The Fool from the Rider–Waite tarot deck by Pamela Colman Smith via Wikimedia Commons, CCO This year in the MythBlast Series we’re exploring the symbols and archetypal images of the major arcana of the Tarot. A picture is worth a thousand words, or so the old saying goes, and the images of Tarot are laden with archetypal significance — so much so, that those thousand words barely begin to open the symbolic, representational, elements of those images.  This first month of 2023 we’re looking at the image of The Fool, the first (or last) card of the Tarot deck, as it bears the number zero. Zero is not a counting number and, similarly, the Fool cannot be counted on to behave predictably nor conventionally. From a traditional point of view, the Fool is a zero, a nobody; one to be ridiculed and degraded. The Fool is thought to be impulsive, irresponsible, unorthodox, unmannered; an empty-headed, naive simpleton who lacks good judgment. The Fool is often understood to be graceless, senseless, and ugly — sometimes even deformed. He may be a dwarf, crippled, or otherwise deformed. Fools may also be incredibly pompous while simultaneously being shockingly incompetent. But there is another, deeper, side to the Fool, an aspect that is the most important of this multi-faceted, bewildering, disturbing, frustrating, and yet ultimately revitalizing and creative archetype: the Wise Fool. Usage of the word fool  was quite common in 1800, but over the next two hundred years fell out of fashion. By 1980 or so, it was seldom used. Around the year 2000, usage returned to became more common; Now, in 2023, it’s used nearly as often as it was in the year 1800. Why has this word made a comeback, and why now? That’s always the therapeutic question, you know; why this symptom, and why is it expressing now? The forms always emerge before understanding, just as the disease has always progressed before symptoms emerge.  The image of the Fool, like all archetypal images, is timeless. Archetypes are not rigidly bound to any particular time, place, or situation, however they can be constellated and shaped by the energies of a given age and place. The idea of foolishness, and therefore the image of the Fool, seems to be constellated by difficult, dangerous times — eras that may be metaphorically represented by arid and distorted landscapes, Wasteland situations, one might say, in which hearts have become hardened and heads have become empty and addled. In the sociopolitical climate of the early 2000s, when the word fool returned to common use, fear dominated the emotional landscape of the time. Fears of terrorism, of political opponents, fear of the truth, and a new fear much harder to understand: the fear of the mutability — the relativity —of truth. We seem to be living in a time in which conservatism — as an idea, as a psychic perspective or a sociological reflex, as opposed to a political philosophy — is more and more popular. Primarily because the conservative perspective, in its preference for order and rules, stability and traditional values, offers an escape from Modernity and the bewildering uncertainty of Postmodernism. The more rapid the pace of change in a society, the more frangible, malleable, and unfathomable life becomes, the more appealing conservatism becomes. Conservatism, with its hunger for rules and black and white thinking, sets the stage for the appearance of the transmogrifying, chaotic wisdom of the Anarchic Fool (think of Groucho Marx movies with shipboard staterooms filled to overflowing with all sorts of people, the manic comedy of Robin Williams, or the revolutionary satire of Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl). When societies and cultures become too proscribed, too rigid, or too rule bound the Fool, through his militant anarchy, turns institutions and logic upside down and inside out. Jesus himself often occupied the role of the Wise Fool, and in Matthew 20:16 Jesus taught, “So the last shall be first, and the first last…” demonstrating the same foolish ability to invert and subvert the usual order of things, rebelling against the excesses of wealth and privilege and the exercise of grim authoritarianism. Echoing the words of Jesus, the Tarot Fool may also be the first card or the last, which adds a kind of symmetry or circularity to the chaos of subversion.  Since irony is the primary constituent in the language of myth , perhaps the fool is the personification of myth itself, because irony is the language of the fool. Irony intensifies and subverts reality just as the Fool does. Like the fool, irony turns things inside out and upside down. It deconstructs and overthrows. It draws attention to the discrepancy between literal and essential meaning, all the while allowing the Fool to go about his business serenely untroubled, almost as if he’s above it all, like Paul McCartney’s “Fool on the Hill” watching the world spinning ‘round.  The Fool sitting on the hill isn’t really “above it all,” he’s a metaphor for the clarity of perspective–the sense of seeing a big picture while at the same time, deeply engaged in life — that reveals the interdependence of everything, that all existence is harmonious and in accord, even when it appears to be a cruel, chaotic mess. It’s the perspective of the deepest Self, a way of honoring one’s own passions while simultaneously recognizing the limitations of being human; of following one’s own heart and utilizing the wisdom of one’s own mind.  Merriment and sadness are always intertwined, and an undercurrent of melancholy flows through the fool. In the second half of Shakespeare’s career, his fools become more worldly wise, more world-weary and, consequently, more compassionate. Being full of word play, puns, and silly jokes, the gravedigger in Hamlet is one example of a fool. But there is also in him a deep wisdom that accepts the course and nature of life on life’s own terms. He unearths a skull and tells Hamlet it was once Yorick, his father’s (King Hamlet) Fool. Taken aback, Hamlet says: Yorick! I knew him, Horatio—a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times...Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? (Act 5, Scene 1) “He hath bore me on his back a thousand times…Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.” Hearing or reading these lines always makes me think that Yorick, the jester, the fool, must have been the main source of whatever love young Hamlet received. It was Yorick that played with the child, not his father. It was Yorick, not his vain, self-interested mother, whom he showered with kisses.  Even in death, the fool tried to teach Hamlet the simple truth about living: that what survives of us is love. And if we are to become fully fledged, functional adults, the love we must pursue is not that of a parent nor a lover, but a love of the conditions of life itself. These conditions of life are not congenial to human understanding or comfort, and rather than rage against this reality, we must learn to accept, even love, the conditions of life if we are to love others, the world, ourselves and our own lives and stand against hopelessness and the death of the spirit. If we can achieve this, we discover that love really is all around us. Even, perhaps especially, in the company of Fools. Thanks for reading,

The Chariot from the Rider-Waite Deck by Pamela Colman. Public Domain For the month of July we will be looking at what, in most tarot decks, is the seventh trump or major arcana card, the Chariot. In the tarot, the Chariot is largely about overcoming challenges, mastery of oneself and one’s environment, and the journey to achieving one’s goals.    As you might imagine, the invention of the chariot (itself made possible by the invention of the spoked wheel) was revolutionary. Of course, at the bottom of all this technology is the domestication of animals such as horses and oxen. Horses were first domesticated in the Steppes, the southeast region of the Ural Mountains, sometime before 2500 BCE, more than six hundred years after the wheel arrived from the Middle East. Strangely enough, the chariot was in use fifteen hundred years before humans began to regularly mount and ride horses. There are very early drawings of people trying to mount horses, but those attempts must have been largely unsuccessful until selective breeding developed stronger, larger, more accommodating animals.    Almost immediately the chariot became a highly valued instrument of war. It provided a charioteer with an opportunity to cover a great deal of ground at dizzying speed and a stable platform from which one could use a bow and arrows to devastating effect. Around 500 BCE, the use of chariots began to decline because of the increased popularity and mobility of soldiers on horseback, organized cavalries, and improved infantry tactics that deprived chariots of their once novel advantages. Although, it’s worth mentioning that the indomitable Celts were still using chariots against the invading Romans until around the fourth century of the Common Era. For the most part chariots had become the focus of entertainment, and chariot racing became popular for the masses, particularly in Rome.  Plato moved the chariot into the realm of metaphor and myth. In his Phaedrus , we overhear Socrates lecturing on the nature of the soul, which he compared to a team of winged horses and a charioteer. The horses of the gods' souls are good, beautiful, and obedient, but mortals’ souls have one horse that is beautiful and good, and one that is ugly and unruly. In some previous ethereal existence, the souls of mortals followed the gods around the vault of heaven, seeing divine sights and experiencing sacred revelations as initiates in the rites of the gods.  The mortal souls that are able to follow the gods do so just barely. They understand some things but not others, and they have trouble with their horses, constantly rising and falling. Some of these souls are unable to keep up at all, and continue to fall earthward on ever shrinking wings, failing to get any glimpse at all of divine reality. Once incarnate these souls, in their postlapsarian state, are more invested in their own opinions than in any sort of ultimate truth. Any soul that caught sight of even one true thing is granted another circuit where it can see more, but eventually all souls fall back to earth. Those that have been initiated are put into various human incarnations depending on how much they have seen; those made into philosophers have seen the most, with kings, politicians, doctors, prophets, poets, manual laborers, and tyrants, descending accordingly as to their relative ignorance. But what a happy coincidence for Plato that philosophers are deemed to have seen more truth than other stations of life! Chariots are also good metaphors for books (this might be the right place to imagine the record scratch sound effect). Books are capable of transporting us to other places, regions, countries, even other worlds in the few minutes it takes to pick one up and engage it. Books can do for us exactly what Plato described his soul chariot doing; they offer us sublime revelations and truths. They offer us beauty, emotion, and relationships. Books initiate us into the human experience and ultimately teach us to be less parochial and more humane. When we learn to read compassionately, generously, and carefully, we can’t help but incorporate those habits into the living of our own lives, and we may even notice that our own lives seem to have acquired the qualities of well plotted novels.   In a letter to a friend, Franz Kafka wrote that “we need books that affect us … A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” For those of you who regularly read the work of Joseph Campbell or the MythBlast newsletter, or listen to one of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s MythMaker Podcast Network’s podcasts, we are offering yet another tool, a freshly sharpened ice axe with which one can address that frozen inner sea. This month we’re introducing JCF’s Skeleton Key Study Guides, a new series of study guides for books by Joseph Campbell. These study guides are written by contemporary experts in myth, and may help you further discover the joy of Campbell’s writing and his insights into mythology.  Each Skeleton Key Study Guide focuses on one book by Joseph Campbell. You'll find a chapter summary for each chapter in Campbell's book plus notable quotes, points of interest, reading lists, and ideas for working with the material in that chapter in the form of discussion questions, essay topics, or creative prompts. These study guides are written for teachers and students who study Joseph Campbell, but Skeleton Key Study Guides are also ideal for creatives, psychologists, and any seekers who feel drawn to myth. Our vision is for these guides to open a portal for you into Campbell's work. The first study guide in the series, Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide , is available now in ebook and paperback formats. The study guide accompanies Joseph Campbell's Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine. View the recording of a webinar with two of the authors of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide , our own Dr. Joanna Gardner in conversation with Dr. Olivia Happel–Block about the study guide on the Joseph Campbell Foundation's YouTube channel

