Anniversaries mark the important events of one’s life; they invite reflection on the past, why it’s mattered, and where we’ve come from. Simultaneously, anniversaries stimulate thinking about the future, where we want to go, and what remains to be done. Anniversaries often find us at a boundary, a border between what we have been, and what we will become. They place us at the edges of ourselves with aspiration pressing against present limitations and, as you will see, the 30th anniversary of the Joseph Campbell Foundation is no exception. Jane Jacobs, a most remarkable woman, wrote in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, that “Often borders are thought of as passive objects, or matter-of-factly just as edges. However, a border exerts an active influence.” (262) At the place of borders, edges, and limits, Psyche exerts its influence as well, and the power of its protean creativity, its appel à l’aventure, awakens a desire for a more fully lived life. It is the call to adventure, and to answer it, one must be dauntless, willing to transgress ostensible limits, especially the inner psychological limits defended by belief, fear, convention, or fiat—the conditions of life to which myth speaks most eloquently. Mythology is indispensable for one engaged in the enterprise of working at the limits or the edges of oneself. Contending with psychic realities, often destabilizing personal and cosmic truths, and the disturbing intuition that, as W.H. Auden wrote, We are lived by powers we pretend to understand: They arrange our love; it is they who direct at the end/ The enemy bullet, the sickness, or even our hand, are the kinds of challenges one finds at the edges of oneself. The thinking of myth confounds notions of comfort, understanding, and predictability, and makes one confront, to gloss Gershom Scholem, the terrors from which myths are made. In his paper, “At the Edges of the Round Table: Jung, Religion, and Eranos,” David Miller described his experience of attending his first conference at the Eranos Foundation in 1969. Eranos was created in 1933, and its central mission was “to provide time and space for thinking.” Dr. Miller describes his experience this way: I first attended the Eranos Conferences in 1969. Along with Gilles Quispel and James Hillman, the speakers were Helmuth Jacobsohn, Gilbert Durand, Toshihiko Izutsu, Schmuel Sambursky, Henry Corbin, Ernst Benz, Gershom Scholem, and Adolf Portmann. The seats for the auditors at Casa Eranos were reserved, and I was assigned a seat in the fourth row. The aisle and Lago Maggiore were on my right and an elderly British woman was on my left. In the intermission of the initial lecture by Scholem, I turned to my seatmate and, in an attempt to make conversation, I asked her whether there would be a question-and-answer time following the lecture. She said to me: “You must be an American.” I confessed that I was, whereupon she educated me about the spirit of Eranos. “You see,” she said, “the presenters are invited to speak at the very edge of their disciplines. If they manage this edge, they are in no better position than the audience to answer questions. It would be premature. On the other hand,” she concluded decisively, “if they do not manage to speak at the edge, then they are not worth questioning in the first place!” Edges are not ends; rather, edges are the means by which one is launched into a less defined, less mediated, less determined space and, as Dr. Miller points out, edges are rich in questions that have no immediate, authoritative answers. Initial experiences of edginess are often intoxicating, but they quickly become sobering when one discovers that the relationship between edges and meaning has been uncoupled. The loss of meaning inevitably betrays the fear that nothing remains to be discovered but emptiness.  However, Wolfgang Giegerich, a Jungian analyst, calls into question our need for meaning, remarking that “The feeling that there should be a higher meaning of life and it is missing is the illness.” (“The End of Meaning and the Birth of Man,” Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, 6/1 (2004): 28.) The human-all-too-human insistence on meaning functions as an obstacle that obliterates the edge and reveals the abyss instead. In his 1957 Eranos lecture, Joseph Campbell sought to dislodge the idea of discovering meaning as the central pursuit of living: “What—I ask—is the meaning of a flower? And having no meaning, should the flower then not be?” A bit later Campbell concludes, ” Or, to state the principle in other terms: our meaning is now the meaning that is no meaning; for no fixed term of reference can be drawn. And to support such a temporal situation, each must discover himself…without fear of the open world.” Campbell urges us to “fly to…that seat of experience, simultaneously without and within…where the meaninglessness of the sense of existence and the meaninglessness of the meanings of the world, are one.” (The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension: Selected Essays 1944-1968. 152-155) Unencumbered by our casuistic search for meaning, having cast off the rusty shackles of causality, we are free (or, some have said, condemned) to live in the intense immediacy and protean liminality of edges in “the open world,” to play with and create room for thought and dance joyfully in the existential vacuum. What, then, does the MythBlast series have to do with edges, meaning, and Eranos? The MythBlast series has grown to become one of the central features of the Joseph Campbell Foundation website and its internet presence. The series has published 180 original essays to date that have highlighted and explored particular Campbell texts, they have been written in an accessible, yet intelligent manner that has challenged our readers to be thoughtful and at the same time, whetted appetites for reading more widely in Campbell’s works. In conversations with JCF President, Bob Walter, and a few other colleagues at JCF, we’ve come to believe that the MythBlast series may be capable of functioning something like a digital Eranos, offering a space for thinking and speculative analyses at the edges of critical Campbell texts, as well as the important intellectual, scholarly, and cultural influences that shaped him. The MythBlast series can become a home to creative, intellectually rigorous, and novel explorations of Campbell and mythology by authors attempting to reach beyond the safe, established, often derivative, confines of traditional scholarship (Dr. Norland Tellez is a good example of a MythBlast contributor who is currently working at these edges). With that in mind, we’re working toward opening the MythBlast series to submissions. There are still some logistical issues to work out, but our goal is to create an opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue among diverse scholars—specialists and non-specialists alike—to consider mythology as it once was, a master discipline whose scope was not limited simply to mythology qua mythology, but also to related disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, religion, and even the sciences. People tend to forget that Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Isaac Newton were also mythologists. My goal is to open the MythBlast series to submissions at the beginning of the coming year, so please watch this space for that announcement! Thanks for reading, and please consider carefully how you might contribute to the MythBlast series,

