Do something, you change. Do nothing, you change. Fight change, you change. Embrace change—well, you get the picture. And while we change, “things” change too. So it seems in the field of relative life, the one unchanging constant is constant change. This being the case, the best we can do is influence the directions of change. One of my favorite parts of mythology (and of story in general) is witnessing the transformations of the characters as a result of their journeys—and all myths are journeys. In fact, what’s not a journey? A journey to the post office, to sleep, through thoughts or even thoughtlessness. The journey is a kind of current that moves us through life. It provides the impetus that keeps one’s narrative in perpetual motion, making change inescapable. Sure, it’s the journey that changes us. But it’s in how we engage the journey—our decisions, actions and reactions—that we are able to exert an influence on it. The good news is that we don’t need to find the “power” to influence change, the journey provides that free of charge. What we need are the skills and tools to steer as best we can in keeping with the general directions that the journey sends us in. This month’s theme attends not to morphosis or objective change, but rather to self-reflective metamorphosis—the kind of change that transpires within. So let’s journey into mythology as a means of tracking psychic transformation through terrains of metaphorical and imaginal narrative. Sure, that’s a lot of abstract, impersonal content, but it holds two key terms that offer us passage out of the impersonal and into something we can call mine: “metaphorical” and “imaginal.” Metaphor is our first big tool because it transcribes mythological narratives (i.e., stories about someone else) into stories about “me.” Or, more specifically, through metaphor, the relationships between mythic characters and the stories they find themselves in are precise correlations to the relationships between me and the stories I find myself in. In Creative Mythology, we are introduced to Immanuel Kant’s formula: a is to b as c is to x. Joseph Campbell then applies this formula to mythic metaphors as a complete resemblance of two relationships. Meaning that it’s “not ‘a somewhat resembles b,’ but rather ‘the relationship of a to b perfectly resembles that of c to x’” (339). The point here is simply to recognize the mechanics of this formula so that we can have it up and running while we read the myths, making their stories metaphorically concurrent to ours. There’s plenty more to say on Kant’s formula—and especially on the mysterious “x” which represents, in Campbell’s words, “a quantity that is not only unknown but absolutely unknowable” (339). And granted, metaphors can correlate all sorts of relationships, but as I’m using it here, xrepresents “my” story (and my myth) as an unknown value, which is precisely why it requires metaphor and not expository explanation to render a sense of what it is. Now let’s look at our other big tool for influencing metamorphosis: Imagination. Being irrational, or non-rational, imagination is a complementary counterbalance to our rational understanding of the mechanics of metaphor. When we are mid-stride in a particular segment of our journey (or, correspondingly, when mythic figures are in mid-stride in a segment of theirs), there is always a level of uncertainty (x) as to which way to go or to what will happen. I suppose that in rational contexts, being in a position of not knowing is bad. In terms of imagination, however, it is highly desirable. The condition of not-knowing is a powerful summons for imagination—it forces its involvement by necessity. We “imagine” into the possibilities of our story to find our way. Furthermore, just as there is a correlation between not knowing and imagination, so there is between not knowing and the journey. After all, the root of the word “question” is quest. We see this relationship in Plato’s Myth of Er, where before entering into life the soul is first dipped in the river of Lethe [forgetfulness] to forget where it’s been and why it’s now here. I can think of a few good reasons for a dip in the Lethe. For one, it provides the mystery that necessitates the quest. And, for two, it provides a metaphor for the origin of a need for imagination. As mentioned earlier, it’s in how we engage the journey that we can influence it. But it’s the experience of the journey that reciprocally changes us. And so we are, to a degree, the authors of our metamorphoses. We become “experienced” in this or that and it shows in our character. Likewise, imagination is entwined with experience. We may argue that it’s only subjectively real and has no influence on outer events. But consider guided meditation, for example. Our guide begins: “Imagine [and it always begins with ‘imagine’] you’re on a quiet beach, a light breeze, the sand cool. . .” and suddenly, your mood is calmed, your body-chemistry changed—perhaps a little more serotonin or dopamine in the bloodstream. And so, where the imagination goes, the experience follows. In describing “aesthetic arrest” Campbell provides the following from Dante’s La Vita Nuova which speaks to the first time Dante perceives his beloved Beatrice: I say that from that time forward Love lorded it over my soul, which had been so speedily wedded to him [‘him’ being a personification of Love and not Beatrice!] and he began to exercise over me such control and such lordship, through the power which my imagination gave to him, that it behooved me to do completely all his pleasure. (68) The key phrase here is “through the power which my imagination gave him.” Likewise, when we imagine into the myths and the metaphors of myths that we read, our involvement is made deep. And a place is opened for the metamorphosis to put in its roots and grow.

“People often think of the Goddess as a fertility deity only. Not at all—she’s the muse,” Joseph Campbell elucidates in Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. “She’s the inspirer of poetry. She’s the inspirer of the spirit. So, she has three functions: one, to give us life; two, to be the one who receives us in death; and three, to inspire our spiritual, poetic realization.” (36) As a Lithuanian, I’ve always been fascinated by how one of the country’s most famous exports, Marija Gimbutas, inspired Campbell. It was her studies of the Great Goddess of the Neolithic world of Old Europe that assisted him in perceiving the goddesses roots in later mythologies, rituals and traditions. He quotes Gimbutas: The human legs of the vulture … imply that it is not simply a bird but rather the Goddess in the guise of a vulture. She is Death—She Who Takes Away Life, maleficent twin of She Who Gives Life—ominous in flight on great, outspread wings. Despite the incarnate presence of Death, the vulture scenes of Çatal Hüyük do not convey death’s mournful triumph over life. Rather, they symbolize that death and resurrection are inseparably linked.