To Be Human Among Titans and Gods
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...
Category: MythBlast
MythBlast | A Most Rare Vision
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...
MythBlast | Penelope’s Loom
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...
MythBlast | Dreaming the Lotus
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...
MythBlast | The Ripening Outcast
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...
MythBlast | Leaky Transcendence
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...
MythBlast | Amor Fati – Love Your Fate
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...
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...
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 Work Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce It would...
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...