shortened from Hopituh Shi-Nu-Mu, a Hopi word meaning “The Peaceful People.” An important use of the...
