Anora (2024) Neon When I think of the Healer archetype, I picture the cover to John Lee Hooker’s 1989 album of that name. The Healer ’s cover features a shadowed photograph of this elder statesman of the blues with arms extending outward very much in the manner of a magician casting a spell. That blurry portrait is framed by a mineralized, geologic pattern reminiscent of Paleolithic cave sites from Altamira to Tierra del Fuego. Something instinctually tells me that healing is a boon of experience: to be granted the title of Healer, one must have lived thoroughly. The Healer, longed for by those in search of cures, is yet an intimidating, perhaps unrelatable, archetype, providing a vital act of care but not typically the protagonist of the myth. How then, you may rightly ask, can I suggest that the titular heroine of Sean Baker’s Anora (2024), a twenty-three-year-old sex worker played by Mikey Madison, is one of the great Healers we have seen on the silver screen in many years? The euphoria of eros Anora Mikheeva (she prefers “Ani”) lives in Brooklyn’s predominantly Russian-American enclave of Brighton Beach and is a stripper at a luxury Manhattan lap-dance club called Headquarters (HQ). After meeting Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (Mark Eydelshteyn), she becomes his paid escort for sexual services. The son of a prominent Russian oligarch, Vanya is a Peter Pan with G-Wagons and Maseratis he is not allowed to drive, spoiled for two decades and one year within the garden of earthly delights. When a marathon of partying leads to an impulsive private jet flight to Las Vegas, Anora’s adolescent Prince Charming proposes. Her rejoinder, “You want to make me your little wifey?”, is met with midnight vows at the Chapel of Love. Afterwards, they stroll down Las Vegas’ Fremont Street, declaring their nuptials to strangers and kissing rapturously beneath the gigantic LED-screened canopy of this pedestrian mall. The digital firework motifs overhead evoke a hypnotic potion of mythic motifs replicating the euphoria of eros. News of their marriage reaches Vanya’s parents, who promptly dispatch henchmen to facilitate an annulment. Vanya flees into the wintry light of day, leading to a scene of Looney Tunes hijinks (“She bites!”), but as one of them, Igor, forcibly restrains Ani, there is the discomfiting premonition of a sexual assault. Thankfully, this does not occur, but Anora’s tone markedly shifts, becoming, in my eyes, a film about the underworld journey that is archetypal to the initiation myths of Healers. The wound of the healer Joan Halifax (now Rishi Joan) assisted Joseph Campbell with his unfinished The Historical Atlas of World Mythology , and amongst his informal disciples has, in my mind, most vitally expanded upon his shamanic speculations. The evocative title of her 1982 survey, Shaman: The Wounded Healer , unconsciously materialized when I revisited Anora. In Halifax’s estimation, the shaman, while a “wounded healer,” is yet a healing healer. I began to see Anora anew. Her story, which I initially viewed as a Cinderella fairytale veering abruptly into nocturnal nightmare, became instead a spellbinding cinematic patterning of the shamanic initiation of a young healer. We would do well to remember Campbell’s insistence that “one of the oldest recorded hero journey tales—possibly predating Gilgamesh—is the Sumerian myth of the sky goddess Inanna’s descent to the netherworld” ( Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine , 60). Mikey Madison’s Ani metamorphoses in the film’s second half into a latter day Inanna undergoing the spiritual dismemberments of a healer’s shamanic journey as the motley search party finally discovers the delinquent Vanya at HQ. At the site where once her sexuality assumed borderline supernatural powers, Ani journeys through this erotic underworld and is forced into an archetypal confrontation with the monster in the labyrinth. In a drunken stupor, Vanya is receiving a lapdance from Ani’s nemesis Diamond, symbolic of the mythic dragon who hoards jewels and captured lovers. A fight ensues wherein Ani’s face is clawed by Diamond as Vanya is escorted outside. Her claw-marked cheek is symbolic of the dismemberment of the psyche undergone during shamanic initiation. With this “wound,” Ani is endowed with an increasing dexterity of agency in the face of Vanya’s betrayal and his parents’ attempts to dehumanize her. Anora as Inanna In “The Descent of Inanna,” Campbell charts how “at each of the seven thresholds that Inanna crosses into the underworld she must remove an item of clothing or jewelry so that ultimately she arrives at her sister’s kingdom naked, divested of all worldly items” ( Goddesses , 61). Paradoxically, Anora, rather than stripping her clothing as we have seen her do in the film’s first half, passes through the thresholds of the search for Vanya across New York’s nocturnal underworlds essentially robed in royal garments. With a flowing black mink coat, Madison’s character is unconsciously echoing the Tungus shamans of her distant ancestral heritage, who performed their own healing ceremonies whilst donning the hides of Siberian animals. The pink tinsel in her hair, while initially an accoutrement meant to enhance the sensorium at HQ, becomes during her journey a symbolic diadem, gleaming with the celestial light once worshipped as the domain of Inanna. Furthermore, as part of Anora ’s inversion of Inanna’s threshold clothing removals, during an exhausting walk along the waterfront on a frigid winter evening, Ani relents and eventually accepts Igor’s offer of a scarf to keep her warm; the very same scarf with which she was gagged earlier in the day. Yet in transfiguring this object of previous violence, Ani’s scarf is now a talismanic vestment of healing that aids in her heroic weathering of this long night in the underworld. Late in the film, Igor, to her annoyance, suggests that he prefers “Anora” to “Ani” because the Russian name translates to pomegranate fruit, and/or bright light. For me, these alternating definitions are symbolic of the duality within Anora the wounded-yet-healing Healer. The Persephonesque pomegranate, a Central Asian mythological symbol of erotic bliss, is also an antioxidizing fruit of medicinal value. But like the apple tree of Inanna that aids in her rejoicing in vulvic wonderment in the ancient Sumerian myth, the pomegranate aspect of Anora’s psyche is also symbolic of the bright spiritual light within that she has steadily been kindling throughout her heroine’s journey. Healing as alchemical Anora ’s ambiguous ending leaves the audience unsure if Ani has returned to her previous lifeways, or if her underworld journey has ended a cycle and she re-enters the home realm transfigured. Anora-Inanna the wounded healer is healing, and she offers us a cinematic archetype of the imperfections (but not impossibilities) of the mystic journey of care. Authentic healing is a conjoining of matter and spirit, yet so often our transactional mindset deceives us into believing the curative is solely achieved on the physical plane. The shamanic initiation of Ani is instead one wherein embodiment becomes sacrament. Her inner light may be dimly perceptible to the viewer, but imperfection’s visibility ought not to obscure the radiant wounds of the healer that Anora is becoming. As the alchemists say, the Great Work continues… The shamanic initiation of Ani is one wherein embodiment becomes sacrament. MythBlast authored by: Teddy Hamstra is a writer and seeker in Los Angeles. He is the recipient of a PhD from the University of Southern California, where he completed and successfully defended a dissertation entitled 'Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism.' Recently, Teddy has been working for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, spearheading their Research & Development efforts. As an educator and research consultant for creatives, Teddy is driven to communicate the wonder of mythological wisdom in ways that are both accessible to, and which enliven, our contemporary world. This MythBlast was inspired by Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine and the archetype of The Healer. Latest Podcast In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Max Klau to explore the intersection of leadership, service, and inner transformation. Max’s work centers on the transformational path of servant leadership: helping individuals integrate their inner life with outer impact. A Harvard-trained scholar in human development and leadership, Max has spent decades designing programs that support leaders who are committed to service. He most recently served as Chief Program Officer at New Politics Leadership Academy, where he worked to bring more military veterans and national service alumni into politics.His upcoming book, Developing Servant Leaders at Scale, offers a roadmap for growing compassionate, courageous leaders. Deeply influenced by Joseph Campbell, Max views leadership as a mythic process—an invitation to face your shadow, grow from adversity, and return with wisdom in service of something greater than yourself. In this conversation, we explore Max's journey, what true servant leadership looks like, and how building better leaders might just be one of the most powerful ways to heal our fractured world. To find our more about Max visit: https://www.maxklau.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The healing of the shaman is achieved through art: i.e., mythology and song. “When I began to sing,” said the shaman Semyonov Semyon, “my sickness usually disappeared.” And the practice of the shaman also is by way of art: an imitation or presentation in the field of time and space of the visionary world of his spiritual “seizure.” -- Joseph Campbell The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology , 244 The Goddess and the Madonna See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Nosferatu (2024) Maiden Voyage Pictures Robert Eggers’ 2024 masterpiece Nosferatu affords us a powerful mythic mirror of the collective spiritual climate that produced it. Beyond the personal or childhood issues that motivated Eggers to re-make Nosferatu, we must contend with the universal transcendent appeal of the story and characters as they open up the mythic dimensions of the film. Although it is hard to spoil a movie that has been made and remade several times over a hundred years, readers should be warned: there will be spoilers ahead for all versions. The archetypal imagery of Nosferatu reveals and conceals traumatic soul truths that reverberate through our own times. The painful insights that the film uncovers are again covered up by the very aesthetic spectacle of the film: the brilliant production design and pacing, the music and dialogue, audio and visual effects—all combine to constitute the mythic experience of the film. In the fantastic element of disgust and horror, where symbols begin to break down and rot, the proximity of the Real appears. Beneath the garb of imaginary horror, a traumatic truth speaks. Let us remember that in true mythology both logos and mythos are combined. Like body and soul, they are inextricably bound up, both literal and symbolic, imaginary and historic, everywhere all at once. A deep mythological reading of Nosferatu would thus involve us into another crucial dyad, that between individual psychology and the collective structures of our social reality. The creature is the shadow of mass murder, obscurely repressed and buried into the depths of the collective unconscious. Expressed in the form of the plague, this collective shadow is an actual evil of genocidal proportions. Real bodies and actual blood baths pave the way of a vampiric system that threatens the very existence of human life on earth. Real horror hides beneath an imaginary one. Therefore, to consider this film through the lens of horror is to contemplate the shadow of our collective evil, both within and without—are you not scared yet? Nosferatu is the healer archetype in its negative form; it heals by means of death, which puts an end to all fear and anxiety— along with everything else. Rather than being the healing element, Ellen is “healed” by becoming the scapegoat victim of a collective evil. ouroboric evil In the opening and ending scenes of Eggers’ Nosferatu , the fundamental mythos of the film is revealed in ouroboric fashion. Forming a circular ring of mythic violence, the alpha and omega of the film dramatize the sacrificial logic of its narrative vision. Beginning and end together shape a single action: the sacrificial rape and killing of the human soul for the sake of appeasing a monster. Drawing from the archetype of child sacrifice “to heal the land,” the anima figure, Ellen, is surrendered to the insatiable hunger of the Vampyre. This is the tragic and pessimistic core of the Nosferatu myth: the sacrificial death of the human soul, crushed and sucked dry by the evil spirit of the collective shadow of our present system. With the final image of the movie, where the Vampyre is melted into Ellen’s lifeless body, having drunk all her blood, the myth of Nosferatu is complete. Both moments form a ouroboric structure of an Evil nature. Any attempt to celebrate a triumph over this pyre of self-immolation is snuffed out, entirely belied by the priceless ransom paid to the demon: a human soul. Although the creature may be dead, Evil ultimately takes the day. The rats will continue to spread the plague following the inexorable laws of microbiology. Nowhere does the film show proof of the magical end of the plague. So the anima dies in vain. Evil claims a prize that is too dear to pay, certainly for Thomas as well as for most audiences who do not share the triumphalism of child sacrifice. Sacrificing virgins There are three most famous adaptations of Bram Stoker’s novel to film, beginning with Henrik Galeen’s 1922 script for F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror . In 1979, the theme was again picked up by Werner Herzog, who saw in it a great challenge for postwar German cinema, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht , translated into English as Nosferatu the Vampyre . Despite the innovations of both Herzog and Egger, in no version of Nosferatu does Ellen or “Lucy” survive. The sacrifice of the feminine is the most brutal change made in the mythic template of Nosferatu . In Stoker’s original ending, Mina does not die. Following traditional expectations, the destruction of the monster is placed squarely in the hands of the men, giving Jonathan Harker the satisfaction to decapitate the demon himself. The reactionary or “backward” ways of the dangerous archetype of child sacrifice is explicitly admitted by the film as the centerpiece of its horror. As Count Orlok says to Thomas when he touches upon the sacrificial image: “I fear we yet keep close many superstitions here that may seem backward to a young man of your high learning.” (31:52) Both at the beginning and end, as well as during the clandestine Romani ritual, the image of child sacrifice is established as the central mythic archetype of the Nosferatu myth. The new scene of the sacrificial rite— which the Roma themselves wished to end —makes the archetype of child sacrifice a more prominent image in Eggers’ version. This sacrificial scene with the Roma people is his original contribution to the Nosferatu myth. In no other version do we find such a scene with an important difference. The Roma people did not sacrifice their young girl to the demon. Their culture is not identified with the brutality of that ritual. Instead they use the sacrificial victim to lead them to the creature in order to kill it. The Romani offer a model for the only morally acceptable solution: kill the monster without killing the child! The presence of the Roma people as outliers or “errant wanderers” (31:42) gives sacrificial slaughter of children its “pagan” or pre-Christian cultural context. The wise old lie To modern audiences, needless to say, the sacrifice of children for the “salvation of the land” can only have its place in horror fiction. Such ritual practices are absolutely abhorrent to modern sensibilities and no amount of ‘neopaganism’ or ‘multiculturalism’ is going to change that evaluation. Thank God. Horror movies like Nosferatu, therefore, must work very hard to romanticize the gruesome sacrifice of an innocent victim. The chief propagandist of the movie’s ideology, as we should expect, is Dr. von Franz who repeats the famous Oedipal line to Thomas from the beginning of Murnau’s version: “Not so fast, my young friend! No-one outruns his destiny” (3:47). Now near the end of the story, Eggers has the Old Wise von Franz, hysterically filled with religious fervor, yell out to Thomas who desperately runs back to Ellen: “In vain! In vain! You run in vain! You cannot out-run her destiny! Her dark bond with the beast shall redeem us all. For when Sun’s pure light shall break upon the dawn: Redemption. The plague shall be lifted! Redemption. ” (1:57:22) The change from his to her destiny exposes the true horror of the film: the use of the scapegoat mechanism. Far from being vanquished, the genocidal evil of the Vampyre has been naturalized and normalized within the given social order. Branded as an archetypal means of healing salvation for the collective, the sacrificial slaughter of the scapegoat victim becomes the “cure” for the plague. Horror movies like Nosferatu, therefore, must work very hard to romanticize the gruesome sacrifice of an innocent victim. The healing of death means the death of healing. It is the death of the individual soul on the sacrificial pyre of a great collective evil. As Count Orlok had explained to Ellen, the banality of evil is rooted in its blind nature, a force that cannot be killed: “It is not me. It is your nature. […] I am an appetite. Nothing more.” (1:26:42) The death-cure is an evil concoction for the soul’s self-annihilation. It is a suicidal vampyre that finally takes Ellen. The sacrifice of the anima is the price we pay for the functioning of a genocidal status quo. It is the perpetuation of a vampyric cycle of collective violence which is being turned within and without. As the Arch-Shadow of our capitalist system, evil remains shrouded in the obscurity of an anonymous doctrine whose spiritual and material functioning is tearing our society to pieces, and turning our civilization into a soulless void. This is a crucial insight into the archetype of the shadow, as George Monbiot has expressed it: “Its anonymity is both symptom and cause of its power.” A system that profits from collective murder portends the realization of our worst fears and nightmares. In view of the true horrors of the world, we should be afraid. For we might be next. In the end, the sacrifice of Ellen does not offer any metaphysical solace. There is no tragic wisdom, no redemption, no epiphany, no consolation at all. Spellbound to the Vampyre of ideology, our soul will die; the only “healing” you can expect from the vampiric system is death. We have come to the final point where, as Campbell writes, “The human mind … has been united with the secret cause in tragic terror” ( The Mask of God, Vol 1: Primitive Mytholog y, 55). Without redemption, without rebirth from the Mother, the murderous violence of our collective shadow brings about a fundamental loss of soul, both for the individual as well as for the whole society. In the face of true evil Nosferatu can only tell us to brace ourselves: it’s time to be scared and horrified. MythBlast authored by: Norland Téllez is an award-winning writer and animation director who currently teaches Animation and Character Design courses at Otis College of Art and Design, Cal State Fullerton. He is also conducting a Life Drawing Lab at USC School of Cinematic Arts. He earned his Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2009 with a dissertation on the Popol-Wuh of the K’iche’ Maya, which he is currently translating and illustrating in its archetypal dimensions as the Wisdom of the Peoples. You can learn more at norlandtellez.com . This MythBlast was inspired by Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine and the archetype of The Healer. Latest Podcast In this first episode of Season Five of Pathways, titled “Metaphor as Myth and Religion,” Joseph Campbell speaks at the Jung Institute of San Francisco in 1985. At 81 years old, Campbell delivers the lecture with a sense of freedom and confidence. The talk closely reflects the themes of his book The Inner Reaches of Outer Space. Host Brad Olson introduces the lecture and offers commentary at the end. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The dominating idea of the sacrifice is that already noted, of a reciprocal dual offering: an eternal being is given life in this world, and temporal lives are returned to an eternal being. Through various modulations it is thereby suggested that an original downcoming or self-emptying of this kind produced the universe and that through properly conducted ceremonials reproducing that original act, life in the world is renewed." -- Joseph Campbell The Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume II: The Way of the Seeded Earth Part I: The Sacrifice , 75-76 The Hidden Dimension See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

From The Power of Myth An initiation is a shock. Birth is a shock; rebirth is a shock. All that is transformative must be experienced as if for the first time. “On Being Human,” Mythos I, Episode 3 I have often wondered about the best way to celebrate and honor the legacy of Joseph Campbell as a great scholar and teacher of myth. What is the best way to keep his corpus alive for our contemporary world? The approach one may take can range from fanaticism to outright rejection, following the motto “I honor whom I attack.” Perhaps there is a razor’s edge of critical appropriation that would help us cut through the opposition of both sides. We often talk about honoring this legacy or that person, but what does “honoring” even mean nowadays? Does it mean a worshipful conservation of what has been accomplished in the past? Does it mean the restoration and preservation of a bygone past? The antiquarian approach To the conservative approach to Campbell, nothing more is to be desired. It is perfectly happy conserving and preserving Campbell’s legacy such as it is, maintaining it as much as possible in the same state in which he left it. This conservative approach, using Nietzsche’s classification, we may call the antiquarian approach to Campbell’s work as a recepticle of the world of myth and history. Opening up this world of epic historicity, what is at stake in Campbell’s work is our fundamental relationship to the whole of human history. As mediated through Campbell’s monumental work, such as Masks of God , the epic history of humankind spreads before our eyes. From its primeval origins shrouded in the veils of prehistory, reaching back to our evolutionary origins, Campbell’s boon is an initiation into the archetypal imagination of epic mytho-history. In the way we pick up Campbell’s work, we express our philosophy of history; it demonstrates the way in which we understand the value and use of history for life. Going back to Nietzsche’s famous essay, sometimes dubbed “On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life”, in the second part of his Untimely Meditations, he brings up the point of the existential relevance of the pursuit of historical knowledge: “We need history, certainly, but we need it for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements” ( Untimely Meditations , 59). Nietzsche points to the existential needs and requirements which Campbell too came to demand from the living study of myth and history. The monumental approach After meeting the conservative or antiquarian approach to Campbell, a second option casts a more liberal line over the historic corpus, one which seeks to go beyond the necessary tasks of conservation and restoration. This second option attempts to bring the past back to life as if it were an ever-present reality. In a more liberal way, this second approach seeks, in Nietzsche’s words, “that the summit of such a long-ago moment shall be for me still living, bright and great—that is the fundamental idea of the faith in humanity which finds expression in the demand for a monumental history” (68). The monumental approach to Campbell’s legacy would also work to maintain this faith in humanity through the reanimation of Campbell’s voice in mythological studies, building on the conservation efforts carried out by antiquarianism. Revitalizing Campbell’s work for contemporary audiences, monumentalism will freely adapt Campbell’s voice to better suit modern cultural sensibilities, even if it means trimming the tricky political edges of his work. To make an author feel “relevant” to the times, the work must be rearticulated and remade to conform to the “new” timely forms of conventional wisdom. Both liberal and conservative approaches, for all their apparent differences, stand on one and the same ideological platform. In both cases an attempt is made to preserve a certain status quo, to constitute a mythic ism, in the understanding of Campbell’s work. Both liberal and conservative approaches fail to create any new vision of Mythological Studies. Both sides suffer from a certain infertility or barrenness of imagination, blind to the truly transcendent possibility which might sprout out of the decomposing corpus of Joseph Campbell. Where the antiquarian is doing her best to prevent decomposition with all the tools of the trade, the monumental approach tries to reanimate this corpse while being in denial that decomposition is taking place at all. Both sides demonstrate a form of stagnation, an incapacity to produce a new order of understanding of myth and history as a complete whole. This creative impotence is symptomatic of a certain ideological fixation which is shared by both sides. Promoting ultimate contentment with the status quo, the antiquarian and monumental approaches pose no threat to the “spirituality” that sustains the established order of things. The critical path of creative mythology Beyond these first two approaches, Nietzsche proposes a third option, which is bound to trigger the traps of both conservatism and liberalism alike. Failing to catch their usual fare, however, the ostensive opposition between liberal and conservative collapses into the ideological mire of their secret identity. Preserving the kernel of truth which belongs to each side, this third option invites the possibility of death and renewal combined. This “middle path,” working right through conventional oppositions, opens a transcendent possibility for Mythological Studies in the 21st century. Nietzsche called this third approach simply critical , “and this, too, in the service of life” (pg. 75). In this final dialectical approach, the devotion of the antiquarian and the zeal of the monumental are combined. This form of thinking exposes ideology to the sacrificial fires of truth in preparation for a new harvest of the mind. Campbell’s established corpus must be exposed to these flames of critical reflection, where he is offered as a sacrifice to the Gods. Upon this sacred altar of critical thinking, we must learn to surrender our precious belief systems; we must be willing to burn ideology to the ground. Let the flames of critical historical reflection perform their purifying function. As Nietzsche observes: For since we are the outcome of earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations, passions, and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is not possible wholly to free oneself from this chain. If we condemn these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alter the fact that we originate in them. (76) We can never regard ourselves as being totally free from the crimes of the past. For we cannot ever break the mythic chain of our existential historicity. As the stage of an event of truth, the critical approach opens the way forward into the new terrains of creative mythology. A legacy that will not expose itself to criticism will not amount to much more than conventional piety. In the hands of the liberal and conservative lines, rather than living myth, we can recognize a belief system or ideology which is in full support of “business as usual” and “the powers that be”. In his own way, Campbell follows Nietzsche’s critical approach, for he believed in using mythology, above all, as an instrument of personal liberation. He promoted the break from infantile dependence on all belief systems or mythic ideologies—including his own—as well as social prestige, wealth and power, or any other form of ego fixation. As we can read in Hero’s Journey : One of the functions of the rituals again is to kill that infantile ego. Then you have a death-rebirth motif. So the individual falls into the ground of his own being and comes out an adult, a responsible adult, who’s undergone certain transformations. (156-157) Nowadays, intellectual and emotional independence is a rare and precious achievement. Swimming against the floods of state propaganda, culture wars and relentless social media, this independent state of mind may seem like a miracle. In everyday life, however, we can find that it is rooted in a spiritual struggle of liberation from the status quo—a struggle which can only be waged in the service of truth—the cutting edge of critical thinking. As a consummate expression of freedom, an independent mind points to the most radical form of individuation, a process that can only take place within the commonwealth of an intellectual or spiritual community across the centuries . In the critical crucible of myth and history, the substance of true mythology ( vera narratio ) is mortified and dismembered, cooked and boiled down to its own most essence, where it becomes one with Campbell’s ultimate dream of a “New Science of Myth.” This critical phoenix of Mythological Studies can today be reborn as the study of epic mytho-history out of the antiquarian ashes of Campbell’s monumental achievements. MythBlast authored by: Norland Téllez is an award-winning writer and animation director who currently teaches Animation and Character Design courses at Otis College of Art and Design, Cal State Fullerton. He is also conducting a Life Drawing Lab at USC School of Cinematic Arts. He earned his Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2009 with a dissertation on the Popol-Wuh of the K’iche’ Maya, which he is currently translating and illustrating in its archetypal dimensions as the Wisdom of the Peoples. You can learn more at norlandtellez.com . This MythBlast was inspired by  The Power of Myth  Episode 6, and The Hero's Journey Latest Podcast In this episode, we are joined by Mollie Adler —a podcaster, writer, and existential thinker whose work deeply explores the complexities of human experience. As the creator of the podcast Back from the Borderline, Mollie challenges us to move beyond surface-level conversations and engage with our innermost selves. Influenced by mythology and the transformative work of Joseph Campbell, her approach is rooted in emotional alchemy—embracing the belief that from the ashes of suffering, something new can arise. Mollie often discusses mental health issues, encouraging her listeners to view mental health symptoms as messengers rather than flaws, guiding us toward alignment with the deepest yearnings of our souls. Drawing from her personal journey, she diverges from mainstream psychiatry’s tendency to "pathologize", offering instead a path of personal transformation and healing that acknowledges trauma, shame, and the challenges of modern life. Through her work, Mollie creates a space for vulnerable conversations, exploring the darkest parts of the human condition in pursuit of self-compassion and renewal. In this episode, she and JCF’s John Bucher discuss her life, her journey into mythology and soul-centered work, and how she has been influenced by Joseph Campbell. Mollie also opens up about her personal struggles with mental health and the topic of suicide. Listener discretion is advised, as sensitive themes are addressed. Find out more about Mollie here: http://www.backfromtheborderline.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "One of the functions of the rituals again is to kill that infantile ego. Then you have a death-rebirth motif. So the individual falls into the ground of his own being and comes out an adult, a responsible adult, who’s undergone certain transformations." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero's Journey , 156-157 The Hidden Dimension (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Teotihuacan - Pyramid of the Sun (Mexico, Aztec, first–second century A.D. Photo: Joel Bedford via Flickr.com. Creative Commons Logo Used under a Creative Commons: Attribution license. Many years from now, at the crossroads of our lives, our souls will want to remember the day our lives were given a fresh start. In such moments of reflection, the past, future, and present all seem to roll together as one. Like the mythical serpent that bites its own tail, giving birth and devouring itself at the same time, every ending turns into a beginning that is constantly renewing itself, delivering an end which never seems to stop. Likewise, at the dawn of the New Year, we invite such reflections from the mythic dimension where the present holiday becomes transparent to the eternity of time. From time immemorial, in the highlands of Mesoamerica, the spectacle of the winter solstice has offered precisely such a point of spiritual concentration and reflection on time. The very term for “sun,” “day,” or even “dawn,” is kinh , or k’ij for the highland Maya, a synonym for time itself whose glyphic form often appears as a kind of mandala “simulating a flower with four petals” (Miguel León-Portilla, Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya , 18). The k’ij or kinh is doubtless one of the central symbols of Maya mythology, expressing the all-encompassing nature of time in the consciousness of being. Eric Thompson saw in the eternity of Maya time “the supreme mystery of Maya religion, a subject which pervaded Maya thought to an extent without parallel in the history of mankind” ( Maya Hieroglyphic Writing , 155). The sun is thus the embodiment of the solar God Hunahpu in all its splendor, whose sweeping annual path, as Raphael Girard writes, “symbolizes the cycle of human life” ( Esotericism of the Popul Vuh , 134), as well as entire Ages of Creation, “which are ‘suns’ in the cosmogonic text of the Popol Vuh ” (León-Portilla 18). The course of the sun traces the descending path the Twin Heroes must take down to Xibalba, the Maya underworld, where they must endure the many trials of the Death Lords, including the sacrificial ball game at Crushing Ballcourt, before rising again triumphant as the resurgence of Sun and Moon reborn. Thus the winter solstice, which the highland Maya call rakan k’ij or “sun’s reach” (B. Tedlock 180), brings together the image of the dying and resurrecting heroes at their “reach” with the symbol of time itself. The astronomical event is thus an apprehension of the noumenal sense of temporality itself, an experience of becoming and transformation, which is concentrated on a point of illumination that eternally renews itself. The image of the Rising Dawn thus illustrates a fundamental insight that Joseph Campbell referred to as a decisive feature of true mythology: its transparency to the transcendent. As he writes with great emphasis in Inner Reaches of Outer Space : “for any god who is not transparent to transcendence is an idol and its worship is idolatry” (18). Yet it is rather obscure and difficult to say what exactly being “transparent to transcendence” really means, and it seems necessarily obscure and difficult, lest our description itself become “opaque to transcendence.” We must guard ourselves against the temptation of reducing the mysterium to something familiar and easy to grasp, which would turn it into an idol devoid of transcendence. This is a problem of communication that affects philosophy and mysticism alike. But this is also where the language of mythology may step in to bridge the gap between opposites in time. The Maya used a dual calendric system for measuring and marking time. In their integrated temporal scheme, roughly speaking, “feminine” and “masculine” forms of time-consciousness continuously overlap. What the shamanic ajk’ij or “day [sun or time] keepers” (B. Tedlock, Time and the Highland Maya , 47) call a proper “Calendar Round” signifies a strict mechanical combination of the two systems. Like two interlocking gears of sacred temporality, the solar and lunar calendars must work in unison while expressing two fundamental senses or intuitions of time, each following its own order of being with the other. On the one hand, a large 365-day solar cycle, known as the haab or macewal k’ij (“common days”), encircles the annual path of the sun and the collective rhythms of agriculture and seasonal change. On the other hand, a smaller 260-day cycle coils around a more internal and personal sense of time, where the psychic influences of that particular day and person are reckoned with and their meaning “sorted out.” This is the role of the sacred divinatory calendar, which came to be known as the tzolk’in , and is “sacred” in the original sense of being set apart , that is, of being able to carve a personal space for the mythic dimensions of the collective psyche.

Crossing the threshold (Gustave Doré, illustration of Dante Alleghiegi's Inferno, print, France, 1861) Looking at my life, I cannot escape a basic fact: my individual existence is enmeshed in the life of the collective—not only my immediate family and friends, but in the larger institutions and systems that give meaning to my existence as a citizen of the United States. Attempting to trace one's own “pathway to bliss,” therefore, cannot be a self-centered undertaking. Every decision and risk I take affects the collective of which I am a part. Therefore, an authentic pathway to bliss can never be solely a question of “personal responsibility,” as it has to do with the larger responsibility that the personal bears to the collective. The power of myth works like a “secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation” ,and the collective nature of this act is often taken for granted (Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3). That being said, we turn to the issue of  archetypes, which are contents of the collective unconscious. Carl Jung writes that an archetype “stirs us because it summons a voice that is stronger than our own,” and “[w]hoever speaks in primordial images speaks with a thousand voices” as the power of myth “transmutes [our] personal destiny into the destiny of mankind” (Jung,  The Spirit in Man, Art, & Literature , 75 | CW15: 82¶129). Both Campbell and Jung ultimately end up stressing the collectivity and universality of the psyche that lives within each individual, although for the most part, unconsciously. It is interesting to note that when Campbell came across psychologist Abraham Maslow’s list of “secular” values (“survival, security, personal relationships, prestige, and self-development”), he was struck at once by the fact that these are “the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for” ( Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation, 86). Unbridled individualism, far from being a road to “higher consciousness,” is a regressive path into the selfishness of nature. In things like survivalism, personalism, and selfish self-development, Campbell discerns precisely the type of values “that a mythically inspired person doesn't live for, because these are exactly the values that mythology transcends” ( Pathways to Bliss, 87). Mythology transcends these values simply because of the fact that it is a product of the collective mind working through individuals. As individuals participate in the collective substance of myth, there is not only individual development but a development of the universal self; the power of myth is the power to transmute personal or private experiences into historic events with collective significance. In the last analysis, this unfolding of mythic consciousness expresses the life of the collective spirit which constitutes a people, a nation, or even a species. As an individual gets caught in the archetypal powers of the collective, consciousness must submit to the rites and symbols of initiation to make sense of this new reality. The fundamental significance of the rites and symbols of initiation has little to do with egocentric self-development, and instead “introduces the candidate into the human community and into the world of spiritual and cultural values” (Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation , x). As individuals are “decentered” from their conscious, ego-driven idea of themselves, they are initiated into a larger context of cultural creation that affects the entire organization of human life. Initiation is a passionate engagement with our collective destiny, accepting the gifts and responsibilities that come from being a grown-up member of society. Initiation means leaving the state of apolitical innocence that characterizes the child, and orienting its consciousness to the universal dimensions of cultural life in the arena of the polis (city-state). Accordingly, it is characteristic of this stage of the journey that it should appear as a descensus ad inferos (“descent into Hell”) wherein we must confront archetypes of the “death-drive” ( thanatos ) at the root of the psyche. Both in puberty rites of initiation and shamanic forms of dismemberment, the hero experiences the sacrificial logic of the self in the underworld. As consciousness is submerged into the chaotic substance of the collective psyche, the “wholeness” of the ego is torn to pieces as its false myths are deconstructed on the sacrificial altar of the universal self. As Campbell describes the second act of the Hero’s Journey, initiation is where “[t]he most difficult stages of the adventure now begin, when the depths of the underworld with their remarkable manifestations open before him. . .” ( The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 91). The opening of the underworld pulls our consciousness down into the dark roots of our collective history and its mythic depths, where a deep sense of belonging emerges as a consequence of the descent. An initiation into the psychic realms of memory and forgetfulness, historic notions and long-lost ancestral shades, it is where we must give the blood of sacrifice that makes the dead speak again. The initiatory journey is certainly not one for the faint of heart; for rather than receiving encouragement or “positive vibes,” we are met with the signs of absolute negativity—the spectral afterlife of psychic inexistence—characterizing the collective psyche in its underworldly aspect. Taking us beyond our instincts for self-preservation, initiation into the depths moves our consciousness toward the knowledge ( gnosis ) of being itself, in the integration of existence with nonexistence, the conscious mind with the unconscious process. Therefore, it requires a full intellectual engagement with the “crazy” logic of the psyche—its negative and self-contradictory psycho-logic—as the spiritual life of the world soul in time.

Radha & Kṛṣṇa as Lovers, from the Gita Govinda (gouache on paper, India, c. 1780. Courtesy of the Walters Art Museum; used through a Creative Commons license) What the holy grail symbolizes is the highest spiritual fulfillment of a human life [...] It has to do with overcoming the same temptations that the Buddha overcame: attachment to this, and that, or the other life detail that has pulled you off course (Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living , 72) Masters of the art of living often remind us that even the highest spiritual fulfillment in life can’t stand apart from the journeying itself. One may be struck on the road to Damascus, but spiritual enlightenment is equally about what happens afterwards, and for the rest of your life. The secret of the art seems to lie within one's ability to reflect, a form of recollection that requires one to look back as well as continually move forward in time. But what is the fundamental insight that leads to the fulfillment of life? To begin with, the answer to this question cannot be something so complicated and obscure that only a few ‘mystic specialists’ could have access to it. On the other, it cannot be so simple and basic that it will lack the power to challenge our whole being, failing to push us on to our greatest adventure. Like the quest for the Holy Grail, the question of the meaning of life is designed to be both at once: completely mundane and familiar as well as absolutely transcendent, et fascinans . Like falling in love for the first time, along the journey to fulfillment, the whole world is transfigured, down to its meanest details, in the radiance of the One. The fact that marriage itself symbolizes such a paradoxical idea—mundane human cohabitation and the highest spiritual achievement—is not a total surprise. It is, after all, a cross-cultural concept that mingles the divinity of love with the profanity of everyday life. In its archetypal dimension, therefore, even the most ordinary marriage points to the miracle of the sacred—an insight into the marriage of the finite with the infinite, which holds the key to the lowest and highest mysteries of human life. A symbol of transcendence and immanence at the same time, marriage encapsulates our ultimate spiritual and biological fulfillment without contradiction.  Being both real and ideal, the profundity of a marriage does not require religious ideology to prove its vital essence and purpose. Joining the profane and the sacred, sexuality and love, marriage brings selfishness to extinction in the fusion with the greater whole. For this reason, marriage is also intimately linked with death, that mother of all ciphers, which is the hidden primordial background of all metaphysical experience.  Joseph Campbell was also keenly aware of the mysterious conjunction of marriage and death, from a mythological standpoint. He saw how its metaphysical content is carried through to its basic functions, the drive to propagate the species and the rearing of children: Marriage and Killing are related. The Marriage is the killing of your separateness. You’re becoming one part of a larger unity. You’re no longer the separate one. In Egypt Osiris begets his hero son Horus when he is dead. When you have begotten a son, you are now secondary. The son is primary and you’re there as a fostering presence; you are no longer number one. And this is death to your primary existence, do you see? So these two things are linked up very strongly, death and marriage ceremonies have a lot in common. The self-sacrificial logic of myth and ritual in this regard is particularly clear, but Campbell raises the stakes even higher: marriage is not a question of idle speculation but a premeditated act of killing one’s ego that begets a new life. Consequently, the sacrificial killing of the alienated ego results in the ability to foster the future of ourkind . In this puzzle of mighty opposites, ultimate fulfillment and the meaning of life may be grasped. As he developed the notion of the death drive ( todestrieb ), Freud saw in the processes of death more than an image; he saw in death a dynamic process of self-transcendence that is internal to life itself, not some intrusion from the outside which cuts life short, but an expression of life's inner drive to descendence which returns to its material origin: If we are to take it as a truth that knows no exception that everything living dies from internal reasons—becomes inorganic once again—then we shall be compelled to say ‘the aim of all life is death,’ and, looking backwards, ‘inanimate things existed before living ones.’ (Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle , 45-46) Jung for his part reckoned with the cultural resistance to this problem—so little understood in general and least by those who would benefit the most: We are so convinced that death is simply the end of a process that it does not ordinarily occur to us to conceive of death as a goal and a fulfillment, as we do without hesitation the aims and purposes of youthful life in its ascendance. (Carl Jung, Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche , 797) Death as the goal and fulfillment of life, as ultimate meaning? A good death, like a good life, depends on our ability to let go. Although it may be more difficult to sell the meaning of life when its purpose is simply to let it go, it is a fundamental insight into our mortal condition with the potential to transform our immortal soul. The readiness is all.

Once heroes have endured the longest nights and defeated the mightiest monsters, once they have stared death in the face and survived to tell the tale, their journey is by no means over.  What may seem to be an afterthought may turn out to be the real point behind the quest. Perhaps the greatest obstacle for would-be heroes is to recognize the trap set against them where they least expect it: after the climactic battle in the small details of the morning after, hidden there by the unconscious. In the last stage of the hero’s journey, which Joseph Campbell calls the Return, there is one last task to perform, a task which might prove to be their undoing, or that might aid them in the  acquisition of the ultimate boon. Campbell speaks of a task in which the hero: […] has yet to confront society with his ego-shattering, life-redeeming elixir, and take the return blow of reasonable queries, hard resentment, and good people at a loss to comprehend. (The Hero of a Thousand Faces , 216) This life-redeeming elixir is ego shattering because what is at stake in the quest is not just one's “personal fate,” as Campbell says, “but the fate of mankind, of life as a whole” ( The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 234). This connection to the collective is a tell-tale sign that we are stepping into the archetypal dimension of the collective unconscious, the native land of myth and ritual. The integration of the hero’s gift into society in the end may turn out to be the real difficulty of the entire quest.  Why is the hero’s gift so difficult to integrate into society? Why isn’t it, like most gifts, more enthusiastically welcomed? The answer should be clear: because it implies a revolution within the collective unconscious—including the sociopolitical and economic orders of our lives. The hero’s ultimate boon is, after all, the possibility of changing the world, and such change requires the transformation of the entire symbolic order governing our collective lives.  The fact that the symbolic order of the collective unconscious is as much spiritual as it is political is often obscured by ideologies of Self-Development or Supreme Meaning, which are supposed to surpass even the value of human life. By way of contrast, true enlightenment begins with the recognition that the internal and the external, the personal and the collective, along with the entire set of binary oppositions are, in fact, not external to each other. Each opposite is reflected into itself via the other.  In the Eastern doctrine of mokṣa , the state of enlightenment means a kind of release from the tyranny of opposites, a self-transcending mode of consciousness in which our enslavement to samsara comes to an end. But this triumph of redemption doesn’t mean that opposites simply disappear or are conflated and done away with. For they belong to the nature of existence as profoundly as Being itself. They are not pitted in flat opposition to each other, but are to be viewed dialectically as integrated aspects of the life of the psyche in its totality. Throughout his Asian Journals , which chronicle Campbell’s travels throughout Asia and his various conversations with spiritual leaders, there is a constant theme concerning the question of the true nature of mokṣa : “Is it release from the world? Or is it release from ignorance?” (208). Especially when confronted by the world-negating tendency in some strains of Indian philosophy, Campbell declared himself a clear partisan of the latter view: “”I preferred the Bhagavad Gītā’s karma yoga to the monastic rejection of the world” ( Asian Journals, 208). There were strong arguments on both sides, and things could have gotten heated, but luckily in the end the comradery shared among friends remained the victor: It was getting late and so I let the argument stay at this pleasant point, suggesting, however, that if one had found or even heard about the still point in the center of  Śiva’s dance, involvement in the fury of the world was different from what it would be without that knowledge. (Asian Journals, 209) “Involvement in the fury of the world” is a great way to describe the sociopolitical dimensions of human existence. In fact, the reference to the Gītā points to the struggle for political power between brothers and sisters in the broader context of the Mahābhārata . The still point in the midst of the gruesome dance of Śiva places us at the crux of the soul’s existence, inside the sacred ring of myth, in which antagonism and tension—indeed, outright war —between brothers and sisters is always taking place. The dualistic tension of opposites thus belongs to the political order of things — indeed, that tension more than belongs to the political order, it defines it. The endless existential struggle for freedom and justice is not merely a metaphor for the cosmic dance but a concrete fight for the soul of humankind.

“Thinking of Lady Yang at Midnight” by Edmund Dulac On the 146th night of Scheherazade’s captivity, as told in Joseph Campbell’s edition of The Thousand and One Nights, The Story of the Birds and Beasts and the Son of Adam keeps her sovereign Sultan from ending her life. In this translation by John Payne edited by Joseph Campbell, the fairytale affords a comical glimpse at our own species’ collective shadow. Like all tales of this sort, the story shifts our human point of view to that of animals, especially those that have been “domesticated” by our industry. The story imagines the terrifying, omnipotent figure that humanity must cut in the eyes and flesh of animal-kind, in their day-to-day suffering, in their subservience to humankind. Looking through the inverted mirror of myth, our celebrated creative qualities and ingenuity are reflected into the shadow of a trickster figure, the archetype most closely resembling humankind. Through the lens of the trickster, our creativity exhibits itself in the destructive aspects of human industry, craft, and skill, the very instruments through which we exert absolute dominion over other species—as well as over our own—with unrelenting greed and cruelty. “The Story of the Birds and Beasts and the Son of Adam” projects an image of humankind which is not opposed to, nor built against the concept of “beasts”; it is rather an image of ourselves as the sovereign beasts on this planet. Beginning with the appearance of a duck on an “island abounding in trees and streams,” a virtual paradise untouched by humankind, the account of the treacherous ways of the “Sons of Adam” is related again and again. The wily character of the sovereign beast was already imprinted in the soul of every animal that immigrated to the island. One after the other—a lion whelp, a runaway ass, a black horse, a furious camel—each beast gives a similar account of their first and last encounter with a Son of Adam. As the birds listen intently, we hear about diabolical technological means through which humanity exerts its dominion over all creatures.  The shocking truth that is finally revealed, however, comes in the guise of man himself: a poor human carpenter who claims to be a victim of the Sons of Adam as well. The old carpenter suggests to the animals that whatever the sons of Adam are capable of doing to beasts, they are quite happy to do to one another. Man is the sovereign beast which devours itself and all others: Homō hominī lupus est. Now, with this insight into the dark side of human nature, how could we possibly build a bridge between that and a feeling of deep gratitude for the whole? Is it possible to find a mode of gratitude that does not exclude the pain of its shadow—including our sins, our treachery and inhuman cruelty? Like the portentous dream of the duck at the beginning, the story ends with a warning against a false sense of gratitude based in a deep persecutorial anxiety. Perfectly happy to endorse the status quo, content with its privileges and given power structure, this final attitude is revealed in the person of antelope. For antelope was the last and only animal seemingly ignorant of humankind upon arrival, although he is quickly made aware of the extent of our murderous treachery as the island is finally “discovered” by the Sons of Adam.  Despite the tragic loss of duck, the peacocks and antelope are able to escape this last encounter and are thankful for having survived. Unable to think through the meaning of the situation, an attitude of mediocre self-contentment finally emerges among survivors, a feeling of resignation and unease which is perfectly captured by antelope’s final prayer: “Glory be to the Requiter of good and evil, the Lord of glory and dominion!”(1001 Nights, p.594) It is as though the myth were asking us: is gratitude simply a way to acknowledge our dependence on worldly masters? Or is it a ritual worship of the unjust world order against which we are pleased to “count our blessings”? Touting a kind of ‘slave morality’ of its own, the antelope’s prayer allows us to rest content with a “business as usual” kind of attitude—together with the collective shadow that is pushing us to the brink of extinction. By narrowly concentrating on personal wealth and power, our sense of gratitude remains enclosed in a narcissistic bubble, a mechanism of fetishistic disavowal, which is portrayed by antelope and peacocks’ final subjective attitude.  Thus the story ends with this comical note, a sad joke which is made to stand for the failure to cope with the situation that threatens all living creatures: duck’s tragedy and the deep inheritance of persecutory anxiety. Rather than splitting the psyche into personal vs. collective, or creative vs. destructive, true insight rests in the recognition of opposites always touching each other in the depths of the psyche. “The secret,” as Jung says, “is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive” ( The Portable Jung,  345). In a truly transcendent sense of gratitude, therefore, we could even be thankful of the destructive impulses of humankind in the drive towards the whole of creative being itself. In a mode of gratitude that is no longer based on fear and anxiety, we could acknowledge the wound of the existential crisis as a gift in disguise. Not that the literal destruction of the environment and loss of lives are gifts, but that the responsibility we take is the gift and the light of the future. For this responsibility points the way to a revolution of the collective soul which will end and begin anew the history of human life on earth.

Rendering Based on Night Way Chant, d.1937, exhibited at the Wheelwright Museum designed by William Henderson, in collaboration with Hosteen Klah and Mary Wheelwright, oil on beaverboad, 47 1/4 x 47 1/4 inches In his 1986 publication The Inner Reaches of Outer Space , Campbell turns to a Navaho sand painting of a Blessing Ceremony which depicts a rite of passage for the initiate. Campbell sees this painting as a specific illustration of a psychic process of transformation which is archetypal in nature; it possesses mythic structures shared among all peoples and cultures. In the Navaho vision the sand painting represents a kind of gateway to another world, an attitude or mode of consciousness hitherto unknown to the initiate. The painting acts as a great transformer of psychic energy, channeling all its impermanence and sense of becoming. For the sand painting will dissolve after the ritual is done, thus showing in a most concrete way its thoroughly temporal sense of eternity. In its purely formal structures the sand painting depicts the journey of a divided mind undergoing a profound shamanic psychoanalysis. As a kind of White Walker of the mind, the initiate enters the bottom right of the picture; their path leaves white cornmeal footsteps that reflect a mind divided against itself, an ailing mindset walking along a divided path. The color of the mind is lunar white, the color of the cornmeal footprints left along the Pollen Path.   As the counter-intuitive abstract unity of all colors, the whiteness of the footsteps represents a thinking mindset. It denotes a mode of consciousness already charged with spiritual intensity. The Navaho White Walkers stand for the ghostly consciousness of psychic existence, a mode of dialectical self-awareness which relates itself to itself in a doubling of the mind. The White Walker of the Pollen Path means the initiation of twin consciousness as the self-awareness of the psychic substance in its own  spectral dimension, a realm of pre-existence between the lines of being and non-being.  The walk of the Pollen Path involves a peculiar mode of thinking, a thinking with “naked feet,” which are allowed to step into the inner life of things. Walking over the red coals of solar feelings and the blue waters of lunar sensations, the White Walker of the Pollen Path learns to step between false alternatives and belief systems, and the pseudo-oppositions of thinking/feeling, which beleaguer the alienated state of the divided mind. Releasing itself from its own ideological traps, its own neurotic conflicts, the initiate gives way to the liberation of the Pollen Path.  The path of twin consciousness is a doubly reflected path wherein the energies of Sun and Moon intertwine. Instead of splitting the world into rigid dualisms, thinking and feeling, sensation and intuition, all walk hand in hand along the dialectical movement of the Pollen Path. The integration of all five ritual colors (red, blue, yellow, black and white) sets the mind, soul, body, and spirit within the cosmic background of Night. In my digital recreations of the Navajo design featured here, I emphasize the dialectical relationship of the conscious elements of the painting against the vast unconscious background of cosmic space-time.  As Campbell also describes the mythic dimension of this painting:  Footprints of white cornmeal mark the path of the initiate throughout. As already noticed, they approach along a road that is of the two symbolic colors of the male and female powers, fire and water, sunlight and cloud, which at the place of the Spirit Bringers abruptly blend to one golden yellow of the color of pollen.( Inner Reaches , 71) The Spirit Bringers ignite with lightning the process of psychic transformation. This happens at the turning point of the initiatory walk, where ascension begins. It is here where opposites become creative rather than destructive as they enter into a dynamic relationship which ultimately becomes a helical movement upwards which fructifies the corn plant.  The healing means a regeneration of the soul-body in order to effect change. Although there may be all kinds of intoxicating aids for this shift in every culture, as Campbell writes, the main point is that the “ordeal is an act of sacrifice” (Inner Reaches, 73) .   What ultimately effects this mysterious “blend” of opposites, however, is not the simple agent of an “altered state,” which may be a passing phase or lapse of the moment. The ritual must not only be felt and intuited, imagined or played with as if it were a matter of make-believe. No, the ritual must be seriously lived through and internalized, existentially reflected in the very logic and syntax of our lives. As the real origin of psychic change, the walk of the Pollen Path exemplifies the unity of opposites in time, but it is the work of the walk itself that matters one day at a time.  As we saw, the emergence of the Pollen Path happens at the turning point where the Twins reveal themselves in their true nature as lightning strikes. It is a twin light of consciousness that appears to ignite the power of the mythic image as the source of a healing experience. Rather than being a “talking cure,” however, the Pollen Path is a cure by means of archetypal sight. It is the visionary way of the shaman, philosopher, and artist soaring into the depths of Night, in other words, “assuming an intentionally metaphorical, mythological cast of hierophantic personifications” as Campbell writes. ( Inner Reaches,  70) The need for an authentic sense of vision in order to bring about the desired healing effect cannot be over-emphasized. As Jung himself sternly remarked: “It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing” ( Psychology and Alchemy , page 13, ¶14). This is where myth comes in as the indispensable instrument of vision to light our paths—like the Phoenix reborn from the ashes of time.

Kālī atop Śiva and Śava (watercolor, India, c. 1740 a.d. Courtesy Los Angeles County Museum of Art) I love those moments in which Joseph Campbell, the world-class scholar of myth, also becomes a story-teller, often drawing a line of Native American wisdom. In The Flight of the Wild Gander, he opens the chapter on “Mythogenesis” with a Sioux folktale to introduce us into the mysterious “center” of all mythological traditions: Early one morning, long ago, two Sioux Indians with their bows and arrows were out hunting on the North American plains; and as they were standing on a hill, peering about for game, they saw in the distance something coming toward them in a strange and wonderful manner. When the mysterious thing drew nearer, they perceived that it was a very beautiful woman, dressed in white buckskin, bearing a bundle on her back, and one of the men immediately became lustful. He told his friend of his desire, but the other rebuked him, warning that this surely was no ordinary woman. She had come close now and, setting her bundle down, called to the first to approach her. When he did so, he and she were covered suddenly by a cloud and when this lifted there was the woman alone, with the man nothing but bones at her feet, being eaten by terrible snakes. “Behold what you see!” she said to the other. “Now go tell your people to prepare a large ceremonial lodge for my coming. I wish to announce to them something of great importance.” (Flight, 57-58) Although later the mysterious woman reveals her teaching using mandala symbolism, the ultimate secret she bears is her very presence as a sexual being. It is indeed the secret of sexuality itself in its connection with death that seems to be the core of her wisdom. Isn’t the dark connection between sexuality, death, and wisdom one of the biggest secrets there is? The archetypal image of the goddess laying on top of the dead bones of man immediately conjures the Hindu goddess of death, Kālī, who is the bearer of the sacred śakti of feminine sexuality and creativity. She is often pictured as a dancing figure over the dismembered corpses of men, herself wearing a sacrificial skirt of mutilated arms and a gruesome collar of heads and other body parts.  From a psychoanalytic perspective, it is abundantly clear that the message of “great importance” that the mysterious feminine figure wants to convey is not an ideology or belief system, nor is it the revelation of a “higher meaning” above ordinary life. The mystery is the very presence of the sacred feminine in the midst of the hunt for wisdom.  Staying close to the mythic image, the Goddess immediately represents the fundamental unity of sexuality and death at the core of the human psyche—the two fundamental psychic forces postulated by Freud—which may lead a new hunter for truth to ask with Nietzsche: “Supposing that Truth is a woman—what then?” ( Beyond Good & Evil , Preface). We need to emphasize the fact that the image of the alluring Goddess belongs with that of the hunters—a connection which makes Campbell resort to the parallel myth of Actaeon and Artemis for further elucidation of the Sioux legend. In both cases, the hunter and the hunted belong to the same archetypal complex, a moment of mythological self-reflection, which depicts the primordial encounter of the soul with itself as the event of “the naked” Truth.  Thus the Intellect as Hunter, looking for an “object of knowledge,” runs into the figure of the sacred feminine by sheer accident. Rather than game for objective research, however, she appears as a mythic image that brings the mysteries of eros and death into a single apparition. At this ultimate stage of self-revelation, we are no longer interested in meaning per se . Conversely, the threat of meaninglessness, the fear-mongering of the Void, no longer affects us. As Campbell wrote of the function of art in general, the point of myth is “to render a sense of existence , not an assurance of some meaning […]” ( Flight, 151). Campbell also understood that ultimately: […] the objective is to be born from the womb of myth, not to remain in it, and the one who has attained to this “second birth” is truly the “twice born,” freed from the pedagogical devices of society, t he lures and threats of myth, the local mores, the usual hopes of benefits and rewards. (Flight, 38 — emphasis added) The true purpose of metaphysics, then, is to transcend the need for metaphysical meaning itself; it is to be released into the arms of the Goddess, the Lady of our dismemberment, in a primordial experience of our material immortality, an experience afforded by the mystery of sexuality and death. For She brings the excitement of Eros with the becoming of death—both symbols without Meaning—in a material image of the being that simply is in the generation of its disappearance.

A Hindu monk walking during sunrise in a mango garden in Dinajpur, Bangladesh. Creative Commons. Although famous for stressing the psychological and metaphysical dimensions of myth, Joseph Campbell also had a grasp of myth’s historic foundations, including its sociological and ethnological inflexions in specific environments. When discussing Hinduism, for instance, Campbell is quite aware of the basic material conditions reflected in mythic archetypes such as that of Manu, the Hindu prototype of the Primordial Man, the First Man and progenitor of humanity. As an image of the archetypal Self, Manu is at once an individual and a symbol of real collective power in the world. It constitutes a certain spirit or “mentality” which is both a literal force and an ideology exercising its domination over the social body.  In his beautiful exploration of Indian mythology, Campbell shows us that myth is “real” in the sense of being an ideological structure that interweaves the political and socio-economic fabric of society. That is why real myth never needs to be literally “believed in” by individuals, for it is like the very air we breathe, the unquestioned reality of our social existence.   On the other hand, when myth becomes an explicit object for us, an object called “myth,” it is already dead, having become a historical phenomenon. Living myth is, by definition, a collective manifestation of the archetypal psyche; it is not simply a metaphor for the reflection of my private experience. The latter is “myth” in the sense of fantasy or an aesthetic plaything but not in the sense of an existential commitment to the truth of our lives. Rather than being a specific object in the world, therefore, true myth constitutes our very sense of actual reality. That is why it is so hard to see it, not because it lies buried in some deep cavern of the soul, but because it is so close to us, so familiar, so taken-for-granted — like the very end of our nose that we never see and yet follow religiously! As Campbell turns his discussion of Hinduism to the ‘Spirit’ or mentality of Manu, the harshest aspects of true myth come to the surface: I have discussed the Indian law books, the so-called Laws of Manu. Manu is a word related to our word man, also mentality. Manu is the sort of primordial man image of India. The Laws of Manu say in one passage that I remember reading with amazement, that if a śūdra hears the recitation of the Vedas, even by accident, he shall have boiling lead poured into his ears. The Vedas are power, in both senses of the word; they are like atomic secrets. They are the powers by which the brahmins direct the energies of the universe, and this power must not be leaked to the subject people. (Myths of Light, 107) Now, what a śūdra or shudra is in the context of the caste system may need some clarification for those not familiar with it. For the symbolic order of Manu constitutes a mythology of its own, wherein each caste of the system is assigned a function analogous to the various functions of the human body.  The brahmins constitute the head of the social body; they are the intellectual and religious elite, preoccupied with sacred texts and esoteric research. Then we have the kshatriyas who are represented by the arms and thighs; they are the “doers” who constitute the political class, the rulers and administrators of the state, also known as the “warrior cast.” The merchant class, vaisya , are the “providers” who are aptly represented by the belly. Then the fourth and lowest caste, the shudra , are the feet of the society, a class of servants or working poor which do all the manual labor. Lastly, we have to name the nameless class, the literal out-casts of the caste system: the dalit — a term more literally translated as “divided, broken, or scattered.” This is the class of people infamously labeled “untouchables,” the lowest strata of society, who effectively occupy the position of being “part of no part,” lacking any generally defining characteristic as a social group or caste. They are nevertheless tasked as a group with the removal of human feces, dead animals, and the like, and, for that reason, they are deemed to be spiritually and biologically “contaminated” and therefore “inferior.” This kind of viral quality associated with the dalit is also shared by the shudras , as Campbell describes it: Why may the brahmin not accept water from these lower śūdra? Because he would become contaminated. These people, the śūdras, are regarded not only as socially but also as spiritually low. It is as though they were diseased and to touch the unclean śūdra, that is to say those from whom one cannot take water, is to contaminate yourself with a spiritual infection. The ruthless avoidance of these people, what is, from our standpoint, the horror of their lives, is a function of the belief that they are infectious, like lepers; they are spiritual plague bearers.Myths of Light, 107 The equation of horrible social oppression with the functioning of a myth that sanctifies it should not escape our eye. It is a kind of transcendent union of physical and metaphysical violence which has been produced by a fierce antagonism that has raged in the collective unconscious from time immemorial. Violence is constitutional of any nation state; rather than being some kind of glitch in the system, such violence underpins its very functioning, the capacity to produce and reproduce itself and its relations of power. As ruling ideology, therefore, real myth casts and recasts the heart of a society, throwing its deep historical shadow into the darkness of human existence.

Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes“And he turns his mind to unknown arts.”Metamorphoses (Ovid, Book VIII, l. 188) As this pandemic rages on, exposing the structural flaws of an economic system bent on profit-making over the lives of ordinary people, we are compelled to turn our minds inward and to step up to the threshold where the doors of the collective unconscious begin to open up the mystery of our own souls. In a sense, under the present pandemic conditions, the general population has been delivered willy-nilly into the underground of the collective psyche, those secret landscapes of the soul where artists have already learned to make their home. In this interior place of the night of the soul, a journey through the many infernos of our psychic existence, we sail over the waters of the unconscious mind at the bounds of knowability. Although bound to make us feel uncomfortable, it is here where we come face to face with the unknown, the other in ourselves. At the same time we also come to the source of creative being itself as the eternal formation and transformation of the entire symbolic order of the human spirit. This is the place of self-creation for the archetypal mind that has been caught in the smithy of the self, what alchemists termed the vas bene clausum (well-sealed vessel). As we get used to our own well-sealed spaces, the somber cloud of this deadly pandemic, together with the socio-political upheavals of our times, have worked to drive everybody into their own inner caves, unwittingly called to become artists of some kind, to improvise with our material conditions on the canvas of the self. We are called to do this not only to stay afloat but also, somehow, to thrive within the cracks of a quaking system. Can such a thing be done without getting in touch with the archetypal well-springs of human creativity? Joseph Campbell alludes to the archetypal dimension of creative being whenever he points to the psychological foundations of myth. It is here, on the archetypal ground of the human psyche, that Campbell finds the encompassing dimension of myth which underlies the entire complex of mythic functions: The first function served by a traditional mythology, I would term, then, the mystical, or metaphysical, the second, the cosmological, and the third, the sociological. The fourth, which lies at the root of all three as their base and final support, is the psychological: that, namely, of shaping individuals to the aims and ideals of their various social groups, bearing them on from birth to death through the course of a human life. And whereas the cosmological and sociological orders have varied greatly over the centuries and in various quarters of the globe, there have nevertheless been certain irreducible psychological problems inherent in the very biology of our species, which have remained constant, and have, consequently, so tended to control and structure the myths and rites in their service that, in spite of all the differences that have been recognized, analyzed, and stressed by sociologists and historians, there run through the myths of all mankind the common strains of a single symphony of the soul.(Mythic Dimension: Selected essays 1959-1987, p. 221) One wonders if, in describing the psychological ground, Campbell had in mind one of the central axioms of Medieval Alchemy as formulated by Maria Prophetissa: “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” (Jung CW12, ¶25) In formulations such as these, it is clear that the fourth term is overdetermined in the precise sense of the word: it is at once a class among others and the cause that underlies the whole. Psychologically speaking, overdetermination doesn’t mean “many meanings” (polysemy); it means the incorporation of an inner division and agreement within itself; it is its own whole in every part, its own identity in every difference. Thus it returns to itself with every new appearance. History is also governed by a similar dialectical pattern of consciousness which is expressed in the famous rise and fall of civilizations; it is a material and spiritual pattern of transformation which plays out, in spectacular fashion, in all the bloody struggles and compromises between traditional ideology, the guardian of the status quo, and the radical emergence of new mythic horizons. We often call this pattern “revolution,” suggesting both a movement of eternal return and the birth of something new out of the crumbling edifice of the past. Moreover, seen through the lens of evolutionary biology, the miracle of radical self-emergence suggests that the level of the archetypal is not eternally fixed or frozen in time; it can also evolve in sudden bursts of revolutionary creativity. Rather than understanding the eternity of archetypes as something literally “timeless,” we should recognize it for what it is phenomenologically: an ecstatic mode of temporal temporality, which Heidegger also characterized as a kind of “being-toward-death.” Thus the experience of the archetypal delivers us once again into an experience of death-drive ( todestrieb ), with its compulsion to repeat, again and again, the eternal return of a new birth out of the ashes of time. This is just as Campbell would have it. The psychological experience of the archetypal constitutes the true mythic dimension. But the object of experience here is no longer a subjective fancy. It is an experience of what Jung appropriately called “the objective psyche,” a term which stands for the gates of the collective unconscious and its archetypal potentialities. For Jung the “subjective psyche” was identical with a mode consciousness entirely ruled by the “personal unconscious,” that is, by a purely ideological and personalistic attitude, whereas “the objective psyche is something alien even to the conscious mind through which it expresses itself.” (CW12, ¶48) In part, this alien character is due to the fact that “the objective psyche is independent in the highest degree.” (CW12, ¶51) It is a will that is not our own in which we come to meet the archetypal force of transcendent creativity — even, or most especially, in times of pandemic and social unrest.