Still from The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers As the editor of the MythBlast Series, I have the privilege of introducing the new year of 2024 MythBlasts. I’m honored and humbled that you, and other readers-subscribers like you, have made the MythBlast Series so popular. Not only does it continue to grow in popularity, but we continue to experiment with themes and ideas that push at the edges of Joseph Campbell’s work in ways that make his thoughts more accessible and more relevant to contemporary culture.   This year our theme for the MythBlast Series is “The Power of Myth.”  The Power of Myth  was filmed over the last years of Campbell’s life, aired in 1988 not long after his death, and remains one of the most popular series in the history of PBS. The series consists of six-hour long episodes, and these episode titles will provide the monthly themes to which our MythBlast authors will write. You will see a few new authors writing for us in 2024, and I think that these authors help constitute our strongest group of contributors yet. Quotes and references to Campbell’s most famous book,   The Hero With A Thousand Faces , first published in 1949, were sprinkled throughout The Power of Myth  series, and it just so happens that this year marks the 75 th  anniversary of Hero’s  publication. This book has inspired millions of readers, and I suspect it may well inspire millions more. For a book that constantly finds itself on lists of the greatest nonfiction books of all time—for example,   The Greatest Books of All Time  website  named Hero  the 348th greatest nonfiction book of all time, it made   Parade Magazine’s  list of The 75 Best Books of the Past 75 Years , and on Time  magazine’s   All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books , Hero  clocks in at number 46—this one had a difficult time as a neonate. Reviewers were hard on Campbell and his first offering as a solo author. It seems that the animus toward Campbell’s book was largely related to his reliance on psychoanalytic and Jungian theory. Sigmund Freud, armed with his new theory of psychoanalysis visited the U.S. only once, in 1909 to celebrate Clark University’s twentieth anniversary. America was initially cool toward psychoanalysis. Perhaps cool is putting it mildly; prominent physicians and public intellectuals routinely referred to Freud’s theory as “filth.” By the 1930s, however, psychoanalysis had grown in popularity and was even being taught in medical schools and universities. Jung’s popularity was initially more immediate in America and by the 1940s, the disciplines of art, literature, and comparative religion had embraced his theories. In addition to Campbell, Jackson Pollock, and Martha Graham, even the physicists Wolfgang Paulie and Erwin Schrodinger embraced Jung’s analytical psychology. The old guard, the establishment figures in “institutions” such as some university literature departments or The New York Times, were nevertheless still reluctant to embrace the influences of modernism and the new abstract dialectics of the time. Twenty years earlier Ernest Hemingway, for example, had to endure largely ad hominem, dismissive attacks for The Sun Also Rises. Time  magazine complained that Hemingway’s "interests appear to have grown soggy from too much sitting in cafes in the Latin quarter of Paris," the Chicago Daily Tribune  said the novel is a "bushel of sensationalism and triviality," and The Springfield Republican  lamented that the novel’s "extreme moral sordidness at such length defeats artistic purpose." These sorts of scolding, smug reviews were also leveled at The Hero With A Thousand Faces . On June 26 th , 1949 The New York Times  published a review of Hero  which consisted of mostly snide remarks without making even a grudging attempt to find sympathy with Campbell’s thesis. In that review Max Radin glibly wrote, Mr. Campbell undertakes to reinterpret all mythologies on the basis chiefly, but not exclusively, of Jung's psychoanalytical theories. Freud is cited just as much as Jung, and Geza Roheim, Wilhelm Steckel and Otto Rank are frequently referred to. Adler is not mentioned. Apparently those who tell stories about heroes are not troubled by inferiority complexes, even as a matter of compensation-fantasy. Certainly Mr. Campbell is not troubled by an inferiority complex, since his book is quite consciously a “key to all mythologies.” Mr. Radin seems to have issues with the ambitious nature of Hero, and yet he seems at least a little captivated by it at the same time: [Campbell’s] sweep in space and time is impressively broad, and his boldness is highly commendable…There is so much in this book, and the analogies and comparisons are so interesting and stimulating, that it is too bad that it is all presented in the mystical and pseudo-philosophic fog of Jung. But ultimately, Mr. Radin could not accept Campbell’s idea that mythology has many different purposes and functions. Campbell described myth as “a primitive, fumbling effort to explain the world…,” as misunderstood poetry, as allegorical instructions to help the individual accept his place in the social group, as “a group dream symptomatic of archetypal urges,” as well as being “the traditional vehicle of man’s profoundest metaphysical insights.” Mr. Radin implicitly appealed to authority by quoting Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when he wrote, “I cannot restrain a lingering doubt.” Finally, Mr. Radin reveals a stunning lack of imagination when he writes that Campbell makes too much out of myth: I fancy that mythology may well be in large measure what those who made the myths—heard them, read them, or saw them depicted in the painting or statuary, apparently thought they were: tales told as tales, without any purpose, other than that of telling them. Radin wraps up his pronouncement against Hero  by penning this piece of mind-numbing nonsense: And when we are asked to believe that the ancient Greeks or other peoples could not…introduce any fact of common experience which was not an allegory of something quite different, I am tempted to exclaim with Andrew Lang: “Who ever heard of such tales!” In its way, I suppose, the Times  was simply trying to stem the symbolist, anti-authoritarian, and potentially revolutionary tide of modernism. Change is always a difficult challenge with which to be faced, and at its core, modernism insisted that the world had to be rethought and reimagined in fundamental ways. Old authorities were no longer recognized by modernism, and its passion for novelty and feeling disposed of hidebound customs and unquestioned orthodoxies while simultaneously opening up and displaying the world’s complexity, nuance, and absurdity, a radical re-visioning that was at the same time reaching across class and economic barriers to be inclusive and uplifting, emboldening and revitalizing. Campbell’s approach to myth was firmly rooted in the thoughts, experiments, and products of modernism, which I must emphasize was not necessarily atheistic, and his finger was on the pulse of a culture increasingly fascinated with new spiritual and metaphysical explorations like Theosophy, Christian Science, spiritualism, and the religious and philosophical systems of Asia. It was into this milieu, this zeitgeist, that Joseph Campbell, with his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces , introduced a reimagined study of mythology, and made the rituals and beliefs of ancient societies relevant to contemporary life. Thanks for reading,   This MythBlast was inspired by  The Power of Myth  Episode 1, and  The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Latest Podcast In episode 4 of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, initially released in November 2022, Duncan Trussell and John Bucher of the Joseph Campbell Foundation talk about Duncan's work as a comedian, and his interest in religion, mythology, artificial intelligence, and consciousness. Duncan is the host of The Duncan Trussell Family Hour Podcast and creator of the Netflix show, The Midnight Gospel. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religion, philosphies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historic man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth." - Joseph Campbell - The Hero with a Thousand Faces  (p1)

A study by John William Waterhouse for his painting The Decameron, 1916. "If you sow lightly, you reap Lightly. And a good crop Requires the kind of soil Where seeds sprout a hundred- Fold, for even good seed Dries up in dried-up ground. What Chrétien sows—the seeds He scatters—are the start of a story [...]" —Chrétien de Troyes, Perceval: the Story of the Grail, translated by Burton Raffel  We live in a world chock-full of stories. Presumably, each has its merits, and yet some stories are quickly forgotten while others become favorites. As a storyteller, I'm intrigued by our attraction to certain stories and curious about how we make them our own. There are certain fairy tales, "The Prince Lindworm" for example, that maintain a haunting sense of significance for me. I've mused over this tale many times, drawn to the moment in which a queen "forgets" the advice of a mysterious crone and eats both of the magical roses. She later gives birth to a dragon. Oops.  One of Joseph Campbell's favorite stories was the Arthurian legend of the Grail quest and the wounded Fisher King. This was the topic of his master's thesis at Columbia University and a touchstone for his later ideas. The image of the solitary knight following a pathless path is emblematic of the hero's adventure, and Campbell's vision of the modern individual on a personal quest for fulfillment. You may recognize this oft-quoted line from the moment the grail magically appeared to the Knights of the Round Table: "Further, they decided that each should go on this quest alone and enter the forest at the point of his own choosing, where it was darkest, because it would be a disgrace to go forth in a group." ( The Flight of the Wild Gander: Selected Essays 1944 - 1968 , 222) Perceval, the Story of the Grail  was written in the 12th century by the French Romantic poet Chrétien de Troyes, who reworked Celtic legends and British history to create the young knight Perceval and the image of the grail. He describes the adventures of a naive young man who acquires the trappings and skills of a seasoned knight, and finds himself at the mysterious castle of the Fisher King. There he beholds the grail, and although he is filled with wonder, he asks no questions. The following morning, he awakens to find himself alone in an empty castle. Perceval eventually rejoins King Arthur's court and is welcomed as a hero. In the midst of the celebration, a loathly lady appears and castigates him for his silence at the Grail Castle. She tells him that his failure to ask a question will bring continued suffering to the kingdom. Filled with remorse, Perceval vows to rectify his error and begins his search for the grail.  At this point in his story, de Troyes shifts the action to the knight Gawain. Perceval has a few more adventures and then boom--the story abruptly stops mid-sentence. de Troyes abandoned his story and Perceval's quest.  He died without finishing his tale, however, the seeds that he sowed undeniably sprouted.   Percival's quest and the image of the grail inspired other poets, who refashioned some of the elements and brought the story to a successful conclusion. In Parzival , for example, the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach has Parzival discover that he has a brother, a Moslem named Feirefiz. When they put down their swords, the loathly lady (Cundrie) declares Parzival the Grail King. The two brothers find the Grail Castle and all ends well. Campbell often told von Eschenbach's version of the story. He developed an elegant exegesis on the meaning of the symbols, and the significance of this new story at this point in history. According to Campbell, the appearance of the grail quest story in the Middle Ages signals a shift in authority, away from the well codified and corrupt religious order, toward personal experience, and the emergence of a new vision of the individual. In Flight of the Wild Gander  he writes:  The Grail is housed not in a church but in a castle; its guardian is not a priest but a king. It is carried not by an assortment of questionable males but by twenty-five young woman, whose virtue must be unsullied, and the knight who achieves the quest, and so restores the Waste Land to bounty, succeeds through integrity of character, in the service of a singly focused love, amor. (219) Like many others, I feel the invitation to pick up where he left off implicit in de Troyes’ unfinished tale. I'd begin with the moment the loathly lady departs, leaving Perceval and King Arthur's court in a state of shocked dismay. A younger me, like that brave knight, would put on her suit of armor and ride off to the rescue without a backward glance. Today, that impulse to fix and set things right feels like an evasion of the real challenge. I see Perceval sitting alone in the empty hall after all of the guests have gone, absorbing the implications of his failure.  Was a search for the grail necessary, I wonder, or had it already been found? What if Perceval laid down his sword, chastened by his new awareness of the limits of his understanding? What if he went back to his beautiful lady and became a devoted husband and father, a good and honest neighbor? What if he was tested by marriage, parenthood, illness, and heartbreak, rather than the enemy's sword and the solitude of the dark forest? If he posed the right question to his daughter, perched on his knee, and she  changed the world?  No one knows why Chrétien de Troyes didn't complete his Perceval. Maybe he lost interest in the story or didn't realize its significance, as Campbell suggests ( Flight of the Wild Gander , 218). Maybe the expectations of his royal patron, Count Philip of Flanders and Alsace, limited his ability to tell the story that he imagined. Maybe the image of the grail catapulted him to a place beyond words and a feeling that he couldn't share. Maybe he told the part of the story that was his to tell. We have inherited many tales of adventure, and yet the possibilities in our storied lives are not exhausted. Each of us can enter the forest of story and begin the quest of our own devising, following the trail our imagination sets down. You may find that the ground around your favorite tales is well trod, but you can still make the story your own. Start where you will. Scatter some seeds and see what sprouts.