Throughout the 1950s and 60s, a comic series called Forbidden Worlds made waves on newsstands, at dinner tables, and even in the Halls of Congress. In 1954, a Senate sub-committee holding hearings on the dangers of comic books pressured the publishers of the comic to change the name. The publishers complied, concerned that encouraging children to explore forbidden worlds was morally questionable. The series’ name and emphasis were changed to Young Heroes, however, less than a year later Forbidden Worlds was reinstated, and remained the title of the comic throughout the rest of its run, which ended in 1967. While it was not the only comic to be targeted by the Senate, the motif of the forbidden certainly caught the attention of those charged with upholding the standards of the country, an issue that has occurred throughout history. Mythology is filled with tales of the forbidden. The forbidden love between Cupid and Psyche, the forbidden vision of Artemis’s nudity, and the One Forbidden Road motif found in certain primitive monster-slayer myths, that Joseph Campbell discusses in Occidental Mythology, are just a few examples. The forbidden takes the form of fruit, doors, boxes, keys, and various other seemingly innocuous objects through myth. The idea is so common that The Motif Index of Folk Literature 6.1 has given the subject its own classification (C600-C649). In The Mythic Dimension, while discussing Eve’s encounter with the snake and the apple, Campbell also brings the concept to our attention. “It is based on a folktale-type known to folklorists as ‘the one forbidden thing’— of which ‘Bluebeard’ is a good example (‘You may open all the doors in my castle but one!’). It commences with a scene of pre-dawn peace, quiet, and wondrous solitude, as do many of the world’s delightful early tales if the Earth-Shaper and his giving of life to creatures of his imagination.”(198-199) Of course, after this initial season of peace, chaos of some sort is unleashed when the fruit is eaten, the threshold is crossed, or the latch is turned. Almost without fail, there is some horror waiting on the other side of the door, within the mysterious container, or with the consumption of the fruit. Beyond comics and literature, this mythic moment makes its way into multiple films and television shows. The 2004 show Lost often included forbidden areas, secured behind hatch doors and other barriers. In Ex Machina, a 2015 film directed by Alex Garland, a Bluebeard-like character is projected as a reclusive CEO of a fictional tech company called "Bluebook" who forbids a houseguest from accessing a secret part of his domain. Most recently, a secret door hides the forbidden in the frequently discussed 2019 film, Parasite. There are a number of symbolic and psychological interpretations for motifs of the prohibited. Campbell again offers guidance as we consider myths and legends on the topic. Campbell writes, “One of the most effective ways to rediscover in any myth or legend the spiritual ‘tenor’ of its symbolic ‘vehicles’ is to compare it, across the reaches of space, or of time, with homologous forms from other, even greatly differing traditions.” (The Mythic Dimension 201) In other words, we might ask: what remains consistent with the motif across cultures and throughout history? In many narratives where the forbidden is explored, we see certain common thematic ideas. One such idea is that curiosity almost always prevails over the fear of that which has been prohibited. The box is always opened. The egg is always broken. The curtain is always pulled back. The character that is being restricted always pushes back against their restrictions. Anyone that has raised a child has certainly experienced this firsthand, and knows its universal psychological truth. Another commonality in these stories is that the consequences of crossing the forbidden threshold are always worse than the character imagined them to be. A final thread throughout these narratives is that usually, life goes on. Eve makes a life with Adam outside of Eden. Bluebeard’s wife inherits his fortune, has the dead women in the chamber buried, and remarries. The hero slays the monster on the forbidden road, but learns a valuable lesson, and will likely choose another road next time. Like so many other motifs in myth, the forbidden can be either protective or restrictive. It can be a boon or an albatross. Our relationship with the forbidden is a path where we learn to discern that which may be painful in the short term but eventually gives way to a new world of possibility, from that which will surely destroy us. Whether we determine it to be skillful or annihilating, we must all approach that one forbidden thing and make our choice.

This September marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. One of the reasons I am so proud and honored to be a part of this organization is that JCF has never lost sight of its primary mission to protect and disseminate the extraordinary work that Joseph Campbell produced over his lifetime. As an organization, JCF, and particularly its president, Robert Walter, have somehow managed to capture and reflect the spirit of Joseph Campbell, his curiosity, his scholarship, his joyful independence, and his immense capacity for bliss. There are fundamentally, it seems to me, two types of founders. One type of founder is the sort of individual, or individuals, who has a definite, clear, and far-reaching vision of how the world, or at least that part of the world they influence, should look. From the beginning, architects of culture have always seen themselves as founders; they imagine institutions and infrastructures their visions require, and even the roles each of us is to play. Ambitious people with foundational intent see the world as a stage and themselves as consummate directors. They imagine themselves as heroes, not simply of their own lives, but heroes of everyone’s life. Many such individuals court heroism on the geopolitical stage, but their corporate cousins are no less bold and ambitious. Another, and usually unintentional, founder is the individual who resolves to be the hero of their own lives. Such a founder isn’t interested in founding anything, nor are they interested in chasing riches, posthumous memorialization, or basking in the warm, narcissistic glow of self-absorption. Instead the only vision they carry forward is the vision forged by the compelling passions of their own lives. People who live with courage, integrity, independence, and exuberance—people like Joseph Campbell—have foundational influences upon others, and they inspire in them the intention to think and live similarly authentic lives. And in doing so, they become their own heroes. Whether one is the hero of one’s own life may seem an odd question to ask, or at least it’s a question one doesn’t hear asked very often. We all have heroes, but they are heroes to us, they are models of heroism for us, they’re not the heroes of our own lives. We seem to automatically presume that role is meant for ourselves. But it isn’t enough to passively presume that we are the heroes of our own lives; we must understand that becoming the hero of one’s own life is a difficult and challenging path to undertake, and it requires from us a conscious commitment. When one takes on that heroic mantle, “Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth,” (Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act I, Scene I) and any attitude other than a commitment to amor fati will, when life humiliates us and our passions become an open wound, transform one’s adventure into misadventure. We are protagonists in a collective fiction careening towards a metaphysical conversion, a death that, despite the overwhelming mood of existential dread, is not death at all, but is instead psychological transformation. We will be fundamentally changed, we will relate to our community as different people, and others will have reason to hope they might experience something similar. One’s personal, selfish ego is overcome and pain is no longer felt only as pain, but as labor leading to psychological re-birth. Pain is transformed into understanding, and each instance of hard-won understanding becomes a pleasure. This is how one participates in the suffering of life with joy, and finds bliss, ideas Campbell returns to time and time again throughout his work. For example, in his book, The Mythic Dimension, Campbell writes: Certain patterns, certain principles, a morphology, can be recognized—the kind of situation that I have expounded in my Hero with a Thousand Faces. There is a general pattern to the hero journey—the quest of the hero into unknown realms, the powers that he meets there and overcomes, the stages of his crises of victory, and his return then, with some boon that he has gained, for the founding of a city, religion, dynasty, or whatnot….(P.5, Emphasis is mine) Being a hero in one’s own life leads to a selfless understanding of the world, lends momentum and gravitas to the shared boon that is foundational to a group, a region, or an entire culture. This boon has itself emerged from the “primary springs of human life and thought,” it transforms us, “and teach[es] the lesson […]of life renewed.” (The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Pantheon, 1961, pp. 19-20) This is why the Joseph Campbell Foundation exists; not because Joseph Campbell wanted it to exist, or that he endeavored to create it. Not because he wanted a personal legacy, fame, or wealth. JCF exists because the foundational boon Campbell gave us was his work and teaching itself, and the foundation that bears his name arose organically from the tremendous impact that his elegant words and his graceful life made upon the world.

