Paul Atreides (Timothee Chalamet) explores the confines of his new home on Arakeen, capital of Arrakis. Courtesy of Warner Bros. The release of Denis Villeneuve’s remake of Frank Herbert’s influential sci-fi novel Dune has its entire fandom reflecting back on what made the novels great, thus bringing to mind the mythic dimension of the Dune universe.  When Dune appeared on the scene in 1965—two years after the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring —it was well received by its audience as a counter-cultural narrative that helped boost a modern environmentalist movement, while warning us against the dangers of digital technology and autocratic rule. The fact that Frank Herbert was himself deeply conservative, decidedly a Republican voter and operative, did not stop Dune’s own mythic universe from carrying certain progressive elements. At the same time, the intensely anti-government propaganda—especially on display in the last books of the saga —is a definite echo of Herbert’s own politico-ideological commitments.  Nevertheless, in spite of its spiritual ambiguity, Herbert famously said that he wrote the Dune Chronicles “because I had this idea that charismatic leaders ought to come with a warning label, ‘may be dangerous to your health.’” Or more poignantly still, he wrote, “No more terrible disaster could befall your people than for them to fall into the hands of a Hero” ( Dune ), because Herbert himself believed that “superheroes are disastrous for humankind.”  Similarly, Joseph Campbell was aware of the danger that such heroic men of action represent with their mono-maniacal single-mindedness, for clearly they “are not the ways and guides to freedom, but the very nets, and the wielders of those nets, by which the seeker of freedom is snared, entrapped, and hauled back into the labyrinth.” ( Mythic Dimension 243) The net that Campbell is talking about here, the net that curtails our spiritual freedom, is none other than the mythic web of ideological phantasies. Appearing at first sight as the saving thread of Ariadne to help us navigate the labyrinthine darkness, positivistic ideology, like a crutch, is sometimes a necessary condition. But if we try to cling to fixed ideas, fetishizing them as final answers to life’s unanswerable questions, then we get caught in the web of an ideology. After all, Ariadne’s thread only helps us retrace our steps backwards, to run away from the danger zone, but does not teach us to fly away, upwards towards the Sun, despite new dangers. For that we need the artistry of Daedalus, what Campbell liked to call “the Wings of Art.” On a broad philosophical level, there is a striking similarity between the Dune saga and The Lord of the Rings trilogy: they both affect a kind of “transvaluation of all values,” a fundamental critique of the mythology of the One and its hyper-masculine heroic attitude . Where the masses are programmed to worship superheroes and bow before “the One,” both of the greatest epics of fantasy literature are there to warn us against the dangers of Its rise. So rather than dismantling the supremacy of the One from the outset, as Tolkien does in The Lord of the Rings —where he re-brands it as the greatest evil and pits it against it a Fellowship and not a singular hero— Dune fanatically asserts the singularity and genetic supremacy of the One. Affirming the messianic hope of the superior Kwisatz Haderach, Herbert wants to allow all the disastrous—indeed, genocidal consequences that follow from the One’s brutal imposition upon the collective.  The imperialism of the One is easily accommodated within Dune ’s feudal sociological vision, which is like Game of Thrones in space. This game of imperialism seems to be the critical target Herbert had in mind when he wrote Dune . Nevertheless, we can still ask if he ultimately succeeded. Did not Dune end up inadvertently strengthening and propping up the very thing it was supposed to take down: the naturalization of an imperialist ideology? It is true, there are at least two ways of undermining or subverting a given ideological edifice: one is by deconstructing it directly, in diametrical opposition to it, and the other is by agreeing with it all too strongly, believing in it all too literally, and proceeding to act accordingly. Where the former is a straight confrontation against the other, the latter brings out into the open its unspoken absurdity. Where Tolkien took the first path against the dominion of the One, Herbert chose the second option.  The question still remains, however: did he succeed in tearing down imperialist ideology or did he not end up glorifying it and justifying it in the end? I’d love to hear your thoughts and further comments on the mythic dimension of Dune —especially when we take Frank Herbert at his word and attempt to read this space saga as a cautionary tale against the emergence of heroes.