Sculpture of a fallen warrior from the temple of Aphaia at Aegina, 6th century BC Before we get to my MythBlast for the week, I want to draw your attention to our new Joseph Campbell Essentials Series . The first two volumes— Joseph Campbell on Bliss  and Joseph Campbell on The Hero’s Journey —launch a collection of beautifully designed pocket gift books that bring together Campbell’s most inspiring reflections. In these pages, the world-renowned mythologist illuminates the mystical joy of following one’s passion and the universal path of adventure, transformation, and return. Portable and elegant, these little volumes are perfect for carrying everywhere, savoring as bedside reading, or giving as meaningful gifts—an invitation to live fully and courageously. These little books make a big impression; they are indispensable, beautiful, and for those who value sage wisdom for living, truly essential. In honor of our Joseph Campbell Essentials book series, and since our highlighted text this month is Joseph Campbell’s classic The Hero With A Thousand Faces , it might be interesting to look at this business of heroing  and perhaps think a little about some of the tacit difficulties of this subject;   it’s not all parades and laurels. All heroism flirts with failure. Death, refusal of the return, an unsuccessful quest—these are not exceptions to the heroic journey but its constant companions. Joseph Campbell, in The Hero With a Thousand Faces , shows us that what looks like failure from one angle is often from another, the very unfolding of destiny. it’s not all parades and laurels. All heroism flirts with failure. The hero, from Campbell’s perspective, seeks not the gods, but what they represent. This is the key to understanding Campbell: the understanding that, in his conception of myth, the two worlds—divine and human—are really one world. Discovering the transcendent reality that runs beneath the material world re-enchants and re-ensouls it, and the hero revels in that discovery. The challenges of the journey There are, however, two points of extreme difficulty in Campbell's Heroic Journey: the first lies in separating from the ordinary world, and the second in returning from the strange, new one. Leaving the comfort of the familiar and predictable—the very domesticity the ego clings to—is accomplished either willingly or unwillingly. As the saying goes, fate leads the willing and drags the unwilling. And once the hero achieves separation, obstacles and tests are met, the strange new world of adventure begins to reveal itself as a kind of transcendent paradise.  The transcendent reality has become the hero’s reality—Utopia. But the roots of the word utopos  mean “no place.” Like enlightenment itself, utopia is not a condition that living, breathing humans can inhabit indefinitely. Those heroes who remain in that utopia are by definition failed heroes and no longer human; they must either have died or undergone a kind of apotheosis, shedding the mortal husk and taking on the radiance of a god.  To leave behind the bliss of profound growth, wisdom, and skill that the strange new world has granted is to face the necessity of return, to fall back into the familiar world. That fall should not be considered a failure but instead, a fortunate fall, a felix lapsus , the achievement of a deeper  understanding and acceptance of mortal life in which one is more fully and profoundly human. Odysseus’ greatness lies not in his wanderings but in his homecoming; Gilgamesh returns to Uruk with a deeper vision of humanity and the value of a mortal life; Psyche endures her trials and reenters the world transfigured by love. To fall back is to pick up once more the weight of time and limitation, yet carry within oneself the seed of what was seen beyond it. And return one must, for without the hero doing so,  the journey is incomplete. Essentially, only the human being can act heroically, for the hero’s task is never to become a god, but to bring what the gods symbolize back into human life. Yet we humans envy the gods—their immortality, their power. But the gods, in turn, seem to envy us. They fall in love with humans (if not love, at least lust), they weave suffering into our lives, Aeschylus says, so we may suffer our way into truth.  And the truth, as Horace reminds us, is that we are only dust and shadow, pulvis et umbra sumus, and only we mortals know despair, only we mortals strive to overcome, and in that striving our mortal natures discover beauty, meaning, and gratitude—emotions known only vicariously to the gods, for those gifts bloom only in the humus of mortal flesh. To be human is to fall and to rise again, and in that cycle, not in an unbroken ascent, the fullness of life reveals itself.  Understanding failure From this perspective, we may be tempted to look at the failure of the hero—whether by death, refusal of the return, or an unsuccessful quest—as a defeat, as something lamentable or worthless. Yet failure is not only inevitable but, I believe, essential to life, especially to the heroic life. To recognize this, however, one must see past the corporeal to the soulful. That task is difficult, and as Virginia Woolf observed : “With the hook of life still in us still we must wriggle. Left to ourselves we speculate thus carnally. We need the poets to imagine for us.” That poetic imagination is precisely what myth offers—the poetry of the unconscious, which reveals failure not as an end, but as the garden in which achievement grows. For every success is itself a form of failure; desire always exceeds what can be attained. In this sense, we do not triumph over failure—we fail our way into success. In The Hero With A Thousand Faces , Joseph Campbell writes:  As Freud has shown, blunders are not the merest chance. They are the result of suppressed desires and conflicts. They are ripples on the surface of life, produced by unsuspected springs. And these may be very deep - as deep as the soul itself. The blunder may amount to the opening of a destiny. (42) I have to wonder if the “opening to destiny” that blunder creates explains why the hero may unconsciously be in love with failure. There is something all too final about success, something finite, relegated to the lifelessness of history. Success really only lives in the past, while the pain of failure and its L'esprit d'escalier, thoughts about what we might have done differently,   always remain  with us. Myths never tire of illustrating the point that failure in this journey is only apparent, that it is not what it seems. What from one perspective appears to be crushing defeat and violent death is from another perspective a willing sacrifice. The myths do not deny the agony (in the Greek sense of the word, which means struggle) of existence but rather see through it to the essential peace and harmony of the universe. Finally, as Campbell wrote in Hero , “It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse” (337). And I would add that each of us, in our own private struggles, our imperfections, sallies forth in the image of the hero—not in our victories, but in the silences of our failures, in our determination to live humanely in an often inhumane world—armed with imperfect skills and the longing to make gentle the life of this world.  Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson, PhD  is an author, speaker, and a psychotherapist. He serves as the Publications Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the host of JCF's flagship podcast, Pathways With Joseph Campbell. Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. OIson is also a depth psychologist in private practice in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived since 1995. Dr. Olson has graduate degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Olson offers mythic life coaching at What's Mything in Your Life ( bradleyolsonphd.com ) This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Magician. Latest Podcast In this episode of The Podcast with a Thousand Faces, we’re joined by Dr. Stephen Larsen , psychologist, mythologist, author, and longtime student and friend of Joseph Campbell. Together with his wife Robin, Stephen co-authored Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind, the definitive biography of Campbell. As close personal friends of Campbell for over two decades, the Larsens were uniquely positioned to offer an intimate, multidimensional portrait of the man behind the myths. Their book, written with exclusive access to Campbell’s journals, papers, and inner circle, brings both the public and private facets of his life vividly to light. Stephen served on the founding board of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and co-founded the Center for Symbolic Studies, where he has spent decades exploring the intersection of myth, psychology, and human transformation. Trained by Edward Whitmont, Stanislav Grof, and Campbell himself, Stephen has also been a pioneering figure in the field of neurofeedback and consciousness research. In this conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Stephen reflects on his relationship with Campbell, the writing of A Fire in the Mind, and why mythology still matters—perhaps more than ever—in a world aching for meaning. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss." -- Joseph Campbell Pathways to Bliss , 135 Joseph Campbell - Jung, the Self and Myth See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Wizards © 20th Century Fox 1977. All Rights Reserved. With September we shift our focus to the magician archetype, which shows itself in many guises: wizards, witches, warlocks, shamans, alchemists and, even, our contemporary street-magicians, to name only a few. What exactly is magic? Well, that’s a complex inquiry, ranging anywhere from tactful trickery to genuine miracles, from subjective experience to so-called objective fact. We do know it has a lot to do with perspective—with what Jung would call “psychic reality” or “the conscious attitude,” or what Heisenberg might call “the uncertainty principle.”  Let me start the bidding by saying we’re all magicians in our ways, capable of influencing matter from afar. By merely uttering a spell of encouragement (aka: some thoughtful words),   we can lift the spirits of a friend (along with the corners of their mouth). We can even activate their supposedly autonomous parasympathetic nervous system, have it send some much-needed serotonin into the bloodstream. Conversely, we can spoil the taste of food—can summon in others the physical sensations of nausea through an all-too-graphic description of some nasty thing at the dinner table. While instances of magic more powerful than these are forthcoming, this inquiry examines the consequences of how we align or misalign ourselves with the “magical” powers we  possess  and, especially, with those far-greater powers that we are given  on loan, as it were, like life.   we’re all magicians in our ways T he “apparent” power imbalance Within the realm of magician-figures, one pattern is certain: that the immediate (and apparently, greater ) power keeps going to the “bad guys”—to those who work to deceive, conquer, destroy. These dark magicians are always highly intelligent and very clever. But like the sudden conflagration of some highly combustible thing thrown onto a fire, their dominating power burns away with naught but the mess left in its wake (and we could say the same for their souls). But then, destruction is easy compared to the work one must undertake to heal, repair and sustain. This deeper power-source is rooted in a wisdom that transcends cleverness and isolated, egoic gain. It requires not only an ability to recognize the value of being in relationship with the cosmos, but also a willingness (if not eagerness) to contribute to  its designs. On this note, consider some of Joseph Campbell’s poignant insights on the matter:   It has been customary to describe the seasonal festivals of so-called native peoples as efforts to control nature. This is a misrepresentation. There is much of the will to control in every act of man, and particularly in those magical ceremonies that are thought to bring rain clouds, cure sickness, or stay the flood; nevertheless, the dominant motive in all truly religious (as opposed to black-magical) ceremonial is that of submission to the inevitables of destiny. No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold. And in the spring, the rites do not seek to compel nature to pour forth immediately corn, beans, and squash for the lean community; on the contrary: the rites dedicate the whole people to the work of nature's season . ( The Hero with a Thousand Faces ,  384) With these pieces in place, let’s dive into this week’s film. Wizards   (1977) is an animated, post-apocalyptic fantasy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi that made its debut just a few months before Star Wars  (which also has its version of the magician archetype: the Jedi). Of note, Bakshi employs a rather magical technique called rotoscoping which blends live-action footage with animation, rendering a strange sort of “interworld” effect that appeals to both the realistic and imaginal sensibilities, simultaneously.  