MythBlast | The Thin Ice of a New Day
“Skating away — skating away — skating away on the thin ice of the new day.” – Ian Anderson, “Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day)” War Child...
Category: MythBlast
Mythblast | The Secularization of the Sacred and Mythic Identification
Last week JCF, through its new arrangement with Amazon, made available a new digital edition of Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension. As I have remarked recently in this...
MythBlast | The No in Inspired Learning
A few days ago, I came across this sentence from Joseph Campbell in his essay “Symbol Without Meaning” in The Flight of the Wild Gander. “The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems,...
MythBlast | Temenos and the Power of Myth
Editor’s note: As we celebrate inspired teaching and learning this month, we are excited to share the ideas and work of one of JCF’s Board members, Kwame Scruggs, PhD, exploring his extraordinary work with...
MythBlast | The Flight of the Wild Gander: The Teacher as Midwife
The Joseph Campbell Foundation and New World Library are, later this month, releasing The Flight of the Wild Gander, one of Campbell’s most important, and popular, collection of essays. In these essays, Campbell is at...
MythBlast | A Community of Inspired Teachers
What makes an inspired teacher? As we step into February, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating teaching that breaks open our ideas, challenges our assumptions, and invites us to see the world full of...
MythBlast | Campbell and Esalen: An Enduring Quest for Meaning
After the stock market crash in the late 1920’s and struggling to find a job, Joseph Campbell decided to seek adventure in travel. He found himself on the coast of Northern California. Bob Walter, Joseph Campbell Foundation...
MythBlast | King, Campbell, and the Ecstasy of Being
Yesterday, January 15th, we in the U.S. celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This federal holiday, declared by Ronald Reagan, was established in 1983. Other cities in the U.S. had been honoring Dr. King...
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...
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...