One of the murals at the Maya site of Bonampak, showing a procession of musicians. Created c. AD 580–800. Photo by Jacob Rus, 2004. CC 2.0. We now enter the festivals of the Winter Solstice and celebrate the birth of the savior archetype, which in the Catholicism of Latin America is presented with the image of the Niño Dios (God Child), putting a greater emphasis on the miracle of a newborn child as the ultimate Christmas gift. On such moments of reflection, we are called upon to an eternal return to the origins.  What is celebrated with the mythic image of the birth of Christ is the second birth: not the first birth of Adam, but the emergence of a new cultural force through which humanity as a whole may be renewed. If we turn to the Maya Bible, the Popol Vuh ( Book of the Community, Book of the Counsel ), we also find at the center of its cosmovision the same archetypal theme of collective self-renewal. In the event of the Winter Solstice, heralded by the image of the Sacred Dawn, the whole of humanity comes to be reborn. Within the Maya cosmovision, this is the momentous experience of the birth of the People of the Corn. It is at this point that A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake meets the Popol Vuh . In both texts, we are driven to the birthplace of humankind out of the mythic womb of history, where Campbell writes as though he was referencing the Popol Vuh : [Step by step the conditions of the dawn moment are being revealed. The Time aspect has been discussed: it is the moment of the first shaft of light. The Place aspect now comes up for consideration; together with the problem of the gist of it all. The place is this fishy river pool where so many things have happened. Here are the great tree and stone. Here a great life festival might flourish, or just as well, a hermit’s hut might stand.] (342) This is the place where the eternal return of the Feathered Serpent turns to that time ( illo tempore ), a time before time, a space outside space—like the shapeless, unimaginable universe before the Big Bang. In the light of the Maya cosmos this placeless place is the Void, the vast watery emptiness of the Womb-Sky. So the Popol Vuh describes the moments before the first act of creation: This is the account; here it is: Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, it still sighs, still hums, and it is empty under the sky. (Tedlock) The first act of creation, before the One can be born, is thus to prepare the sacred unground of the collective soul . There is no act of creation before opening up the space of the Void. The One is thus the second step of the process of creation, not the first. The emergence of the One is already a Two, a Twoness of the Void and the One. In the Maya cosmovision, the One is already a Twinship that appears in the image of Tepeu and Gucumatz, the Sovereign Plumed Quetzal Serpent, as the creative logos of the Maya soul. This is an archetypal image that brings together the contrasting attributes of a bird and a snake—one as an air being and the other as a being on earth. At the same time, the One is also a Three making up the Heart of Heaven, Huracán , as we can see on key passages of the Popol Vuh :  Then came the word. Tepeu and Gucumatz [Sovereign Majesty and Quetzal Serpent] came together in the darkness, in the night, and Tepeu and Gucumatz talked together. They talked then, discussing and deliberating; they agreed, they united their words and their thoughts. Then while they meditated, it became clear to them that when dawn would break, man must appear. Then they planned the creation, and the growth of the trees and the thickets and the birth of life and the creation of man. Thus it was arranged in the darkness and in the night by the Heart of Heaven who is called Huracán .  The first is called [Giant Master Lightning] Caculhá Huracán . The second is [Lightning Splendor] Chipi-Caculhá . The third is Raxa-Caculhá [Trace of Lightning]. And these three are the Heart of Heaven. (trans. Goetz and Morley, Recinos) The pluralistic aspect of the Maya Logos, Its Root Ancient Word, comes together in both the Heart of Heaven Huracán and the Two Gods who form the Sovereign Plumed Quetzal Serpent, Tepew Gucumatz . The One as both Two and Three. We can see clearly the strange similarity and the difference between the trinitarian conception of the One in Christianity and that of the Popol Vuh . What other similarities and differences can you sense based on our brief excursion into the Popol Vuh ?