In brief, the tale concerns two wizards born as (very non-identical) twins: Avatar (the hero) and Blackwolf (the nemesis) who, together, personify the archetypal duality of the relative  (no pun intended) that we see in other myths like the Egyptian Osiris and Seth and the biblical Cain and Abel. Avatar’s domain comprises the nature-regions that have escaped destruction or have begun to heal, inhabited by fairies, elves and humans. Whereas Blackwolf’s domain, the land of Scorch (which is as it sounds), is inhabited by mutant-monsters who emerged after the war. Within this setting, a conflict unfolds between nature-oriented, old-world wisdom and technology-oriented, modern-world intelligence.  Media mythologized Blackwolf possesses two key technological weapons in his quest to (of course) dominate the world. The first is Necron 99 (an assassin-robot engineered by Blackwolf himself), who rides the land searching for victims. The second is a 1930s-era film-projector Blackwolf has salvaged and restored, powered by two sad-but-lovely, finger-sized fairies tied to a crank they’re forced to turn.  I’ll leave Necron 99 to wander off (although the narrative provides both positive and negative aspects to this figure, making it a fitting analogue to AI). The projector-weapon, however, merits more consideration as it aptly addresses the high volume of abuse (i.e., evil spells) of audio/visual media we are witnessing today. It’s amusing (in a synchronistic way) that the weapon is literally a “projector,” making the psychological notion of projection  inescapable—and reminding us that the phenomenon itself is also inescapable. So the story unfolds, enacting the dangers and destruction that accompany malicious projection and the absence of thoughtful reflection. Rationally problematic is that there’s no actual screen upon which Blackwolf’s terrifying and debilitating imagery is cast. Rather the content somehow fills the atmosphere (a premonition of wifi?) and saturates the minds and moods of all in its field. But the message is clear, revealing the adverse psychological effects inflicted by aggressive, cleverly engineered propaganda. In short, the targets believe  what they see. And by capturing the subjective reality, Blackwolf captures the subjects. According to French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (author of the germinal The Savage Mind ), this is a significant aspect to magic that emphasizes intelligence, cleverness, sleight-of-hand (and of-mind)   techniques, and very much the assistance of technology to accomplish these ends ( Structural Anthropology , 167-69). While we might categorize such magic as “tricks,” their effects remain real to the psyche. And so, what counter-spells might we cast to mitigate such reckless power? Well, if it’s not too awkward, let’s consult with Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeons & Dragons got it right! At an early age, I was won over by this role-playing game. Call it my introduction to myth—and a very effective one, in my opinion. Not surprisingly, I wanted to play a character capable of powerful magic. I naturally presumed that to play a mighty wizard (“magic-user” in D&D) one would need wisdom. So I allocated my highest abilities-scores to that attribute only to learn later that the really cool spells required a higher intelligence  score—and by “really cool” I mean the kind that exerted power over the natural order—essentially, Blackwolf stuff.   Fortunately (though not to me at the time), the Dungeon Master held me to my choice, and so I was forced into one of the few classes that do benefit from a high wisdom score: the Druid, who (unlike the solitary magic-user) functions in service to the natural order of the cosmos. But the spells they cast were far less exciting as they pertained “merely” to healing, nurturing and tending, whereas I (being twelve) simply wanted to kick ass.  These recipes and allocations of two very different kinds of magical power are not arbitrary. In fact, the dynamics of service and contribution that Campbell addresses above just may be the chief feature that distinguishes wisdom from intelligence (in the present context). Granted, I’m not suggesting we do away with intelligence (however one-sidedly I may have contextualized it here). But we might do well to attend to Dungeons & Dragons’ take on wisdom so that we might incorporate more of it. A sacrifice We’ve all seen how easily and unconsciously one can fall into the trap of dark magic and self-serving power like Blackwolf (and like you perhaps might have at twelve). The wisdom of Avatar was surely a thing earned not by smarts but through decades of contact with the cosmos— fashioned , as it were, and tempered with a thoughtfulness and appreciation for the miracle of things as they are. But our wisdom has never kept up with our intelligence or our technology. Not even close. A simple survey of the history of industry and politics, its wars and threats of wars—not to mention, the sheer volume of damages (even in times of peace) wrought upon the flora and fauna and earth, itself (cf. “Scorch”). We say we’ve “inherited” this place, but that invites notions of possession. Maybe we’d do better to say we’ve been “given” a window to participate in all the magic that’s already here? And with that, roll up our sleeves and get on with the work of contributing? Thanks for reading! MythBlast authored by: Craig Deininger  has been writing for the JCF Mythblast series since 2018. He has taught at Naropa University, Studio Film School in Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he earned an MFA in poetry. He also earned an MA and PhD in Mythology and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He has counterbalanced his studies with manual work in fields like big ag farming, landscaping, commercial fishing, trail-building, framing houses and so on. He is grateful to have somehow made it to later life after too many outdoor misadventures in backpacking, rock climbing, hiking and, especially, trying to get too close to wildlife that doesn’t want to be gotten-too-close-to. His poetry has appeared in several literary magazines including The Iowa Review , and his first book of poetry Leaves from the World Tree was co-authored with mythologist Dennis Patrick Slattery and published by Mandorla Books. This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Magician. Latest Podcast This lecture, “Mythology – The Path (Part 2),” was recorded in 1980 at Yellow Springs, Pennsylvania. In it, Joseph Campbell continues the discussion from Part 1, presenting mythology as a path of discovery. Here, he focuses on the search for “the self,” drawing on Jungian language and archetypes. The recording also includes a brief Q&A following the lecture. Please note: around the 42-minute mark, the original tape speeds up slightly. While this affects the sound quality, the content of Campbell’s talk remains intact. Host Bradley Olson introduces the lecture and offers commentary at its conclusion. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "It has been customary to describe the seasonal festivals of so-called native peoples as efforts to control nature. This is a misrepresentation. . . . No tribal rite has yet been recorded which attempts to keep winter from descending; on the contrary: the rites prepare the community to endure, together with the rest of nature, the season of the terrible cold. And in the spring, the rites do not seek to compel nature to pour forth immediately corn, beans, and squash for the lean community; on the contrary: the rites dedicate the whole people to the work of nature's season." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces , 384 Living in Accord with Nature See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Still from Hayao Mizayaki's The Boy and the Heron This mythblast is not exactly about Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron , but it is inspired by the “affects” of this recent film which won the best animated feature category at last year’s Golden Globe and Academy Awards. I suspect audiences are drawn to the film because it demonstrates with uncanny precision (and imprecision!) the encounter with the dream-world (aka: underworld, aka: unconscious) through the agency of the archetype of the trickster figure. On that note, now is a good time to recall Joseph Campbell’s apt correlation between dream and myth: “Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream” ( The Hero[n] with a Thousand Faces, 18). To better suit the following context, allow me to restate: Dream is the expression of the personal unconscious, while myth is the expression of the collective unconscious, within which the archetypes reside. The weirdness of the dream Surely there are other, rare films that are also (literally) dreamlike. But as for the rendering of the actual experience of encountering the unconscious via the dreaming state, The Boy and the Heron is, in my opinion, unsurpassed. There are only two things I feel I need to point out to support this claim. The first is the film’s accuracy in recreating that particular kind of imagistic and narrative weirdness that we encounter in dreams—and I emphasize “weirdness” because it is of a sort that is strangely familiar (perhaps having something to do with weird ’s etymological source: fate). The second criterion is the unmistakable duplicitousness of the story’s trickster, the heron, who guides the boy (and us) down a path that begins on ordinary-enough terms, but then transforms into something very different along the way. Furthermore, the transformation (of both environment and guide) proceeds by such negligible degrees that we suddenly find ourselves, late in the game, startled and bewildered, lost deep in unconscious terrain with no real idea of how we got there. This mini-awakening, this recognition that things have sneakily transmuted without our having noticed (or even questioned) until it is blatant, is common to dream-experience. And guess who’s responsible, so to speak, for shuttling us to and fro, in and out, of these different states of consciousness and perspective, these moments of seeing, moments of blindness, and so on and so forth? That’s right, as will soon be (partially) seen, the trickster. But for now, note that these mini-awakenings or glimpses into the unconscious indicate that, for a moment, an aspect of the unconscious has been made known to the conscious due to the light, so to speak, that we’ve thrown into it. And note also that this light can penetrate only so far before it is simply stopped, as if at gates specifically designed to preserve the mysteries of the unconscious from our making a mess of them—or, more likely, to preserve us from being annihilated by them. Either way, this dynamic highlights a central aspect of the archetype (indeed, of all archetypes)—namely, that just as the exception is always inherent in the archetype, likewise there is always that part of the archetype that eludes our knowing altogether. We could call this its depth. And this is kind of a good thing, because when we find ourselves at those gates, gazing into the awesome face of the unknown, we are in that moment subsumed by the beautiful condition of being lost, and hopefully, at a loss for words or thoughts or anything, really. For at last we are capable of pure exploration and discoveries. At last the soul finds itself in the room with its preferred kind of treasure: wonder, novelty, renewal and, of course, experience (which is the soul’s chief currency—both in value and in the flow or direction [cf. “current”] of its evolution). Get your snake oil here, but maybe don’t drink it I won’t address The Boy and the Heron ’s specifics because that would flatten the experience and waste time. So instead, in signature trickster fashion I’ll just say trust me. Check out the film. You might as well, the risk is small enough, even if I am lying about the whole thing. And so it is with the trickster, whose scale of severity ranges anywhere from Curly and Mo boinking each other in the eyes to Loki engineering the destruction of an entire pantheon along with its cosmos. Regardless of scale, the trickster jars the ego into a new perspective by subjecting it to frustration, embarrassment, terror, confusion, ruin and sundry other psychologically unpalatable flavors. But the trickster may also ease the ego into new terrain through all kinds of slippery maneuverisms and sleights-of-hand. Either way, new perspectives are rendered in which, for better or worse, we are suddenly not so central or significant as we had formerly presumed, and our power of influence is indeed meagre if not entirely absent. The trickster jars the ego into a new perspective by subjecting it to frustration, embarrassment, terror, confusion, ruin and sundry other psychologically unpalatable flavors. The superlative metaphor for this absence of influence is probably death, which we find in the myth of Hades and Persephone. Here, in one fell swoop, we (and “we” are the Persephone-figure in this myth) are simply taken without any say in the matter, without any means of escape or of fighting it