(31) Many of us long for resurrection, to be called to arise and shepherd the totality of ourselves, including our inner world, out into the external realm. And while the banished and ignored shadow parts of our being may yearn for the light of renewal, it’s only when we orient ourselves to the mysteries of the world of spirit, and to all that speaks to the eternal, that we may find the wisdom, beauty, strength, and rebirth we seek. Symbolically these soul attributes may be pictured as the eternal feminine within us awaiting our attention and foster. (“Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan.” “The eternal feminine / Draws us on.” Goethe, Faust). The soul’s underworld is the most fertile ground for the psyche’s deep awakening. The resurrection, as Gimbutas describes, illustrates how essential it is to also meet the Goddess as vulture—a rite of passage, which involves a radical surrender. It’s an experiential process that necessitates being picked down to our very bones (as vultures literally do) to expose and unravel the falsities, masks, and personas that we so frequently employ as protective guises in the everyday, surface world. However, as Campbell reminds us, “It is through the Goddess that you enter the world of the spirit. She is the maze, and she is also your guide.” (39) The Goddess, whether we call her Gaia or one of various other names, is also the personification of the energies of nature. “The simplest manifestation of the Goddess in the early Neolithic planting traditions is as Mother Earth,” Campbell states. “The Earth brings forth life, and the Earth nourishes life, and so is analogous to the powers of the woman.” (3) Our soul invites us to house both dormancy (winter) and renewal (spring) by observing what’s disintegrating and rising within us. Again and again we read in the Mystery texts that we must die to our old patterns of behavior and habits of mind so that we may reimagine and refashion ourselves anew. And like the proverbial snake shedding its skin to reveal a new one, death is conquered by the soul’s ongoing regeneration. Too often we forget that the processes of fertility and creativity initially emerge through dissolution and fragmentation. We’re fearful of the darkness that these movements bring, too weary to explore their mission and hidden, yet sacred, poetry. But it’s the womb space of fallowness and gestation in both vegetative life and in our own soul’s regenerative artistry that is to be sensed. Attentiveness to the “tomb as womb” potentiality must precede our future birth. It’s why we’re required to dwell for lengthy periods of time in the Stygian darkness of the underworld—and heed its tutelage: because it takes that much hidden, obsidian power to birth a new “you,” a new “me,” a new “us” in the personal, societal, and cultural realms. And so, the feminine impulse for fertile renewal is central to our future birth. As Campbell explains, “Here, when the gods find they are impotent, they have to give the power back to where it ultimately came from: to the female principle. She is the power of life, which lives in us in both its natural and in its so-called supernatural aspects. And in the Greek world we have the rise, then, of the mystery cults, the goddess Demeter, Persephone, and in Egypt, Isis, Nephthys. These are the guides to rebirth, and it’s their symbology that comes in the symbol of the Virgin Mother as the Madonna.” (227) The myths Campbell references point us to the principles inherent in the cyclical nature of life—the ongoing, agonizing death of the outmoded and resistant old in us in order to prepare for the birth of the new. Gimbutas adds that, “… pre-industrial agricultural rites show a definite mystical connection between the fertility of the soil and the creative force of woman. In all European languages, the Earth is feminine.” (8) For example, the Goddess Persephone is represented visibly as the rebirth of plant life – the seeds of the old crops converging with the new. This dying away and coming into being again is not a singular, once-off event. It’s a continuing, cyclical process and a constant experience. In a sense, it’s the very quintessence of life itself. Indeed, that’s how we meet the Goddess within us.

A passage from the Homeric Hymns tells us of a goddess that stretches out her bow and fires her creation into the world. “The peaks of mountains tremble. The forest in its darkness screams with the clamor of animals, and it’s frightening. The whole earth starts shaking, even the sea,” the Hymn states (The Homeric Hymns, translated by Charles Boer, Putnam, CT: Spring Publications 2003, pp. 4-6). Joseph Campbell spoke about the archetypal role of goddesses as powerful creators, connecting the physical birthing process to the metaphoric role that goddesses embody (Goddesses 21-26). While Artemis was believed to have attended the physical birth of children, the creations of the archetypal goddess transcend the physical realm and encompass creative offspring such as art, storytelling, crafts, and music. Over the summer, the much-anticipated musical album Happier Than Ever from singer Billie Eilish debuted at number one on the American Billboard Top 200 chart. Critics have been trying to define and describe Eilish’s popularity since her viral rise in 2015. Since then, she has become the youngest artist in the history of the Grammy Awards to win all four general field categories in the same year and was named to Time magazine's inaugural Time 100 Next list in 2019. Whenever a figure experiences a meteoric rise in culture, an archetypal influence is often at play. While several archetypes might seem relevant when considering Eilish, the goddess Artemis best intersects with the 19-year-old singer, as it is Artemis whose creation made such a profound impact when she shot into the world. Campbell unpacks the Hymn describing Artemis in Goddesses (109-110). Associations with gold are found in the Homeric Hymn to Artemis, specifically mentioning her solid gold bow. A song titled "Goldwing" on Eilish’s most recent album opens with a harmonized performance of two lines from Gustav Holst’s 1907 translation of the great canonical Hindu text, The Rig Veda. The lines describe a goddess, a golden-winged messenger of the mighty gods, whose smile lifts one to the highest heavens. Eilish’s song goes on to caution a young goddess-like woman about revealing who she is to those who would crave her magic but ignore her divine nature, which could leave her torn apart. The conversation plays like a wiser version of Eilish speaking to her younger self about the pitfalls of fame. The warning is directed in such a way to suggest the woman’s innocence—a quality that was associated with Artemis, as well as a descriptor often used by critics of Eilish. Later in the Hymn, Artemis unstrings her bow and goes to the house of her beloved brother, Apollo. The close relationship between Artemis and Apollo has been explored in a variety of ways by numerous mythologists with varying interpretations. Eilish has also had a famously close relationship with her brother, known mononymously as FINNEAS, who has produced both of her albums and remained her closest creative collaborator. Several of Eilish’s most popular songs were written as the two sat at home together. On Halley’s Comet, she sings of sitting in her brother’s room, unable to sleep, while contemplating her love for someone she’s come to know. Her meticulously minded musical brother is undoubtedly the Apollo to Eilish’s Artemis. In a final interesting turn found in the Hymn, Artemis puts away her arrows and dons a beautiful dress. Campbell tells us that Artemis manifested in several different ways (108). Here, we see the goddess changing from the huntress, clothed in animal skins that were frequently associated with the masculine, to a beautifully dressed feminine dancer. Eilish, who rose to prominence often dressed in age-appropriate, gender-neutral clothes, was criticized after appearing in more feminine and decidedly adult outfits for Vanity Fair earlier this year—a nod to her own coming of age.  Her embrace of the new aesthetic mirrors the transformation of Artemis we see in the Hymn. The photos generated fears that Eilish would begin to exploit her sexuality to further her commercial success. She masterfully navigated the concerns of fans and nay-sayers alike, choosing explanations that honored both her growth and maturity as well as the commitment to her core self that made her so accessible to so many. She continues to embody the murky complexity and the unabashed certainty of the goddess archetype in a manner that somehow seemed reminiscent of Actaeon’s fateful encounter with the bathing Artemis. Campbell describes Acteon’s gaze on Artemis as lustful instead of honoring, a completely improper reaction to such a deity. “Seeing that look in his eye, Artemis simply splashed him with some water and he was turned into a stag, and his own dogs then consumed him.” (Campbell 113) Campbell goes on to say that the dogs represented Actaeon’s lower appetites, which are what actually caused his demise. Billie Eilish continues to create and radiate goddess energy, firing creative arrows into the world, and instead of fighting every potential attack that arises, allowing those that would attempt to tarnish the golden properties of the goddess to be consumed by their own lesser selves.

