MythBlast: Mythic Play
When I first was drawn to myth, it was through play. My sisters and I, nerdily passionate children of academics, spent a lot of time playing “Greek Gods and Goddesses” in a father-made fort...
Category: MythBlast
MythBlast: Independence and Hanging Together
In the United States, July 4th is a national holiday celebrating the Second Continental Congress’s approval of The Declaration of Independence, a document created to explain congress’s decision on July 2, 1776 to formally...
MythBlast: The Afflictions of Philoctetes: The Work of Some Rude Hand
It seems to me, life on this planet displays a disturbing propensity for the powerful to further afflict the already afflicted. The personae non-grata, the sick, the powerless, the poor, are forced to live in...
MythBlast: The Transcendent Summer Solstice
It is high summer in the Catskill mountains of New York where I live: green, lush, blooming, sparking with life. It’s an enchanted time. Every morning I walk my dogs in our meadows and...
MythBlast: Ramadan: The Empowerment of Self Restraint
Ramadan, celebrated this year between May 27th and June 24th by approximately a quarter of the world’s population, is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and commemorates the revelation of the Quran to...
MythBlast: Juno: Not Everyone Knows How to Love the Terrifying, Strange, or Beautiful
As we enter the month of June remember that this month, her birth month, is named for Juno, the Roman goddess married to Jupiter (who is also her brother), and who has traditionally been...
Mythblast: The Goddess, Beautiful in Tears
As I watch the renewing, generative energies of spring wrestle with the lingering insistence of winter in the mountains of Northern Arizona it might be apt to remember Freyja, the most familiar and powerful...
MythBlast: What is Myth? It’s a Mythtery!
What is myth… and why should anybody care? What do you think? I ask this because that one of the most marvelous ways to play with mythology is to assess our own answers to this question. ...
MythBlast: Following My Bliss
In April, 1999, I was at a crossroads. I had just left a job that I loved running a theater school because it no longer served my family’s needs. I knew that I wanted...
MythBlast: A Little Rebellion is a Good Thing
¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo! Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that began to be celebrated in California in the 1860’s marking the Battle of Puebla. It is not, as it is commonly misunderstood to be, the...
MythBlast: The Cruelest Month
American poet T.S. Eliot opens his masterpiece The Wasteland with a section titled “The Burial of the Dead”: APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull...
MythBlast: Life, Resurrection, and the Mythic Teachings of Frogs
A few nights ago, spring returned. In the Catskill Mountains of New York state, where I live, it’s a distinct moment, at dusk on the night when the spring peepers erupt into song. If...
Mythblast: Descent and the Birth of the Self
The most important and oldest date on the Christian calendar is the celebration of Easter, the death and resurrection of Christ. The whole of Christianity rests on this event and without it, Christian mythology...
MythBlast: The Sagacity of Fools
April 1st, April Fool’s Day, is a day traditionally set aside for playing tricks on people or hoaxing. Pranks and hoaxes range from the very clever, like the BBC’s “spaghetti harvest” or an article...
MythBlast: Zarathustra, Campbell, Nietzsche and Bliss
In the Zoroastrian religion Nowruz, the new day, is perhaps the most important day on the Zoroastrian calendar (it also marks the Persian new year) and is celebrated on, or near, the spring equinox. Much...
MythBlast: Modern Quests
Why do we tell stories about quests? In traditional, warrior cultures, such tales make a certain practical sense: they’re a way to give a sense of purpose to young men who have nothing to...
MythBlast: Love, Longing, and Wildness
A week ago, I found myself at that hard moment of freeing my eighteen-year-old cat from a body that was failing her. From the moment of her choosing me at a California animal rescue,...
MythBlast: May the Blessings of St. Patrick Behold You
We are all familiar with the trope of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland, but the real St. Patrick was even more remarkable in real life than the pied piper we have...
MythBlast: The Love-Death
In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, we read story after story of a human (or demi-human) encountering the gods and being literally transformed by the experience. The stories generally come in one of two flavors: the human is ready...
MythBlast: Shiva and the Great Dance
Shivaratri, The Great Night of Shiva, is celebrated this year on the 24th of February, the 6th night of the Phalgun, and devotees fast and maintain vigil all night. This, the largest of Shiva celebrations, centers on...
MythBlast | Valentine’s Day
The origins of Valentine’s Day are a bit murky, but they seem to reach back far into the early Roman celebrations of Romulus and Remus and the fertility festival of Lupercalia celebrated at the...
MythBlast: Beginnings and Endings
New Year’s is, traditionally, the time set aside for reflecting on the year just past and setting goals and making resolutions for the year to come. It is a curious emotional position in which...
Finding the Gold Within
Finding the Gold Within, a film that, according to the director, “probes what it means to be young, black, male, and ‘other’,” enjoyed its world premiere this week at the Mill Valley Film Festival...