off and that, as they say, is that. Well, the (probably) good news is that another job of the trickster (who, of course, is a moonlighter!) is to guide souls into (and sometimes out of) the underworld. In classical terms this auxiliary role [Gk. psychopomp ] is played by Hermes. Furthermore, he is the inciter of dreams through so-to-speak taps on the unwitting heads of all sleeping things with his dual-serpentine helix caduceus staff whose history traces even farther back beyond Greece into ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. And so, this deity, like Miyazaki’s heron, is both the personification of, and the host of, the psyche’s transport to and fro between worlds which are distinguished less by physical contents and more through psychic encounters as the perspectives we inhabit within whichever particular state of consciousness we literally find ourselves. This, I think, is the great value to all the trickster’s antics. It’s just that (as with all things) it comes at a price. Thanks for reading... MythBlast authored by: Craig Deininger  has been writing for the JCF Mythblast series since 2018. He has taught at Naropa University, Studio Film School in Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he earned an MFA in poetry. He also earned an MA and PhD in Mythology and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He has counterbalanced his studies with manual work in fields like big ag farming, landscaping, commercial fishing, trail-building, framing houses and so on. He is grateful to have somehow made it to later life after too many outdoor misadventures in backpacking, rock climbing, hiking and, especially, trying to get too close to wildlife that doesn’t want to be gotten-too-close-to. His poetry has appeared in several literary magazines including The Iowa Review, and his first book of poetry Leaves from the World Tree was co-authored with mythologist Dennis Patrick Slattery and published by Mandorla Books. This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Trickster . Latest Podcast Enuma Okoro , is a Nigerian-American author, essayist, curator and lecturer. She is a weekend columnist for The Financial Times where she writes the column, “The Art of Life,” about art, culture and how we live. And is the curator of the 2024 group exhibition, “The Flesh of the Earth,” at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Chelsea, New York. Her broader research and writing interests reflect how the intersection of the arts and critical theory, philosophy and contemplative spirituality, and ecology and non-traditional knowledge systems can speak to the human condition and interrogate how we live with ourselves and others. Her fiction and poetry are published in anthologies, and her nonfiction essays and articles have been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Aeon, Vogue, The Erotic Review, The Cut, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazaar, NYU Washington Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and more. Her Substack, "A Little Heart to Heart" is a labyrinth towards interiority, exploring the fine line between the sacred and the ordinary in our daily lives. Find it at Enuma.substack.com and learn more about Enuma at www.enumaokoro.com . In this conversation, we explore Enuma’s journey, the ways myth, art, and storytelling shape us, and how we can use them as tools to reimagine both our personal and collective realities. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The dream is a private myth, and the myth is a public dream." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 18 Psyche & Symbol: The Origin of Elementary Ideas (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Psycho © Paramount Pictures 1960. All Rights Reserved. A chilling use of shadow in Le Manoir du Diable (1896) is often credited as the first instance of a vampire and horror film. Then shadows grew teeth, claws, and distorted reality in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). They returned as a revolution in Eisenstein’s intellectual montage in Battleship Potemkin (1925). All the while, Hitchcock lurked in the shadows, combining these film language techniques into a masterpiece of terror. He didn’t need fangs or an army, just a boy, a toilet, and a knife behind a curtain. What makes the shower scene so terrifying is that we don’t see anything in 52 anthological cuts and 78 camera setups, but during these 45 seconds, we feel and perceive everything. The terror in Psycho doesn’t come from what we see, but from how we see it: through keyholes and from behind curtains. In Psycho , the shadow isn’t just a cinematographic choice—it’s a confession. The true genius of the Oedipal buffet of Psycho lies in the mirror it holds up. We scream at our own shadows. Psycho forces us to look at the parts of ourselves we’d rather flush away. Carl Gustav Jung claims that everyone has a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the darker and denser it is. Master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, an archetypal trickster, in 1960 delivered the buried Id from the basement of Freud’s unconsciousness. Not as a metaphor, but literal embodiment of the monster, suppressed, neglected, and hidden in forgotten parts of the psyche, to haunt cinema and mass media brought up generations. Psycho is not just a thriller noir; it is a cinematic trapdoor of the shadow archetype, summoned from Jungian theory and sprinkled with the anxiety of Freudian repression in the most unsettling taxidermy collection of an empty Victorian house, ruled by the dead body of the Mother. Shadow mother What makes Norman Bates, the cinema’s most well-mannered monster, truly terrifying isn't just the fact that he keeps his mother's corpse in the cellar. Still, even for Hitchcock, it’s very unsettling. Norman embodies something much deeper and darker—the double agent’s secret operations of his shadow, of which the ego is not aware. Jung’s shadow archetype represents the unacknowledged parts of the ego; the wild, dark urges we dare not name, that refuse to go away. They skulk about in our dreams, our projections, and in Norman’s case, in a wig and dress in the upstairs bedroom. Mother Bates, though dead, has never felt more alive. She’s the shadow incarnate: a grotesque fusion of Norman’s guilt, fear, desire, and trauma. He has not only repressed her but has also absorbed her by splitting his ego in half, giving her a voice and a knife. His denial of Mother’s death is both symbolic and clinical. He is not merely haunted; he is the haunting. Christopher Vogler, who adapted Campbell’s monomyth for modern narratives, notes that the shadow archetype is psychosis incarnate, and Jung might argue that Bates represents the shadow’s possession of the ego. [Editor’s note: JCF will host a webinar featuring Christopher Vogler on September 13. Click here for details]. To an ego identified with the superego and persona, the shadow reeks of decay and epitomizes evil. By opening to the experiences of the shadow, an individual becomes whole, but it's a pact with the devil. Because you never know what you might find in the basement. Norman Bates wasn’t born in a vacuum; he was stitched together from the deranged psyche of one of America’s most notorious murderers: Ed Gein. Hitchcock saw in him the raw materials for a new kind of cinematic killer, the one whose shadow projects onto his Anima. Norman, played with eerie charm by Anthony Perkins, lives in a dilapidated Gothic house, perched above its basement as a metaphor for psychological repression. His mother, dead and buried in theory, yet haunting every inch of his psyche, has become his alter ego. Not symbolically. Literally. She is a shadow anima, a persona he wears, a judge and executioner lurking behind the familiarity of everyday life. Toilet and abortive hero Freud’s concept of das Unheimlich is a German term for “the familiar made frightening.” Hitchcock’s genius makes the everyday known terrifying. Psycho features the first American film scene of a toilet flushing. Judged by rating committees at the time, this was scandalous. Toilets, like shadows, are repositories for the unwanted: body and moral filth. Marion Crane, the heroine killed halfway through the film, seeks to wash away her sin in the infamous shower scene. Instead, she is butchered. The knife is a phallic metaphor, slashing through the purification of sins. What is truly disturbing is the setting of the scene. Bathrooms are private, vulnerable spaces—we’re naked, unarmed, and rinsing ourselves clean. Hitchcock doesn’t just break that boundary, he stabs right through it. Fear isn’t just felt in the mind; it’s imprinted into the nervous system. That’s why we lock the bathroom door, sing in the shower, and keep our eyes focused on the curtain, decades later, even if we live alone. Referring to Campbell’s monomyth, Marion’s path begins with promise. She is the reluctant hero who steals money from her boss, crosses the threshold by fleeing Phoenix, and enters the road of trials via rainy highways and a creepy motel. Vogler would call this a narrative subversion. Marion’s hero’s journey is aborted, leaving Norman as the inheritor of the journey. Yet his path is an inverted monomyth: instead of integration, he descends into fragmentation. Shadows don’t stay quiet; they leak, lash out, and sometimes, put on a wig and stab people in the shower. Norman never confronts the shadow; he becomes it as his chakras are blocked. Shadows don’t stay quiet; they leak, lash out, and sometimes, put on a wig and stab people in the shower The root of all evil Eastern philosophy describes chakras as energy centers along the spine; each associated with psychological states and spiritual balance. The root chakra (Muladhara) governs grounding and connection to the maternal. Norman’s root chakra is in absolute disarray. He is untethered, both physically (living alone in a liminal space of his creation) and psychically (possessed by a maternal figure). His sacral chakra, linked to desire and sexuality, is similarly corrupted. His voyeurism indicates a twisted sexual development. Viewed through a Jungian lens, Norman Bates is a man who has refused to integrate his shadow, becoming its puppet. Freud would diagnose him with psychosis and multiple personality disorder, and a Hindu sage might suggest root chakra meditation. The brilliance of Psycho lies in the layers of story and a Hitchcockian myth it creates. Like Norman’s house, it is a structure of levels: conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. And somewhere, in the creaking attic or a damp basement, our own shadows wait patiently to be seen. Did Hitchcock take one archetype to create a modern collective unconsciousness, or did he simply illuminate the curtain of our own shadows? The next time you watch Psycho , don’t just scream at the shower scene. Ask yourself: what’s hiding in your cellar that makes you terrified of things behind a curtain? MythBlast authored by: Dr. Lejla Panjeta  is a Professor of Film Studies and Visual Communication. She was a professor and guest lecturer in many international and Bosnian universities. She also directed and produced in theatre, worked in film production, and authored documentary films. She curated university exhibitions and film projects. She won awards for her artistic and academic works. She is the author and editor of books on film studies, art, and communication. Her recent publication was the bilingual illustrated encyclopedic guide – Filmbook, made for everyone from 8 to 108 years old. Her research interests are in the fields of aesthetics, propaganda, communication, visual arts, cultural and film studies, and mythology. https://independent.academia.edu/LejlaPanjeta This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Shadow. Latest Podcast In this episode we are joined by Dr. Mark Epstein - psychiatrist, author, and pioneer in integrating Buddhist psychology with Western psychotherapy. With decades of experience, Mark has transformed how we understand the mind, self, and emotional healing. His books, including Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, Open to Desire, The Trauma of Everyday Life, and The Zen of Therapy offer a profound synthesis of Eastern spiritual insight and Western psychological depth. Influenced by teachers like Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein, Mark shows us how, psychotherapy, mindfulness, and compassion can lead to deeper self-awareness. In our conversation, we dive into Mark’s journey, how both Buddhism and Western psychology can illuminate the stories we live by. We also discuss his connection to Joseph Campbell, and how myth can serve as a powerful vehicle for self-discovery and personal growth. For more information about Mark and his work visit http://markepsteinmd.