This month the MythBlast Series is focusing on Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine which is, I think, a tremendously important contribution to the Campbell oeuvre edited by the gifted Safron Rossi (who is also a contributor to the MythBlast Series). This is a text that seems infinitely rewarding in its breadth, its depth, in its treatment of ego and, less explicitly, irony. In her introduction, Dr. Rossi writes of the Campbell lectures that constitute the text: These lectures are investigations of the symbolic, mythological, and archetypal themes of the feminine divine in and of herself, and for Campbell her main themes are initiation into the mysteries of immanence experienced through time and space and the eternal; transformation of life and death; and the energy consciousness that informs and enlivens all life.(ix-x) The reason that this text is so illuminating in its treatment of these three main themes is to be found (and this is true of mythology in general) in its exploration of reality, both material and immaterial, through the use of metaphoric irony. Ironic metaphor is pleasingly effective because it intensifies and subverts reality through resemblance and sharpens the perception, comprehension, and significance of the events and experiences that constitute the human condition. It results in “a sense of reality keen enough to be in excess of the normal sense of reality [and] creates a reality of its own.” (Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and Imagination, 79) As for the ego, its relationship to reality is tenuous. The ego seeks to find itself reflected everywhere, and insists that that reflected ego is itself reality. Additionally, it’s problematic that the ego oscillates between fear and desire, and “reality” is perceived largely within that dialectic: The fear of death is the fear of death to your ego, and the desire that the ego should enjoy the goods that it is interested in—these are what keep you from realizing your immortality. Fear and desire are the clashing rocks that exclude us from the intuition of our own immortal character. Joseph Campbell, Goddesses, 189 The ego’s insistence that its own reflection is really reality is made more complicated by the fact that, simply put, we do not know ourselves. But ignorance of one’s self is a hard thought for the ego to bear, and subsequently the ego finds it too painful to live in the gap between what it wants reality to be and what reality is. Metaphor and irony compellingly explore that gap which, when we more closely examine it, reveals itself to be a seam or a scar that knits together that which we think we know and that which we don't (or can't) know. Living in and exploring the gap necessarily diminishes and distresses the ego, which is forced to become a witness to, rather than the creator of, phenomenality. Because the ego expects to find its own reflection everywhere, the failure to decenter the ego results in reducing myth to an amusement, an inconsequential role-playing diversion whose object is merely to match qualities to archetypes while entirely ignoring the reality, and especially the force, of the archetypal. So how does one “get around” the ego? How can the ego be decentered? One way, and I think it’s an exceptionally effective way, is to cultivate a sense of the ironic. Irony is the pin that pops the ego’s inflation, calms its desires and fears, and allows one to live more enthusiastically, more gallantly, more genuinely, amidst what Wordsworth called “the still, sad, music of life.” Soren Kierkegaard put it this way: Irony is a disciplinarian feared only by those who do not know it, but cherished by those who do. He who does not understand irony and has no ear for its whispering lacks eo ipso what might be called the absolute beginning of the personal life. He lacks what at moments is indispensable for the personal life, lacks both the regeneration and rejuvenation, the cleaning baptism of irony that redeems the soul from having its life in finitude though living boldly and energetically in finitude.Kierkegaard’s Writings, II, Volume II: The Concept of Irony Irony turns things inside out and upside down; it upends and reverses things; irony deconstructs and overthrows, it draws attention to the discrepancy between literal meaning and essential meaning. Myth, properly read, is always ironic. While the ego fears its decentering as a literal death, from the perspective of metaphysical irony, Campbell tells us that the death of the ego heralds the experience of the transcendent. In many traditions the great Goddesses are often found in relationship to darkness and the depths—the telesterions of life where one is exposed to sorrows and fear, even to tragedy. In those dark manifestations She is the Initiatrix who cleanses the doors of perception which open to the transformation of consciousness and the transcendent. But the benefit of those experiences—experiences that "normal," daylight consciousness always fails to understand and would rather pathologize—is that the ego cannot extend itself fully into these dark depths so it is there, in darkness and uncertainty, disabused of the comfort of the ego’s pleasing illusions, that we are confronted with who and what we really are. She, with her dark materials, pushes us along toward individuation and wholeness. “The rapture of the tragedy is the rapture of seeing the form broken for a flowing through of the radiance of the transcendent light.” (Joseph Campbell, Goddesses, 217) Irony is the indispensable attitude for engaging the goddess in her depths and darkness—darkness that places the radiance of transcendence in bold relief. Irony is life’s language; it grants one multiple points of view, it lets one see oneself seeing oneself, and mercifully, irony saves us from sarcasm, cynicism, and desuetude, the demoralized manifestations of broken hearts. Perhaps you’ve looked around and noticed how unforgiving and thoughtless culture is becoming; aesthetic sensibilities wane as we flirt with the neo-brutalism that encroaches upon so many aspects of contemporary life. Is it possible that irony may free us from the conventional constraining literalism of existence? Through irony might we see more deeply into the metaphor that is life, and in so seeing grow wiser, more joyful, humbler, and indeed, more compassionate? Thanks for reading.

