Halloween decorations sprang up suddenly, like giant mushrooms on front lawns all around my neighborhood this week—3 full weeks before the official holiday. (I’m writing this at the end of September so, technically, it’s a full month before the official holiday.) And let’s frame “holiday” with quotation marks in observance of its function as a true holy day, lurking at the end of October as if it were some kind of Thanksgiving warm-up in a, supposedly, secular calendar. (I’ve come around to the idea that there are no purely secular holidays; and there never were. All holidays are holy days. Anyway, people sure do act like they are.) Holidays have a ritual function and, as with all rituals, the function of such holidays is to help humans navigate difficult times (marriage, winters, harvests) and the psychological stressors common to the species—like fear: fear of failure, fear of freezing, fear of starving. Halloween, like the Frankenstein and arm-waving ghoul balloons filling my neighbors’ front yard, looms large in this month’s MythBlast theme of FEAR . All Hallows Day (November 1) celebrates the spirits of departed saints but All Hallows Eve focuses on departed spirits who are supposed to be departed but haven’t departed yet. Boo! This got me thinking about what happens when you bury things improperly. I'd like to suggest that the ritual function of Halloween is to help us mediate, mitigate, and endure the ghosts that arise when, by hook or by crook, we bury things improperly. That’s not something you want to screw up—and yet we do. For practical purposes, there are two ways you can bury something improperly. The first is to fail to observe the appropriate rituals and protocols—designed to facilitate a transition from this life into the beyond—to help the spirit (or idea, or even a point of view, hint hint) recognize its own death, relinquish its ties to this world, and be put to rest where its components can recycle into the hamster wheel of life and death, Heaven or Hell, or ecosystem. When you do that correctly, you don’t create a ghost problem. When a spirit (or idea or point of view) is acknowledged by all parties to be deceased, it can pass away happily without clinging to this world by, say, hiding under your bed, or in your closet, or in the back of your mind, where it will become a terrible nuisance. The other way is way worse. The other way to improperly bury something is to bury something that isn't quite dead yet—and now we’ll have real problems. When you bury something that isn't dead, it inevitably takes exception. It wakes up in the coffin of its hopes, or even your hopes, and comes back as a zombie. Dr. Freud is well known for having pointed out that when you bury or repress something it comes back as a monster. It’s amazing this still happens, since zombies are well understood nowadays. They have their own movies and streaming franchises, and yet people keep making zombies. Every day. Deliberately. Perfectly alive bits of our psyche are buried by desire or fear and left to fester, just below the sodded field of consciousness, until they’re strong enough to claw their way to the surface where, given the chance, they will consume everything in their path—as zombies and ghouls are known to do. Which brings us back to Halloween. A lot of the ghosts haunting us today are the specters of a past we haven’t buried properly, generally because we can’t bear their loss and won’t let them go – as happens when nostalgia for the comfort of an imagined yesteryear, embodied in the metaphors and symbols of that earlier time, is raised like a Golden Calf to become both an object of devotion and a golem of revenge on the world that replaced it. Campbell alludes to this when he says, We must remember, however, that the metaphors of one historically conditioned period, and the symbols they innervate, may not speak to the persons who are living long after that historical moment and whose consciousness has been formed through altogether different experiences.”(Thou Art That, 6) The world is filled, right now, with symbols and metaphors that belong to an earlier or dying era, but they continue to haunt us long after the world that grounded them and gave them flesh has faded away. These symbols, religious or political or social, have lurched from life support in the prayers of those unwilling to face the world as it is today, and have become the walking dead, claiming victims by contact and spiritual ingestion. More bluntly, consider the number of social ills we continue to face, sanctified by the intubation of historical nostalgia, kept alive out of fear, and out there walking around, scaring the living. History, looked at through this lens, starts to look like a Stephen King novel. Boo! Still, in a very real sense all humans, and all cultures, are haunted by the specters, demons, ghouls and ghosts of what was meaningful in the past, the death of which we fear to face. They need a funeral and an Irish wake. We’d all feel better afterwards. In the meantime, you might check your car door for... “a bloody hook!” BOO!! Thanks for musing along.

Sacred realms. It’s so easy to discuss such a topic in the abstract. But how can we discern and honor such places and spaces in our everyday lives, given the many issues and pressures that many of us encounter on a daily basis? For the greater part of our lives we spin fast—both in our exterior and interior lives—as we attempt to keep up with the incessant in-flow of data and demands that pressure our attention. In this swirl, much gets overlooked and forgotten. Especially those deep, internal wellsprings within us that contain the potential to renew us. Joseph Campbell is noted for saying, “Your sacred place is where you can find yourself again and again.” In Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, Campbell explains that “a sacred space, then, is any area, such as the caves, in which everything is done to transform the environment into a metaphor.” [96] So how may we best manage our time to allow for the re-centering of our bodies and souls, and in so doing, touch the deeper, more sacred and metaphoric rhythms of life? But how do we even recognize the sacred? Or even develop the apposite, inner organs of perception and reception within our psyche? Deep down, or just below the rim of consciousness, most of us have a desperate craving for an encounter—indeed, for an intimacy—with the sacred. Yet frequently we’re caught up in a world-mind-culture that feels full of cold, steely angles and prodding, sharp spikes while simultaneously being assaulted by the bombardment of negative noise and grim news headlines. Where’s the sacred in all of this? Especially, for example, for those people who are caught up in war zones or who are on the brink of starvation. And, of course, there’s the terrains of war and starvation within our own psyches. Often we try to avoid these terrains by distracting ourselves through willful busyness, or on the other hand, on those rare occasions when we do recognize the need to reclaim our more sacred selves, there’s the possibility to actively work towards them. Metaphorically and experientially this is the time to connect to Hestia—the goddess of the hearth—to make sacred, warming spaces within ourselves in the midst of what sometimes appears to be the swirl of mad modernity. The Hestia archetype gathers people together to bring frayed souls back to their center. Observing and absorbing the light and warmth of our soul’s inner hearth, we’re then able to gather the tired fragments of our psyche and lead them towards an integrated communion. In reconnecting with ourselves in this way, we can build faith in a presence and power, which is greater than our mundane selves. In this, we find something of Hestia’s renewing realm within our own psyche and consciousness. With heart warmth and firm confidence we abide in something immovable and unshakeable. From this inner hearth-home we can sustain a place within ourselves of return... a return to integration and poise. This is not a place of escape or mere refuge. It’s a resourceful realm where our authentic self may revisit and renew itself. It’s also a realm where the soul may cleanse itself. The accruing burdens of false belief, façade, and inauthentic life behaviors lead to toxic build ups, both within our systems of body and psyche. This realm isn’t a zone of mere repose. Rather, it’s one of active pause and of vibrant, regenerative quiet. Now for some thoughts about sacred places beyond the above discussion about the structure (mnemonic) of the psyche. The Vesica Pisces was sometimes used by the ancients to design sacred buildings, such as Gothic Cathedrals. And ratios, such as the golden mean and the squaring of the circle can be observed in the human form itself, as has been demonstrated in the sketches and paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. I dare to suggest that there could also be a musical physiology of the human body in its structures of chest, collar bone, arms, and legs (sculptural anatomy)... and indeed between the rhythms that pulse from—and between—the organs. Many of the ancients would say that the human body is a temple for the human spirit. It’s also interesting to recall (as a contrast) that many temples across the ancient world were built primarily not for human beings, but as dwellings for the Gods and Goddesses. We could also remind ourselves that we in the west often make a stark, conceptual distinction between the sacred and profane. But in some cultures, such as the Balinese culture, there’s no such polarity. The Balinese work with a tripartite system in that they locate a third position, one of center and poise between poles. So in everyday experience and custom, their reality is to balance and live productively with opposing forces—not to eradicate them. Hence, the sacred and profane give constructive meaning to each other. Balinese spirituality inhabits the idea of sacred time. While for mercantile reasons (as well as convenience’s sake) the Balinese use the Gregorian calendar, their spiritual-cultural time arises from the intersection of various natural time rhythms, like solar and lunar relations. Finally, and perhaps more importantly, are those zones that include both space and time. These zones are formed by quality, relational exchanges between people. In this exchange realm, transformative processes are generated because there’s transparency and translucency to the whole and holy human. And these are truly our primary, sacred places in contemporary life. It’s here that we each potentially may find a soulful refuge to recenter and renew ourselves and reclaim our inner sight.

Entering a movie theater is a sacred experience for me. My only routine public confrontations are with those that ignore the warnings about respecting the sacredness of the experience. Living in Los Angeles, I have the privilege of visiting classic theatrical palaces that more closely resemble ancient temples than contemporary corporate big box retail venues, which seem to be the reigning aesthetic at modern multiplexes. These temples of cinema are relics of a bygone era when patrons dressed in their finest clothes to see films. There was a respect for filmic art that sometimes feels lost today. Audiences came with an expectation of being moved—yes, emotionally, but also in an imaginative sense where new philosophical and psychological landscapes magically appeared on a screen so large that it overwhelmed all logic and reason, leaving the viewer to think about and explore the mystic and transcendent possibilities they’ve just seen. There are theatrical ceremonial sacraments that remain from the early days of the moving picture shows. We still buy our ritual corn and wine, now in the form of popcorn and Coke, before entering the temple. We still dim the lights, creating a subtle altered state. And, most importantly, we still tell stories. Moviegoers in the early days of cinema didn’t have to be reminded not to treat the theater as if it were their living room. The aesthetics of these cinematic palaces demanded respect and communicated the unspoken sacredness of the space. The stories on screen sometimes resembled real life, but more importantly, they offered the possibilities of what could be. Even the events of the everyday world seemed to foster a larger connection to the transcendent when amplified onto that giant screen. From cave paintings to the pyramids, image has long been a cultural bearer of myth. In his book Creative Mythology, Joseph Campbell says, “…the myth as the revelatory factor by which the incidents of the daylight world are discovered linked to that ground which is the ground of all and gives to everything its life” (373). Another way we might consider what Campbell says here is that myths offer revelation when we observe how divine light shines through everyday events. In the darkness of the theater, which once upon a time was called a dream palace, light passes through single images marked in time, which move at a rate so quickly that we are unable to perceive the still moments, creating the motion of something revelatory on the screen before us. Going to the movies can still convey that religious experience, that link to the ground of all, with the proper intentions. I had such an experience recently in a dim theater watching George Miller’s film, Three Thousand Years of Longing. Miller has been vocal about the impact that Joseph Campbell has had on his work and particularly this project. It should be no surprise then that Three Thousand Years is his most explicit mythological exploration to date. Based on The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, a 1994 collection of five mythical short stories by British novelist, A.S. Byatt, the film follows a narratologist (an imagined female Joseph Campbell-like figure), named Alithea Binnie, her encounter with the mythological Djinn, and the journey that the djinn made over three thousand years before coming to grant Alithea three wishes. As a quick point of reference, a djinn is a spirit figure from pre-Islamic Arabian mythology that is sometimes portrayed as a genie. The djinn has had a long history in myth, from more recent tales of Aladdin, to Charles Perralt’s fairy tale The Three Ridiculous Wishes, to One Thousand and One Nights, and long before that in Mesopotamian and Persian literature and oral traditions. The djinn’s story that unfolds over three thousand years is a love story. It is also a story about our love of story and why story has become so central to our understanding of mythic ideas. A thoughtful examination of the film would require many more words than I am afforded here, and spoil those gripping moments that make Miller’s work exceptional. However, it would spoil nothing to suggest that metaphors for the current motifs in our world abound. Even the landscapes throughout the story speak, telling us of a dying world, a post-heroic world. In Creative Mythology, Campbell speaks of such Waste Lands saying, What, then, is the Waste Land? It is the land where myth is patterned by authority, not emergent from life; where there is no poet’s eye to see, no adventure to be lived, where all is set for all and forever: Utopia! Again, it is the land where poets languish and priestly spirits thrive, whose task it is only to repeat, enforce, and elucidate cliches. (373) The Waste Lands in Three Thousand Years span real and speculative history, but are not unlike our own. They are patterned by authority, not organically emergent from life. They repeat, enforce, and elucidate cliches; these Waste Lands heighten the importance of our cinematic experiences. In our dream palaces, we can imagine a world beyond cliches. We can imagine a world of face-to-face encounters with a divine djinn. We can imagine a world where even when surrounded by darkness and the occasional popcorn-chomping loudmouth, a light suddenly appears, cutting a hole in the darkness, stretching across time and space, and projects an image before us larger than anything we’ve seen before. An image where the Waste Land is renewed, and the poets no longer languish.

Joseph Campbell states in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living that: Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called ‘the love of your fate.’ Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment – not discouragement – you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures followed by wreckage were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see that this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes. The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. (35) “The love of your fate.” Before we explore this phrase of Campbell’s, it’d be helpful to clarify his use of the word “fate.” Often we align the word “fate” with the idea of brute fatalism. Fatalism as an idea is sometimes expressed in common thought idiom as “whatever will be, will be, and there’s nothing much that we can do about it.” We might resent this circumscribing situation, or at best—with Stoic resolve—just accept our fate. In this Stoic vein we have the opportunity to be reconciled with the horrid stuff of life. We may even accept that it’s all grist for the mill, as it were… and all potentially beneficial for the growth of the psyche. In this sense, we may assume that the “bad” stuff of life is a necessary precondition for the eventual arrival of the “good” stuff. But even this notion of fate is too dire. It’s not necessarily true that “whatever happens is needed.” The tragic suffering in Ukraine is surely not what its citizens require for their civic and soulful flourishing. The gradual swamping of Pacific islands due to creeping climate change is probably not the best way for these populations to prosper. These instances suggest that the word “destiny” is perhaps better than the word “fate.” According to some definitions, destiny is not fatalism. Rather, it bears a malleable template. It allows for some exercise of freedom. Fate derives its authority through our familiarity with the iron-clad necessities within the natural forces that operate around us. Destiny, however, allows us to extricate ourselves somewhat from such stern compulsions. As such, not everything is utterly predetermined and inevitable, especially in the inner realms of the psyche. Because the human psyche is a bearer of both inexorable forces of nature and the human capacity for freedom and creativity, “any disaster you can survive is an improvement.” Contingent, of course, upon our interior response to the disaster. The how of the response can be a matter of choice. We have some agency here, even though sometimes the disaster indwells us so deeply that we undergo what has often been called "a dark night of the soul." With this, the soul often finds itself inhabiting a gloomy soul space. This dark night may take the form of a harsh depression, which hangs heavily for weeks, months, or even years before it disperses. When we haunt this dolor we can find ourselves living a double life—a coping life—where we perform and present for external eyes while our interior life seems to live in a zone of quiet despair, as if we’re enfolded within those shadow people who dwell in the mythical Cimmerian world. They live in perpetual mist and darkness and just a thin distance from the realm of the dead. In this land there is little or no light: no light from the sun, no light from the moon. Even the otherwise faithful stars are clouded. We might blame ourselves for our entrapment. Perhaps our eyes are not trying hard enough to see beyond the mists? Self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-hatred may also ensue. But how to escape? Possibly we’re being held prisoner in this gloomy place by our own out-worn beliefs, entrenched patterns of behavior, and conditioned reflexes—all of which require shedding. But such shedding will be painful because we’re so tethered to these “old” scaffoldings. They give us security and refuge from the untested and beckoning “new.” Indeed, they have become part of our custodian identity, yet we’re invited to accept this soul darkness, even merge with it, and then be open to its guidance. It’s sometimes said that the night’s darkness is densest just before dawn. However, given enough patience and courage, a light emerges, although faintly at first. And with this light there is the dawning of insight—perhaps even of soul-disclosing flashes of revelation. There is an awakening and a renewed engagement with a more authentic self and with the wider world. Using another metaphor for this process, we could say that a seed has awakened and arisen out of the endarkening, yet nurturing, earth. The awakening of every seed, then its stem, leaf, and eventual flower, takes its own form and duration. Its process can be fostered, but never hurried. When we’re overwhelmed by the emergence of old, unwieldy, and unresolved forces in our psyche, our truest nature and purest light has been eclipsed. Yet despite the trauma, the experience also presents an opportunity and a gift. We have to see into our self-created shadow realms and learn from the luminous dark, which shines penetratingly into our psyche’s deep interior. In a sense, Individuation (or Initiation) is about learning to see in—and into—the dark and to recognize our shadow self more clearly. Then we may follow a resolve for the shadow’s gradual transformation. We can’t cast the shadow self out. We’re married to it. There’ll be no divorce. It’s an integral part of us. But we can shed light on it. Love it, even. The shadow can greatly assist us along our journey of self-discovery (though admittedly it can be a rough journey!). But the travel is empowered because light and shadow dwell together, and as such, give perspective along the way. One final thought: While our own individual effort is fundamentally required for the journey, we’re to remind ourselves that we’re not distinct, unrelated persons. We live in social, and sometimes also inter-subjective, networks with other people. And we can reach out for support from fellow travelers, which is why these MythBlasts are so helpful for the Joseph Campbell Foundation community.

Recently I had an appointment with a dental hygienist I’d never met before. Making small talk, he asked me what I do. I told him I’m a mythologist, which means I study stories that have meant a lot to a lot of people. Sacred stories. He thought that over for a few minutes, then asked if I focused on any particular myths. Yes, I said, I focus on creation myths. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Genesis.” “That’s one of them. But there are lots of others too, from all over the world.” He blinked a few times, then he blurted, “But they all start with the man, right?” * * * If you’ve had the good luck to read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass, you might recall the story she shares about Skywoman. This sacred creation story comes from the Haudenosaunee (or Iroquois) alliance of Indigenous nations of the forested hills and lake country in what we now call upstate New York. John C. Mohawk’s book Iroquois Creation Story also tells of the divine creator Skywoman, beginning in Sky World, where she falls through a hole in the ground above, then keeps falling, down through the chasm between that world and this one. As her body was sinking through the darkness she saw Fire Dragon (Comet) and he seized her body in flight.… “I will aid you as best as I can in all things so that you can survive when you arrive below." Mohawk, Iroquois Creation Story Fire Dragon accompanies Skywoman a little longer, and then he leaves. She keeps plummeting through the air toward an unlit sea where the primordial water-bird beings who live there, rush upward to lower her down on their wings. But where will they put this surprising new arrival? There’s no land in the world below, only water. “Something must be done,” said Loon, “to keep her body from sinking.” Then Hanoghye (Muskrat) said, “I will dive to the bottom of the water to bring earth for her. It is well known to us that she has creative power and can use this earth.” “It is well known,” the myth says, “that she has creative power.” The ensouled world recognizes in Skywoman a being of great creativity whose medium is earth itself. Soon after this, she creates the land (with the help of Turtle and Muskrat), and gives birth to a divine baby girl. When Skywoman falls into the void, I feel a jolt of adrenaline. Surely she’ll die! But she doesn’t. The chasm turns out to be neither empty nor lifeless. Helpful, intelligent beings inhabit that space, an indication that the emptiness holds consciousness. Fire Dragon—fast, hot, ferocious—swoops in to assist. The bird beings empathize with her and slow her descent. In mythic terms, the void is actually alive and supportive. And Skywoman’s creativity seems to require this separation between realms, to require crossing it. Her difficult downward passage leads her to her deeper work. This scene offers an example of what Joseph Campbell calls “magical aid,” which helps Skywoman discover the pervading “benign power” that supports her. (A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living 75) Skywoman is an Indigenous creator, illustrating the creativity of Indigenous cultures and ideas. Skywoman partners with other beings, and her diverse, ecological creativity arises from an interconnected web. She is a woman, displaying an example of women’s creativity. Not coincidentally, Haudenosaunee nations lived in a matriarchal democracy where women and men both led – a system of government that inspired the founders of the United States. In short, Skywoman is a sacred being in the form of an Indigenous woman who collaborates with the natural world to create a stable, bountiful, beautiful biosphere. What’s missing from this story? For one thing, there’s no commandment to exercise dominion over other beings. And instead of imagining women as an afterthought who exist for men’s pleasure and companionship, Skywoman is a powerful creator in her own right. * * * The dental hygienist and I went on to have an interesting conversation about science, knowledge, and the limits of scientific knowledge. He was obviously no biblical literalist, and yet he still offered a clear example of mythic assumptions at work in the world. Thanks to the Genesis creation story, he believed that he and others of his gender were inherently privileged and entitled to come first. Myths are stories that have meant a lot to a lot of people. In other words, myths hold great meaning. But meaning by itself has no moral valence or value. It is our job to bring conscious awareness to the many levels of meaning that myths carry–both at the surface and their deeper, more hidden, metaphorical values and assumptions. I believe that this is one of the most important reasons to study sacred stories: to identify values and assumptions that might otherwise go unnoticed. Some values and assumptions are harmful. Some are helpful. We do well to listen–respectfully, reverently, and with gratitude–to the values and assumptions that divine creators like Skywoman share through their stories. * * * Have you ever felt like Skywoman falling through the void, in moments when everything changed suddenly? Have unexpected helpers come to your aid? Have you ever bumped up against your own or others’ assumptions that were rooted in myth? * * * For a movie version of the Iroquois Creation Story, visit the Ganondagan Seneca Art and Culture Center in Victor, New York, or stream the video here.

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves that the term “the unseen aid,” along with so many other potentials for that title like “the Great Mother,” “the psychopomp/guide-of-souls,” “the wise old woman or man,” etc., are archetypes. If we are to approach the unseen aid one-sidedly as such, then our journey has failed before it’s begun. And please note that bit about “one-sidedly,” as this qualification is essential to what follows. As mythologists, we work with archetypes to better understand the complex, voluminous content of myth. However, in our sincere efforts to organize and expand our knowledge through their employment, we often overlook that archetypes are (among other things) abstract constructions, theoretical classifications that are deduced after the fact to address sources that precede the fact. And “the fact” is whichever specific mythic figure or image stands before us, so to speak, at a given moment. And so, these figures are lifted from their specificity, from the settings and contexts of their narratives, and dropped into their new (unfurnished) conceptual homes. We then seek out candidates to keep them company, but do so with eyes one-sidedly trained on identifying traits in keeping only with the general category we wish to fill. And here, as a gentle warning, we will do well to reflect on the expression “whatever one is looking for, that is what one sees.” In short, our quest for fuller knowledge is paradoxically narrowed by the generalized breadth we impose upon the content, including the dim presumption that by knowing the archetype we know the figure. These are but a few examples of the collateral damage we incur when dabbling one-sidedly in archetypes, when we lose the concreteness of the original image. Having said that, however, consider the following in which Campbell employs the Buddha-figure as the image: “The Buddha,” he writes, “is not a graven image to be understood concretely. It is a meditation tool, something to be seen through.” (A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, 190) What does he mean, not to be understood concretely? Don’t we want concreteness—indeed, exquisitely precise concreteness—in the image? Now we come to the subtle misapplication that accompanies the term “concrete,” and to the severe consequences that follow. The problem rests in a failure to recognize that our encounters with images are process. When we approach their manifest concreteness as conclusions, as final culminations of the whole meeting, then we are halted in a process meant to take us farther. This is literalism, the great enemy to deeper insight and to deeper experience. To further illustrate, I have reworked Campbell’s quote a little (and I daresay without diminishing in any way his intention): “The image is not to be encountered and then left as concrete. Rather, it is to be initially encountered in its full concreteness which then opens a way to the depths that reside behind its face”—precisely why Campbell goes on to say that the image is “something to be seen through.” But I’m not done yet. I think the greatest danger that accompanies blunt archetypal application is that it neglects the utterly indispensable exception, which quite contrary to the generalizing-force of the archetype, reveals the unique characteristics of the figure in question. After all, “exception” is the chief criterion that distinguishes uniqueness. This is why amplification is such an important practice for the mythologist. For in surveying a high volume of correlative mythic figures, one invariably encounters more exceptions, more oddities, more that’s not in keeping with a figure’s prescribed archetype. Furthermore, the term “the exception” is itself another archetype—a concept addressing the concept that figures possess uniqueness. Whereas “a” figure’s uniqueness, initially revealed in the specificity of its image, serves as the concrete bedrock of its symbolic potential. I must introduce symbol because it is too often conflated with archetype. Being a literature type, I like to begin my distinction between symbol and archetype through the simplest literary classifications available, wherein the symbol is the image, and the archetype is the theme. Taken together in process, the concrete immediacy of the image gives way to the symbol, becoming the psychic-machinery that speeds the thematic influence of the archetype. Done deal. Well, almost, because as we dive deeper into the inquiry, the two will eventually (and inescapably) be subsumed by grey regions. Take, for instance, the pre-packaged meanings of the more general images we find in dictionaries of symbols (and with “more general” we enter the grey). These meanings accompany images that are concrete, yes, but that are generally-so—images like tree, as opposed to the young maple with her thousand broad palms dishing up the light (which you’ll have a hard time finding in a dictionary of symbols). To these former (general images), which initiate the overlap of symbols with archetypes, Jung advises that we learn them and then forget them. In so doing, I like to think that the presence of their positive absence, like a residue, somehow holds in the mind of the inquirer—somehow lingers in the periphery of the conscious, yet not altogether unconscious. Grey regions, indeed. The practice of learning-and-then-forgetting is applicable also to archetypes, and allows us to handle them without being derailed, or rather, railroaded by them to pre-conditioned, subsuming conclusions. It keeps us attentive to process, while simultaneously activating more pervasive means of perception like intuition and feeling which, alongside our forgetting, nuance the specific image, but do so at a distance—in a way that does not contaminate but rather complements its “suchness.” Here at the end, with room only for a few sentences, I want to address the unseen aid who threw me into this entanglement of archetypal-mechanics. I could offer names like the angel of necessity or the daimon of the Ancient Greek philosophers but as it is with archetypal-prescription, so the act of naming can hardly contain or reveal the totality of a thing. And not wanting to box this figure into a name or concept or even image, I will leave it for now “as is” and, true to its nature, unseen.

It's interesting how a book can show us a crystal-clear picture of who we were, are, and maybe even will be. The Portuguese edition I have of A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, edited by Diane K. Osbon, is dated 10/23/2003, when I was 37 years old. As I turned the pages of the book, I rediscovered a cute drawing of a bunny wrapped in little hearts made by my daughter, Laura, then five years old. I hold the book in my hands and I see the passages underlined in chapter 1, Living in the World. They are the passages where Campbell explains his perspective of the five levels of love, from servile to fraternal, the biological desire for procreation, identification with the other and, finally, the romance of the highest order, wherein there is a surrender to love itself. On my way into metanoia, evoked by living in the second half of life as Jung proposed, I was enchanted by the way Campbell talked about alchemical marriage. In marriage, he said, you are not sacrificing yourself for the sake of the other, but for the relationship. And I never forgot his amazement at couples who broke up after the children grew up. When their kids left the nest, they no longer had anything in common. Many of the clients who seek out a Jungian psychoanalyst are struggling with love relationship issues. It was interesting to see that much of what makes sense to me in this regard goes back to this and other texts by Campbell. He describes, on page 48, the big problem with marriages: can couples open themselves to compassion? There is very little room for compassion in the modern world, inside and outside the psychotherapist’s office, and Campbell's question still resonates strongly nowadays. However, nearly twenty years later when I reread his work for this brief essay,  my eyes were fixed on text not previously underlined, starting with the moment when the book itself was conceived, as the result of a one-month seminar for ten people in 1983 at Esalen. Campbell was 79 years old at the time, and I particularly appreciate the books, such as this one, that encapsulate worldviews and wisdom over the lifetime of great thinkers. Now when there is, for so many of us, less time ahead than there is behind, what caught my attention were the passages in which Campbell talks about aging and death, and one’s attitude toward it. Or as he puts it, “You go to your death singing.” (80) In italics, to help us deal with the idea, Diane points to a thought by Jung on the issue: “As a physician I am convinced that it is hygienic…to discover in death a goal toward which one can strive; and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.” Discover in death a goal toward which one can strive… with this injunction in mind, I reread Campbell's passage on page 84 carefully: In old age, your only relationship to the world is your begging bowl, which in our culture is your bank account. That’s what you’ve already earned, and it has to support this relatively carefree last stage of life.Since I am myself in that stage now, I can tell you that it is the best part of life. It’s properly called, in this wonderful language that we have, the “Golden Years.” It is a period when everything is coming up and flowering. It is very, very sweet. Golden Years... Campbell is talking about the sweetness of the final stretch, heading to the exit, as he himself called it, in a very different perspective from that practiced in contemporary society. But as he said, he was not a sociologist and was not interested in these everyday things but, instead, in the eternal ones: "The image of decline in old age is a bit deceptive”, he says, “because even though your energies are not those of early youth—that was the time of moving into the field of making all the big drives—now you are in the field, and this is the time of the opening flower, the real fulfillment, the bringing forth of what you have prepared yourself to bring forth. It is a wonderful moment. It is not a loss situation, as if you’re throwing off some-thing to go down. Not at all. It is a blooming. “It is a blooming.” “Golden years”. Now I understand what he means. It's about the individuation process Jung described. The image that comes to my mind when I read about aging in Campbell is that of a beautiful sunset, an intense phenomena made all the more so because we know it will soon be gone. A sunset, by the way, which illustrates the cover of the book in the Portuguese version. I close the book and internally thank Campbell once again. Well, well. His work continues to resonate with me, exercising its pedagogical function of guiding me along the way, just as I imagine it does in the lives of so many other people.

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truthIs Change. God Is Change. This is the central verse of Earthseed, a religion promoted by the teenage protagonist of Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower. Lauren Oya Olamina claims she hasn’t invented Earthseed, but discovered it; whether or not people choose to believe in it is their own business. “Consider: Whether you're a human being, an insect, a microbe, or a stone, this verse is true.” It’s hard to think of a concept more slippery, more contentious or more fraught, than that of truth. The United States has reached a level of polarization around concrete concepts in science and human rights that’s hard to wrap one’s head around. A prolonged pandemic keeps us separated from our flesh-and-blood communities and kettles us into online spaces that, by design, make it easier to craft our own reality. Our immediate communities become more abstract, more rooted in ideology than mutual support and human interaction—precisely the opposite of what we need in a country of increasing violence, disinformation, and extremism. Anyone who picks up Butler’s science fiction novels today will see a world reflected that is far too close for comfort, from the rising prices of basic necessities to the election of a Christofascist president who claims he will “make America great again.” I can’t emphasize enough: Butler wrote these words in Parable of the Talents in 1998. "Post-truth" was Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year in 2016, a year many Americans may recall feeling especially unmoored. It was, as Butler's novels illustrate, anticipated, like an especially large chunk of ice finally sliding off a glacier; the latest schism in an ongoing series. Debate over the simplest facts—especially now, in the internet non-places that run hot and eat fury for fuel—has long been an earmark of extremist groups who benefit from rejecting our shared reality, indoctrinating and isolating their community members to create a psychological chasm that makes it near impossible to leave, let alone reintegrate into reality. And with our world in turmoil, it's very tempting to choose fury, denial, and blame over grief, acceptance, and adaptation. The problem is that facts, as well as universal, capital-T Truths, bind every single one of us and our actions together whether we believe in them or not. That is not only a beautiful feature of the collective human experience, but a vital piece of our continued survival. Joseph Campbell waxes poetic about this inevitable system of interdependence in a letter to his friend, biologist Ed Ricketts, in 1941. He’s here referencing Ricketts’s book Sea of Cortez, which was co-authored by their mutual friend John Steinbeck: These little intertidal societies and the great human societies are manifestations of common principles; more than that: we understand that the little and the great societies are themselves units in a sublime, all-inclusive organism, which breathes and goes on, in dream-like half-consciousness of its own life-processes, oxidizing its own substance yet sustaining its wonderful form. (Correspondence: 1927-1987, 48-49) Truth is a living organism the way Earthseed’s god is Change: the only constant in our lives is that the sands will shift. In general, this is objectively terrifying. Change is dirty work; certainty is easier, settled—and deadly. The communities that hide from our shared experience are a shame, and I prefer to focus on the communities that lean into the work. Much like Campbell’s oft quoted, rarely understood “follow your bliss,” there’s a misleading idea that a positive, effective, coherent, and sustaining community is idealistic. But if God is Change, a functioning community looks less like a land of lotus eaters and more like a system of mutual care, where members face even the most hideous truths with organized collective action. Campbell admired the Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, and it’s not difficult to see why. His concept of bliss is much the same as Campbell’s: not unfettered joy, but finding and celebrating your place in the great web of humanity: At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work — as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for — the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?”So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands?You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. (Marcus Aurelius, Meditations) Butler’s young protagonist found comfort in her Earthseed verses. Accepting that change is the only constant, we find ourselves much more likely to help our neighbors and remain close to the people we love, making our community a many-celled organism more likely to survive. Olamina writes, Civilization is to groups what intelligence is to individuals. It is a means of combining the intelligence of many to achieve ongoing group adaptation. Civilization, like intelligence, may serve well, serve adequately, or fail to serve its adaptive function. When civilization fails to serve, it must disintegrate unless it is acted upon by unifying internal or external forces. During the periods of our lives that feel the most unjust, the most bleak, the times when we feel voiceless, is when we need our community most. Olamina’s Earthseed went from the notebooks of a teenage refugee to printed source materials for a global religion over the course of two novels (as well as a third, Parable of the Trickster, unfinished at the time of Butler’s death in 2006). What we’ve learned in the past few years is the necessity of operating in a shared reality. We must pay attention to the God-as-Change, even though the truth might pain us. We must listen to this god, respond to its whims as well as we can, become resilient—not so that this god will care for us, but so we can better care for one another.

The theme for July at JCF is Community, a term that draws all sorts of positive, warm and fuzzy projections today. In its broadest sense, a community is a social group with interests in common. Nevertheless, in his description of the traditional hero’s journey as depicted in myth, Joseph Campbell seems to set the individual at odds with the larger community: Your real duty is to go away from the community to find your bliss. (A Joseph Campbell Companion, 21) Is society then the villain here? Just what does Campbell mean by “community”? Traditionally, according to Campbell, a mythology grows up within a bounded horizon, whether a tribe, a village, or a culture. "A system of mythological symbols only works if it operates in the field of a community of people who . . . share the same realm of life experience." (Thou Art That, 8) There are two ways of living a mythologically grounded life. One way is just to live what I call “the way of the village compound,” where you remain within the sphere of your people. That can be a very strong and powerful and noble life. (An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms, 23) Though the community may not understand the individual who craves more than what “the way of the village compound” offers, Campbell does not suggest that such a divide need be permanent—far from it. It’s no surprise that many interpreters of the hero’s journey motif naturally focus on the beginning of the quest (hearing a Call, which often involves realizing something significant is missing in life), with the idea of encouraging their audience to risk the adventure and dare to “depart from the ordinary world,” leave one’s comfort zone and step beyond the expectations, support, and protections of society. Much attention is also paid to detailing the trials, ordeals, helpers, and guides one meets along the way, as well as the transformative initiatory experience that is the climax of the quest. Though this might include a literal, physical journey, the real work of initiation ultimately requires an inward turn. On occasion, though, I notice the end of the journey gets short shrift from some who popularize it—little more than a mention in passing, as if it just naturally follows that everything will come out right. Nevertheless, the hero quest Joseph Campbell explores in The Hero with a Thousand Faces has three equal movements: Separation (from the community); Transformation (physical and psychological); and Return (once again part of the community, but in a new role): You don’t have a complete adventure unless you do get back . . . It's not an easy thing to know how to handle that return threshold; it's even more difficult than the departure threshold. But it is the same threshold. It's the threshold where that which has been missing is reintroduced to that which missed it, but didn't know it missed it. (Joseph Campbell, Archive Audio L0604 – Odysseus Discussion Q & A, 8/14/1980) I’d like to focus on that last line, “where that which has been missing is reintroduced to that which missed it, but didn't know it missed it.” Which begs the question: whom, exactly, is one questing for? A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.(The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 23, emphasis mine) There is a natural tendency to think of the concept of the hero’s journey as totally subjective: I’m off on my quest, for my benefit. But that’s not exactly how it works in myth. Centuries ago, the Plains Miwuk in the part of California where I live told a tale of how, back in the beginning, this land was always drenched in fog. No one could see anything in the perpetual cold and gray—and none who lived there had ever seen or heard of the Sun. Then, one day, Coyote departs and wanders up into the Sierra Nevada range, where he stumbles across the Sierra Miwuk, who just happen to possess the Sun. Enraptured by its warm glow, he craftily manages to steal the golden orb and beat it on down the hill—where, eventually, an arrangement is brokered between the Plains and Sierra Miwuk that allows a balance between the sun's blistering summer heat and the cold, damp, gray of fog in winter. (We are still plagued by thick, impenetrable tule fog here, but only some 20 to 40 days of the year—thank you, Coyote!) Coyote didn’t keep the Sun to himself in order to read in bed at night; he shared it with his community. Parzival wasn’t after the Grail so he could upgrade his coffee mug; his success on this quest healed King Amfortas and restored a blighted kingdom. Moses didn’t confront Pharaoh to secure power and riches, but to free his people. That’s not to say mythic heroes never have selfish motives. Many may start from there (such as Han Solo in Star Wars, whose participation in Princess Leia’s rescue is secured with the promise of financial reward), but generally tend to rise to the occasion as the adventure unfolds. Contrast that with the older brothers in “The Water of Life”—one of the fairy tales preserved by the Grimm Brothers—each of whom undertakes the dangerous journey to retrieve that healing elixir with the intention of inheriting the kingdom for himself; rather than rise to the occasion both fail in their task, while the youngest prince’s quest is instead guided by his focus on restoring his father (and, by extension, the entire realm) to health. Maybe the Hero’s Journey isn’t just all about me… It’s a cycle of departure, tests and ordeals, a realization of some kind. It may be great. It may be little. But it gives you the sense of realization. And then the return with your realization to the society that you left and somehow contributing to it. That’s the elixir boon. (ZBS Media Interview with Joseph Campbell, 1971, emphasis mine) That doesn’t necessarily mean you come back to the exact same circumstances and relationships. I think of fairy tales where a youngest son of a king leaves his father’s kingdom and experiences a series of adventures that culminate in marrying a princess in another kingdom, where together they rule in peace and prosperity—slightly different setting, but same vibe as where he started. Asked whether you “go home,” Campbell responds, The world you come back to is the one you left; otherwise, the journey isn’t complete. . . It may not be exactly the same locus, the same village, the same town, but you might say it’s the same career. You are coming back to your life. (Joseph Campbell, Archive Audio L1185, "EXPLORATIONS: Aim of the Hero’s Journey," Esalen, Big Sur, CA 11/8/83 What boon did Joseph Campbell bring back from his own hero’s journey—and with what community did he share it? We can find a sampling in JCF’s July book selection, Correspondence: 1927 – 1987, as Evans Lansing Smith observes in his introduction to this collection of Campbell’s exchanges: The letters that were written to and about Joseph Campbell . . . come from an astonishing diversity of individuals who were touched and inspired by his books and lectures. This remarkable web of correspondents extends well beyond the halls of academia. It shows how widely influential Campbell’s work was, inspiring creative endeavors and subtle shifts in many people’s lives. What about your community? On whose behalf do you quest?

From Correspondence: 1927 – 1987 (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell): [Barbara Morgan (July 8, 1900 – August 17, 1992) was an American photographer best known for her depictions of modern dancers. She was a cofounder of the photography magazine ‘Aperture.’] Barbara Morgan Studio High Point Road Scarsdale, New York Post-Valentine’s Day, 1968 Dear Jean & Joe: Since I had to vanish from the Van Waveren’s party for you – in order to get my Volkswagen over the tundra to Scarsdale before the werewolves entered my empty house – I didn’t get to finally say what a superb totality it was in all its complexity made understandable – your lecture series. And I also wanted to tell you partly for fun and partly for real – the following – my photographer reflexes make me always both consciously and unconsciously watch other people’s gestures (even when I have no intention of doing so), reflexes, shifts of mood, etc. – and so by the next-to-last-evening I suddenly realized that your ‘gestural aggregate’ (so to speak) meant for me – at least two things – That you are first of all a reincarnated Bard and/or Shaman – and that only – Secondly, you are a contemporary scholar. When you would pause in your discussion to quote or chant – an entirely different psyche took over. There was an inner glee – a magnetic something – your own individuality happily slid into another collective – ancient – embracing – psyche. It was like a snake casting off old skin and you glowed anew with security of speaking for the Eternal. (And there was a special gleam for the demonic). Then – chanting over – you took up the duties of logical thought as a 20th Century man, inheritor of our rat race traumas & trajectories from the past – seeking inner logic & harmony for mankind’s future. But then here came the next realization – these two phases were ‘integrated’ and slid back & forth like gears in a Cadillac. But, for me, that more primordial element will henceforth be ‘there,’ the genuine Joe, from which all springs no matter how many PHD’S. I f we were together I would laugh at this point – so you can take it or leave it. […] Well – I’ll leave you in peace – I’m in bed with this flu ‘bug’ – hence these flights of fancy –Again – thanks –Love – Barbara Figuratively speaking, we are all at Van Waveren’s party, at least for much of the time. The party posture—any party posture—bears unspoken behavioral mores, accepted mannerisms, and maneuvers: “reflexes,” “shifts of mood, ” a “gestural aggregate.” But occasionally we step out of the party’s script. We become something other: a self that lives and speaks out of a deeper authenticity and authority. Perhaps this deeper Self connects to a primordial, even eternal Psyche. If we are sufficiently conscious and skilled, we might observe the party members at play. Rather than mere voyeurism, this observing can be of healthy interest when asking ourselves, “What are the embedded gestures and response patterns that control me in this and similar situations? What are my habitual trigger reactions? Through what persona veils do I peer? And what costumes do I wear? Am I longing to press my ego onto the collective soul of the party? And why exactly do I want to impress? Is it insecurity? A consuming need to belong? Competitive egotism?” I feel that deep down we all want to be at one with ourselves, others, and the universe. This means that we not only want to belong... but we also want to become. We want to journey towards a deeper Ground, where our essential Identity resides, even if this journey demands that we exist and walk along an unscripted path. But the deeper Ground is bare. At its deepest, it’s utterly naked, undisguised and without elaboration. Given this, it’s best to seek this condition along all stages of travel, with the mirror of objectivity by our side—the mirror by which we may more reliably observe our progress. The great religious texts have pointed to the necessity of encountering our hidden nakedness—the concealed, aspirational, unadulterated Self, whether this Self be a mighty Primal archetype or sensed as a simple, vulnerable babe. “[...] For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.” (Words from the “Gospel of Matthew.”) We may employ these words in respect to the path of Individuation. While on the path towards Individuation, personas (and pretensions) are gradually stripped away. This is a journey towards the Awakening and Actualization of the Self. And paradoxically (or so it may seem at first), when the individual has become fully Individuated, they take on many faces and expressions as this Individuated Self responds to every new encounter. Then being and becoming are completely present and responsive to the living request of the moment. The lengthy preamble above prompts us to consider how we may meet and speak to each other (and to the larger society) in ways that engender a more rounded perspective and greater capacity for empowerment. In this we become mindful of how we are fashioning ourselves in the world. Can we find—and engage—with that bedrock of ourselves, that aspect that endures? And, when required, move beyond the familiar social prescriptions and identity frames? Self-observation is to be joined with the desire to cultivate an open, receptive heart. When a presenter or writer shares something genuine from the heart about their own life’s journey, the offering arises from within the soul’s steadier depths. In parallel, it’s also helpful to develop some ability to speak and write imaginatively with word pictures, similes, metaphors and the like. Also required is an artistic sensitivity, so that we may adjust our message intuitively according to what, in the moment, seems most soul-alive in the people whom we’re addressing. With practice this may be done without compromising academic content or intellectual rigor. Inevitably in this porous process, we expose something of our nakedness and vulnerabilities. As we intentionally present ourselves to others, we signal that we are on a journey where our body of knowledge and personal understanding have not arrived at finality. Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale “The Emperor’s New Clothes” may instruct us. The innocent, unscripted child can be viewed as the envoy of the emerging, larger Self. This child can see beyond the pretense and the deceptions: “But he has nothing on at all!” Unlike the Emperor in the folktale, deep down we are all true Emperors. But what costumes at the party, if any, are we wearing?

When I was in graduate school studying mythology, I volunteered in the archives that housed Joseph Campbell’s papers. My job was to create high-resolution scans of Campbell’s personal photos—baby pictures, childhood, youth, adulthood, snapshots from his later years. Sitting at a workstation in that windowless basement office, I positioned each piece of paper on the glass face of the scanner, clicked the Scan button, then zoomed way in on the digital file to make sure to capture clean edges of the original. I often found myself staring at those close-up images, captivated by the eyes of the people in the scenes. My impression of Campbell himself changed as I worked. He became less of a disembodied voice on the page, and more of a real, actual person who seemed to have lived intensely and intentionally. Campbell’s book, Correspondence: 1927 – 1987, includes a letter he wrote to the artist Angela Gregory in 1928, when he was twenty-four years old. He writes: I know that the constant drumming of things around one can upset the pulse of one’s heart. But after all it’s inside our own hearts that beauty reposes. Pleasures and pains affect the body; and if our dreamings have never released our souls, then pleasures and pains will upset our mental and emotional tranquility. Aggravations and disappointments—and even a certain blankness can help the soul to grow in understanding, once the soul has learned to feed upon whatever comes its way. (13) I can picture the passion in his young face as he composed these words. I can hear the urgency that would drive his voice if he were to speak them out loud. If our dreamings have never released our souls—he's talking about loosening the tendency to over-identify with the trappings of our lives, our religions and belief systems, desires, political ideas, relationships, and even our bodies, and mistake them for who we really are. The alternative to letting those dreamings hold our souls captive, he suggests, is to release our souls not from our ideas about life, but from confusing them with our ideas about life. To grant our souls the freedom to observe our experiences the same way Campbell demonstrates how to observe myth—staying alert for truth and beauty. Further down the page he completes the thought: When we shall have lived this intensely we should have truth in our hearts and beauty—then our work will be great because we shall be great ourselves. Living intensely. Living wide awake, with our souls free and released. These are aspirational ideas, no doubt, but Campbell seems to have done a reasonable job of it, releasing his soul from identification with his dreamings, living intensely in the direction of truth and beauty, doing great work. This is one of the boons that Campbell found on the journey of his own life, and he brought it back to share with us, his community: not only his work itself, but also his wayof working. He showed us that aspirations like these are within reach. This boon also opens the possibility of communities that support their members living intensely and doing great work. For what is a community if not an aggregate of individuals, and what is an individual if not a representative of their community? The souls of individuals affect the community, and the soul of the community affects individuals. This dialectic is fundamental to creative work. Creative people, like Joseph Campbell and Angela Gregory, continually move back and forth between their communities and their individual imaginations to generate images and ideas, bring them into being, and share them. I see this pattern play out again and again in the community of mythologists—a community that owes so much to Campbell’s contributions. So perhaps we might be permitted to imagine a revision of Campbell’s reflections to Angela Gregory, this time as a message to his extended community: I know that the constant drumming of things around us can upset the pulse of our hearts. But after all it’s inside our own hearts that beauty reposes. Pleasures and pains affect us all; and if our collective dreamings have never released our community’s soul, then pleasures and pains will upset the community’s mental and emotional tranquility. Aggravations and disappointments—and even a certain blankness can help the community’s soul to grow in understanding…When the community shall have lived this intensely, the community will have truth in its heart and beauty—then our work will be great because we shall be great. And isn’t myth itself intense? Its outsized imagery, its larger-than-life deities and heroes, its clashings and collaborations among characters who represent the great powers of Earth and cosmos? Myths are collective dreamings of Earth’s human communities, and so they represent a perfect practice ground for zooming in on their images and ideas, freeing our souls from identifying with those ideas, and thereby cultivating truth and beauty in our own creative hearts. How might a community release its soul from false beliefs, dis-identifying from myths that cause misery and harm? How can a community enter more fully into the realm of truth, beauty, and creativity?

When I lived on a mesa in northern New Mexico, one summer night I left every window open so the starlit, indigo air could cool the house after a long, hot day. It seemed like I had barely fallen asleep when a shrill, continuous shrieking woke me so fast that I was up and out of bed before my eyes opened all the way. That otherworldly screaming swirled around me like auditory sparks in the gray pre-dawn light. I dashed to the bedroom window. Outside, not ten feet away, sat a coyote, letting loose with a piercing kai-yai-yai, but the sound encircled me, like it came from inside the house as well as the bedroom window. Wide awake now, I raced to the kitchen. Another coyote kai-yai-ed outside that window, too. All around the house—north, south, east, west—coyotes had surrounded the walls to voice their spine-tingling cry. So much sound from those small bodies! The song flared on and on through the open windows, filling the rooms from floor to ceiling. Breathless, I hovered by the back patio door facing east to listen and watch the coyote who sat there. One coyote among many, yes, but also Coyote, an archetypal field of energy, a flame of the soul whose flickering, shifting shape can represent a larger pattern often called the Trickster. In his book Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell introduces tricksters from many cultures and eras, as is his way, in traditions that range from Indigeneity to Christianity. Campbell hypothesizes that Trickster was the primary figure of myth in the Paleolithic age, creating the world and bringing fire to the people (273-76). Here we can read “world” and “fire” as metaphors for culture, but we can also read them as psychological images. Trickster can return to us our inner flame, the sparks that sometimes sputter somewhere along the way, the embers of our own personal creativity and world-making. In New Mexico, I often saw coyotes loping along sidewalks, trails, and suburban lawns, thriving at the edges of human civilization. Wiry bundles of cunning and energy, snouts always pointing toward new possibilities, they ate everything from beetles to garbage to pets. The Trickster’s amorality means they can never integrate into society. Instead, they represent the perpetual stranger who exists outside the known order. But isn’t it so often the stranger who shakes up our moribund routines? Who reminds us to stay alert? Who ignites new ideas? We tell stories of Trickster to talk about the fires of life as they exist outside our rules, precisely so we can change those rules when we need to. Trickster fires can burn, but they can also turn food into feasts and thaw frozen hearts. ~ When the coyotes finished their song, they moved away from my east-facing patio. Reunited, the pack paused together in the morning twilight. Now I could see all five of them. One sat down and rested a furry chin on the back of another who was still standing. Together, they gazed across the valley toward the mountains in the distance. They waited. And waited. And then the sun came up over that ridge, right where they were looking. The valley filled with golden light that limned juniper trees and yucca plants and coyote coats with liquid marigold brilliance. Then the coyotes trotted off down the mesa together. The morning still quivered with their jubilant song. Their placid companionship. Their witnessing presence at the sacred birth of a new dawn, unlike any other that had happened before or would happen again. Coyote called that day into being and woke me so we could watch it together. We are not alone. We are companioned by beings other than humans, by forces that sing and shape our shared experience. Why did Coyote sing so loudly that summer morning? Well, why not? Why not set aside self-doubt and self-consciousness? Why not sing with everything you have and everything you are, as though summoning the sun’s fire to earth? Why not create, and then be still, to watch the magic of a new day roll over the horizon?