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The demon that you can swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply." -- Joseph Campbell Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers , 202 Hell & Transcendence See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Sherlock (2014) BBC One Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective Sherlock Holmes is designated as the most portrayed human character by the Guinness Book of Records. Jeremy Brett, who warned that Sherlock Holmes can devour an actor’s soul and leave no room for the original landlord, said that it is the most difficult role to play, and named him—You Know Who. Are the eccentric, ingenious ideas and methods of this character indications of a sick or wise man? BBC’s modern adaptation of Sherlock  (2010–2017) is one of the most compelling and innovative interpretations within the digital socio-cultural framework of the 21st century.   Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes is not merely a master of deduction but embodies what Carl Gustav Jung defined as the Sage archetype–an incarnation of wisdom, knowledge, and insight. What makes this portrayal particularly fascinating is how the Sage is simultaneously embraced and subverted. While Holmes possesses an undeniably brilliant mind, he is also emotionally crippled and uninterested in the everyday functioning of social conventions that include human interaction.  Prisoner of intellect  Jung’s Sage archetype represents the thirst for reasoning, truth, and illuminating the unknown. For Sherlock human intuition is nothing less than pure mathematics and logic. He muses, “ Intuitions are not to be ignored … They represent the data too fast for the conscious mind to comprehend ”  (S4E1) Sherlock’s deductive prowess and encyclopedic knowledge make him a modern Wise One. But Jung also warned that the Sage, detached from humanity, could become a prisoner of his intellect. Cumberbatch’s Sherlock embodies exactly this paradox. He is a genius who can solve any puzzle, but human connection is a conundrum for him. He lacks phronesis, what Aristotle referred to as the practical wisdom that combined with theory makes the true philosopher-king. But, for what he lacks in human interactions, he compensates with his eidetic memory, pure use of intellect, obsessive detailing, witty sarcasm, as well as zero tolerance for any stupidity or mind-slowness and his egocentric behavior.  Joseph Campbell’s concept of monomythic narrative structures is evident in Sherlock . Campbell’s Wise Mentor figure traditionally aids the hero on their quest. This Wise One guides others, while he himself is the hero. He stands at the edge of Campbell’s return with the elixir stage in possessing great knowledge but reluctant to share it meaningfully. In that sense, Holmes is, according to Northrop Frye’s archetype narrative modes, an ironic Sage. Unlike our comprehension of the traditional Sage, as Santa Claus, Merlin, Dumbledore, Gandalf or Yoda, this wise man lives on our streets and breathes the same urban smells as we all do. While traditional sages often hold a spiritual or religious authority, their modern counterparts, such as Sherlock, may derive their authority from street-smart wittiness, arrogance, and problem-solving skills.  Holmes is like a yogi immersed in the yang energy of the mountain, isolated from the world and devoted to the mystical where good and evil do not exist. The social and ethical dualities of this principle do not exist in his “mind palace.” He is detached from his emotional apparatus. This Sage is the most unrealistic of all character types, because he possesses something extraordinary and dwells in the domain of the mystical, which is inaccessible to ordinary mortals. Sherlock’s brilliance is indisputable, but his inability to grasp basic human customs, spiced with the unsurpassed British black humor, turns the Wise archetype into a source of comedy. This Holmes is not serenely detached, but emotionally complex, with blunt displays of haughtiness, egotism, and antisocial behavior. Cumberbatch’s Holmes is both a genius and a fool–enlightened and gifted in some ways, utterly clueless in others, and struggling with emotional intelligence, yet despite his deductions having it.  While Holmes possesses an undeniably brilliant mind, he is also emotionally crippled and uninterested in the everyday functioning of social conventions that include human interaction.  Emotions buried by wisdom  His famous line “ Oh, do your research! I’m not a psychopath, I’m a high-functioning sociopath” (S3E3) points to his analytical introspections and has been the kickoff to many theories on his mental state. But his actions speak much more than words. “I don’t have friends,” he says to Dr. Watson. “I only have one!” The careful development of this character makes him take a journey from a machine-like cold sage to a normal human being (although he would never admit it.) To protect those he cares about, Sherlock sacrifices himself. He throws the American double agent who harassed Mrs. Hudson several times out of the window until he was on the verge of death, with the diagnosis he established before calling an ambulance. In the end, he saves the woman who beat him and with whom he fell in a complicated mental BDSM relationship. And to protect Mary, the woman loved by his only friend, Dr. Watson, Sherlock will blow the brains out of an unarmed Magnussen, in front of the British government, because his memory keeps the evidence against her.  By the time the others catch up that he cares, he has already saved the world from true psychopaths. The Wise One must reserve from emotional entanglements to perceive the truth. Sherlock Holmes, although an irritating know-it-all, is practically a superhero in the age of dark digital crime and primordial evil, which he tries to solve and, with his deduction and sometimes illegal methods, bring to light and justice. He simply has no time for feelings; his superpower lies on the other side of the spectrum. This emotional distance is what enables him to embody the Sage archetype, as true wisdom often demands an ability to remain above sentimentality.   The Sage in the modern world  The BBC’s Sherlock  offers a fresh, witty, and ironic take on the Wise archetype. By juxtaposing Sherlock's exceptional intellectual capabilities with his social awkwardness and moral ambiguities, the series offers a more complex and nuanced portrayal than traditional representations. Its success lies in its ability to engage audiences through a relatable, flawed, yet brilliant protagonist, enriching the understanding of the Sage archetype in modern popular culture. While Holmes fits Jung’s description of the Sage in pursuing truth with relentless dedication, his wisdom is incomplete. Aristotle would argue that true wisdom requires balance, something Sherlock lacks. Campbell might suggest that he is a mentor reluctant to take his own advice, while Frye’s irony highlights the comedic contradictions of a hyper-intelligent man who can solve crimes but has no interest in human relationships.  Sherlock forces us to reconsider what it truly means to be wise: is it knowing everything, or knowing how to be human? Ultimately, he redefines the Sage archetype by enriching contemporary views on wisdom and influencing how extraordinary characters are portrayed in media today. MythBlast authored by: Dr. Lejla Panjeta  is a Professor of Film Studies and Visual Communication. She was a professor and guest lecturer in many international and Bosnian universities. She also directed and produced in theatre, worked in film production, and authored documentary films. She curated university exhibitions and film projects. She won awards for her artistic and academic works. She is the author and editor of books on film studies, art, and communication. Her recent publication was the bilingual illustrated encyclopedic guide – Filmbook , made for everyone from 8 to 108 years old. Her research interests are in the fields of aesthetics, propaganda, communication, visual arts, cultural and film studies, and mythology. https://independent.academia.edu/LejlaPanjeta This MythBlast was inspired by Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine and the archetype of The Wise One. Latest Podcast In this episode, we welcome Maria Souza - Comparative Mythologist, poet, educator, and host of the Women and Mythology podcast on the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s MythMaker Podcast Network. Maria’s work bridges myth, ecology, and the sacred. With advanced degrees in Comparative Mythology and Ecology & Spirituality—and years working in the Brazilian Amazon with Indigenous communities—she brings a unique and powerful perspective to the relevance of myth in our lives today. Her book Wild Daughters explores feminine initiation through myth and poetry, and her workshops and mentorships help women reclaim archetypal wisdom and sovereignty through mythic storytelling.In this rich conversation with JCF’s Joanna Gardner, Maria reflects on her journey, the deep initiatory stories of the feminine, and how myth can be a living, healing force for our time. Find our more about Maria at https://www.womenandmythology.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Nevertheless, the ultimate realization, which the sages have celebrated, is that the god worshiped as though without is in reality a reflex of the same mystery as oneself. As long as an illusion of ego remains, the commensurate illusion of a separate deity also will be there; and vice versa, as long as the idea of a separate deity is cherished, an illusion of ego, related to it in love, fear, worship, exile, or atonement, will also be there. " -- Joseph Campbell The Masks of God, Vol. II: Oriental Mythology , 14 The Goddess Embodied See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

The Godfather © Paramount Pictures 1972. All Rights Reserved. What better way to explore the power of the shadow—its consequences of inflation—than in The Godfather (1972), a film consistently ranked among the greatest ever made. Given its exalted place in the canon of cultural literacy, I would be surprised to learn of someone who hasn’t seen it, but, nevertheless there are, of course, spoilers in this essay if you haven’t. The Godfather doesn’t simply entertain—it mythologizes. It allows audiences, often unconsciously, to witness the movement of archetypal energies across the screen without fully realizing what they’re seeing: epic tragedy worthy of an ancient Athenian stage. From the very first scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece, we’re confronted with a stark truth: the shadow is not something to be trifled with. It is not an archetype we can summon, impress into service, and dismiss at will. The shadow is not in our employ. The movie gives us a glimpse of light in the beginning, a Sicilian wedding under a bright summer sun—people dance, music fills the air, and the Corleone family gathers in its full glory. It’s a world awash in celebration, in wealth, in the illusion of harmony. But inside the house, the shadow is already at work. Don Vito holds court in his study, granting favors in a room made dark by blood-red mahogany walls, dim lights, and drawn blinds. “I believe in America,” the undertaker Bonasera tells Don Corleone. Once, perhaps, but its promise has betrayed him. Justice has failed, blind not to class or influence, but blind to the truth. But Bonasera comes to Don Corleone, not as a loyal subject, but as a man who wants to benefit from the function of the shadow without the cost of initiation into it. Bonasera is too calculating, too disingenuous, too much of a tourist in the Shadowlands to realize that he cannot cajole or entice the shadow into his service. Bonasera didn’t offer kinship, or reverence, or respect—only a transaction. Don Corleone, embodying the old-world ethos of honor and reciprocity, rebukes him: “You never wanted my friendship … and now you come to me and say, ‘Don Corleone, give me justice.’ But you don’t ask with respect.” Before Bonasera can receive the shadow’s gift, he must undergo ritual humiliation. He must plead for friendship, kiss the Don’s hand, bow to the archetype, and accept its cost. The shadow is not a service—it’s a structure, and the archetype must be respected. One cannot express it without consequence. Bonasera, unlike the baker Vito Nazarine, who, happy in his relationship to Don Corleone and honored to supply the elaborate wedding cake, could not integrate the shadow consciously in his life and therefore wound up in service to it. the shadow is not something to be trifled with. It is not an archetype we can summon, impress into service, and dismiss at will. The shadow is not in our employ. Outside, the guests keep dancing We in the audience, like the family at the wedding, are waiting in anticipation. We feel the tension, we have an intuition that someone important enough to change schedules, delay rituals, add members to the family as if by fiat, is approaching. The most important one; the semi-prodigal son has not yet arrived. When Michael Corleone finally appears, he’s in military uniform and posture, a breast full of gleaming medals and a hero’s aura. At his side is his alabaster, all-American girlfriend—a refugee from another cultural world. We sense he is somehow removed from the rituals of the family shadow and it feels, at least for the moment, like relief. Michael, apparently, is the one who escaped the gravity of the shadow, who resisted its seductions of power, of wealth, of an inflated ego, but lived near enough to tell us exactly how ruthless and monstrous it can be. He bears witness, for those of us still bathed in light, of how dark the shadow can be; like that servant of Job, he only escaped alone to tell us. But what may never be doubted is that the light will soon fade. Shadow possession: “I’m with you now” With The Godfather , Coppola (and the novel’s author, Mario Puzo) gives us a trilogy worthy of Aeschylus or Sophocles. All the materials of tragedy are present: cruelty, loss, suffering, yes, but also—and perhaps most importantly—a questioning spirit and the desire to rise above the crushing momentum of tragedy that courses inexorably on toward a violent eruption. Don Vito is at the height of his power and influence. Politicians, judges, Hollywood studio bosses, all are powerless against his bidding. He is, as Aeschylus described Agamemnon, teleios—fulfilled, arrived at perfection—but as is the way of tragedy, this also means that Vito Corleone, indeed, his entire family, is simultaneously ripe for sacrifice. In mythic terms, Don Vito’s failed assassination by an underworld rival is more than a play for power—it’s the eruption of mimetic desire, as René Girard might say, in which rivalries escalate and violence seeks to nullify any and all competition. But it is also a botched sacrificial rite, an incomplete slaying of the king. And in myth, a failed sacrifice fails to prevent tragedy—in fact, it compounds it. The archetypal order has been disrupted. The rite is incomplete, the subsequent cost in blood and treasure will be borne by each of the five families. “Evil is unspectacular and always human,” wrote W.H. Auden , and “No one is ever spared except in dreams.” Michael’s confounding, all-too-human dream of love, evoked by compassion for his incapacitated father, opens the door to a shadow inflation—a possession by the shadow, which occurs when he kisses his hand and whispers, “I’m with you now, pop. I’m with you now.” Trying to preserve the old world, the old fallen world, trying to set it aright, Michael loses his own soul and gives himself completely to the shadow. Not only to his personal shadow, but to the collective shadow that drives his family. His subsequent murder of Sollozzo and McCluskey, the men responsible for the failed attempts on his father’s life, are often viewed as Michael’s point of no return, but that moment already occurred in his father’s hospital room. Sollozzo and McCluskey’s murders are the consecration of the shadow, the apotheosis of Michael’s shadow possession, the moment when the shadow takes complete control, and his distorted face and weeping sinuses perfectly reflect his similarly deformed soul. He has not merely avenged his father; he assassinated what remained of his former self. Initiation into a new life At the film’s end, Coppola stages a ritual of extraordinary irony. In a suitably gothic cathedral, Michael participates in the Catholic rite of baptism as godfather to his sister Connie’s baby. The priest recites solemnly: “Do you renounce Satan?” Michael responds “I do.” What plays out isn’t a baptism—it’s a sacrament of Shadow. “Do you renounce his works?” “I do renounce them.” All the while, Michael’s enemies are executed one after another. The cross-cutting is deliberate, liturgical: sacred vows in one world, murder in another. This is not hypocrisy—it’s a Napoleonic installation. Michael is not pretending to be virtuous while secretly wielding violence, he is—like his infant nephew—tragically, irrevocably, being initiated into a new life. He is no longer acting out the shadow—he has become the shadow, anointed by the blood of rivals and sanctified by the ritual sacrament. The organ reaches a crescendo, the baby cries, the murders cease. And it’s as though Michael Corleone—the bright, shining hero—never existed. All that remains is the shadow-Don receiving the final kiss of ultimate power. Aristotle believed that tragedy, through its depiction of suffering and the ultimate downfall of a hero, allowed the audience to vicariously experience intense emotions like pity and fear. Because the tragedy is vicarious and not personal, one may experience a release, a cleansing, a sense of emotional resolution the Greeks called katharsis. Joseph Campbell wrote in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space that the term referred to “a spiritual transformation brought about by participation in a rite. The mind, ‘cleansed’ of attachment to merely secular aims, desires and fears, is released to a spiritual rapture” (103). I argue that a constituent of that rapture included the acknowledgement of, and compassion for, the sublimely tragic aspects of human existence. In the words of one of my late, beloved undergraduate literature professors, “From Homer we received the foundations of Western civilization; from Aeschylus we acquired a deeper humanity.” Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson, PhD  is an author, speaker, and a psychotherapist. He serves as the Publications Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the host of JCF's flagship podcast, Pathways With Joseph Campbell. Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. OIson is also a depth psychologist in private practice in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived since 1995. Dr. Olson has graduate degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Olson offers mythic life coaching at What's Mything in Your Life ( bradleyolsonphd.com ) This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Shadow. Latest Podcast This bonus episode, The Origins and Functions of Myths, was recorded in 1974, though the location is uncertain. In it, Joseph Campbell explores mythology and folklore in relation to the "emergence of humankind." He emphasizes the importance of addressing these topics in this context, noting that myth is coequal with humanity and emerged alongside the human species. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The word “catharsis” (Greek katharsis; from kathairein, “to cleanse”), which in Aristotle’s usage denotes the effect of tragedy as “effecting through pity and terror a katharsis of these emotions," was a term which referred in the Greek religious vocabulary to a spiritual transformation brought about by participation in a rite. The mind, “cleansed” of attachments to merely secular aims, desires, and fears, is released to spiritual rapture." -- Joseph Campbell The Inner Reaches of Outer Space , 103 The Mythic Symbology of Release See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Valentine’s Day This month being the calendar home for Valentine’s Day, the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s MythBlast series is looking at The Lover At The Movies. The origins of Valentine’s Day are a bit murky, but they seem to reach back into the early Roman celebrations of Romulus and Remus and the fertility festival of Lupercalia observed on the ides of February, the fifteenth of February. Lupercus was an ancient Roman god worshipped by shepherds as the promoter of fertility in sheep and the protector of their flocks. Lupercalia was itself a modification of another, even older (dating back to Etruscan or Sabine cultures) springtime cleansing ritual, Februa, which lent its name to the month of the year. As Christianity was emerging in the empire, several Christian martyrs named Valentine or Valentinus were created during the first few centuries of the early church, and we don’t exactly know which one the fourteenth day in February is named for. Regardless, the modus operandi of the early Christian Church was to co-opt venerable pagan celebrations, rename them, and redefine them in Christian terms in order to make the new celebration seem familiar to pagans and facilitate a broader acceptance of Christianity. I am particularly fond of one legend that describes an imprisoned, soon to be martyred, Valentine sending a greeting of love to a young woman whom he adored. He signed the missive, “From your Valentine.” Not only is this a bittersweet story explaining the origins of the phrase, but it also discloses the distressing aspects of love—I recall Joseph Campbell remarking in A Joseph Campbell Companion that romantic love is an ordeal—aspects one would rather overlook for the contemplation of more exhilarating, affirmative, blissful aspects of love. Loving another and communicating that love is often not easy, especially if the thrilling, enthralling, novelty of love has settled into a predictable familiarity—perhaps just such an examination that Valentine’s Day affords. The Philadelphia Story It is certainly the examination that the 1940 movie The Philadelphia Story affords. I think this movie sets the standard for all romantic comedies. Its wit, its pathos, its celebration of love and, to borrow a phrase from Campbell, following one’s bliss is, I think, unrivalled in the genre. In addition, one has the pleasure of watching the unparalleled appeal of legendary actors performing at the peak of their thespian powers. The imperious Katharine Hepburn (of her cheekbones, one Hollywood wag said they were the greatest calcium deposits since the White Cliffs of Dover) overcame her reputation as box office poison. Cary Grant was his irresistible, dapper self. Jimmy Stewart won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as writer/journalist McCauley Connor, and Ruth Hussey flawlessly delivered brilliant, sparking lines of dialogue that helped the movie win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Released in 1940, the film has its baggage, of course, sprinkled with common early-mid twentieth century themes of male privilege, masculine philandering, implied domestic violence (which the movie attempts to atone for), and Uncle Willie’s creepy lecherousness. However, despite some of these limitations, we watch Katharine Hepburn in the role of the rich, entitled heiress, Tracy Lord, transcend gender role expectations and limitations of the time and assert her own independence in matters of the heart, spirit and mind. As the movie opens, we find Tracy Lord, a wealthy, arrogant socialite, preparing to remarry. Concurrently,her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven (Grant)—who, it’s implied, had until very recently been in rehab in Argentina—smuggles two tabloid reporters into the old Main Line Lord family mansion. It’s a harebrained idea to obtain exclusive pictures and copy of the nuptials in return for Spy magazine’s publisher killing an unflattering story about her philandering father while saving Tracy from public humiliation. As the wedding weekend unfolds, Tracy grapples with her renewed affection for Dexter, who, in overcoming his demons, has become kinder, patient, and more accepting of human frailty. He’s finally become the man that she always hoped he could be. As the weekend unfolds, she discovers Connor also has his charms and realizes that class and privilege should not dictate who one loves. Tracy recognized her unattainable standards and perfectionism stood in the way of her own individuation—her in-her-selfness, and the discovery of lasting, imperfect, human, love. As a wedding gift, Dexter gives Tracy a model of the yacht The True Love, on which they spent their honeymoon—a beautiful, sleek sailboat that she called “yar.” A yar vessel is quick, agile, easy to steer or reef the sails. In the eastern United States where this film is set, a boat is considered yar when it is well-balanced on the helm, quick, and handy. Regarding the model of The True Love , Tracy says, “My, she was yar!” “She was yar, alright,” Dexter replies. “I wasn’t, was I?” “Not very.” Tracy's dawning awareness, the inception of self-objectivity, eventually replaces an egoic self-subjectivity that, until now, always scuttled love and relationship. Tracy’s moment of revelation occurs in the middle of a Dionysian revel, her pre-wedding party: “Oh, it’s just that a lot of things I always thought were terribly important, I find now are—and the other way around, and—oh, what the dickens.” She realizes that her conventional, striving, ambitious, vain fiancé is not the man she loves. She loves Dexter, the patient, kind, clever man, who, like Eros emerging from Chaos, becomes the driving force of creation; in this case, the creation of self-hood in tandem. The two have not become one, but rather each has become, as Nietzsche put it, who one is. It's a dynamic and ongoing creative act of becoming, of actively shaping oneself through self-overcoming and embracing the uniqueness of oneself and the other. Love as a people-growing machine Rainer Maria Rilke w rote to a young poet that Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate — ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for a long, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice. Love is the inducement to individuation, to becoming who one is, and while one is engaged in that process, one finds that love brings out both the best and the worst of oneself. “The whole catastrophe,” as Zorba said. Love is the inducement to individuation, to becoming who one is But love won’t make us beautiful, it won’t make us complete, it won’t make us content with our fate, at least not on its own. That’s where the ordeal comes in. It’s not a struggle with another to mold, shape, or bend them into the person we want them to be. Instead, it’s a struggle with oneself, dealing with the shadowy selves that emerge in sometimes surprising or novel ways. The lover can be the incitation to that inner-self work. The more of it we do, the better love is. In the words of McCauley Connor, “That’s the blank, unholy surprise of it!” Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson, Ph.D.  is an author, speaker, and a psychotherapist. He serves as the Publications Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the host of JCF's flagship podcast, Pathways With Joseph Campbell . Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. OIson is also a depth psychologist in private practice in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived since 1995. Dr. Olson has graduate degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Olson offers mythic life coaching at What's Mything in Your Life ( bradleyolsonphd.com ) This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Lover . Latest Podcast This lecture, recorded at the Esalen Institute in 1981, features Joseph Campbell delving into Jung’s concepts of the Anima and Animus, the shadow in psychology, and the role of myth in helping us navigate unexpected life challenges. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "If you go into marriage with a program, you will find that it won’t work. Successful marriage is leading innovative lives together, being open, non-programmed. It’s a free fall: how you handle each new thing as it comes along. As a drop of oil on the sea, you must float, using intellect and compassion to ride the waves." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion , 47 Psyche & Symbol (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