“And my understanding of the mythological mode is that deities and even people are to be understood in this sense, as metaphors. It’s a poetic understanding.” Joseph Campbell, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, p 101 It’s the middle of winter. Bedtime. I hear a thump in the bedroom. I go in to find out what happened. My husband is lying in bed on his back, limbs rigid and shaking, jaw working, his unblinking gaze staring straight up. In the direct light from the ceiling, his wide-open eyes are fathomless emeralds that I’ve never seen before. A rush of adrenaline turns my vision crisp and clear as I dial 911—fire trucks and an ambulance fill the street—pulsing red lights in the dark—EMTs come inside and administer seizure medication—they carry him out on a canvas stretcher. ~ Thousands of years ago, in the labyrinthine caves of southern France, artists drew galleries of stylized horned bulls, majestic and fearsome. The Chauvet Cave has one figure with a man’s body and a bull’s head, arranged so that this early Minotaur overlaps and wraps another image, this one of a woman’s pubic triangle and upper legs. The artist had to have worked by firelight—smoke, flickering honey-colored light, hands brushing the rough stone, as images sprang into being where before there had been only blank rock. ~ It’s the day after my husband’s seizure. The doctors perform emergency surgery. They cross the threshold of his skull, venture into the cave of his brain, and try to release the pressure caused by a mass that appears on the MRI as a blurry zone without clear edges. ~ Around 1400 BCE, on the island of Crete, in a civilization whose bull art dazzles us to this day, a clerk recorded an offering of honey to someone whose name is often translated as The Lady of the Labyrinth. Literally translated, however, her name would be “The Female God of the Labyrinth Who Has Great Power.” (T. Palaima 441, 448) Centuries later, mainland Greeks told a story of their hero Theseus, who sailed to Crete to kill a Minotaur who lived at the center of a labyrinth to end the human sacrifice the monster demands. But Theseus could only succeed with the help of Ariadne, whose name means Most Holy. Ariadne gave Theseus a sacred sword with which to kill the Minotaur, and a divine ball of thread to lead the way back out of the labyrinth. ~ Three weeks after surgery. We sit in the surgeon’s office with more MRI scans. The mass is cancer, the doctor says. A brain tumor. My husband needs more surgery, this time at a specialist center in San Francisco. This time doctors will go in ready to confront the entity inside. ~ The Cretan Minotaur was named Asterios, which means Starry One (C. Kerenyi, The Gods of the Greeks, 110-11), from the root astro, or star. So Asterios is a brilliant but dangerous being, an animate, cannibalistic star who inhabits the furthest reaches of the circuitous labyrinth. ~ The Minotaur in the center of my husband’s brain has a name, too: Astrocytoma. It is a cancer of the astrocytes, which are star-shaped brain cells that play a supporting role for neurons. Astrocytoma demands the sacrifice of healthy cells to feed its hunger. ~ It’s the day of the second surgery. Along with anesthesia, the specialists administer medication that makes tumor cells glow when bathed in a blue light. Then they open my husband’s head again and reach inside with the aid of a surgical microscope fitted with a blue light. Now they can see the horned cells, the way ancient artists saw beings emerge on the cave walls, the way Theseus saw the brilliant Minotaur. By seeing the cells clearly, by bringing them into the realm of conscious inspection, the neurosurgeon can understand them and deal with them. ~ The center is a pivot point, a discovery, a realization. It’s not the end of the adventure—you still have to make your way back out—but nothing will be the same again after you encounter the star within. ~ With the help of that technological blue thread, the medical team does such incredible work that they send my husband home with no further treatment needed. Miracle-drenched, we enter the new labyrinth of recovery, knowing nothing of what comes next. ~ The labyrinth removes us from linearity. It’s a bubble that pauses the flow of time and reminds us of the limits of logic and planning. Labyrinths derange our routines and teleport us into the present moment to face our inner starry animals, so shockingly similar to ourselves, potentially so dangerous. But Ariadne presides. She stands ready to help. Her thread turns the labyrinth into the simplest possible map. Just follow the path. The labyrinth itself will lead you.

A man stands at the mouth of the Forest Adventurous, “where we meet our adventures when we are ready for them.” (Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Romance, 116) He is ill-prepared; perhaps not prepared at all. Perhaps he has only just enough awareness to realize how absolutely out of his depth he is. Ted Lasso (from the Apple TV+ show of the same name) nearly steps in front of a speeding car on his first day as the manager of a UK football club. He’s looked the wrong way before crossing the street—the correct way, if he was still in the United States, but here he stands on a curb in London, almost struck down before he even meets his new team. “This is the true beginning of the Grail Quest,” says Joseph Campbell in Romance of the Grail (116), referring to Parcival’s own entrance to the forest in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s romantic poem Parzival. “Everything up until this point has taken place in the way of our hero’s nature; [his] character carried him through...” Until now. Coach Ted Lasso a folksy figure, renowned in the United States for carrying his American football team to victory. He’s not only a successful figure, but a beloved one: before we even meet him, we’re introduced to his legacy through a video of a locker room celebration with his team that culminates in a massive, joyful huddle. He is an honorable man, and this label is powerful in the optimistic land of America. Elsewhere, though, it makes him an easy mark. When he’s finally introduced, Ted is on a plane about to take off for London. For reasons as yet unknown, he’s been selected as head coach for AFC Richmond, an English football club. His first dialogue is with a smirking fan who’s come up asking for a photo with him. “I mean, it’s mental,” the young man says with abject glee. “They’re going to murder you.” Ted’s smile doesn’t falter. After the fan returns to his seat, Ted turns to his partner, Coach Beard: “Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doin’ it, you’re probably doin’ it wrong.” Parcival, having just run the Red Knight through and put on his armor, has now gotten on the dead knight’s horse and is being helplessly carried along on its back, merely a passenger in its mad dash forward. They’re both comical scenes: a person out of their element almost always is, and a person at the mercy of an unruly beast running full-speed into the unknown has an undeniable majesty in it, too. Brave, or stupid? He brings his full self: he is open to this vast unknown, to adventures he can’t yet fathom. He is vulnerable, and like the awed fan approaching Ted on the plane, we can’t help but admire it. We soon learn that Ted, like Parzival, has been sent on this endeavor by someone who wants him to fail. Parzival’s mother dressed him in fool’s clothes so her son would be shamed, turned away from Arthur’s court and returned to her loving arms. Rebecca, the new owner of AFC Richmond, is equally sure of her subject’s ineptitude but has none of the maternal affection. Instead, Rebecca becomes Ted’s Fisher King, a figure of great power who carries an equally great and crippling wound. She has called him to her court not to heal her, but to expand the Wasteland, bringing everyone who dares care about the club to the depths of despair in which she resides. Throughout the first season of the show, Ted never stops asking Rebecca, “What ails thee?” He doesn’t make the same mistake Parzival does—in fact, he makes the opposite mistake. His nature leads him to ask, repeatedly, the exact wrong question. If Coach Lasso is following Parzival’s methods of entering into adventure, he’s thankfully got the benefit of Sir Gawain’s personality. “Gawain is a charming character in Wolfram’s work. In fact, he’s a delightful character wherever he appears. In the English medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for example, he is a forthright, lovely person, graceful and sensitive, with a wonderful — how to put it? — responsiveness to feminine beauty.”(Romance of the Grail, 124) “Little girls are mysterious, silly, and powerful.”Ted in Ted Lasso, Season 1, Episode 9 One of the reasons Ted Lasso had such an immediate impact on jaded viewers is Ted’s seemingly unflappable optimism. In a world of cynicism, genuineness gives us pause. The most beloved knight, Sir Gawain, is the gentle knight, the “ladies’ knight.” He is not only admired by women and children, but men in and out of court. He stops Parzival from stepping into traffic, so to speak, but does not scold or patronize. Like water wearing away at stone over millennia, Ted’s unadulterated vulnerability wears down the icy, ironic Brits in his company over the first season. He receives all critique, all failure, and even betrayal with a benign smile and perhaps a light, self-deprecating joke, removing the wind from any detractor’s sails. He’s free with his praise and means it genuinely, even as some characters believe it’s a method of manipulation. He’s earnestly answering a rhetorical question, and this earnestness is so true it makes our breath catch in our chest. What does our admiration say about this brand of masculinity? I’ve sat with this question for a long time. The conclusion, I believe, is deceptively simple: To be hurt and remain vulnerable is the ultimate strength. To remain open, to trust, to forgive, is the ultimate honorability. Writer and artist Iain Thomas captures the power of tenderness with this line (which is, fascinatingly, often misattributed to Kurt Vonnegut): “Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You After finishing the first season of Ted Lasso, I texted a friend who I knew had already seen it to half-jokingly ask why I was crying over a show about soccer. She replied immediately: “Because Ted Lasso restores our faith in the concept of men.” While we enter into Ted Lasso seeing the main character as the butt of a joke we don’t yet understand, the joke is, ultimately, on us. But it isn’t unkind; in the same way a mother lion will play-fight her cubs to prepare them for more serious battles when they’re grown, it’s an opportunity to create new reactions that will benefit us in the future, individually and collectively. Hey, it says. Here’s your sensitive spot. Here’s your vulnerable place. Use it.

