Joseph Campbell’s work is full of reflections on love. I like to think this is due to his successful marriage to his life partner, the dancer and modern dance choreographer Jean Eardman (1916–2020). In a Q&A session during Joseph Campbell's Mythos series, The Ego and the Tao, the mythologist uses the Eastern notion of Tao, that circle with a sinuous line that divides it into equal parts, one white and luminous and the other black and dark, to speak of the wisdom of the body to produce the world. In this symbol, he highlights the interaction of the pairs of opposites, rotating his hands in a moving sphere to convey the idea that this interaction is not static, but happens in a continuous, circular way. Therefore, life must conform to this cycle. According to Campbell, it’s important to watch closely in order to take the right action at the right time. This essential capacity for observation and discernment, which underlies the processes of choice, is clearly represented in tarot card six, the Lovers. Most people interpret it as the arrival of romantic love in life, which may be correct in some cases. But if you have a Raider-Waiter-Smith deck, hold card six in your hands. You will see a sun that opens wide onto an angel-like figure with its wings spread out over male and female figures. The woman is innocently standing in front of a tree with a snake wound around its trunk. The metaphor captures Eve, of course, on the verge of eating the forbidden fruit, a choice that will grant them wisdom but also represents the end of their paradise, or at least that particular experience of paradise. Well, Jungian psychology is solidly based upon the concept of the union of opposites. This is because the male and female figures are not only symbols of love and marriage, but also of our own dual nature. In this psychological approach, the integration of the conscious and the unconscious is the ultimate goal. The interesting thing is that in this choice the union of duality gives rise to a third condition, which is dialectical, called the transcendent function. Something new emerges that did not exist before. In the mythic tarot deck this card is represented splendidly by a scene inspired by the judgment of Paris. As we know from the Greek myth, Paris is minding his own business tending cattle. He is the son of King Priam of Troy. And out of nowhere, Hermes chooses him to award the golden apple to whichever of the three goddesses before him he deems fairest: Hera, Athena, or Aphrodite. A tough choice, and he doesn’t want to do it, as he probably intuits the mess it will inevitably cause. The goddesses, as is their way, try to cast their spells upon him: Athena promises him power in war, Hera promises to make him king, and Aphrodite promises he will get the most beautiful woman in the world. The most beautiful woman in the world? Paris is a young man, and like most young men he has romantic love on his mind. He can plainly see that Aphrodite is offering him the most beautiful mortal woman in the world, Helen. And, as we know, this event precipitates the Trojan War, for the beautiful Helen is married to King Menelaus of Sparta. There’s perhaps a side of us that wants to point the finger at Paris and say, “Hey, you didn’t choose wisely.” But let’s face it, the contest had been imposed on him (by a God, the metaphor for that divine part of the psyche that wants our personality to relate to the Self, the most integrated, whole version of ourselves). The contest takes him out of his bucolic comfort zone and throws him into something entirely new. After choosing love, his entire known world is radically transformed. What he will likely learn as the story unfolds is that every choice has its own particular consequences, and we are responsible for them. And yes, as the ancient Greeks might have said, skata happens, and eventually it will be all right. And this brings us to one of Joseph Campbell’s favorite themes: the troubadours and the Arthurian legends. The troubadours used to associate love to spiritual life. Perhaps, in our troubled times more than ever, it is necessary to have a kind heart—that is, a heart capable of love—in order to face the interesting and challenging times of today. As Campbell says in Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, “the best we can do is ‘lean towards the light’ in an attempt to understand the other in a compassionate way. (197) Because the other mirrors a conflict that is within us, in our family, our community, our country, our culture, our world. It was Campbell’s integrated perspective on body, love, and spirituality that captivated me when I first heard him talking about stories of love and marriage in the Power of Myth series with Bill Moyers. I never forgot the journalist’s frequent surprise when he asked Campbell a question. It was as if he were facing a wise old man like no other. I felt the same way. I imagine that, like many, I was hooked by the erudition and sympathy of the mythologist, who interpreted profound mysteries in a passionate and simple way. The series first aired on Brazilian public TV in 1991. I diligently recorded each episode on VHS tapes so I could review them whenever I wanted. Eventually the series could be purchased, and I acquired the box set to use in the mythical narrative structure classes I taught to students of journalism in those days. For the past year, and two residences later, I’ve been organizing my house and moving things up to the attic. I confess that I couldn’t merely put these old tapes in a cardboard box and banish them to the solitude of the attic. For me, those tapes represent something that I consider to be among the best of my academic and human training. They reflect the heart of who I am. I have learned from Campbell that troubadours recognized love as the highest spiritual experience. And, for me, the individual experience in relation to another is still the toughest and the most sacred journey, one that smooths one’s edges day after day. Woe to Paris, woe to Tristan and Isolde, and woe to us lovers all!

Suspended between Strength and Death is the Hanged Man. He doesn’t look particularly concerned. The illustrator of the emblematic Smith-Waite tarot deck, Pamela “Pixie” Coleman Smith, portrayed him as seemingly unsurprised and unbothered by his situation. His hair dangles down, and blood begins to pool in his head, which is encircled by a halo of yellow light. He swings gently in the breeze from one elegant leg, the other bent down behind it as a sort of physical and visual counterbalance. His hands are—clasped? tied?—behind his back. For more than one hundred years, tarot readers have wondered at Pixie’s illustration, turning its meaning over in their minds and deciding how it might reflect a truth personal to them alone. And the numbers of those handling cards are growing: the early pandemic years saw a boom in the number of tarot cards sold in the United States, causing some game companies to double their printing in 2020 and 2021 to keep up with demand. In this month’s featured text, The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays, 1959–1987, Joseph Campbell reflects on the cycle of humanity’s love of the occult in the essay “The Occult in Myth and Literature” (302): The Old Bronze Age realization of a micro-macrocosmic unity is returning, and everywhere all the old arts that once were banned are coming back. I have myself been traveling about quite a bit these years, from one college campus to another, and everywhere the first question asked me is, ‘Under what sign were you born?’ The mysteries of the Tarot pack, the I Ching, and Transcendental Meditation … Well, all this is just the beginning, the first signaling of a dawning realization of the immanence of the occult, and of this as something important for our living. When Campbell published this line in 1977, the curtain had just gone up on the Broadway revival of Hair, the “American tribal love-rock musical” of 1967. The show had been regaling audiences with its representation of hippie subculture for ten years, enthralling and alarming viewers in equal measure with nudity, drug use, and occult references alongside a vehement rejection of the country’s puritanical Christian philosophy. The musical is called Hair, for gods’ sakes, the ultimate symbol of liberation and power across cultures for millennia from the Indigenous peoples of the Americas to ancient Greek gods and heroes. “My hair is holy,” Dionysus says in Euripides’s tragedy The Bacchae. “I grow it long for the god.”  Hair is packed with references to Christianity as both allegory and foil to the tribe’s aims and antics. Alongside these are vibrant celebrations of the natural world, especially the stars, a mainstay of the occult. Even though British astrologer Neil Spencer referred to “Aquarius,” the show’s anthem, as “astrological gibberish,” it had no bearing on its wild and sustained success. The Civil Rights movement, the sexual revolution, antiwar fury, and women’s liberation made it imperative for Western seekers to find beliefs that better suited their ideals of love, freedom, and connection with all things. Christianity fell extraordinarily short in all areas, leading to a surge of Eastern practices in the US and England, as well as a rebirth of many esoteric practices, including tarot and astrology. The “ancient” feeling of these disciplines resonated with people looking to escape the confines of their tight-laced post–World War II upbringing, even though many of these practices had been refined at the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was music that offered the direct pathway to the ineffable. Campbell was given the opportunity to see the Grateful Dead in concert near the end of his life. He told his audience in a lecture after the show that “this is Dionysus talking through these kids.” He further describes the experience in The Mythic Dimension: Rock music had always seemed a bore to me, but I can tell you, at that concert, I found eight thousand people standing in mild rapture for five hours. The place was just a mansion of dance. And I thought, ‘Holy God! Everyone has just lost themselves in everybody else here!’ (260-261) “[Music] is the oldest form of religious worship,” writes Peter Bebergal in his 2015 book The Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll: when magic and religion were inseparable, where myth was communicated through a colorful and often wild blending of costume, song, and dance. This type of yearning for freedom and self-expression is our first and earliest glimmer of the spirit of rock and roll, a primeval and communal method to transmit a truth, to celebrate, to mourn, to sacrifice something to the gods. And to do it together. (18) Occultism isn’t one set belief, making the figure of the witch the perfect symbol of counterculture, outcasts, and weirdness: too loud, unpredictable, otherworldly, and, most terrifying of all, sexually liberated. An accusation of witchcraft is still mortally dangerous in many parts of the world; far from a kitschy symbol of rebellion, the witch is a declaration of freedom in spite of legitimate deadly risks. It’s little wonder that witches were invoked in the face of life-or-death causes like Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, or by groups like WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell) founded by radical feminists to fight for women’s liberation. One of the leaflets WITCH dispersed at their protests in the late 1960s read: If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a Witch. You make your own rules. You are free and beautiful. You can be invisible or evident in how you choose to make your witch-self known. You can form your own Coven of sister Witches (thirteen is a cozy number for a group) and do your own actions ... You are a Witch by saying aloud, "I am a Witch" three times, and thinking about that. You are a Witch by being female, untamed, angry, joyous, and immortal. (Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshipers, and Other Pagans in America. Margot Adler, 1979) Witchcraft, this vector of fascination as well as fear, was criminalized in Britain until 1951 when the old law was repealed and replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act. Hair itself wasn’t permitted to be performed in London’s West End until 1968, when the Labour government repealed a 1737 law that prevented the show on the grounds of nudity and drug use, itself a revolutionary act for free speech that boosted the show’s popularity in the UK. Once the curtain was up, reviews began flowing in. Most were positive, if overwhelmingly English; Philip Hope-Wallace wrote for the Guardian, “It is all a good deal less awful than it sounds but will probably find its own proper audience, if that is the right adjective.” The renewed celebration of the witch, and the discomfort and alarm that follows, is not so different from the journey of the Hanged Man himself: someone unfamiliar with the tarot will often take the card as a bad omen based on the name and imagery, but spending time with the card, turning it over and examining the details with an open mind, might lead them to some surprising revelations. A.E. Waite of the Smith-Waite deck wrote The Pictorial Key to the Tarot in 1910, which includes descriptions and interpretations of Smith’s illustrations. He wrote of the Hanged Man that “it has been called falsely a card of martyrdom, a card of prudence … a card of duty.” A rope ties you in place where you hang, uncomfortable and unable to release yourself. What it does mean, Waite writes, is enlightenment: expansiveness, perspective, intuition, circumspection, prophecy. One interpretation of the card even says the Hanged Man put himself up there, tying himself deliberately to the Tree of Life to gain knowledge from experiencing a new perspective. As long as there are cultural norms, there will be the drive to rebel against them, and the witch will be there. As the Hanged Man alarms passersby in his personal quest to achieve enlightenment, the witch strives for truth and empathy with the full knowledge of disruption and fury it will inevitably provoke. The old arts that were once banned are back. A “micro-macrocosmic unity” is what makes the occult appealing, and is why it will always, in some form, return. We need this connection: tying ourselves upside down to the Tree of Life, a radical rejection of convention, a tug-of-war between duty and spiritual expansion—and a responsibility and connection to one another.

Before diving into the symbolism of the Star card of the tarot, let’s first consider its predecessor the Tower, whose sudden onslaught of destruction will have already descended (precisely) like lightning upon us. By now, however, we have hopefully distanced ourselves from the drama enough to compartmentalize events in the gentler, more manageable abstractions of “dissolution” or simply of “loss.” Sometimes this act of distancing comes naturally with the passage of time, while at others it requires a conscious choice. The element of conscious choice has a significant place in the present look into the symbolism of the Star card because it invites Logos into the mix. “Logic?” you ask. “Intellect and reason in the business of symbols?” Yes, because it’s the literalist—the dogmatist of symbolic hermeneutics who leans exclusively on the intuitive/associative/experiential encounter with the image—who believes the intellect has no part to play. For Logos is both complementary and necessary to an albeit predominantly intuitive, irrational process—and if the adjectives complementary and necessary are not ample, then let me add inescapable. We’ll return to the Logos later, and to its correlation with choice, so please hold that thread. For now, however, having found ourselves here at ground zero, centered and empowered to consciously contribute as creators and cocreators to our own rebuilding, we are able to proceed with options of far greater scope and scale had the lightning not come in the first place. For such is the case with foundational work: the deeper we’ve gone—or should I say been sent?—the greater the potential if we choose to “build big.” So, on to the images of the Star card as our formative stage of renewal, and with a fuller appreciation of what they can teach us not about loss but rather about what we can do now that we’re back. First we register the gestalt, the overall feel of the scene: distinctly serene, more at ease and in flow, and all in a deeply natural setting. Clearly it is nature’s harmonious aspect, her tending, nurturing side, not her destructive one. However at ease the scene may be, it is not idle, as demonstrated by the calm industriousness of the central actor and action of the card: the Woman. Her composed demeanor deepens the unembellished simplicity (and sincerity) of her nakedness. She is strong. And without need or concern for the egoic armor (symbolized by clothes) that we must don to defend ourselves from all the physical, social, and psychological dangers that accompany the human context. Vulnerable? Sure. But without urgency or fear. She instead possesses a quiet kind of confidence that seems to affirm all the more that shebelongs here, her sensibilities and sensitivities exposed to a more immediate relationship with her environment and story—in short, with her myth. I am tempted to say she is vulnerable to destiny. But not as a victim, not as acted upon as we see in the Tower, but rather by choice. Call it destiny in its dharmic sense, where one is simply on the Path, playing one’s part, doing precisely what it is one is called to do. One foot is placed on top of the water and not submerged in it as one would expect, emphasizing the conscious over the unconscious (for water is, among other things, an archetype of the unconscious). This highlights the conscious, rational attributes of choice and the capacity to act, both Logos based and intellect initiated. On that note, I must insert an irrational criterion for relevant reasons to come—and because it’s just too valuable to omit: Hope—an irrational, emotional phenomenon quite beyond the domain of intellect. For the Star card is widely known as the card of hope, which is probably the single most potent initiator and ally to renewal. For sake of time, and rather than defining hope, to fully appreciate its value one needs only to consider its opposite: the ruinous destroyer despair (literally “de-hope”) and move on. So, hope. Sometimes descending by grace, but more often requiring us to open the door and get involved via conscious choice and action. In short, we must jump-start an attitude. Enter Logos. And please note that this simple act need not take more than a moment—less than even a second!—to perform its priceless function. However brief, this intellectual maneuver is paramount, and not just with hope but with all kinds of content and contexts. Although it’s not my intention to get into the distinction between symbols and signs right now, I’ll share the following popular quote from Jung as an analogy, in lieu of an explanation, of what attitude can do: “Whether a thing is a symbol or not depends chiefly upon the attitude of the observing consciousness.” (The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Psychological Types, 603) Point being, with attitude we can actually shift our conscious perspective, and in so doing we shift the whole (apparently) external environment, dimension, reality—whatever one wishes to call it—to reveal that which formerly lay hidden, embedded in the topography of our initial encounter. And this, as you’ve probably gathered by now, I find astounding. With that point established to reinforce our focus on attitude’s relationship to what we can do, let’s return to the Woman, because for all this talk of being conscious and “above,” her business is quite “down.” She is kneeling down, looking down, pouring water down from jugs in her hands, all of which demonstrates a conscious perspective toward the unconscious, toward the foundational, with an attitude of tending—in other words, to “inner work.” In this image one cannot help but think of Demeter, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and its theme of renewal, initiated first through Persephone’s abduction by Hades (surely a Tower event) and subsequently by Demeter’s fierce quest to retrieve her daughter from the underworld. She attends to the chthonic, the unconscious (cf., the jug that the Woman pours into water). Third is Demeter’s archetypal role as grain goddess. And this is the conscious, the field of life symbolized by the other jug poured upon earth. Joseph Campbell speaks to both the conscious and unconscious sides of renewal while addressing the figures on the Terra Nouva Sarcophagus: “Demeter is seated on a sacred serpent-coiled basket, and from the mystic basket precedes the serpent, that which sheds its skin to be born again and which represents the engagement of life-giving consciousness in the field of time and space.” (Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 195) But we have further correlations to Demeter in the Woman’s bright golden hair. Straight from the poet’s mouth nearly three-thousand years ago: … a lovely fragrance from her perfumed veils spread about and a brightness from the immortal flesh of the goddess shone far away and her blond hair fell to her shoulders and the sturdy house was filled with light like lightning (The Homeric Hymns, Charles Boer, Trans. 139) Consider a moment all the brightness in the passage above. And next, how the Woman’s hair matches precisely (and only) the gold of the one larger star on the card. Is she then linked to a sun symbol, albeit shaped like a star? I’m fine with that. Or have we forgotten our sun is a star? Or so it is in the empirical fantasy. Since archetypal interpretation tells us sun is masculine, then we have an exception, which increases its emphasis via uniqueness. In short, there is something exceptional to the Woman’s sun connection, less as an ultimate symbol of Source or Being but rather more worldly in the Demeter sense—as in that which shines down and causes the flora and grain to grow—from germ to flower, from darkness to star.

Hence in a season of calmer weather Though inland far we be, Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the Children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. (Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth) The vernal equinox marks the transition from winter to spring here in the northern hemisphere, and our friends in Australia can now breathe a sigh of relief as a tough, hot summer transitions into autumn. Regardless of where you are, this astronomical moment marks a boundary both factually and symbolically. Appropriately enough, this month our MythBlast family has been musing on the seventeenth trump card of the tarot: the Star. The Star is one of the goddess cards in the tarot. There are a number of such cards representing different aspects of the “Divine Feminine,” that is to say a variety of characteristics ascribed to the symbol as “feminine” based partly in a socially constructed and culturally inflected set of experiences and conceptual structures and then projected into that misty ganz andersein (Ultimate Other) lying just beyond, or below, normal waking consciousness. I'm being careful in this description, because describing something as “one aspect of the Divine Feminine” suggests that these representations are prototypes, as if they describe a set of “divine” characteristics or Platonic Forms to which human beings are supposed to aspire and against which human lives are to be judged. I think this view is exactly backwards. Symbols like these are projections of our psyche captured in metaphor—the metaphors can be beautiful, but their value depends upon the degree to which they effectively disclose, or direct our attention to, deeper parts of our own experience. Metaphors like these put us in relationship with the world and, when our understanding of the world changes, so too must those metaphors. As civilization moves into a less binary understanding of life and culture, these metaphors will have to morph as well. In any case, while women can be stereotypically understood using these aspects of the Divine Feminine, the symbolic topography of Divine Feminine must first be understood as having been determined by what a particular culture, situated in a particular time and space, deemed to be a “woman.” The same goes for the masculine side of this traditional binary. There is a chicken-and-egg analogy working in the background here, but it's important to get the order of signified and signifier right. With that safety lock in place, let's get starry eyed. The Star, as a verb instead of a noun, seems to work regardless of current social constructions. Operationally defined, she symbolizes the boundary layers and the mode of transit between daily, mundane consciousness and that which lies beyond. Discerning readers will have noticed that in some sense the metaphors that link us to what lies beyond mundane consciousness will, to mundane consciousness, often seem to be understood as lies. What lies beyond often seems to lie. That’s always the problem with metaphors. The fact that it’s ironic and corny at the same time is always the first indication of a deeper hermeneutical, and hermetic, mystery. The Star card typically shows a woman at the water's edge, sometimes a river, sometimes a pond, but the water always represents the Great Sea. She kneels beside it wielding two jugs, one held aloft pouring water (or starlight) onto herself and the other slung below, pouring that water out into the world. She inhabits the shoreline, marking the tide, straddling the boundary between Here and There, making accessible the Yonder Shore or, at least, the watery starlit pathway that transits Here to There. In normal life you may have had the experience of walking the beach at night when the water is still, rippled by hushed zephyrs, and felt the sea dew gentle itself against your face: a barest intimation of the vast and mostly opaque ocean depths rolling out of sight to the horizon. Arguably, most days, our unconscious selves communicate in the same way, as the slightest, almost unnoticeable mist bringing material to consciousness from what seems a mostly opaque and inscrutable depth rolling out of sight beyond the horizon of normal consciousness. It whispers misty intimations (I really want to say mythsty intimations). Sometimes we recognize and rejoice in these mythsty intimations of immortality, but, more often than not, we perceive these whispers as nothing more than a spray of healthy hydration that keeps the hardening skin of adulthood softer, and more pliant, and more functionally alert. So, to normal waking consciousness, the Star card represents a kind of humidifier—although, admittedly, sometimes a fire hose—powered by the unconscious. We notice it only when we shut it off or when it runs out of starlight … I mean, water … and our skin, or the protective membrane of mundane consciousness, dries out and hardens, or cracks. The metaphor here suggests how we can share in this transverberation by absorbing the sea dew, the spilled starlight, and then acting as a conduit, spilling it out into the world. Spilling starlight into the world is a pretty dense, if twinkly, metaphor, but it would come down to something like this: once one is in touch with the Great Sea—and the “Great Sea” here is a kenning for the Jungian unconscious or even for the universal architecture which Aristotle reminds us is accessed through wonder—one cannot help but spill the water from that Grail out into the world. Twinkle twinkle. Thanks for musing along.