"So none of us can fly? So what, do we all just punch and shoot? I can't think of a worse group of people trying to work together." The anti-heroes' journey Sitting in the theater for a superhero film doesn't usually come with an expectation of deep psychological reflection. The beats of the genre often follow Campbell's hero's journey, albeit often with just cursory attention to the underworld experience. Thunderbolts*  (2025) shoves the trends and tropes of the genre aside and dives headfirst into the darkness of the psyche’s underworld. ( Spoiler Warning: This essay contains major plot details from Thunderbolts*) The ragtag group of anti-heroes that form the Thunderbolts is the last team anyone would expect to save the world. If the Avengers were Nick Fury’s bold vision of assembling the best and brightest for an extraordinary mission, then the Thunderbolts are the ones who didn’t make the cut—the castoffs, the rejections. The Thunderbolts * collects characters from across the Marvel Universe, most of whom were simply ancillary to the larger story in which they first appeared.   Bob and the birth of the void Initially, the most unassuming of characters, Bob (Lewis Pullman), dressed in pale pajamas, soon consumes the whole of the story and quite literally consumes the very city. Bob is a superhero named the Sentry, possibly the most powerful of all humans in this fictional world. Bob admits that he wrestles with a darkness inside. He calls the aching darkness inside of himself "the Void”—a darkness fueled by childhood trauma. Ultimately, Bob’s Void manifests as an actual dark shadow monster—his greatest foe is the darkness within himself made real.   The attic of the mind: visualizing the psyche The film’s climax is a spectacular visual exploration of the unconscious psyche and the Shadow archetype that sits deep inside, violently resistant to being dethroned. As the Void emerges, Bob withdraws psychologically. He experiences a complete dissociative retreat into his internal landscape, visualized as a multi-storied building in New York. As the Void unleashes havoc upon the real city, Bob hides out in a corner of his mind, pictured as a comfortable childhood attic setting, hoping for the storm to blow past. Bob keeps repeating his mantra, "It will be over soon,” as the monster outside rages. The portrayal of the Void in Thunderbolts*  offers a powerful dramatization of the Jungian Shadow—those repressed, denied, and disowned parts of the psyche that operate with unnerving autonomy. As C. G. Jung writes , “Closer examination of the dark characteristics—that is, the inferiorities constituting the shadow—reveals that they have an emotional nature, a kind of autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive or, better, possessive quality” (8). The Shadow is not simply something we carry—it can carry us. Alongside Bob, Yelena (Florence Pugh) reflects this truth poignantly. Her pain constantly simmers just beneath the surface, shaped by loss, betrayal, and a lifetime of survival. She confesses, “There’s something wrong with me. An emptiness. I thought it started when my sister died, but ... now it feels like something bigger. Just a void.” Yelena’s memories reveal a long pattern of suppressing emotion and compartmentalizing trauma. She can take down supervillains yet is frozen when addressing her internal tortures. Only by plunging into Bob's manifested darkness is she empowered enough to open the doors in her internal void. Moreover, confronting her darkness then lets her guide Bob through his confrontation. Jung declares, "Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people" ( Letters , Vol. 1 , 237). The Shadow is not simply something we carry—it can carry us.   The path of integration This is the real confrontation Thunderbolts*  offers—not with an external villain, but with the inner monster, the disavowed self. Until the film’s climax, both Bob and Yelena have avoided confronting the Shadow. Avoidance will fail—again and again and again. The psyche does not forget what we choose to ignore. As Jung articulates , “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is ... But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected” (76). The longer we attempt to exile or exorcise our darkness, the more power it accumulates, festering in the unconscious until it bursts forth—often with destructive consequences. The Shadow will not be banished. It must be confronted, integrated, and ultimately embraced as part of the wholeness of the Self. Thunderbolts*  does not claim to be a psychological case study, nor should it. This is still a superhero film, shaped by genre conventions and cinematic spectacle. It does not diagnose or prescribe. Yet what it does remarkably well is give form and texture to the internal psychic landscape. It dramatizes the Shadow not as a single antagonist, but as an ensemble—each character a fragment of repressed guilt, shame, grief, or rage.   The superpower of love Monsters have usually been defeated with violence. But this monster is different. So, Yelena gathers the Thunderbolts to do something spectacularly rare in a superhero movie—embrace Bob and demonstrate love. The Void is ultimately defeated, but not by some cosmic superpowered combat, but by a group embrace. The Void is defeated by a hug. Psychologist James Hillman challenges  us: “[T]he cure of the shadow is a problem of love. How far can our love extend to the broken and ruined parts of ourselves, the disgusting and perverse?” (242). Are we brave enough to take that superpower of love that we so often extend to others and turn it around and apply it to the dark, fractured parts inside? How powerful is that love? This exploration is very personal, and I feel compelled to ask myself if I can love the unlovable parts of me that I’ve buried deep in my void. Even attempting to ponder that question—and wrestling to give an honest answer—begins the work of healing. I must see that dark, shattered part of me as worthy of love— my love. But this is not easy. These are the parts of myself I reject. I despise them. I’m often too aware of them, their horrible breathing and snarling in the back of my mind. These are the parts I am terrified others will discover about me. Hillman continues, “Loving oneself is no easy matter just because it means loving all of oneself, including the shadow where one is inferior and socially so unacceptable. The care one gives this humiliating part is also the cure” (242). The monster of the Shadow must be confronted, embraced, and hugged tightly. Am I courageous enough to fully love all of me—not just the parts I’m proud of—but the rejected, fractured, painful, and embarrassing shards of me?   Compassion for the shadow Thunderbolts*  doesn't offer us easy answers or quick fixes. Instead, it presents us with the most difficult challenge of all: the courage to turn toward our darkness with compassion rather than condemnation. In a world that encourages us to curate only our best selves, the film's greatest gift may be its reminder that true heroism begins not with flying or super strength, but with the willingness to embrace our broken humanity. The path forward isn't through denial or destruction of these dark aspects, but through the radical act of integration. We are all imperfect beings carrying our voids. But it's precisely in acknowledging this shared brokenness that we might find our way toward something approaching wholeness—not just for ourselves, but for the world we're trying to save. We do not emerge from the Underworld of our Shadow the same. Thunderbolts*  reminds us that redemption is not the denial of darkness, but the loving embrace of it. Campbell taught us that the hero's journey always requires a descent into darkness before the return with wisdom. Thunderbolts*  reminds us that this isn't just the stuff of myth and legend. It is the most essential work of being human. The treasure we bring back from our underworld is the capacity to love all of ourselves, shadows and light alike. In the underworld, in the Shadow, we discover the rest of us there, our whole self, wailing desperately to be loved. The Void is not just Bob’s. It’s ours. The hero’s journey, now more than ever, demands not capes or shields, but compassion. For ourselves. For our shadows. Ultimately, that may be the only superpower that truly matters. Important Reminder: If you are in darkness, you are not alone. If you or someone close to you is experiencing depression, emptiness, anxiety, or thoughts of self-harm, know that these feelings are real—and there is always a path to help. Reaching out is not a sign of weakness but an act of courage and strength. In the United States:  Call or text 988  — the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. This free, confidential service is available 24/7  for anyone in emotional distress or experiencing a mental health crisis. For more resources and live chat, visit 988lifeline.org . You are not alone. Help is always within reach. MythBlast authored by: Jason D. Batt, PhD ., is a technological philosopher, mythologist, futurist, artist, and writer specializing in mythologies of space exploration. He co-founded Deep Space Predictive Research Group, Project Lodestar, and the International Society of Mythology. He has authored three novels, edited four fiction anthologies, and his short fiction and scholarly work have appeared in numerous publications. Jason currently serves as Senior Editor for the forthcoming Journal of Mythological Studies, Co-Managing Editor of the Beyond Earth Institute Space Policy Review, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Space Philosophy This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Shadow. Latest Podcast In this episode we are joined by Dr. Mark Epstein - psychiatrist, author, and pioneer in integrating Buddhist psychology with Western psychotherapy. With decades of experience, Mark has transformed how we understand the mind, self, and emotional healing. His books, including Thoughts Without a Thinker, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, Open to Desire, The Trauma of Everyday Life, and The Zen of Therapy offer a profound synthesis of Eastern spiritual insight and Western psychological depth. Influenced by teachers like Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, and Joseph Goldstein, Mark shows us how, psychotherapy, mindfulness, and compassion can lead to deeper self-awareness. In our conversation, we dive into Mark’s journey, how both Buddhism and Western psychology can illuminate the stories we live by. We also discuss his connection to Joseph Campbell, and how myth can serve as a powerful vehicle for self-discovery and personal growth. For more information about Mark and his work visit http://markepsteinmd.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "In the myths, the shadow is represented as the monster that has to be overcome, the dragon. It is the dark thing that comes up from the abyss and confronts you the minute you begin moving down into the unconscious. It is the thing that scares you so you don't want to go down there." -- Joseph Campbell Pathways to Bliss , 73 The Adventure of Being Alive See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter