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Our given topic for this month–The Message of the Myth: Arts and Artists–is both majestic and expansive. Over millennia and across cultures, countless great art has drawn inspiration from the realm of myth. Frequently in Western societies, artists have sought to represent puissant themes that are embedded in the traditions of both ancient Greece and Rome, as well as in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
In the realm of classic art, most of us are familiar with The Sistine Madonna painted by Raphael, The Last Supper mural painting by Leonardo da Vinci, the many works of art depicting Hercules slaying the Hydra, or the sculpture of David’s Michaelangelo. Such works of artistry are usually admired irrespective of the culture or tradition of the beholder.
But what about our immediate time? In this MythBlast I want to focus on the artistic genre of music. Specifically, the voice and phenomenon of Taylor Swift and how powerful our personal experiences can be when they’re associated with a myth or an archetype.
Cassandra, the cursed prophetess
Swift’s emotional storytelling has the ability to make the personal universal and the universal personal. This can especially be felt in the song “Cassandra” from The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology (TTPD) double album.
So, they killed Cassandra first ’cause she feared the worst
And tried to tell the town
So, they filled my cell with snakes, I regret to say
Do you believe me now?
Wikipedia succinctly explains, “Cassandra in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.” (As an aside, Swift also has a song titled “The Prophecy” on the same album.)
Cassandra was a powerful and wise woman who accurately predicted both the fall of Troy and the death of Agamemnon, but was ignored by society. A rhetorical question: “How many women have also experienced their predictions being ignored?” It’s a tale as old as time.
Let’s first explore Swift’s connection with the Cassandra archetype and how she links a personal life event with this mythical figure through both her artistry and the shared emotive field of her audience. In 2016 Kim Kardashian leaked a short recording on Snapchat appearing to prove that Swift had given her consent to being mentioned in Kanye West’s song “Famous,” despite Swift claiming she was never told that West planned to use the word “bitch” to describe her. And when the full footage of the call came out in 2020, it exonerated Swift (“Do you believe me now?”).
As Swift describes in her Time Person of the Year interview, “Make no mistake–my career was taken away from me. You have a fully manufactured frame job, in an illegally recorded phone call, which Kim Kardashian edited and then put out to say to everyone that I was a liar. That took me down psychologically to a place I’ve never been before. I moved to a foreign country. I didn’t leave a rental house for a year. I was afraid to get on phone calls. I pushed away most people in my life because I didn’t trust anyone anymore. I went down really, really hard.” Cassandra, anyone?
The alchemical snake symbol
Swift sings about being betrayed, disbelieved, persecuted, and defamed. These are–unfortunately–incredibly relatable global experiences that she captures in her allegorical, metaphorical, and poetic lyrics. “So, they filled my cell with snakes” references how in the myth it’s the snakes who whisper the prophecies to Cassandra and how she was also taken prisoner. For Swift, the “cell” was her rental house that became a prison and a cell phone full of snakes, because at the time, the overwhelming consensus online was that Swift was a liar–a snake–and so this emoji covered her social media (“filled my cell”).
As she mentioned in an Elle interview, “A few years ago, someone started an online hate campaign by calling me a snake on the internet. ... It would be nice if we could get an apology from people who bully us but maybe all I’ll ever get is the satisfaction of knowing I could survive it, and thrive in spite of it.” Swift returned in 2017 with her album Reputation, a fan favorite with the lyrics: “I’m sorry / But the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now / Why? Oh, ’cause she’s dead (oh),” and the snake became a defining symbol of this era.
Joseph Campbell in his artful prose writes in The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers:
The power of life causes the snake to shed its skin, just as the moon sheds its shadow. The serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon its shadow to be born again. They are equivalent symbols. Sometimes the serpent is represented as a circle eating its own tail. That’s an image of life. Life sheds one generation after another, to be born again. The serpent represents immortal energy and consciousness engaged in the field of time, constantly throwing off death and being born again. There is something tremendously terrifying about life when you look at it that way. And so the serpent carries in itself the sense of both the fascination and the terror of life. (53)
A snake symbolizes transformation, transmutation, and alchemy. (Track 15 on TTPD is titled “The Alchemy.”) Now who among us hasn’t had to shed the outer skin of a present identity to reveal a new life chapter? Or in Swiftie language, “era.”
No one likes a mad woman
I also want to highlight how in the myth Cassandra was viewed as a mad woman instead of a divinely-inspired seer. Author Seth Schein describes Cassandra as one of those women “who often combine deep, true insight with utter helplessness, and who retreat into madness” (12). A madness that comes from being a frenzied prophetess whose “prophetic utterances” are dismissed, ridiculed, and gaslighted by those around them and the wider society. In Swift’s song “mad woman” on the album folklore, she describes this, again, all-too-common experience.
And there’s nothin’ like a mad woman
What a shame she went mad
No one likes a mad woman
You made her like that
One of many reasons Swift is so popular is because her music makes the listener feel that their personal story is important, their feelings are in fact valid, and their truth matters; their story is just as significant and valuable as the eternal, cosmic stories playing out in the grand myths. And through Swift and other artists, we witness how these ancient and universal stories can indeed be reawakened through the power of creativity.
Through Swift and other artists, we witness how these ancient and universal stories can indeed be reawakened through the power of creativity.
Archetypal and mythic inspiration
Now, speaking about our subject more broadly ... do great works of art draw their inspiration from great myths? Or is it that when a striking piece of art so impresses itself upon our souls, it naturally wakes us up to the potential presence of the underlying myth and therefore amplifies it? Swift’s expressive and evocative songwriting can inspire and encourage us to explore the mythic base of her lyrics so that we too may appreciate the archetypal dimensions at play in our own lives. But the great myths can also press themselves into our own souls, even if we’ve not directly invited them to do so.
Even if we’re not immediately led to explore the generative archetypal realm behind (and within) a display of art, some artists’ portrayals of a mythical event will nevertheless move us simply because of the sheer power of their creation. A song can be an ohrwurm (catchy tune) “just because.” Florence and the Machine also have a track on their album Dance Fever called “Cassandra,” and as one fan wrote on reddit, “Cassandra Live at MSG is a perfect example of a live performance making a great song into a spectacular song! That extra verse at the end, the build up from the band, the emotion in her singing, even the cheers from the crowd! It all makes this song go from 10/10 to 15/10.”
Both Swift and singer Florence Welch (who collaborate on the song “Florida!!!” on TTPD) draw from the same myth to extract their own lore from their personal lives, and as Welch said in an interview on vulture.com, “‘Cassandra’ very much reminds me of the way that I used to create myths around things that I was trying to understand or wrestle with. ... I just was always an overthinker and anxious, and I had to create worlds and characters to help me understand my feelings.” But even without any of the archetypal and mythic awareness, “Cassandra” is a dance floor banger!
Over time we may come to more readily recognize the mythical elements within works of art, as well as sensing something of the larger archetypal impulses living in them. We can best cultivate an awareness of the archetypes at play in the outer world–and within ourselves–when we bring an artistic sensitivity to our act of perception so that we may sense both the mythic in the art, as well as the archetypal impulse within the mythical. For this recognition to occur, we’re called to be artists ourselves–in our perceptive and imaginal lives.
MythBlast authored by:
Kristina Dryža is an ex-futurist, author, TEDx speaker, archetypal consultant, one of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Editorial Advisory Group, and a steward for The Fifth Direction. Based between Australia and Lithuania her work focuses less on the future and more on the unknown. Presence. Not prediction. What’s sacred? Not only what’s next. Kristina is passionate about helping people to perceive mythically and sense archetypally to better understand our shared humanity, yet honor the diverse ways we all live and make meaning. To learn more about Kristina, you can view her TEDx talk: Archetypes and Mythology. Why They Matter Even More So Today https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4PYNroZBY&t=525s
This MythBlast was inspired by The Power of Myth Episode 2, and Pathways to Bliss
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In this episode entitled "Interpretation of Symbolic Form" which was recorded around 1970, Joseph Campbell delves into the meaning of symbolic forms and narrative. In the lecture, he explores how symbolic forms point to the human capacity for the transcendent experience. Host, Bradley Olson introduces the episode and gives commentary after the lecture.
This Week's Highlights
“What we’re taught today mainly has to do with economics and politics. We are not nurturing our spiritual side. So we are left with this void. It’s the job of the artist to create these new myths. Myths come from the artists.”
-- Joseph Campbell
Myth and Meaning, 177