In The Power of Myth, Bill Moyers remarks that the Lord’s Prayer begins with, “Our father, who art in heaven,” and then asks Joseph Campbell if it could begin with our mother. It is a delightful trigger for the mythologist to talk about female metaphorical images as a representation of the world. In this context, the field of the symbolic images, the challenge of March’s MythBlast theme is to delve into the tarot card called the Star. We can use Moyers's curiosity as a prompt to remember the history of the Waite Tarot, a popular deck which dates back to 1911. It was created by the American-born British poet and mystic Arthur Edward Waite (1857–1942), and is sometimes also called the Rider-Waite, bearing the name of its first publisher, the British company, William Rider & Son, Ltd. (which is still alive, so to speak, as a part of Penguin Random House UK). However, it is also known by the name of Rider-Waite-Smith, acknowledging its British illustrator, Pamela Colman Smith (1878-1951), a theatrical designer, artist, and writer. So, in this text, Rider-Waite-Smith it is. Card number seventeen, the Star card in the Rider-Waite-Smith deck shows a woman kneeling like the ancient knights: one leg on the ground and the other in a flexed position. Two knees to the ground means full and strict submission, so in this case the individual has surrendered to their fate, but the other leg in a flexed position shows that the ego is properly in its structuring, balancing function. “I surrender of my own will: having said this, do Thy will,” we can imagine the woman murmuring. We know that this position in general is also associated with a duly respectful and humble attitude towards people and life—and her bowed head confirms it. She is still young, but she appears to be well on her way to becoming a wise old woman, taking the responsibility for her life into her own hands and yet listening to the mystery.  Her right leg is solidly resting on the ground—grounded—representing her practical abilities, skills, and, perhaps, her attentiveness to the traditions she inherited. But the other foot is gently resting on a pool of water, usually a symbol for the Source of Life, showing us her willingness to listen to her intuition and inner resources. She holds a jug of water in each hand, the one in her right hand pours into the pool (the unconscious) while the jug in her left hand empties onto the earth (consciousness). An auspicious image by all means, if we consider the lush, fertile greenery around her, as well as the bird on the verge of taking flight in the background. The two feminine elements, earth and water, seem to be at peace and in balance: common sense and inner voice. In the image of card seventeen, the feminine principle in women and men makes the connection between the water element (usually linked to the emotions) and the earth, generally associated with firmness, strength, determination, objectivity, practicality, and structure. This individual has her foot on the ground, in touch with and stabilized by the earth. It is also on earth that the material treasure of gold is found, so in a broad sense the earth can be related to prosperity. The background of the card shows eight stars with eight points, one star being larger in relation to the other seven. Let's remember the Star’s tarot card number is seventeen: if we add the numbers one and seven we will have eight again. In both Eastern and Western cultures, the number eight is a lucky number and related to the idea of growing, victory, and prosperity. The woman is naked, which symbolises her naïve attitude—no shame, no social masks, a perfect state of trust. It’s not accidental that this card is associated with hope, faith, purpose, renewal, and good paths, as well as a bridge to something larger than material life and the present, something we can call spirituality. In the Mythic Tarot, the Star card features Pandora, possessed by curiosity, opening the tricky box given to her by Zeus, designed to obtain revenge for Prometheus’s theft of fire, which was then given as a gift to the human race. We can see Pandora’s wow face at the exact moment she sees its contents released into the world, not yet realizing she is actually letting loose all manner of misery and evil. Things like illness, death, and probably aging too. Though she hastened to close the container, the only thing that was left behind is usually translated as hope. For the ancient Greeks, hope was an expectation without a corresponding action and might be interpreted as a sign of self-deception or delusion. Pandora must have seemed like a happy child waiting to open a Christmas package, whose jaw drops when she doesn't get exactly what was envisioned. From some future perspective, however, the present may turn out to be even better than one might have hoped, but in the moment it causes pain, feelings of betrayal, and disappointment. Pandora seems distraught in this image and therefore, in the reversed position, the card usually refers to a star traveler’s setbacks, bewildered because their foundations are not solid enough, and they may feel lost. In that case, the card is associated with a lack of faith and trust, despair, disconnection, a detour in the path, possible losses of various types (the opposite of the abundance card number eight promises). If we refer to the inverted Rider-Waiter-Smith Star card, the containers of water would fall towards the sky, showing an upside-down rain that would obviously not be in accord with nature. The starry night sky is not in the heavens, a metaphor for the peaceful state of mind known as Nirvana in Eastern traditions. What may the Star card teach us today? Perhaps it speaks to a part of our psyche that, despite the frustrations and disappointments inherent in human life, with its ups and downs, does not allow itself to be endlessly trapped in the depressions caused by the inevitable losses experienced in the process of living. That despite everything, after the necessary period of sadness and mourning, every individual has the inner resources and strength to let the dead take care of the dead, to see the successes embedded in the failures, and to find meaning enough to cling to life again and again. Somewhere out there is a dim light that shines softly like a guiding star that heals our wounds and leads us home. After all, as Campbell points out in Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, these mythological images are references to the field of potential experience of the human spirit. “These are to evoke attitudes and experiences that are appropriate to a meditation on the mystery of the source of your own being,” says Campbell. It is indeed a pleasant challenge to take on. In the Christian tradition, we can remember the saga of the three wise kings who were guided by the star of Bethlehem to pay their respects to the divine child. And let's face it: the star was up there in the sky, in plain sight, within everyone's reach. But only three people were open enough to see what it meant. What remains is the notion that the symbols and synchronicities are all around, but it is necessary to pay attention to the signs and stars so as not to let them, or our own lives, pass by unnoticed.

Jean Marion Erdman, choreographer, director, co-founder of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and wife to Joseph Campbell for 49 years, was born on February 20, 1916. This week, in honor of her birthday, Diane McGhee Valle explores how the polarities in Erdman's life were integral to her art. We cannot know Joseph Campbell without knowing Jean Erdman, and likewise, we cannot know Erdman if we ignore the life and work of Campbell. This week we celebrate the birthday of Joseph Campbell’s spouse, Jean Erdman (Feb. 20, 1916 – May 4, 2020). The occasion presents an opportunity to note a contrasting variety of influences on her life and artistic work. Erdman was an extraordinary creator, performer, and producer of dance and theatre. The influences discussed here, can be seen as opposing tensions that pushed, pulled, and ultimately guided her to experience the fullness of life. Each challenge she faced provided insights that allowed her to achieve the epitome of artistic expression and create sublime works of art. Her challenges can be viewed through lenses of culture, geography, the art of dance, and of course, illuminated by her relationship with Campbell. Joe Campbell frequently wrote about the psychological concepts and opposing tensions of duality and non-duality. Whereas duality refers to a split or fracture of our consciousness, non-duality represents the complete union of it. We often long for the distinctions of duality to be eliminated; true art offers a way to discover this divine form. It can sometimes be encountered when extraordinary beauty brings “aesthetic arrest”; when opposites seem to dissolve, and a viewer experiences a sense of “wholeness, harmony, and radiance”. (See Campbell’s discussion of proper art in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, 100-102.) Dance can also offer these qualities, and is “a powerful way of embodying and realizing the moving potential of the human soul”. (Jean Erdman Papers. 1939 – 2001. 18(2:2):4, New York City Public Library Collection) Although a dance-maker could create choreography for the purpose of special effects or to induce desire, both Joe and Jean did not consider this approach to be powerful or “true”. Instead, they believed, proper art is realized through the liberation from clichéd earthly ideas. In The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Campbell observed that both the mystic and the artist show similar innovative insights. For both, “It is of their own inmost truth brought to consciousness: by the mystic, in direct confrontation, and by the artist, through reflection in the masterworks of his art.” (91) An artful choreographer may hone a somatic approach to movement invention. She may actively pursue the fluctuations between the conscious and unconscious mind and permit these to interplay in metaphorical ways, ultimately to be expressed by the moving body. For dancers, movement can be qualitatively analyzed using a system of opposites. The choreographer finds artistic opportunities by selectively passing through and among the opposites to create a visual interest in the human form. For example, force can range from heavy to light; the speed of the dancer can vary from fast to slow; and directionalities are assigned terms, such as forward or backward, right or left, high or low. Body shapes are also defined within frameworks of opposites, illustrated by terms such as symmetrical or asymmetrical, straight or curved, large or small, wide or narrow, and so forth. Exploring these possibilities could go on ad infinitum. In the art of concert dance, Jean Erdman drew from the entire spectrum of possibilities. She was a genius in her methods. Her selected actions were derived from both from basic skills and a priori knowledge, and also from various cultures and artistic styles that she had studied. These experiences gave Erdman a vast store of dance knowledge that provided her greater mastery of the body and opened avenues for artistic innovation. Reared in Hawaii, Erdman learned well from her childhood dance experiences. She practiced the ancient Hawaiian sacred traditions, especially hula, and was deeply interested in the traditions of Japanese and Chinese theatrical styles. She studied American tap dance and learned the basics of modern dance from an innovative teacher while at the Punahou School. These opportunities turned her attention to the remote philosophies and values of Asia, and these teachings subsequently left a deep impression on her identity. Jean identified as Oriental and Polynesian but, she acknowledged, the modes of living and thinking were often at odds with those of her family’s old New England roots. (Jean Erdman Papers, 1939 – 2001. 7:8) One of Erdman’s challenges was to resolve the tension between these internal opposites. Erdman noted that distinctive dance traditions developed according to location and culture but also revealed that all humans are essentially the same. This idea seemed to parallel the theories of ethnologist Adolf Bastian (1826 – 1905). Following both Bastian and C. G. Jung, Erdman recognized that traditional dances frequently retained the characteristics of ancient archetypes and were steeped in mythology and thus, often timeless in their meanings. She felt, “There is value [in] the uniqueness of each dance tradition – and that each style should be approached as a complete unity.” (Jean Erdman Papers, 1939 – 2001, 10(1:2):9) Much of Erdman’s early professional dance training took place under the tutelage of several significant 20th century icons, such as Martha Graham, Hanya Holm, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. Each choreographer had invented a dance style that bore the name of its originator. But Erdman eventually came to the opinion that such individual methods and styles were pieces fractured from the glorious whole of movement possibilities. For art’s sake, she sought release from the subjective sentiments of her respected masters. She advanced the position that an individual cannot claim ownership of a technique or dance, and stated, “The style belongs to the dance, not to the dancers.” (The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance, 162) Erdman subsequently sought to transcend the elements of distinct styles and use the capacity of myth to give strength and structure to her dances. In the early 1940s, Erdman briefly sought the company of the New Dance Group to gain choreographic and teaching experience. The Group was an association of Erdman’s peers from the various modern dance camps in New York. Most members were strong-willed women who held deep ideological beliefs about socialism. Erdman soon discovered that the Group did not provide the creative freedom that she sought. It seemed the Group’s call to “freedom” frequently became a story for political advocacy and propaganda. It was a difficult decision, but ultimately Erdman pulled away from the collective to become the agent of her own myth.  She went forward using, as her husband wrote, the “courage to let go of the past, with its truths, its goals, its dogmas of ‘meaning,’ and its gifts: to die to the world and to come to birth from within”. (Campbell, J., The Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology,  677 – 678). One of the most transformational influences for both Erdman and Campbell was their love story. Through Erdman’s early days of college and professional career, Campbell was her mentor. As they matured together, she achieved the place of his intellectual equal. They were well-matched in their social abilities, as well as their mutual fascinations with myth, literature, religions, philosophy, and aesthetics.  In 1972, they collaborated to co-found the Theatre of the Open Eye. Throughout their careers, the two often operated at great distances from one another; yet, their personas melded so closely they seemed of one consciousness, an idea symbolized in Hindu mythology by the image of the androgynous deity, Ardhanarishvara. In this deity, the paradox of the opposites form the unity of the male and female principles, transcending all distinctions. Such a union is a true and proper likeness of this remarkable couple.

The magician made a modest request. Could he and his friends from the local chapter of the Society of American Magicians perform the “broken wand ceremony” at my grandfather’s open-casket, Catholic funeral? My resistance, bordering on physical revulsion, to the casual syncretism of wand and crucifix is difficult to explain and makes me sound like a cultural bully, but I think Joseph Campbell can help me out here. Throughout the history of the Christian cult,” he wrote in Creative Mythology, “the liability of its historicized symbols to reinterpretation in some general mythological sense has been a constant danger.” Or, put another way, keep your wand in your pocket. We do our own magic here. Indeed, we have our own magic wand. According to my treasured Dictionary of Symbols (a Penguin reference), the Bishop’s staff or “crosier” has the same approximate function as a magic wand, both of which confer hieratic status upon the owner. “Like the staff, the wand is the symbol of authority and of second sight.” And yet, the symbols appear to be in competition rather than mutually reinforcing, evoking from me a swift rejection to the Magician’s plea. And what was he asking for? Nothing more than the radical inclusivity one might expect of a mythologist. And yet, Campbell, whose unum mundum philosophy underlies every important work of his oeuvre, recognized the limits of interfaith exchange. “For, as every serious study of intercultural exchange has shown, it is simply a fact—a basic law of history, applicable to every department of life—that materials carried from any time past to a time present, or from one culture to another, shed their values at the culture portal and thereafter become mere curiosities or undergo a sea change through a process of creative misunderstanding” (Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology, 137). In short, the pairing of your Wal-Mart magic wand with our bishop’s sacred crosier does credit to neither, bringing the dime-store novelty a step closer to a status it frankly should never have and simultaneously taking the fun out of it. Or, worse, from the Catholic’s point of view, the puissance of cross and crosier are reduced, their mystic voltage diminished, the spiritual charge sputtering from the association to a cheap contender in the field. It is a sad fact of life that men cannot help comparing their wands. When Harry Potter shows up in the Little Hangleton graveyard in a duel with Lord Voldemort, their respective wands, both composed of a phoenix-feather core, refuse to attack one another. They are “brother wands.” The officiating priest at my grandfather’s funeral would probably balk at recognizing any “brother wand” equivalences at play in the Requiem Mass underway in the Sanctuary. More typical is the wand contest of the book of Exodus, where Aaron throws down his staff and it becomes a snake. Not to be outdone, Egyptian magicians do the same. Aaron and Moses watch as their predatory wand literally swallows the wands of the opposing tribe, the Egyptians. Catholic magic, it could be argued, is on the order of miracle, never a “trick.” It is a miracle going by the tongue twister transubstantiation in which ordinary bread is transformed into the body and blood of Christ. The distinction between miracle and trick is not always obvious. When a professional illusionist is about the do the big reveal where the broken egg emerges from the hat as a full grown rabbit, he might (in simpler times) be heard to say “Hocus Pocus Dominocus,” a medieval corruption [many scholars agree] of the words “Hoc Est Corpus meum” (This is my body) said by the priest to announce the completion of the mystic conversion of flour to flesh. So, on that level, the magician could be forgiven for thinking he is among friends. And what about that water into wine business? And those loaves and fishes? How is the magician asking you to pick a card, a different species from the Savior telling the women to roll back the stone? Are they not at least on the spectrum of the same archetypal figure? If so, why do I find the idea of a magic wand in church so provocative? Campbell had a similar reaction to a third-century panel of graven images which once adorned the ceiling of Rome’s Domitilla catacomb. “In the center of the panel, where a symbol of Christ might have been expected, the legendary founder of the Orphic mysteries appears, the pagan poet Orpheus, soothing animals of the wilderness with the magic of his lyre and song” (14). It’s not just an anachronism. It ignores the ocean of philosophic difference separating the Orphic mysteries and the early Church and, maybe worse, ruins the aesthetic. It doesn’t belong. It’s the wrong kind of magic. The magician’s request to place his magic wand in the open casket of the late Jack Steck, my beloved grandfather, was not a crime, nor a sin. It was just presumptuous. Catholics are no longer a miracle-dependent faith community. We’re more like this: I never saw him calm the sea Nor change the water to wine But he has calmed the rage in me And changed my heart and my mind I never saw him multiply the loaves and fishes one day But he has multiplied my love which grows more when given away. I wrote this song to remind the audience or congregation that the best miracles do not require the suspension of the laws of physics.  So, nothing personal, Magic Man. I know you loved my grandfather who, himself, was a card-carrying member of your society. But it’s no longer about magic. We’ve moved on. The magicians ignored me. When they got to the coffin, they encircled it, spoke their words of commendation, snapped the wand in half, and placed it somewhere on the body of my grandfather. It was inappropriate, ill-considered, contrary to rubrics of the one true faith, and absolutely adorable.

The wheel of the year ROTATes and the next card in the TAROT pops up. What card did we pull out of the Year of the Rabbit’s hat for 2023? The next one: The Magician. Tarot decks typically display roughly the same symbolic features for this card. A mercurial figure holds aloft a scroll, or a wand, or a hollow-tube-to-bring-down-fire-from-heaven. Before him we see a table prepared for some kind of work: a workbench, or a scrying table, or an altar. Tools float in his vicinity or are laid out on the table waiting for the action to begin. In Frieda Harris’s deck he’s shadowed by an ape. Hm. This month we’re looking into Campbell’s Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology. We now live in an era in which mythology had to become creative rather than inherited. How do we appropriate these traditional symbols and retrofit them to make sense of our situation today? People who haven’t worked with symbolic structures can see the process as more magical than rational, although there is plenty of good sense floating through proper magic. What we’re being asked to do in the twenty-first century is to come up with ways to put ourselves back into a relationship with the ground of our being—whatever that happens to be. And that’s tricky because, and regular readers will recognize a common theme, the world that the old myths related us to has vanished. So how do we proceed? Well, one of the ways to uncover the ground of our existence was discussed last month when the MythBlast series took up the Fool card of the Tarot. The Fool seems to wander aimlessly while never missing a step, an idea reinforced in the classic Daoist texts which remind us that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself. Whenever you lose yourself in an activity, you almost always discover something that seems to be most suitably you. (For instance, the religious cult I spend most of my time with, I discovered by accident, by wandering aimlessly, by leaving the road where the woods were darkest, where there was no path—the cult of the ukulele. There are a lot of really interesting people in that cult. You should join us.) Maybe that’s a MythBlast for another time. If the Fool card (and the important, but apparently aimless wandering it symbolizes) can bring us to the truth about who we are in the world, and begins to describe our relationship to living-in-the-world, then the follow-up would be understanding and articulating the life this foolish wandering recommends. The Magician, the Magus, carves the runes of that understanding. This is easier said than done. Mythology has to be creative now, but creativity can be funny. Edison seems to have captured it best when he said that invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Sometimes you have to wander a lot before you get to wonder about the wandering, and once you wonder about the wandering, you have to use the wand, the pen and ink, of your will to articulate the fire you’ve brought down from heaven, and then let the wonder determine itself. And this is where the magic comes in. You have to take the moment of aha!, the sigh, the breath, the inspired respiration of that moment of discovery and then carve that column of air—using your teeth and tongue—into a Word, a Logos, that can be transmitted not just to others but also to ourselves. I want sublime and amazing experiences, but I also want to be able to think about them—and that requires making them definite, and making them definite is always a problem because they don’t like being definite. That’s why there are so many tools laid out on the table in front of the Magician. The inspired insight, the fire brought down from heaven, must be crafted into concrete meaning using the elements available to us—earth, air, fire, water, and spirit—in order to determine it. And while I’m thinking about it, sometimes German is really helpful. The German word for “determinate” is bestimmt or bestimmtheit. But Stimmen is also the word for “voice” and so, to determine something means “to give voice to it.” Until we can say it, until we can speak it, we haven’t fully grasped or understood it. We may have had an amazing experience of some kind—and it could be spiritual, or scientific, or even pizza—but experiencing and understanding are not the same thing. Any attempt to articulate our relationship to an experience, whether that means my relationship to my spiritual adventures or even to an amazing and “heavenly” pizza (and sometimes these are the same thing), will always and of necessity be inadequate to the task. We can get close, but that relationship will always be expressed metaphorically in the language of myth and it will, therefore, always be inexact—close, sure, but never perfect. By the way, this applies equally to attempting descriptions of sublime spiritual attainment and descriptions of sublime pizza. You’ve probably had that experience. So the symbol of the Magician card reminds us that, in some serious sense, any overly serious attempt to articulate that truth will always end up a kind of lie. This, of course, is the conundrum of all mythological discourse. When we believe myths are attempts to explain the facts about the universe, all myths turn out to be lies—and when we recognize that their function is, instead, a narrative one that places us into relationship with the deep experiences of our lives, all myths are the truth. Speaking of which, the idea that all mythological speech is, in some sense, inadequate to the task of complete expression, provides a useful analysis of the craziest and most dangerous of all human beings—the ones who demand the purity of perfect clarity instead of a useful, and liveable, approximation. For more of which, stay tuned for September’s MythBlasts when I take up The Tower. I suppose there’s also the truth that any time anyone brings down fire from heaven, there’s hell to pay. Thanks for musing along!

As we begin a new year, our calendar seems to have a magical effect upon us, triggering a certain archetypal response in our souls which may be appropriate for all new beginnings and ends. Thus our Gregorian calendar, with its hidden archetypal background, is preparing us to face the new challenges and problems of the new year. Although no one doubts the cosmic reality of the next sunrise, at least for several billion years, the length of our individual lives is but a flash of lightning. The question of our own mortality, or the mortality of those we love, is thus riddled with doubt and fear. We all know that only a few precious turns around the sun are granted to us, and we never know which rotation will be our last tour. In the words of the mad Ophelia: “Lord, we know what we are but know not what we may be.” (Hamlet  4.5, lines 48–49) Old or young, sick or healthy, rich or poor, no one knows the expiration date that will be added to their epitaph. To mark in advance our own calendar run with the words consummatum est (“it is finished”) remains beyond our mortal grasp ”—the rest is silence.” (5.2, line 395) Although the knowledge of our death may be denied to us by the order of things, it bleeds into that tremendous and fascinating mystery of being alive between birthlife and death. As Shakespeare again expressed it in Hamlet, lacking such knowledge of our death, we must learn to understand the “special providence in the fall of a sparrow”: If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. (5.2, lines 234 -237) The awareness of our mortality is a double-edged sword: it may lead to the realization of profound gratitude, that every day is a gift and a miracle, but it may also lead to a heightened awareness of the immense background of death and nothingness that engulfs every star. To the extent that we are alive, therefore, the light has won its vindication over death’s dominion. But Death, the Unconscious, is all around us, even in the physical form of “dark matter.” Likewise, the beginning of a new year represents an immense gift which opens the door to infinite possibilities—including the ones that may prove to be our downfall. Such is the standard image of the Fool from the tarot deck: a youth happily walking toward a cliff, only one more step to make before falling into the abyss. In its mythic dimensions, the Fool represents a certain archetypal constellation in which great danger is combined with free-spirited naivete. This androgynous figure represents youthful innocence, a childlike stranger free from the cares of this world. They strut down a path, with their gaze to the sky, dancing toward the precipice of life and ruin. The presence of the dog at his side, as if warning the Fool of the impending folly, is an emblem of instinct, the connection to the earth, which the wonderstruck hero sorely lacks. For in its inferior pole, the Fool is indistinguishable from literal foolishness, reckless abandon, and extreme risk-taking. Also closely associated with madness, as in Batman’s Joker figure, the Fool can exhibit a kind of suicidal or even criminal death drive, a compulsion or addiction, which leads the youth to walk over the cliff. The Fool thus contains divine and demonic aspects that must be taken seriously and with great discrimination—lest we ourselves fall into the trap of the Fool! For the edge of this precipice is quite real today for individual egos as it is for nations. Indeed, it involves the entire social collective of humanity at large. In our own times we are dealing with end-of-time questions such as the ones brought out in books like Hegemony or Survival and The Precipice by Noam Chomsky. There are certain ecological and geopolitical conditions we face today that point to a whole constellation of apocalyptic signs, impending catastrophes at scales that have never been imagined. These existential conditions, aloofness of which drives the Fool to the precipice, seriously put human survival into question. For our present world situation is not simply another period of tensions and confusions like the ones we’ve had in the past. Today we face absolutely unprecedented conditions which our ancestors could have barely imagined in their myths about the end of the world. In the present horizon of mythic history, it is not an exaggeration to say that we are living in end times, breathing a toxic cultural atmosphere, with mass-scale disasters looming on every side. Taken together, it is hard to avoid the feeling that we are passing through a possibly terminal stage of human history. Faced with the new horsemen of the apocalypse–Climate Catastrophe (Famine), Nuclear Annihilation (War), New Pandemics (Disease), Social and Economic Breakdown (Death) – our civilization as a whole stands in the situation of the Fool about to walk off the cliff. Thus the Fool perfectly mirrors our current existential situation as a species, the understanding of which is made clear by its mythohistorical dimensions. As Campbell states of the primary functions of mythology: The first function of a mythology is to reconcile waking consciousness to the mysterium tremendum et fascinans of this universe as it is: the second being to render an interpretive total image of the same, as known to contemporary consciousness. Shakespeare’s definition of the function of his art, “to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature,” is thus equally a definition of mythology. It is the revelation to waking consciousness of the powers of its own sustaining source. (The Masks of God, Volume 4: Creative Mythology, 13) Joseph Campbell thus credits Hamlet’s speech with the highest honor that a mythologist can give, that of providing a definition of mythology itself. In the culminating volume of Masks of God, Vol 4: Creative Mythology, Campbell comes home to the creative foundation that makes mythology indistinguishable from art. To the question, what is art? Campbell directly answers: “it is mythology itself.” Creative mythology, whose reflective function it is, like Hamlet’s mirror, to imitate in the medium of consciousness the archetypal powers of its own unconscious source.

Every year’s end, I and the inner female circle of my family draw animal cards as inspiration for the upcoming year. For 2023, my card is the otter. I loved welcoming this joyful creature who, according to the explanation in the book, represents “absolute bliss.” So I was in the playful energy of a child when I started thinking about the challenge of writing this essay. This year, we are invited to consider the images of the tarot. We’re starting the year with card number 0, The Fool. To be frank, it is one of my favorite tarot cards. I got into my hands the familiar Rider-Waite deck, in which The Fool card shows the sun, the universal symbol of the source of life, shining brightly. Despite that the enterprise seems to be blessed by the sun itself, the male figure is standing at the edge of a cliff. As the young man gazes upward, as if lost in thoughts, there is the suggestion of imminent danger. The white dog that is a little behind seems to be trying to alert him of what is coming ahead. Animals tend to be symbols for our instincts, so it would be a good idea to listen to them whenever we need guidance in our life journey. In his right hand and across his shoulder, he carries his possessions in a small bag on a stick. Not amounting to much yet, but certainly things related to power, achievements, goals, and things that matter to him in this phase. This initial reading of the symbol speaks to the first part of life, as Jung wrote in a 1931 essay entitled, “The Stages of Life.” (“The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche,” Volume 8, The Collected Works of Carl Jung) The Swiss psychiatrist uses the sun metaphor to characterize the lifespan: “In the morning it rises from the nocturnal sea of unconsciousness and looks upon the wide, bright world which lies before it in an expanse that steadily widens the higher it climbs in the firmament.” (§ 778) We are talking, therefore, about the floating islands of consciousness that emerge from the child's unconscious and gradually build the ego. As Campbell said to Bill Moyers in The Power of the Myth, in the Western world, we are not intended to neutralize our ego as in the Eastern traditions, for a well-developed ego is necessary to face life's struggles, especially when it comes to having a job, a healthy romantic relationship, raising children, or running a business. But as Campbell says, the ego can become a real dragon, in the sense that it may hold us in and not let us go beyond our beliefs, established objectives, and society’s conventions, pinning us down in a smaller life than the one we could be living. How to slay the dragon in us? Moyers states that Campbell remarked on the “soul’s high adventure,” to which the mythologist replies: “My general formula for my students is follow your bliss, find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.” And of all the amazing phrases Campbell uttered, perhaps this one represents the heart of his teachings, which, for me, are both practical and profound. If the individual has the courage to follow this advice, The Fool card has a chance to become tarot card 22—traditionally, it ends with card 21, The World—in a reversal that mirrors the complete journey, the ultimate achievement. As Jung says in the prologue of Memories, Dreams and Reflections, “My life is a story of the self-realization of the unconscious.” So we have the same card in front of us, but the meaning may be entirely different. The man stepping to the edge of the cliff now makes us remember the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and the famous Leap of Faith scene. There is a previously unseen path ahead to what seems to be the end of the track. As the way forward is not visible, it is necessary to have a good deal of trust in the unknown to discover what is still veiled, and be open to letting go of things that were important but no longer serve us. Now, if we pay attention carefully, we can see that The Fool is holding a rose in his left hand. In Jungian theory, the left side of the body is always attributed to the feminine, the unconscious, or little things that are not that much praised in our times, but still they express the voice of the soul. And above all flowers, and especially the rose, are connected to love. With Christmas still fresh in our minds, I remember the 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart. What really matters, Zuzu’s petals, takes up very little space. This might be one of the positive dimensions of experience and aging. As Jung wrote: “A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.” (§ 787) In between The Fool card as number 0 or as number 22, the journey of life takes place. In the audio Tarot & the Christian Myth, Campbell recalls the first time he saw a tarot deck at Esalen, and he reminds us that these symbols are referring to a basic principle: the elevation of consciousness and, consequently, spiritual life. Therefore, this journey represents an illumination that is possible and can be achieved. In a sense, it is only one small step away.

I am thrilled to write on the MythBlast Series’ monthly theme, “The Heroism of Failure.” Especially on the failure part, because I feel so qualified in the matter—so much relevant content from my past to choose from! Strange though it may sound, this assessment evokes in me, for better and for worse, an appreciation for myself: for having passed through said terrain, and for the failures for selecting me, so to speak, for deepening. In recent years I’ve begun saying, “The blessing and the curse walk hand in hand.” But this is no new discovery, as all opposites follow this pattern of living together under the same roof: hot and cold in the house of temperature, happy and sad in the house of emotion, and so on. However, by recognizing this phenomenon and embracing the viewpoint that failure and success cannot be wholly separated, we preserve their relationship, and do so within their natural environment. This pattern arises frequently in mythology, in literature, and in life—these successful failures, replete with surprise, ambiguity, and no lack of irony, especially when the narrative involves agents of prophecy and fate. For now, though, the practice of merely seeking the gifts that come with a failure helps one avoid sinking too deep into depression, regret, self-abasement, and the like. All of these, when in excess, are a kind of narcissism: an excessive self-centeredness on content that happens to be negative instead of positive. On the other hand, attentiveness simply to the presence of potential hidden values in failure invites such allies as thoughtfulness, reflection, and hope. But, even more valuable, this attention prompts a conscious capacity to initiate new perspectives, spacious perspectives, which are exceptionally effective in evading the confinement that accompanies one-sidedness. Conversely, this practice conditions one to keep an eye out for the (usually surreptitious) dangers that inevitably come riding in on the coattails of even our most magnificent successes—indeed, especially in our most magnificent successes. I’m reminded of a seminar James Hillman hosted over a decade ago. We had just accomplished something of value, figured something out, though I forget what it was because he quickly followed with: “Well, that’s just great. Now, if we could somehow snatch some defeat from this victory.” Of course we all laughed at this for a long time—this essentially being ourselves and our chronic inability to recognize the gifts in failure. Initially, I had intended to focus on the obvious gifts failure brings like character-building, patience, and wisdom, but now I feel it more valuable to camp out on the expansion of perspective—on taking responsibility for our own liberation (which is the only way individuation works, anyway). The perspective part is straightforward enough, being that we always—as in, “perpetually”—have one. Just as our perspectives perpetually have us. But what of the expansion element that opens more inclusive and comprehensive directions? For this, let’s turn to the shaman, who Mircea Eliade describes as “healer and psychopomp . . . because he commands the techniques of ecstasy . . . because his soul can safely abandon his body and roam vast distances, penetrate the underworld and rise to the sky” (Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy 182). Before proceeding further, it’s important to note that “ecstasy,” which is generally taken to mean something like “magnificently happy,” descends from the Greek ekstasis, literally “to stand outside of oneself.” It is in this sense that Eliade wields the word when describing the ecstasy of the shaman, whose healing-work requires vast travel of a deeply psychic nature—and let me remind, the literal translation of psyche is “soul.” Furthermore, the shaman’s travel to the vast “out there” transpires simultaneously within the mystical geography of the vast “in here”—that is, in psyche. This paradoxical dynamic is addressed in the depth-psychological tenet that psyche is within us and we are within it. Be that as it may, I’m guessing most of us are not shamans by trade, spending our evenings in caves hunched over small fires, periodically sailing out of our bodies to consult the stars. So how do we relate to this figure? Again, psychologically. In Flight of the Wild Gander: Selected Essays 1944-1968, Joseph Campbell highlights this shared ground: “The shaman,” he writes “is one who, as a consequence of a personal psychological crisis, has gained a certain power of his own” (126). We have the standard catalysts for the psychological crises that initiate a shaman into power— severe illnesses, getting struck by lightning, seizures, falling off a cliff—events that most people would categorize as failures. But for those of us who know better, must we leap from cliffs in lightning storms to reap the reward of ecstatic technique? Short (and best) answer: No. Psychological crisis is commonplace enough, even little ones, and provide us ample primateria to work with. Consider the proverbial “troubled artist,” one for whom many believe it’s the trouble that drives the art. I happen to think it’s the earnestness to heal (albeit prompted in no small part by the trouble) that does the driving. Like the shaman, the artist can travel beyond, expand their perspectives miles above the crisis, and often without the need to directly address the crisis. They heal through the simple act of making. Nonetheless, I would be wary in asking to write poetry like Pound and Plath, novels like Tolstoy and Woolfe, or to paint like O’Keefe or van Gogh, lest I invite with it a magnitude of psychological crisis that far exceeds my ambition or calling. But if one is neither artist nor shaman, no worries! Stick with the psychological. All of us have our bittersweet neuroses—those persistent symptoms acting like one long, drawn-out crisis, initiating us into the business of “ecstasy” and self-healing. And let’s be sure to remember: we are not beholden to these catalysts just because they got us “here.” As Jung shares in his Memories, Dreams, Reflections: “If they [those afflicted by neuroses] are enabled to develop into more spacious [emphasis mine] personalities, the neurosis generally disappears” (140). Thank you for reading, and may you have an ecstatic day!

The inscription on the curved aluminum surface reads simply: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” Signed,— alongside signatures from the three astronauts—Richard Nixon. It’s quite a memorial for a President some would consider unworthy of such recognition. Seriously, even if you’re a Republican, this out-Rushmores Rushmore. You know whose name does not appear on the moon? God’s name was excluded from the plaque by the order of NASA’s assistant administrator for public affairs. He absolutely denied Richard Nixon’s explicit order that the plaque should include a reference to the Almighty; a Nixon aide had scribbled the reference to a deity so that the plaque would have read “We came in peace, under God, for all mankind.” “God?” asked the assistant administrator.  “What God?” After all, he reasoned, “this is a universal thing. What about the people on earth who do not worship our God?” And Buddhists. What about Buddhists?They don’t believe in any God at all, or so the assistant had been told. Joseph Campbell was among the billions with eyes glued on his television set that July evening over fifty years ago and his sentiments were in perfect accord with the NASA functionary resisting Nixon’s order. Campbell believed that, quoting Buckminster Fuller, “all humanity is about to be born in an entirely new relationship to the universe.” (Myths to Live By, 253) Myths would die, new ones arise. Prayers would be re-written. There is an attitude, shared by Campbell I believe, that living myth can never be in contradiction to scientific fact. Indeed, the idea is canonized in his second function of myth, the cosmological function which states that scientific perception and mythic response are mutually supportive. Some four thousand years ago, Sumerian skywatchers determined that the sun, moon and five visible planets moved at mathematically predictable rates, and Sumerian priests devised rituals and vestments to reflect this sublime cosmic order. They felt the need to reconcile scientific reality with religious identity, much like Nixon insisting that “God’s name” be included on the lunar plaque. Episcopalians, likewise, were quick in the effort to bring the ancient prayers into line with the realities seen on television in July 1969. They changed their Eucharistic prayer, and some say it was a direct result of the famous “earthrise” photograph sent back from the moon mission. The author of the prayer (and writers everywhere might wonder how you get a gig writing prayers) was named Howard E. Galley, Jr. and I cannot imagine his state of mind. The revised Book of Common Prayer for 1979 included Galley’s oddly moving invocation to God in which the faithful attest that At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. By your will they were created and have their being. From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another. Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight. Some call it the “Star Wars Prayer,” an attempt by a member of the Anglican communion to find a myth to live by in the context of an epic shift in human consciousness, from an earth-borne stargazer to a Magellanic voyager looking back at a planet once called home only to realize that the prayers will have to be revised and stories discarded. The moon was in ancient times regarded, and in part of the world still is regarded, as the Mansion of the Fathers, the residence of the souls of those who have passed away and are there waiting to return for rebirth. (Myths to Live By, 235) But cosmologies come and go. “All the old bindings are broken,” Campbell wrote, describing his reaction to a new world order. With the first boot planted in the dust of Tranquility Base, the moon myths seemed to expire as if they were as dependent upon oxygen as the men leapfrogging across its pitted surface. Just as the Church had to re-evaluate its simple cosmology (heaven up, hell down) in the aftermath of Copernicus’ heliocentric theories, so all the great traditions faced a new reckoning that July. When Apollo 11 sent back that single image of the earth rising above a lifeless lunar landscape we saw the writing on the wall. All binary wisdom was turned on its head by the singularity of earth in space, an earth without borders or spheres of religious influence. From this new point of view, in which all people are necessarily joined in common cause to preserve life on a single planet, the idea of mutual survival makes claims of tribal exceptionalism look exceptionally short sighted, even absurd. There were no chosen peoples from this vantage point. There were no sacred centers. “Cosmological centers now are any- and everywhere. The earth is a heavenly body, most beautiful of all, and all poetry now is archaic that fails to match the wonder of this view.” (Myths to Live By, 237) Myth, unencumbered with unreasonable expectations of historicity, no longer confused with scientific truth itself, realized its true role in human affairs telling us “…in picture language of powers of the psyche to be recognized and integrated in our lives, powers that have been common to the human spirit forever, and which represent that wisdom of the species by which man has weathered the millenniums” (Myths to Live By, 14). The stories themselves, arising in the troubled sleep of prehistoric cave dwellers or in the fervid minds of nomads wandering unincorporated deserts, stories which somehow still abide with us in our cities and suburbs, will be repurposed appropriately. There are myths and legends of the Virgin Birth, of Incarnations, Deaths and Resurrections, Second Comings, Judgments, and the rest, in all the great traditions. And since such images stem from the psyche, they refer to the psyche. They tell us of its structure, its order and its forces in symbolic terms. (Myths to Live By, 253) And religious orthodoxy, like a solid rocket booster of which we have no further need, plummets into the sea of discarded belief.