In Sake and Satori (being the second volume of Asian Journals), Joseph Campbell provides an account of his travels in the Far East during the spring and summer of 1955. Addressing his time in Japan, (which comprises the bulk of his travels), one finds that the romantic notions of an exotic, spiritual, and mysterious culture slowly give way to sobering undercurrents of cultural and political malaise—especially in international matters. I suppose this is the case with all nations to varying degrees; but at the time, with the relatively recent end of World War II, areas of cultural identity and international relations were surely more pronounced in the collective awareness of the country. The following is but a small sampling of the many areas and causes of tension that Campbell names: Communist ideologists, U.S. agencies, Japanese unions, senator junkets, illiteracy among foreign staffs, Christian missionizing masquerading as democracy, U.S. Army personnel, and, of course, a fair share of less-than-optimally-cultured tourists. These factors alone would require decades, if not lifetimes, of work to manage into some sort of balance. However, Campbell dives beneath the turmoil of sociopolitical symptoms to search out more universal sources of these problems. One Wednesday in June, he reflects on how each faction is particular to its specific system and (here I am surmising based on what follows) to the tools of its trade. “Specialization and technology—yes,” writes Campbell, “but—without culture, humanity, civilization, it is identical with the menace that all of mankind despises: Titanism.” (Asian Journals, 532) Following this reflection, he adds, as if storing a platform for later reference: “Discovered theme, then: Titan or God?” More on Titanism in a moment. First, let’s examine the above content more carefully. Within specializations and their accompanying technologies, (whether they be mechanical, psychological, political, etc.), individuals and organizations become experts in their fields; however, such expertise often comes at the expense of recognizing larger, more general contexts—namely, the culture of which they are but a part. To accomplish specialization to a very high degree, one must embrace one’s field whole-heartedly—or, to put it less romantically, one-sidedly. And so, each specialized group or individual runs the risk of becoming a sort of know-it-all whose interpretations and evaluations of universal phenomena are overshadowed by the context of their specialization. That said, specializations and the invention of their subsequent technologies are natural to evolution. The problems arise when one does not consciously incorporate one’s expertise into a more collective scope—in which case, one becomes titanic, and is infected by a certain hubris and thoughtlessness that effaces one’s own foundations from consideration. This pattern is quite popular among corporations and industries who destroy the Earth’s environment for the sake of monetary profit. Now, as the Greek and Roman myths tell us, the Titans rebelled against the gods of Olympus, who in archetypal terms, represent the natural governing order of the cosmos. But the Titans were defeated and imprisoned beneath the earth in Tartarus where their efforts to escape have since been felt above as earthquakes, erupting volcanoes, and so on. In short, because the Titans did not recognize their place in the grander scheme, they were (literally) put in their place. However, the myth of the Titans’ rebellion is far more complex than being a mere demonstration of the laws of cosmological balance, or of the consequences that accompany any challenge to that balance. For their quest, although one-sided, is still one of self-empowerment which, as mentioned above, is natural to the evolution of all beings. So, how are we to manage this conflicting situation? To this question I wish to introduce readers to Glenn Slater’s “Re-Sink the Titanic” (Spring vol. 62, 1998 pp. 104-120). Among many other things, this exceptional essay on the archetypal applications of the Titan-myth suggests a simple solution: sacrifice. And by “sacrifice” I believe what is meant is an offering of conscientiousness and of thoughtfulness to a higher order, whether that order is social, political, environmental, or cosmological. These days, I am compelled to use the word “offering” in place of “sacrifice” simply because my students are regularly put-off by the latter. Whatever the reasons, and regardless of word-choice, either term refers to an action or intention that reunites one, to whatever degree, with the foundations, be they social, environmental, or cosmological. Consider Socrates, who offers (or sacrifices) the recognition that he doesn’t know, and suddenly, his perspective is opened to possibilities, exceptions, and truths that otherwise would have been dismissed in the presumption of knowing. In like fashion, Campbell writes “…there is no point in trying to play the role of God” (which is precisely a Titanic endeavor). Instead, he employs the myth’s lesson, and concludes that being less than God is a healthy and accurate sacrifice or offering: “[W]e just haven’t what it takes for [being God]. But we could be human….” (532) The irony is that while recognizing a position of being less than, one tacitly acknowledges the presence of a more than. And, I would hazard that by doing so, one invites the influence of that more-than into what would otherwise be an isolated endeavor, cut off from its source.

In the Northern Hemisphere, much of July and August is commonly referred to as the “dog days” of summer. Swelteringly hot, heavy, stuffy days tint life with lethargy, ennui, or larghetto. The phrase, dog days, refers to the appearance of Sirius (Canis Majoris—the Dog Star), in the night sky at this time of year. Ancient Greek poets thought the star was responsible for both heat and fever, and considered it an ill-omened time of year. Homer wrote, “Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky on summer nights […] Orion’s dog they call it, brightest of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat and fevers to suffering humanity.” (Illiad, Lombardo Tr., Bk. XXII, II. 33-37.) The late summer heat inspires dreams of cooler, more comfortable weather, and the memory of an easy-breezy, lightness of spirit. The heat may also inspire fevered, disturbing dreams depriving one of sleep, and undermining morale. Dreams, from the standpoint of Depth Psychology, are not merely neuro-physiological byproducts of brain activity without apparent benefit, but rather the direct expression of unconscious psychic activity and the inner situation of the dreamer. C.G. Jung said, “We dream of our questions, our difficulties. There is a saying that the bridegroom never dreams of the bride. That is because he has her in reality.” (Dream Analysis: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1928-1930. Ed. William McGuire, p. 3-4) We dream about what we don’t know, what we don’t understand, what we’re curious about, and often we dream about worlds, people, and experiences which otherwise might remain undiscovered. And yet always, and in all ways, we’re dreaming about ourselves. In Shakespeare’s play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Oberon, the King of the Fairies, magically beleaguers his estranged wife, Titania — along with several guests at a wedding — in order to punish her for not giving him something he wants. One of the actors engaged to perform at the wedding, Nick Bottom, a puffed-up, buffoonish popinjay, discovers that he has been so transformed as to have the head of an ass. The fairy princess, Titania, seeing the ass-headed Bottom, falls deeply and dotingly in love with him; she indulges and pampers him in ways he could never have imagined, and blissfully gratified, he falls asleep. Upon awakening, Bottom says, “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.” (Dream, IV-1) But Bottom, overestimating the limits of his own wit, pushes on with the dream analysis, which perhaps causes him to understand the meaning of his dream all too well. Aware of the disturbing self-revelation in the dream, he moves to distance from it, and declares in a fit of synesthetic anger: Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had—but man is but a patched fool if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.(IV-1) Joseph Campbell noted that, in a journal entry as he traveled through India, he had prepared a talk to give at one of his host destinations: My talk had as title A Comparison of Indian Thought and Psychoanalytic Theory. I introduced the talk by pointing to the East-West contrast of gods soaring on rapture with gods soaring on wings: the Oriental experience of vision-rapture and the Occidental interest in mechanics. We have turned to the dream world from the sphere of waking consciousness and see dream as a fact for science to consider; the Orient turns to life from the realm of rapture and sees life as a dream. Asian Journals: India and Japan, p. 205 Reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we watch Bottom correspondingly struggle with the mechanics of the dream—the facts of it—trying to understand and explain it, rather than letting the dream incite him to rapture in waking life. Instead, his rational mind wanted to suppress his irrational insights and articulate instrumental causes of the dream; but ultimately, he could not, and decided to turn it into poetry instead. No self-respecting rational-materialist will concede that life is a dream, for that way madness lies. But perhaps we shouldn’t fear at least a little creative madness, since “Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies that apprehend more than cool reason ever comprehends.” (Dream,V-1) If life may be understood to be a dream, its fascination, metaphors, and depth of experience are indeed bottomless, and filled with awe. And rather than be the most serious and rational of men, I would choose to be a patched fool who experiences the magic of life while remembering that, to gloss Aristotle, hope is a waking dream. Thanks for reading.

When Penelope tells her story to the stranger, who is Odysseus in disguise, she reveals how the loom strategy she used to keep the suitors at bay came from a divine source: “A god from the blue it was inspired me….” (Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Robert Fagles, p. 394) So Penelope set up a great loom and for four years wove daily a shroud for Laertes, and each night unraveled what she had woven. Penelope’s weaving, a gift of the goddess Athena, is a motif that bears multivalent meaning in The Odyssey. For one, it can be understood in relation to the poetic narrative of the epic, as any great story is a tale woven into form employing words like threads. We can also think about the weaving motif in relation to Odysseus who is trying to make his way home and is thwarted at various times by Poseidon, and even his own crew, and literally goes backwards, farther away from Ithaca than before — ‘weaving’ his way home. Whereas the epic treats Odysseus’ many adventures on his journey home, Penelope is on her own journey if we look at her weaving in a certain way. Perhaps the current circumstances of our Covid-19 world—confined movements, limited outward excursions and contact with others—give us an insight into Penelope’s style of journeying. Unlike Odysseus who spent years on distant shores, from the battlefield of Troy and Calypso’s sweet scented island, to sailing through foreign seas meeting exotic people and strange creatures, Penelope was home. Her movements were free within the confines of the domestic sphere and her whereabouts familiar—the same faces, same food, same views. Yet, she traveled far. Her weaving was the journey through time to the present moment when Odysseus returns. By going back and forth over the vertical threads with her shuttle she wove her way forward. In undoing those very threads each night, she could weave herself onward again. Undoing and doing, unraveling and raveling, this rhythm carried her on, day after day. Her fingertips traveled a thousand thread leagues. Haven’t these many months allowed us to experience Penelope’s style of journeying? Have we not been pressed to learn something about the uses of confinement and the passage of time? René Guénon’s study on the symbolism of weaving in The Symbolism of the Cross reveals cosmic dimensions of the metaphor. On the loom, the warp refers to the vertical threads that are formed and create the foundation of the weave. The weft (or woof) are the horizontal threads made by the shuttle passing through the warp. In cosmic terms, the warp corresponds to the archetypal or divine principles of the world and the weft is the time, place and conditions in which those archetypal energies manifest. The Hindu concept of Śruti, the vertical warp, corresponds to the transcendent principles of the universe. Smṛti, the horizontal weft, is the human interpretations and applications of those principles in life. Together these threads weave the world as a garment of divinity. In another beautiful metaphor, Śruti is compared to the light of the Sun and Smṛti to the light of the Moon, the two luminaries symbolizing not only the eternal and temporal but also masculine and feminine energies in the universe. In Joseph Campbell’s Asian Journals he describes Śruti as, “harkening to the voice of the living God, the Muse” (p. 176) and notes how these two concepts also communicate the polarity of knowing (Śruti), and seeking (Smṛti), which add another level to the cosmic dimension of the warp and weft. What does this symbol of the loom offer for our contemplation of day to day experience? I would like to have us listen to it in relationship to our inner lives, the life of the psyche grounded in the archetypal patterns of nature. So much of contemporary culture privileges our outer world orientation at the great expense of our interior compass. Penelope’s journey challenges the notion that life happens only in relation to the world out there. It is as if it’s only when we are in an Odyssean epic and dealing with outer life and its collective human activities, that anything of value is going on. In James Hillman’s words: Events are not essential to the soul’s experiencing. It does not need many dreams or many loves or city lights. We have records of great souls that have thrived in a monk’s cell, a prison, or a suburb. But there must be a vision of what is happening, deep ideas to create experience.  Re-Visioning Psychology, p. 122 Those deep ideas are the vertical warp threads of the archetypal imagination, which myths, poetry and art render visible. Penelope’s patient weaving and humble unraveling presents a paradox in terms of journeys. To undo what she has done means to go backward, start again—no forward progress. Yet it is the unraveling that keeps the story moving. The unraveling is what requires the spinning of new threads. In psychological terms the unraveling is a metaphor for old attitudes and habits, frames of mind undone in order for new threads and new patterns to emerge. Penelopean loom work means traveling to interior reaches where the warp and weft meet in such a way that kindle the light of deep experience.

Joseph Campbell’s volume Asian Journals includes an essay called “Hinduism,” in which Campbell shares a mythological overview of this ancient Indian religious tradition. In one Hindu creation myth, the god Viṣṇu sleeps on the back of a great serpent named Ananta, or Endless, who floats on the waves of a primordial sea (Asian Journals, 314). According to a medieval version of the myth, during Viṣṇu’s divine rest “there arose in play from his navel a pure lotus, wondrous and divine.... Spreading out 100 leagues, bright as the morning sun, it had a heavenly fragrance.” (Dimmitt and van Buitenen, Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Purāṇas, 30) This is the brilliant, playful, perfumed flower upon which the creator Brahmā will meditate before making the world. David R. Kinsley sees this lotus as an “effortless reflex of a god who creates the entire universe while asleep; he dreams the universe into existence.” (The Divine Player: A Study of Kṛṣṇa Līlā, 2) So Viṣṇu’s creativity requires no efforting, as we say these days. It only needs REM sleep, or the complete opposite of work. Others see the lotus as “a masculine image of bodily reproduction,” (van Buitenen and Dimmit, 17) and truly, Brahmā does emerge from this lotus and its umbilical stem. But the scholar of gender and religion June Campbell (no relation to Joseph) cites Joseph Campbell’s observation that the lotus represents the goddess Padma, whose name means “lotus” and whose body is the universe. Because umbilical energy flows from the mother to the child’s navel, this maternal lotus must nourish Viṣṇu, not the other way around (June Campbell, Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism, 58). I think the lotus gracefully holds both views. Dreamer and dream effortlessly sustain each other. In a sense, they create each other, because without the dreamer, there is no dream, and without his dream, Viṣṇu could not be a dreamer. The lotus also illustrates the gifts of dreams. Creative people in just about every sphere of endeavor report new ideas and creative breakthroughs in the content of their dreams, and the culture of India is particularly comfortable with the possibility of goddesses and gods sending guidance through dreams. The lotus rising from Viṣṇu’s navel, the navel representing the core of his being, is a mythological example of a creative idea that arrives in a dream, with a feeling of miracle, magic, and divine grace. The lotus is an image of an inspired dream. Joseph Campbell sees Viṣṇu, the serpent, and the ocean as three expressions of the same “subtle substance that the wind of the mind stirs into action,” giving rise to the dream of the world (Asian Journals, 314). Campbell continues, “just as, in your dreams, all the images that you behold and all the people who appear are really manifestations of your own dreaming power, so are we all manifestations of Viṣṇu’s dreaming power.... Hence, we are all one in Viṣṇu: manifestations, inflections, of this dreaming power.” (314) In other words, we might seem to be separate, but actually you, I, and the universal lotus are all the same. We are divine creativity. Campbell’s creative approach to myth is on full display in these passages. He practiced a form of mythopoesis, except that instead of expressing myths themselves poetically, in the way of the Odyssey for example, he writes poetically about myth. His poetic myth-ologizing, meaning his poetic study of myth, was attuned to metaphor, meaning, beauty, and wonder. In Asian Journals, Campbell himself reflects on what he sees as two primary positions in the Hindu tradition: one that focuses on unchangeable truths, and another position that “harken[s] to the voice of the living God, the Muse.” (176) I can practically see him leaning in to receive that divine inspiration in order to write about divine inspiration. He goes on: “I tend, therefore, to associate the work of the creative genius in art, literature, science and mathematics with the living, creative aspect of my subject,” meaning he associates creativity with myth. He was a creative mythologist and a mythological creator. His mythological creativity inspires us to build on his work through our own. Dreams arrive in our consciousness much in the same way as creative breakthroughs, like surprise guests bearing gifts. Myths, too, come into being through creativity. Myth and dream arise from the same source, the same font of imagination from which all creativity flows. So if Viṣṇu dreams a world dream, and Campbell dreams a myth dream, what dream arises effortlessly from the core of your being? What lotus creates and feeds your inner Viṣṇu? Viṣṇu always reclines on the muscular coils of the eternal serpent, rocking on the waves of the cosmic sea. The fragrant lotus blossoms on, lighting up that mythic landscape, sustaining Viṣṇu and supporting Brahmā. Creator goddesses and gods represent creativity each in their own way, but they all remind us that creativity is sacred, and the sacred is creative.

This is a very strange time we find ourselves in. Many mythologists are taking on the myths and meaning behind our sudden isolation and how it has driven us into our homes and away from the things of the world. I had just moved from Los Angeles to Joshua Tree and was struggling to adjust to my new environment when the pandemic took hold. I was already feeling isolated out here in the desert, its vast expanses so different from the crowded concrete world of the city. Strangely, the pandemic has made me feel far less isolated and more connected than ever. I am now able to attend events in LA through Zoom. I was elated at first by my new-found ability to reconnect with the life I had, until this week when I came face to face with my fate. I was participating in an event called Myth Salon, which I often attended monthly when I lived in Los Angeles. However, they’ve moved online due to our current circumstances, allowing me to attend from the comfort of my new home. This week, one of my myth colleagues was presenting on the mythology of our isolation. He and the panelists were brilliant, weaving story and emotion into the conversation. Yet, even with this brilliance before me, I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into despair. I wondered why this presentation on what I love — mythology — had me feeling so dark. I had discovered myth through Joseph Campbell’s conversation  with Bill Moyers in “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth” so long ago. While watching the PBS series on TV, I experienced that “aha!” moment; I found a spark of the divine that would carry me far, including years of studying Campbell’s works, and finally to a graduate program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. So what was different now? I had lost that spark, that bliss that had carried me so far. I turned inside, and I also turned to Campbell’s work to see if I could rediscover my bliss. Can we simply summon up that feeling of awe? I wasn’t feeling it at all. However, synchronously, at this moment my closest friend, who is isolating with family in Montana, happened to be watching the Power of Myth for the first time. She texted the word “nihilism” and that Campbell said we must embrace all of life, the good and the bad. I had just turned to page 88 in Myths of Light, where Campbell mentions “this glorious approach to life,” Nietzsche’s “amor fati.” Quoting Seneca, Campbell says, “‘He who goes with fate the fates lead; he who resists fate the fates pull’ [...] In coming into this world at this time, you wanted it at this time. It’s a big, great thing you decided to do – don’t lose your nerve. Go through and play the game.” Amor fati. Love your fate. This concept has come up several times over the last two weeks: first in a blog I follow, then in a friend’s presentation to a group in India, and now here it was again. It appears as though fate is intervening in my life, reminding me to embrace my own fate, my circumstances. It is a Buddhist concept as well: to be happy even with your struggles, for you are strong and becoming stronger. In Myths of Light, Campbell describes Jiva, and viva, “the living force that keeps putting bodies on,” the being who reincarnates to experience and learn (45). He says, “if you will realize that this (life here and now) is nirvana, you will lose that will to get loose and you will be loose while alive.” Nirvana, bliss, awe, rapture, the sublime; Campbell has used all these words to describe the indescribable. Mythology helps us to connect with the mystery behind all of life, “to help us realize that that being which is transcendent of definition is our own being.” (71) For me, the experience of this is that “aha” moment when consciousness dissolves into the mystery. Last year at this time, I witnessed the defense of a dissertation by Devon Deimler, entitled "Ultraviolet Concrete: Dionysos and the Ecstatic Play of Aesthetic Experience." I highly recommend it.  It is about this ecstasy, this Dionysian experience of being beyond the conscious world. I FELT this throughout her defense. Talking about it IS my bliss. And while it may seem a frivolous endeavor during unstable times like these, I would encourage you to find that which moves you in that deep, indescribable way and bring it into the world, for it may be the most worthy endeavor of your life. Campbell states, “There is not a power in the world greater than a fulfilled, noble human being.” (19) Give that gift to the world and let that spread like a virus, so that we all may stand in awe of our existence on this planet, no matter what life brings.

Joseph Campbell often told a story that he recounts near the end of his book, Myths of Light. In the fable, a baby tiger’s mother is killed while hunting goats. The young tiger is raised by the goats his mother was hunting, and he never realized that he was different from his bleating peers. Eventually, the child meets an adult tiger who makes numerous attempts to show the little one what he really is. He shows the tiny tiger his reflection in a quiet pond and explains that he’s a tiger, not a goat. Finally, the elder tiger shoves the flesh of a gazelle at the younger, who after initially claiming to be a vegetarian, gags on the meat as he swallows it. Campbell tells us that the young tiger begins to feel a buzz inside him — something he had never felt before. All of the sudden, without even knowing it, the child lets loose with something that is not quite a roar, but enough so that the older tiger, who knew roars, recognized it as a possibility. (Myths of Light, 138-140) Our initial inclination with the story is to examine ourselves in terms of the baby tiger. We might consider our own awakening. We might recount the gagging we experienced when we first tasted the food that was right for us. While this story holds a number of lenses that we can benefit from, perhaps one of the more underappreciated aspects of the tale is the persistence of the elder tiger. Putting ourselves in that character’s noble position is a bit harder to romanticize. Being the elder tiger in the story requires patience, maturity, and the ability to see something in someone else that they may not see in themselves. It requires being willing to watch the younger tiger choke on the food that you know to be delicious, and then preparing a second course. Being the elder tiger requires vision. It requires humility. It requires an advanced death of the ego that many of us never achieve. The younger tiger experiences the excitement of transformation and often gets all the publicity and acclaim. The elder tiger must watch from behind with a smile, recognizing their role that was played in the transformation, even when no one else is aware. Netflix had a hit series a few months ago called Tiger King. It centered on a gargantuan battle of egos. The natural swagger of the animals featured throughout the series seemed to reflect the hubris of the human characters in the story. It’s no coincidence that the animals present in Campbell’s story are tigers, either. The insights required to unpack the ego-related issues in the symbolism of the tiger give the narrative rich layers. While often awarded the title of “king” in various corners of culture, lions live together in prides, whereas tigers prefer to be alone. An investment in someone else becomes an even greater challenge for the symbolically solitary tiger. It requires a greater deflation of the ego — something the characters in Tiger King never seem to fully grasp. All of us can point to elder tigers that have been formative in our lives. They are those who offered well-timed words of wisdom. They are those who introduced us to new food, food which we might have initially rejected, but later came to love. They are those who helped us see who we really were and returned to remind us when we began to lose sight of it. One of the unintended ironies of Campbell telling this story, of course, is that he has served as the elder tiger for so many. Scores of seekers have come to understand who they are a result of his words. I never got the opportunity to meet Joseph Campbell in person, though he has influenced me greatly. I have been fortunate enough to meet people who knew him, and who have dedicated themselves to seeing his work sustained. One of those men has invested in me over the past year. He has been that elder tiger — a Tiger King of sorts — more interested in my maturation than his own ego. He has seen things in me that I was unable to see in myself, and I am forever grateful. He knows who he is, and I am confident he will read this. I’ve tried to take every opportunity I can to let him know about my appreciation of his investment because we live in a world where people tend to hear plenty about what others dislike about them and far too little about what they do. It’s crucial that we honor our elder tigers, and that eventually we, too, take the time to guide younger cubs that we encounter to that quiet lake and invite them to see who they really are.

“Can you make no use of nothing, Nuncle?” (Shakespeare, King Lear, 1.4.658) Lear may not have been able to make use of nothing, but Joseph Campbell certainly did. In Campbell’s book, Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal, the idea of nothingness—nothing, no-thingness—is one of the important concepts to grasp: What can we say of this strange thing that happens between here and here, so that here there is nothing? You cannot say a thing either is or is not. The things are no things, there is nothing there. (Myths of Light, 73) Nothing is a difficult notion to work with; it is antithetical to the sort of materialistic, dualistic thinking to which most of us are accustomed. The nothingness that Campbell refers to is not merely the negation of being, but rather it is the ground of everything, the ground of grounds, “since it throws all beings into their limits.” (Martin Heidegger, The Principles of Reason) In this volume Campbell tells a delightful story about a young student who is stymied in his attempt to see his guru who lives on the other side of an overflowing, flooded river. The student says, “My teacher is the vehicle of truth to me, he is my god, he is my oracle, I will think about my teacher and I’ll walk across the water, and so I did. I thought, Guru, guru, guru,” and he successfully walked across the flooded river atop its engorged waters. Well, the guru was a bit gob smacked by his student’s disclosure, and Campbell tells us: When the student goes, the teacher thinks this was in him. He says, “I’ll go to try this thing. I’ve got to see how this works.” So he looks around to see if anybody’s watching. When he is sure he is alone, he goes down to the water and looks at the rushing torrent. He thinks, I’m going to do it. He thinks, I, I, I. He steps out onto the river. . .and he sinks like a stone.The only reason one can walk across water is that there is nobody there; one is pure spirit, spiritus, wind. In Sanskrit, this is pråna. That teacher in the student’s mind was a communicator of truth. In his own mind, he was an “I,” and an “I” has weight and sinks. (Myths of Light, 113-114) The “I,” the ego, can be a problematic psychic organ largely because it is so intransigently subjective and not particularly prone to mindful reflection. Ego psychologists tended to describe ego as the subjective experience we have of ourselves, which is certainly the idea of ego that generally permeates the West, certainly the U.S. Generally speaking, one’s ego provides a way of thinking of oneself as a being in the world and holding a general perspective of life—a sense of self-familiarity, continuity, and individuality. As Campbell puts it, “an ‘I’ has weight and sinks.” It is as if one’s being is a precipitate that falls into the world. Martin Heidegger had doubts about the efficacy of the concept of ego, pointing out that, contra Descartes, there are more ways of being than simply thinking. The idea of ego wasn’t enough for Heidegger, it didn’t adequately capture the totality of the being that experiences the world. Therefore, he used the word Dasein, which literally means “there-being.” Dasein is “that entity in its Being which we know of as human life; […] the entity that we each ourselves are, which each of us finds in the fundamental assertion: I am.” (The Concept of Time, 6/112) Heidegger describes Dasein as accompanied by a sense of “Throwness,” of being thrown into the world regardless of whether we want to be in the world or not. It’s rather like Campbell’s guru sinking like a stone; it’s what happened to guru, and was going to happen to him, despite his fondest wishes. From where do we sink? From where are we thrown? Campbell says that Being is a great mystery, “beyond which you cannot look.” (Myths of Light, 135) At least for me, this is very similar to Heidegger’s nothingness, which is the ground of everything; everything is contained in It, and It projects Being or Dasein into the world whether we want to be in the world or not. No-thingness, as Campbell’s guru will attest, is not something we can master, we only respond to it. For Heidegger, Dasein is not, in itself, an actuality but is rather the disclosure of no-thingness. As Campbell put it, You are it and it is nothing. It is a very difficult thing to tell anyone about because the words themselves suggest that there is a meaning here, but the thing is just to get it, and that is why you can’t communicate or teach [it]: you can only bring a person up to it. (Myths of Light, 135) Asian mythologies are remarkably compatible with Heidegger’s philosophy. In each, Nothing and no-thingness are not negations, but the language they use is often hard to grasp. But it is “awfully easy,” Campbell says, “to sympathize with and go with because anything you are doing is it […] and you realize that the whole mystery and void is shining through at you, you are there.” (136) Thanks for reading,

As I write, the globe remains in the grip of the pandemic. There is so much that is unknown about the novel coronavirus––and what is unknown breeds fear. Within that bubble of uncertainty events continue to morph so fast we hardly have time to catch our breath; an apt metaphor, as the one thing we do know about Covid-19 is that it steals your breath away. The first principle of life is the breath: Greek pneuma, Sanskrit prana, Latin spiritus––what God breathed into Adam to give him life . . . (Joseph Campbell, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce, 152) Life outside the womb for every human begins with that first breath. Every breath thereafter marks our existence as a separate, individual being growing into our own conscious awareness of the world around us. The association of breath to spirit is reflected in our language. The Hebrew word for soul in Genesis is naphesh: “a breathing creature.” Corresponding terms in Indo-European tongues parallel this derivation: in Latin, for example, anima means “breath” and “soul” (etymologically then, an animal is a being “having a soul,” or “a being which breathes”). Similarly, atman, in Sanskrit––often translated “soul” or the “divine Self”—comes from the root an (“to breathe”), and is related to the German Atmen (“breath”) and the English atmosphere. The Greek terms pneuma (spirit) and psyche (soul, mind) are also related to wind or breath; similarly, prana, chi, and ki are, respectively, Sanskrit, Chinese, and Japanese terms for the subtle breath, spirit, or energy that infuses the universe. In English we find the term spirit itself embedded in respiration, inspiration, expiration, and other breath-related terms; clearly a common thread, no matter the language or culture. But the metaphor of breath extends beyond the individual to the world we share. Earth’s atmosphere provides the context for all life. The air we breathe is the same air our fellow creatures breathe. Even the plants and trees mirror this dance, breathing out as we breathe in. Air, Wind, and Breath are subtle expressions of a universal archetype common not just to preliterate cultures, but a source of imagery found across all mythologies. It’s no surprise that Creation Myths often open with the wind stirring the waters. In Genesis 1:2 we read that “the Wind [or “Spirit”: ruach, in Hebrew] of God moved across the face of the waters”; among the Dine’ (or Navaho), n’ilch’i—the Holy Wind—existed first; in Babylonian myth Anu begets the four winds on the surface waters of Tiamat, disturbing this Dragon Goddess of Chaos whose Being forms the substance of all that is; and, Joseph Campbell often points to Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra, which likens the forms of the phenomenal world (as experienced through the senses and the organ of mind) to the surface of a pond rippled by the breeze. This is an essential image. The wind is air, the highest holy power of the universe, Brahman, the life-force of the world; for the wind persists in its blowing when all the other powers of the body of the universe have temporarily ceased to exist . . . (Heinrich Zimmer, Myths & Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization, ed. Joseph Campbell, 171) Covid-19 kills by blocking an individual’s ability to take in the oxygen needed to survive, focusing the whole world’s attention on the importance of breath. Beneath waking world concerns––infection rates, PPE shortages, stay at home orders, death counts, efforts to “flatten the curve,” re-opening the economy, and so much more––this core mythic image simmers in the collective psyche. But there is another unanticipated consequence to this pandemic: the economies of China, India, Europe, the United States and, indeed, the whole industrial world, have been offline for months. Factories, automobiles, jet planes, cruise ships and more have taken a break from spewing hydrocarbons into the atmosphere––and the whole world has noticed. Skies have cleared, long murky waters now sparkle, and, whether they want to or not, every nation has been meeting its carbon reduction targets. By the beginning of April, Los Angeles, legendary for its pollution, ranked number two on the World Air Quality Index, enjoying its longest stretch of clean air in a quarter of a century. And residents of Jalandhar, in India, have discovered the snow-capped Himalayas, over 200 kilometers away, visible for the first time in decades (many have lived their whole lives without ever before catching sight of the mountain range from their own homes). Epiphany! Is there a resonance between what Covid-19 does to our lungs and what human activity is doing to the atmosphere? Metaphorically, the answer would seem to be yes––and now the entire population of Earth has together witnessed that impact with their own eyes. There are several takeaways here related to that other global existential crisis, climate change. One is that it really is possible to reverse course. Already we are learning that society can change; as we power back up, we have the opportunity, and the means, to consciously and intentionally embrace new approaches to the ways we travel, work, and live. Another realization, brought to my attention by a friend, mythologist Catherine Svehla, Ph.D., is that it does not take long for the Earth to heal when given the chance. And then we are learning that individual action, multiplied a billion times over, can make a difference. These realizations come at a high human cost––which is why it’s important we not waste this mythogenetic moment. Could this be the boon we bring back from our collective death-and-rebirth experience on this worldwide Hero’s Journey? Only time will tell.

Each month, we explore a theme through weekly MythBlasts, curated works, quotations, etc. This month's theme is Our Global Community. It’s hard to ignore the fact that human life on this planet has been changed by COVID-19, but of course we all know it is not for the first time, nor is it the last. In a January 27th, 1920 letter to Oskar Pfister, Sigmund Freud wrote: “This afternoon we received the news that our sweet Sophie in Hamburg had been snatched away by influenza pneumonia, snatched away in the midst of glowing health, from a full and active life as a competent mother and loving wife, all in four or five days, as though she had never existed.” Freud went on to say that even though they had been worried about Sophie, “it is so difficult to judge from a distance. And this distance must remain distance; we were not able to travel at once, as we had intended, after the first alarming news; there was no train, not even for an emergency. The undisguised brutality of our time is weighing heavily upon us.” What compassion and sympathy Freud’s words evoke in me, not just for Freud, but for those of us experiencing similar losses in the present. In his book, Thou Art That, Joseph Campbell writes, “What is central to our considerations is found at that level that rises above that of mere self-preservation. There arises the awakening of compassion, the opening of the human quality in our relationships with both friends and strangers.” (21) Compassion is among the most important resources we have right now. Campbell invokes the Waste Land of the “hideously wounded” Grail King to speak to the circumstances of living that inspire compassion: “The Waste Land is that territory of wounded people—that is, of people living inauthentic lives, broken lives, who have never found the basic energy for living, and they live, therefore, in this blighted landscape.” (23) The virus-blighted landscapes of contemporary life present us with a powerful invitation to explore our own inauthentic, broken, or desperate lives as our sources of distraction and entertainment are curtailed and while our illusions of safety and invincibility are shattered by a global pandemic. I am reminded of the line in T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland: “A crowd flowed over the London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.” Moving on, getting back to normal, opening up the economy, recovery, are diversions that avoid the scarcely answerable existential and philosophical questions raised by terror and loss. We want answers, we want to understand the causality at work, we want to find the expressway leading away from the Waste Land. We want to deal with the instrumental causes of the pandemic because we are too shaken, too appalled, to accept its secret cause. We say the cause of the threat to humans is the novel coronavirus, infected bats or pangolins in Wuhan, the pneumonia it causes, or underlying health conditions in its victims; these are certainly instrumental causes, but Campbell advocated for exploring the “secret cause” of things. Articulating his thoughts on this, Campbell suggests that terror “is the emotion that arrests the mind before whatsoever is grave and constant in human suffering and unites it with the secret cause. What does that mean? That is the key to the whole thing: the secret cause.” (Thou Art That, 31) So, what then, is the secret cause? Campbell goes on to explain that The secret cause of your death is your destiny. Every life has a limitation, and in challenging the limit you are bringing the limit closer to you, and the heroes are the ones who initiate their actions no matter what destiny may result. What happens is, therefore, a function of what the person does. This is true of life all the way through. Here is revealed the secret cause: your own life course is the secret cause of your death.(Thou Art That, 35) Death is really a secondary matter to Campbell, primarily because we all are destined to die and how we die is not as important as how we live. When you decide to say yes to your life, yes to everything that animates you, yes to what you’re passionate about, yes to what drives you and makes your life significant, when you say yes to all that, careless of how much resistance or push-back you get from the world, you’re following your bliss. Campbell isn’t suggesting that one be reckless, ignore accepted science, or court danger needlessly; he is simply acknowledging that following one’s bliss necessarily exposes one to some sort of suffering. It’s not really that complicated: no suffering, no bliss. In fact, Aeschylus teaches us about the relationship between pathos and mathos, suffering and learning, and tells us that we must “suffer, suffer into truth.” (Agamemnon, 98) When we accept life’s invitation to live this way, walking the pathway to bliss, Campbell convincingly declares that death “is understood as a fulfillment of our life’s direction and purpose.” (Thou Art That, 35) Perhaps it’s not the virus that frightens us; perhaps it’s the chilling realization that we could die having never really lived that terrifies us. And if so, it’s an important realization to have because it’s never too late to heed the call to adventure, especially those adventures awaiting us within. It’s a question of “do I dare?” Like the J. Alfred Prufrock of another T.S. Eliot poem, do I dare disturb the Universe?