Our featured volume this month in the MythBlast Series is Joseph Campbell’s Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth. There is much to like about this lovely volume as it contains, to quote Zorba the Greek, “everything. The full catastrophe.” But for now, I’m mostly curious to look at the way suffering and healing is treated in the Arthurian Romances and, by extension, in mythology in general. The Arthurian Romances aren’t merely legends or literary works; taken as a whole, they form an entire chivalric age. This age seems increasingly distant or fanciful to contemporary readers, an epic period in which honor and nobility, truthfulness and fidelity, call forth a wondrous, enchanted world. It teems with extravagantly impossible challenges which are, in the end, made possible. Contradiction and confusion are baked into the Grail legends; they operate in this literature much in the same way consciousness itself operates, teaching the reader that what is omitted, what is left out or repressed, always returns to unsettle every settled interpretation, no matter how monolithic it may at first seem. Initial failure is a necessary feature of the grail quest, and that’s why the Grail hero is inevitably a callow, naïve, inexperienced youth; a beginner in over his head. The beginner’s mind is of the utmost importance because for a beginner there are a multitude of possibilities, while for an expert, there are few. Because beginners often fail, they must remain open to constant questioning, improvisation, and revision—qualities that are indispensable when dealing with phenomena that can never be fully known or adequately represented by human—all-too-human—beings. Professor Campbell puts it this way: “The goal of the Grail hero is to heal that wound, but he is to do so without knowing how he is to do so. He is to be a perfect innocent, not to know the rules of the quest, and he is to ask spontaneously, ‘What is the matter?’”Romance of the Grail, 26 The quest begins in earnest only after the hero has failed in his first, unintentional visit to the Grail Castle and commits to returning to it once again in order to, as Jessie Weston puts it, fulfill “the conditions which shall qualify him to obtain a full knowledge of the marvels he has beheld.” (The Quest of the Holy Grail, 45) Epistemological narcissism, unreflected certainty, and dogma snuffs out innocence and provokes the Grail Castle to disappear even farther into the metaphysical mists. Fully immersed in the initiatory situation, the innocent quester is progressively introduced to suffering, his own and that of others. Suffering is among the most important symbols in the Grail Romances. Arthurian Romances and mythology in general are not very prescriptive when it comes to disease and physical suffering. Rather, myth largely focuses on learning to see through our physical suffering to the spiritual malaise that afflicts us. When the soul suffers, the body cries out. The Grail King suffers from a parmi les cuisses, and his suffering is directly related to the wasting away of all that he oversees. This phrase, parmi les cuisses (literally meaning among the thighs), is a euphemism for a wound to the genitals. This association has its roots in a belief, shared by many cultures in antiquity, that semen was produced in several places in the body, including the marrow of the thigh bone, and the thigh’s proximity to the testicles resulted in a close association between thighs and the male genitalia. It is, however, crucial to remember that there are always two orders or levels to consider when reading myth: the lower order deals with the more literal aspects of material existence, the creative principles of fertility and generation, choice and action, and physical birth and death. The higher order deals with the mysteries of spiritual renewal and revivification, and spiritual death and rebirth. A wound to the genitalia is, from this perspective, very different from the cringe-inducing image of a physical wound. For example, both Odysseus and Captain Ahab suffer from parmi les cuisses. Odysseus has a scar on his thigh where he was gored by a boar when he was a boy and in his later life, it revealed his identity. Odysseus’ scarred-over wound symbolically constellates the defenselessness, disarray, and destruction of his home and property by the bivouacked hungry suitors. The thigh scar presages his twenty-year disappearance, the lonely confinement of his wife, and the self-doubting son deprived of a father's instruction. And Ahab didn’t merely lose his leg to Moby Dick; Ishmael tells us: “For it had not been very long prior to the Pequod’s sailing from Nantucket, that he had been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible; by some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his ivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise smitten, and all but pierced his groin.” Moby Dick, Chapter 106 In Moby Dick, Ahab’s wound is tied to the scarcity of whale sightings, the frequent tide overs, the onboard mishaps, his own emotional and physical isolation from his young wife, their new child, his crew, and the emptiness of his own heart. Physical wounding in myth is a symbol of spiritual suffering. Compassion is what heals such a wound—not diagnosis, prescriptions for medication, or surgery. The suffering is relieved by asking, in all innocence, a question, the answer to which cannot be known by the questioner: “Uncle, what ails thee?” This healing question is the therapeutic move, the healing application of compassion: You tell me what is wrong because I can’t know, and when you tell me, I will stand in that suffering with you until you discover that you can bear it. Joseph Campbell writes that it is through Parzival’s “integrity in love that he finally becomes the Grail King and heals Anfortas and the land.” (Romance of the Grail 50) What better way to describe compassion than integrity in love? Epistemic certainty defenestrates compassion and throws one out of, not only the mystery of life, but out of relationship as well, because both compassion and relationship require wonder, openness, curiosity, and humanity. If we are to “finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds” as well as heal ourselves, “Compassion alone is the key...,” (90) Campbell writes, and compassion alone unlocks the door to healing—and bliss.

Amidst the tales of chivalrous knights and exciting Arthurian quests that Joseph Campbell unpacks in Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth, he makes an intriguing observation about how the process of so many legends came to be. He states, “One characteristic of medieval storytelling is that the poet didn’t invent the story; he developed it. The bards, troubadours, and minnesingers would take a traditional story and interpret it, giving it new depth and meaning in keeping with the conditions of their particular day and place.” (95) And for reasons I will explain, Campbell’s words have me thinking about The Grateful Dead. The Dead’s music is powerful, not because it originates from a single artist’s genius, but instead because it flows out of the collective genius of the artists involved in the making of the music. Their ability to take a mythic story or motif and “interpret it,” to use Campbell’s language, is one of the reasons the band has remained an enduring presence, even while defying the formulaic tropes commonly found in popular music. Tales of cosmic love, so central to so many of The Dead’s songs, have echoed around the world and been found throughout different cultures in various envelopes of time long before the the band ever took the stage. Campbell notes that The Song of the Cowherd (the Gita Govinda), which celebrates the love of Krishna for Radha, was written around 1172 in India—the same era that also produced the mystic Tristan romances in Europe and The Tale of Genji in Japan. (27) We might say that these mythic motifs move through history in rhythms rather than appearing randomly. It should then be no surprise that those who mastered the mysteries of rhythm sometimes developed a shamanic consciousness. There is no better example of this than Joseph Campbell’s friend Mickey Hart, a drummer for The Grateful Dead as well as a profound thinker and an author with a mythic embrace of music. Hart spoke to the relationship between rhythm and myth in an interview about his album RAMU, where wordsmith Robert Hunter, a frequent collaborator with The Grateful Dead, composed lyrics to intertwine with Hart’s rhythms. “He spins tales, he’s a great mythologist, like all those characters that came to life in Dead songs,” Hart said. The lyrics in mythic music often act as signposts where the rhythm serves as the path, moving us closer and closer toward the great mystery of all that is beyond us. Circling back to the medieval, another metaphor for the great mystery the path leads to is the Holy Grail. Disturbed by the oversimplified cultural assumption that the Grail is a mere cup, Campbell admonishes us: “It is one of the prime mistakes of many interpreters of mythological symbols to read them as references, not to mysteries of the human spirit, but to earthly or unearthly scenes…This aim is basic to the Grail tradition.” (14) These mysteries of the human spirit are communicated powerfully in the language of the drum. Whether words share their space or not, the drum’s rhythm guides us toward those mysteries. Famously, Joseph Campbell attended a Grateful Dead concert after spending time at Mickey Hart’s home. In a lecture Campbell gave later, he reflected on the experience. He admitted his lack of interest in rock music, but called the performance powerful, saying it reminded him of the Dionysian festivals. “This is more than music. It turns something on in here,” Campbell said, pointing to his heart. “And what it turns on is life energy. This is Dionysus talking through these kids.” Several months later Campbell, Hart, and Jerry Garcia came together in a symposium called “Ritual and Rapture, From Dionysus to the Grateful Dead.” Offering evidence of this idea of rhythm providing a path for myth to travel by, Mickey and several collaborators offered a mythic performance called “The African Queen Meets the Holy Ghost.” Rhythm offers a rich metaphor for “the path toward the Grail” for a variety of reasons. One of the most poignant is that rhythm can’t be directly touched. It can’t be seized or snatched. It can only be heard, felt, and experienced. We must surrender ourselves to rhythm’s force. Campbell pointed to one particular legend in which the Grail appears to the knights in Arthur’s court obscured by a shroud. Gawain initiates a quest to behold the Grail without its covering and all the other knights join him (136). The shrouded mystery is an invitation, not necessarily to reveal what lies under its cover, but an invitation to the quest, to the journey itself. Rhythm acts as a similar invitation. It invites us beyond ourselves. It moves us toward the transcendent. It invites us to quest, to journey, to consider the infinity of possibility. What might that quest hold for you? (Mickey Hart is hosting a book club this summer focusing on the work of Joseph Campbell. Several figures involved in the work of Joseph Campbell, Mickey Hart and the Grateful Dead, as well as the Ritual and Rapture event will be participating. For more information, visit the book club's Facebook page. )

That said, let’s turn to Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth, where Joseph Campbell hones in on the distinction between principled honor and honor that is genuine. In his forward, Evans Lansing Smith shares that of all original Arthurian-myth literature, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival is Campbell’s favorite. Being mine as well, I’d like to take a closer look. Parzival is a knight of many quests, one of which is to find the Grail Castle, a place visible only to those who qualify. What determines qualification is a composite of possibilities: sincerity, skill, training, grace, destiny, luck, who knows? Many have ridden through the surrounding terrain, and even inhabited it for years, yet never get a glimpse. The Grail King, also known as the Fisher King, is the keeper of the Grail, which in von Eschenbach’s narrative is a stone (as opposed to a dish or cup in other versions of the myth). The whole kingdom of the Grail has fallen into ruin because the king (who reflects that which he governs) bears a seemingly incurable wound to the groin. And here we can associate aspects of procreation with the Grail, which generates (apparently) anything out of nothing. For his wound (and, correspondingly, the whole kingdom) to be healed, the king need only be asked the one question: “What ails you?” That’s it. No exotic magical potions. No elaborate rituals enacted in twilight under auspicious planetary conjunctions—simply a question. It’s an odd solution, this question. But it is precisely its oddness that invites inquiry. What it means is up for grabs, and there are many opinions. Campbell writes that “[Parzival] has accomplished the worldly adventure . . . and now has come to the spiritual adventure, the one of asking the question, one that involves the Bodhisattva realization of compassion for all suffering beings” (52). I like this interpretation because it extends beyond a simple word-formula and into the emotional terrain of compassion, which implies a certain selflessness (which is, indeed, honorable)—something beyond the ego is at work, something nearer to the heart. However, when Parzival, after years of travail, does finally encounter the suffering Grail King and is compelled to ask what ails him, he does not because he has been instructed that a knight does not ask too many questions. And the quest fails. To this Campbell responds, “His nature prompted him many times to ask the question, but he thought of his knightly honor. He thought of his reputation instead of his true nature. The social ideal interfered with his nature, and the result is desolation” (52-53). And so, ironically, Parzival’s commitment to the principle of honor extinguishes any engagement or enactment of an honor that is genuine. Principles, applied dogmatically, do not acknowledge one’s story—as in “my story.” As mentioned previously, they surely have their value, but not when one applies their generic quality to all specific contexts. We could say that such principles provide a kind of essence, but that essence is removed from the environment in which it thrived—removed from the context that distinguished the phenomenology of its suchness, its character. To a mythologist, this environment is nothing less than its story. Fortunately, Parzival’s story isn’t over yet because he later embraces what Campbell refers to above as his “true nature.” For he manages to return to the Grail Castle a second time, a feat that was hitherto thought impossible—a feat described in the narrative as a “miracle.” But this time, seasoned by life-experience and wholly attentive to his context, he most certainly does ask the question and, yes, the kingdom is healed. To this “miraculous” turn of events, Campbell emphasizes that “through your own integrity, you evoke your destiny, which is a destiny that never existed before” (79). Of all things, be they Grail-specific or not, that one insight is profoundly inspiring: that our destinies (i.e., our stories) are surely not written in stone, and that they can be inflected and redirected at any point if we simply embrace the fact that they are only and ever our own.

This month we turn to Campbell’s volume Occidental Mythology. For most of us raised in the West, Western mythology is where we get our start investigating myth, and that means the Greeks. For me, the Yellow Brick Road of mythology began with Athena, Goddess of Wisdom. Technically speaking, as a philosopher, I was in school to go to work for her. She was the symbol that began to teach me to look beyond the metaphor, to see through it to what it was pointing toward— in Campbell’s language, to make the metaphor “transparent to transcendence.” Having read through Campbell at this point, my thought process went something like this: “Surely Athena must be pointing toward a specific experience I already have access to, but have yet to connect back to the symbol.” This was a lucky guess, but a standard Campbell approach to any myth, so I started thinking it through. You’ve all seen Athena: sprung fully grown from the brow of Zeus, armed with a spear, a shield, a helmet, and accompanied by an owl. I knew all of this already and it didn’t help a damned bit. But I kept coming back to the front of her shield and the severed, angry, snake-covered head of Medusa. You know that story, too. It seems that Perseus was tricked into promising to get the head of Medusa for King Polydectes of Seriphus, who was lusting after Perseus’ mother. Oh, those Greeks. The danger here was that anyone who looked directly at Medusa would be turned to stone. A lot of heroes had tried and failed. Fortunately, Hermes and Athena came to his aid, directing him to the Graiai, those three sisters who shared the one eye. Perseus was able to grab their eye, and refused to return it until they had told him how to slay Medusa.  They did—and then provided him with the power to fly, become invisible, and even gave him a bag for Medusa’s head after he chopped it off. For symbolic purposes, it’s important to add that Athena loaned him her shield. That shield turned out to be the key. Perseus caught up with Medusa, waited until she was asleep, and using the polished inside of Athena’s shield as a mirror, was able to cut off Medusa’s head without looking directly at her. He grabbed up the head, snakes and all, shoved it in the bag, and headed for home. On his way home he ran into Andromeda as she was about to be sacrificed to a sea monster, fell in love, held up the head to turn the monster to stone, saved Andromeda, etc. At the end of the story, Athena took back her shield and stuck the head of the Medusa on the front as an aegis. Those are the details. Now, if myths are metaphors, then what is this metaphor for? If Athena is the Goddess of Wisdom, then she is a metaphor for Wisdom, and if that’s the case—you have to say it—it’s a little weird. Why would the Goddess of Wisdom be represented with the head of Medusa on the front of her shield? Taken at face value, wouldn’t this mean something like “anyone who approaches Wisdom risks being turned to stone”? Hmmm. So I started to ask myself this question: what is the experience of approaching Wisdom? Could I remember any experiences where approaching Wisdom turned me to stone? Between us chickens, I will confess attempting to approach Wisdom by getting stoned as a college student during the 1970s, but—and trust me on this one—this doesn't really work. Sorry. However, when I wondered about approaching Wisdom and being turned to stone metaphorically, everything started to click. Here’s the beauty of it: everyone has had this experience. Do you remember sitting down to do homework and gazing at a sprawling math problem you had to solve? A monstrous equation so big you wanted to give up and die? And do you remember becoming utterly immobilized in that moment? That’s the experience of being turned into stone by attempting to approach Wisdom without proper technique. This still happens to me all the time. It happened the first time I tried to read Hegel—actually, it happens to everybody the first time they try to read Hegel—and the first time I tried to program my VCR, back when they made VCRs. You know what I’m talking about now, right? Being frozen, turned to stone, when you try to figure something out that’s too big for you at that moment? That thing. So how in the world are you supposed to approach Wisdom if, at the first glance in Her direction, you get turned to stone? Here is one of the characteristics of analyzing symbols I’ve become intimately acquainted with over the last 50 years: the answer is always a horrible pun. Here's the pun: The solution to the problem of approaching Wisdom, of getting past the head of Medusa staring back at you, is provided right there in the myth itself. The trick, of course, is to follow Perseus’s example and not approach Medusa, or Wisdom, directly. You can only approach her through… are you ready?… “reflection.” Told you it was terrible. And suddenly, Athena made sense to me. Wisdom, which (for Socrates, at any rate) means recognizing your own ignorance, must only be approached after careful reflection. If you confront it directly, you’ll be immobilized. You can see this in yourself, of course, in all those situations where you dig your heels in and refuse to admit you don’t know something you thought you did and, especially, in those who identify with beliefs – whether philosophical, religious, or political – that cannot endure a closer look. People like that are petrified by their own convictions, forever frozen in their understanding of themselves. The same fate threatens all of us who by-pass reflection in our attempt to become wise. Technically, I still work for Athena but our relationship is now “mirrored” in the myth. Grin. Thanks for musing along. Yours, Mark

Games have long been a compelling presence in mythology. The origins of the Kurukshetra War between Kauravas and Pandavas in the epic poem The Mahābhārata begin over a game of dice. Mythologist David L. Miller explored Joseph Campbell’s approach to myth and its intersection with games in his book Gods and Games. Then, of course, there is the strange game that serves as the catalyst for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Arthurian tale based on the 14th century epic poem. For those unfamiliar with the myth: It’s a curious story, where a Green Knight appears in Arthur’s court and proposes an intriguing game. He challenges any man to strike him with his axe and then meet him one year later at the Green Chapel, where he will return the favor. Sir Gawain steps forward, wields the axe, and promptly removes the mysterious knight’s head. Gawain’s journey to the Green Chapel and his climactic confrontation with the knight is filled with mythic motifs and moments of symbolic challenge. Resisting definitive explanation, as good myths usually do, interpretations and retellings of the tale have continued through to our present day. A new rendering, aptly titled The Green Knight, hits movie theaters in a few days. The story of the Green Knight was of interest to Joseph Campbell as well. In Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, he mentions the Dolorous Stroke, a key element woven into the fabric of Arthurian legends such as The Green Knight. Campbell aficionados will recall that the Dolorous Stroke was also the subject of his Master’s dissertation, the full text of which is made available as an appendix in Romance of the Grail as part of Campbell’s Collected Works. It’s a motif he was fascinated by. Discussing the Arthurian tradition, Campbell says “the legend refers to the restoration of a land laid waste through a Dolorous Stroke dealt to its king, by an unworthy hand, that took possession of a sacred lance, that in later versions of the legend is identified with the lance that pierced Christ’s side.” (508) Competing ideologies such as these from the Christian and Pagan traditions spiral their way through all of Arthurian mythology. As Campbell suggests, Gawain’s world is defined by wounding. It’s a world where institutions have come under indictment, yet matters of life and death are sometimes treated as a game. One doesn’t need to look very hard to see our own allegorical reflection in the story. In the new cinematic iteration of the tale, Gawain is a man searching to redefine himself. He’s looking for a new story, a story where he’s not simply known as a relative of Arthur. The other knights at the table all have stories of adventure and chivalry, but not him. “The concept of chivalry in relation to a young person figuring out what type of man he’s going to be was the root of this story for me,” says The Green Knight’s director, David Lowery. “The subject is present in the original text but it’s something that makes this story incredibly timely. Gawain is on an epic quest towards realizing the value of personal integrity.” We might say that Gawain is a wounded man, trying to determine what it means to be honorable and find meaning, in his world of wounding. The game that the Green Knight proposes to Gawain seems to offer a path towards healing his own wound. Even today, we see individuals drawn to games that might offer a salve for their woundings. These games take varied forms in our culture: politics, social media, or sports, to name only a few. Like Gawain, we jump at the opportunity to engage in any game that offers a balm for our wounds. In bringing the myth of the Green Knight into our modern context, Lowery continues: I didn’t truly understand why this poem has stood the test of time until I was well into the process of making it, by which point I realized what a daunting task I’d set out upon. The original text is so rich, so overflowing with meaning and symbolism, that one could make a dozen adaptations of it and still not quite capture what makes it so vital. This adaptation is an interpretation of the text, but it is also in conversation with it. It is a reflection of the values contained in the original poem, and also an inquiry as to how to contextualize those values and make them resonate at this moment in our culture. Lowery’s comments speak to the power of myth, inviting us into a conversation around the ideas contained in the text, rather than positioning it as an equation to be solved, or a game to be won. In Romance of the Grail, Campbell goes on to explore the many challenges in the game Gawain engages and how they intersect with those values Lowery mentions. “It concerns the two great temptations of lust for life and fear of death. Those are the same temptations faced by the Buddha. What you have here in these knightly adventures are spiritual adventures, and the tests are those of lust and fear. Gawain has not succumbed to the temptation of Kāma, the god of Desire, and he had felt just a bit of fear at the brink of death (the god Māra). He was fearless, but not without fault. He was human, after all, and this is what keeps him in the world, you might say,” Campbell says. (145) One might suggest that what Sir Gawain finds at the conclusion of the game, in his final confrontation with the Green Knight, is... himself. The holy grail that waits at the end of so many mythic tales is, as Campbell has so often said, a reference to oneself, as all mythological symbols point to spiritual potentialities within the individual. The Green Knight interrupts us time and again throughout our life’s journey. He proposes a game that we may choose to play or refuse. It is a game of death and resurrection, a game of discovery, and a game that offers us the opportunity to unearth hidden treasure buried deep inside ourselves.

This month, the MythBlast Series is centered on Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology.Given that we in America are celebrating the Fourth of July on the day this MythBlast is published, and given that the health of Democracy around the world seems to be ailing, it might be interesting to explore what Occidental mythology—and Greek thought in particular—might say to us about this aspect of contemporary life. In a 2010 White House speech, President Obama remarked: And so it was that the democratic example of a small group of city states more than 2,000 years ago could inspire the founding generation of this country, that led one early American to imagine that “the days of Greece may be revived in the woods of America.”It’s the sense of nobility and morality written in the pages of those timeless Greek texts, which have instructed students…down the ages, in every corner of the world. That same sense of nobility and morality also instructed Thomas Jefferson and inspired his humanism, as well as his belief that the human goal of happiness could be achieved through the cultivation of virtue, particularly nobility and reason, which the Greeks called arete. Joseph Campbell defines arete as ”pride in excellence, which has been called the very soul of the Homeric hero—as it is the soul, also, of the Celtic and Germanic; or, indeed, everywhere, of the unbroken [individual].” (The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology, 194) Jefferson believed that Natural Rights, emphasizing reason rather than divine providence, are the claim of humankind. The “rational study of the world as a field of facts'' contributes to the understanding that humankind is not a product of, and therefore not subject to, some particular god, but is rather a product of nature and as such, is limited only by nature itself and fate, which may simply be the word we assign to the perennially enshrouded, stubbornly incomprehensible operations of nature. And yet, despite some profound limitations, a startling degree of freedom waits to be discovered through an empirical engagement with the world. As Joseph Campbell put it in his beautifully poetic way: The rational study of the world as a field of facts to be observed began, as we all know, with the Greeks. For when they kissed their fingers at the moon, or at rosy-fingered dawn, they did not fall on their faces before it, but approached it, man to man, or man to goddess—and what they found was already what we have found: that all is indeed wonderful, yet submissive to examination. (222) Jefferson acquired much of his personal philosophy from the Greek Stoics. From the Latin historians, he derived much of his political philosophy. Those influences continue to shape the country which he helped to create; contemporary America to me seems in structure and temperament much like ancient Rome (especially the late Imperial Rome), yet her aspirational ideals always seem to lean towards Athens. Clearly, Jefferson disliked the idea of what he termed an “artificial aristocracy,” but he did subscribe to the notion of a “natural aristocracy.” In an 1813 letter to John Adams he writes, “…there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue [arete] and talents.” Greek democracy in the classical age lasted a surprisingly short time, from around 507 BCE to 404 BCE when Sparta defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War and installed an oligarchy of wealthy collaborationist Athenians to rule Athens. The Thirty Tyrants were overthrown in 403 BCE and an attenuated democracy was restored until finally, in 338 when Alexander and his father Phillip II conquered Athens, it was destroyed. There is no single reason for the collapse of Athenian democracy, but I think the self-righteous thrill of the egoic hunger for power present, for example, in the execution of Socrates in 399 BCE, played no small part. There is little doubt that a significant factor in the arrest and execution of Socrates was that he had become, in his own words (according to Plato) a gadfly, an exasperating pain in the...neck, whose self-identified purpose was to stir the “noble steed” of Athens to life. Socrates was generally critical of Athenian politicians and power brokers, and indeed, of democracy itself (he had close relationships with at least a few of the Thirty Tyrants). For decades, it had been his habit to expose pompous or powerful Athenians who claimed to possess special knowledge as poseurs, publicly exposing and humiliating them, thereby inspiring deep, burning resentments compensating feelings of profound shame and inferiority. In turn, the powerful naturally looked for opportunities to remove agitators and limit speech, eroding democratic ideals and practices. Aristophanes, a comic playwright, lampooned Socrates in his play The Clouds as the trivial, eccentric headmaster of a sophist academy called, “The Thinkery.” But Socrates isn’t the play’s only target of satire; Strepsiades, a character reminiscent of the Gleasonesque Ralph Kramden-like self-saboteur, always looking for an edge or advantage or a way to get something for nothing, is Aristophanes’ caricature of the average dull, entitled, lazy, Athenian. After Strepsiades' scheme—aided by what his son learns at The Thinkery—backfires, Strepsiades burns the school down. The exposure of casually corrupt and malignantly narcissistic self-interests, paired with the force multiplier of public humiliation, has throughout history been the match that touches off the most destructive conflagrations of societies. In a culture where individuals are only interested in themselves, the cultivation of power and acts of violence remain the only bases for human relationships, and its most precious freedoms are forfeited along with the ideals of democracy. In the Delphi Complete Works of Plato introduction to Phaedo, Simmias is quoted, saying that we have a duty to face the truth and follow it wherever it leads us even if, perhaps especially if, we don’t like it: “And if truth divine and inspired is not to be had, then let a man take the best of human notions, and upon this frail bark let him sail through life.” So perhaps, on this 245th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we can take a moment to relish the novel, ambitious, and demanding idea of Jeffersonian democracy and resolve to sail upon its frail bark toward the best human notions of genuine freedom, civility, and compassion. Thanks for reading,