Tête-à-tête. Edvard Munch, 1894. The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1956. Public domain. Although Joseph Campbell is often pegged as a partisan of Carl Jung, he begins The Hero With a Thousand Faces with a fundamental piece of psychoanalytic wisdom. Leaning on Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams , Campbell evokes a kind of “hermeneutics of suspicion,” an interpretive attitude that regards appearances as deceptive, hiding and distorting as much as revealing a deeper level of truth.  Campbell begins his famous book by introducing the gap that separates the manifest contents of dream and myth from their underlying latent thoughts. Like the thousand faces of myth, the manifest contents of a dream are to be regarded, not as unvarnished truth, but as the childish disguise that distorts and hides a latent truth beating within. So Campbell explains: “It is the purpose of the present book to uncover some of the truths disguised for us under the figures of religion and mythology by bringing together a multitude of not-too-difficult examples and letting the ancient meaning become apparent of itself.” (xii)  We should be clear that the ancient meaning undergoes a fundamental transformation in the process of interpretation, becoming a phenomenon of the understanding of the present moment. What becomes “apparent of itself” in contemporary life is its distinctly modern significance, for the only way to recapture the ancient wisdom is to harvest it anew, not being afraid to dig it out of the dark mythic soil of our present historic moment. Therefore, if we want to embark on our own odyssey of ancient heroes, we must be prepared to discover a distinctly modern experience—as James Joyce does, for example, with Ulysses . To inhabit the hero’s world in a conscious manner, we must learn to speak the symbolic language of myth and dream anew, in the light of modern reason. That is why “we must learn the grammar of the symbols,” as Campbell writes, “and as a key to this mystery I know of no better modern [my emphasis] tool than psychoanalysis. Without regarding this as the last word on the subject, one can nevertheless permit it to serve as an approach.” (xii-xiii) And here you have the secret hero of The Hero With a Thousand Faces . What makes it a distinctive modern experience points to the historic breakthrough of psychoanalysis. In other words, the secret heroes of The Hero are Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Their interpretive approaches have become indispensable instruments for the understanding of myth in contemporary life. One of the things I love about Campbell is that rather than getting caught in partisan squabbles, he proceeds with an implicit reconciliation of Freud and Jung in his work. The conflict between psychoanalysis and analytical psychology, which is indeed a real ideological battle, seems to dissipate for Campbell in the transcendence of creative mythology. Working out of this zone of creativity, it is not so much a question of Jungian vs Freudian assumptions concerning the hero. In Campbell’s view, the point is not about a hero’s myth but about the experience of myth being the hero.  Soaring above the fundamentalism that creates Jungians vs Freudians, Campbell integrates both into a kind of twinship of archetypal proportions. He thus follows the lead of a new set of twin heroes, two of the greatest depth psychologists that ever lived, whose unique perspectives share a common goal in aiding the fundamental process of making conscious the unconscious psyche.  As an integrated process of self-understanding, Campbell seems to tell us, the psychoanalytic perspective is the modern hero and champion of the reality of myth. Through psychoanalytic reflection, it has become possible to recapture the fundamental sense of the Real in myth. Without it, myth remains in its mundane status of false illusion, like the “irrational” products of sleep. As the modern instrument of vision to illuminate the dark background of our lives, psychoanalysis re-opens the archetypal portals of myth and religion in the historic consciousness of the here and now.  This is the existential edge of creative mythology, the rub of its modern “materialistic” and “rationalistic” bias. For the modern soul is no longer interested in an idealistic form of “spiritual” transcendence, which is to lead us out of this world into some other place beyond reason. For that would be a form of transcendence reserved for a holier-than-thou select few. Instead, turning against such elitist impulses, the modern soul yearns for a more democratic experience of material transcendence , in principle available to all, through the ecstatic modes of being in the world.  For Being means being with and for one another, not a being in the atomized individuality of a self-centered consciousness. The latter is simply ego caught in self-righteous ideology, seduced into the narcissistic bubble of a false me-consciousness. Rather than a doctrine of the self or a belief system,, psychoanalysis is the very activity that would keep us free from the trappings of self and belief systems. So there you have it. Consider yourselves in the know concerning the esoteric core of The Hero With a Thousand Faces .

Mark Rylance as BASH CEO Peter Isherwell alongside Meryl Streep as President Orlean. Image courtesy of Netflix. Despite all rumors to the contrary, Don’t Look Up is not about climate change (spoilers ahead). An incoming comet, being a purely natural phenomenon independent of human influence, would in fact be a bad analogy for the problem of climate change. For the latter is a problem of the influence of human industry on the impending disaster, but human industry plays no role in determining the direction or speed of the comet.  To reduce the symbol of the comet to climate change pure and simple would be to miss the broader implications of its symbolic functioning within the film. A truly mythological reading of the comet would show its reflected meaning in the many mirrors it contains, drawing from the internal resources of its archetypal imagery. A symbolic reading thus stays away from a purely allegorical reduction of the comet, dispensing with the need to import external referents or additional hypotheses beyond those provided by the film. From this mythic or uroboric point of view, the meaning of the action of the comet is, of course, the reaction it creates in the human race and our systems of organization and first response, bringing into the open our failing sense of collective responsibility. The comet depicts a narcissistic culture of indifference, caught in a “post-truth” spiritual atmosphere whose catastrophic finality is finally pushed over the edge by the most obscene element of all: the existence of BASH CEO Peter Isherwell. Critics who took the film much too seriously and forgot that it was, after all, a comedy, also overlook the fact that Peter Isherwell is the true comic hero of Don’t Look Up. Where the scientists play the role of tragic heroes who ultimately fail but die honorably as decent human beings, Peter Isherwell actually succeeds, at the end of the film, in fulfilling his obscene dream of ushering in a New Golden Age of humanity—even if it was short-lived. Moreover, the critics miss a crucial insight of the plot, one which really surprised some first-time watchers who were not expecting the positive turn the film takes during the first half of the story, when a fresh wave of scandal forces President Orlean to do the right thing and embrace the mission to destroy the comet. At this point, the film’s mockery of people caught up in social media, disinformation culture, and mass entertainment, reaches its limit. By means of the very power of scandal, President Orlean finally does the right thing and steps up to the plate. Although corrupt and slow to act, the government does succeed in putting together a mission that could save the planet. Leading up to the very launch of the mission, the film is incredibly optimistic, suggesting that there is hope to work with the system as it is, fake news and all, and still avoid catastrophe. But of course, this was only an illusion; we cannot work with the system as it is and still avoid catastrophe. For it is the functioning of the system as it is—a system that produces the obscenity of billionaires—that is the real source of the catastrophe. For this reason, Don’t Look Up drops the hammer with BASH at the last minute, reintroducing Peter Isherwell when it was almost too late to derail the mission. His intervention causes the mission to abort in mid-flight, showing us that the meteor they were looking for had already struck the earth in the shape of BASH. As Peter Isherwell breaks into the situation room with a casual “Hey everyone, mind if I join?” Jennifer Lawrence’s character, Kate Dibiasky, is prompted to ask: “Is he allowed to be here?” to which Jason (Jonah Hill) responds: “Yeah, he's a Platinum Eagle level donor to the campaign. He has full clearance.” The billionaire intervention of BASH is the mirror image of the comet itself. The writers suggest as much by naming the tech company BASH, like the sound a meteor would make when smashing into the earth. The meteor is BASH and BASH means the meteor. The meteor is the obscene existence of Peter Isherwell, the true unsung hero of Don’t Look Up . Peter Isherwell is not only the personification of self-centered consumerism, he is also an embodiment of archetypal power as the mythic figure of the Old Wise Man. Like a Saint Peter standing at the gates of a golden age promised by Silicon Valley, Peter Isherwell is a kind of hybrid between Steve Jobs and Joe Biden. In his last name, Isherwell, we get the connotation of a wishing well—the fulfiller of wishes and the well-wisher of our final farewell.  The figure of Peter Isherwell can be said “to illustrate the libidinous association of the dangerous impish ogre with the principle of seduction,” as Campbell writes in The Hero with a Thousand Faces , naming “Dyedushka Vodyanoy, the Russian ‘Water Grandfather’,” a mythic being who was “an adroit shapeshifter and is said to drown people who swim at midnight or at noon. Drowned or disinherited girls he marries. He has a special talent for coaxing unhappy women into his tolls. He likes to dance on moonlit nights.” (66)

Hamlet statue at Gower memorial to Shakespeare, Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Photo by Flickr user Sheep Purple, 2008. CC by 2.0. Art imitates life. I look like the crazy father, just like they said. I look like the crazy father just like they said about Richard Williams. But love will make you do crazy things. (Will Smith) Although what the world witnessed on the stage of the Dolby Theater was a most disgraceful spectacle, the mind-boggling violence of the slap and subsequent shouts, it would be better to say here that life imitates Hollywood—or that Hollywood imitates Hollywood. But despite the shameful explosion of his violent arrogance and jealous rage, Will Smith was right on one point alone: he is living proof that love will make you do crazy things.  We see a similar crazy love in Hamlet , for instance, in the scene where he confronts Ophelia (Sc1 Act III)—the closest they ever got to a love scene—which is also full of hate. Although the object of this hate is ostensibly the prostitution of beauty to dishonesty, there is more to Hamlet’s words than he can say. So when Ophelia responds to Hamlet’s probing questions, whether she could be both honest and fair, she asks in return whether beauty herself could “have better commerce than with honesty?” To which Hamlet replies: Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. This was sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof. I did love you once.( Lines 1798 – 1808 ) Here again the time gives proof to the apparent contradiction of Love in mortal affairs. It is a paradox in which “hate” can be the flip side of Love’s coin. The paradox of Eros embeds sexuality and violence in what is lofty and sublime as well as in what is vulgar and crude—even murderous. For in the tragic annals of “the power of Love,” we are not far from the catalog of “crimes of passion” carefully curated by the criminal justice system. This is an interesting fact. The very legal definition of a “crime of passion,” in contradistinction with “premeditated murder,” implies an act of violence committed under the influence of a certain compulsion or psychic force, a spiritual power which drives individuals to “act out” the violence they could not dream of. The perpetrators of such crimes are literally in an altered state of consciousness at the time they commit their murderous deeds—often regretting it deeply afterwards. The offender is in every case “triggered” by an immediate event or “cause” for which they seek to satisfy an overwhelming desire for revenge or possessiveness. So it may be a little unnerving to learn the fact that, outside of wars and pandemics, most homicides in the world are committed by people who once loved one another very much: family members, spouses, or sexual partners. As we can read in the current statistics the shocking results cited by the legal dictionary : “crimes committed in passion comprise most of the total homicides out there. Needless to say, crime of passion statistics can be pretty unsettling.” The part that’s unsettling is the knowledge of the fact that you’re far more likely to be killed by a loved one than a total stranger. It’s unsettling to know of the existence of so many lovers-turned-killers, all of whom could say to their dead victims, echoing the words of Hamlet and Will Smith: “I did love you once. But Love will make you do crazy things.”  Campbell touches on the paradoxical nature of Love throughout The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Nearing section 5, "Master of the Two Worlds," for example, he writes:  “The encounter and separation, for all its wildness, is typical of the sufferings of love. For when a heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then agony is great; so too the danger.” (196) This danger is real, however, not simply a metaphor. This God is not a “master of two worlds” either. Despite the domestication of Eros, Love is ultimately out of our control. As Sappho of Lesbos expressed it in a beautiful fragment : “Eros, looser of limbs, tosses me about, bittersweet, overmastering creature.”  Sappho brings us to the heart to the Ancient Greek conception of Eros which is the topic of the Symposium , the famous platonic dialogue dealing with the virtues and wonders of Love. Put in the mouth of Diotima of Mantineia, a wise woman who instructed Socrates on the art of love, Plato’s exposition of Eros becomes the highlight of the famous banquet.  "What then is Love?" [Socrates] asked; "Is he mortal?" "No, [Diotima responded]."  "What then?"[said Socrates.] [Diotima:] "As in the former instance, he is neither mortal nor immortal, but in a mean between the two." [Socrates:] "What is he, Diotima?" "He is a great spirit ( daimon ), and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal." ( Plato’s Symposium ) Thus Diotima attempts to teach Socrates the dialectical or intermediated nature of Love as a thing that occupies a space between good and evil, between ignorance and wisdom, between mortal and immortal worlds.

[Creation] by Diego Rivera. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Gods within Joseph Campbell had a vision of an independent “science of myth,” a discipline of depth mythologizing which could stand on its own academic legs. Rather than being relegated to literary, anthropological, and archeological disciplines, Campbell wanted to ground myth on its own mythic substance while privileging a depth-psychological approach. Especially leaning on Carl Jung, Campbell comes again and again to a fundamental insight about the universality of myth— the archetypal figures of myth and legend correspond to psychological factors that are at work in the depths of the collective unconscious mind : “And this is one way of saying that in all of us, in our human activities, deities are operating” ( Romance of the Grail 152). Whenever a human action shines with the power of the archetypal, it has been transfigured by the power of myth. Archetypal images mediate both outer and inner realities. They constitute a psycho-physical medium of consciousness, indispensable to the cognitive function of the symbolic and its capacity to disclose the reality of the world.  Logos vs. mythos Images are not outside of language, not even outside verbal communication. For there is a direct relation between images and their meaning; they belong together as integrated wholes in the symbolic order. When we hear a foreign language, for example, we may have the jarring experience of hearing sounds without meaningful images attached to them. Without the resonance of images in our soul, we could not hear the song of meaning in the vibrations of human thought. As Martin Heidegger put it, “Language itself is poetry in the essential sense,” ( Poetry, Language, Thought 72) that is, in the sense that language can reveal the essence of things. Hence, he explains: “Language is not poetry because it is primal poesy; rather, poesy takes place in language because language preserves the original nature of poetry” (72). Rather than external opposites, mythological images are internal to words, as mythos  to logos  and logos  to mythos , in the full concept of mythology . We know that “non-verbal” images have the power to speak louder than words. As structures of signification, archetypal images are core channels of meaning and imagination; they constitute the world wide web of our symbolic life as a species.  Archetypal images retrace the order of the collective unconscious; they express the cultural forms of a collective consciousness which casts its shadow on the reality of the social field where it generally becomes unconscious. The collective consciousness and the collective unconscious are one and the same. Mythic images both hide and reveal the subterranean movement of the universal in the order of conscious thought, a movement that unleashes the power of the creative imagination. Combining the literal with the metaphorical into a single force, it is in the nature of the mythic to become historic.  Mythic images both hide and reveal the subterranean movement of the universal in the order of conscious thought, a movement that unleashes the power of the creative imagination.  The crucible of mytho-history Mythic images mediate between the literal and metaphoric, the manifest and latent, the ghostly and the real, in the virtual medium of psychic in existence. For the mythic only “exists” inside the historic. Mythic images are thus historic self-elucidations of the human spirit, caught between the metaphoricity of language and the literalism of fact.  The mythic and the literal are thus not external factors opposed to each other in fixed hierarchy. The metaphorical is not better than the literal and vice versa; one should not be on top of the other, as good is supposed to rule over evil, right over wrong, better over worse. Adapting the words of Jacques Derrida: “It is not, therefore, a matter of inverting the literal meaning and the figurative meaning but of determining the ‘literal’ meaning of [the mythic image] as metaphoricity itself” ( Of Grammatology 15). The mythic image expresses this metaphoricity of the literal itself, which opens up new horizons of meaning and archetypal vision. Dehumanizing mythology The human soul as human language, the archetypal Logos, which includes the mathematical and cognitive dimensions, has a demonstrably inhuman reach into the secrets of Nature. This very inhumanity at the same time allows us to peer into the unfathomable workings of nature as revealed by quantum physics, for example.  To speak of the archetypal, therefore, is to lay bare our naked inhumanity. For archetypes come to embody the best and the worst of what humans can do to one another, other creatures, and the environment. In the same vein, James Hillman too was compelled to speak of the “dehumanizing” effect of archetypal experience in general. For better or worse, the archetypal power of the mythic image comes to life in the deeds and misdeeds of human history.  The transparency of the transcendent Campbell had a beautiful way of expressing this opening of the mythic dimension. Rather than the opacity of the black and white, he spoke of achieving a certain transparency to the transcendent . To this purpose, he bid us look to artists for “These people can look past the broken symbols of the present and begin to forge new working images, images that are transparent to transcendence” ( Pathways to Bliss 20). In their disclosure of archetypal truth, myths are guides and guide posts to help us light our way. The power of their created works is to reawaken our capacity for mythic vision out of the primeval void of the collective unconscious. Artists are thus specialists in the deployment of the symbolic dimension of myth in the light of what is true; we are molders and shapers of the transparency of language to the shattering experience of archetypal truth.  “Thus in the work it is truth, not only something true, that is at work” (Heidegger 54). It is the archetype of the Logos  or the “Holy Ghost” or Spirit of Truth that is also at work in mythological creation. The event of truth in the work of art goes beyond the aesthetic experience of myth.  The aesthetic experience is itself made transparent to the operation of the transcendent function of truth, or logos, through which we as human beings evolve. Mythos and logos are not binary opposites or mortal enemies. In their togetherness alone mythos and logos complete the archetypal pattern of true mythology in the crucible of myth and history. Rather than aestheticizing myth in an imaginary universe divorced from truth, true mythology ( vera narratio ) emanates from “Its Root Ancient Truth,” as the Maya Popol Wuh  has it in its opening pages of creation. The power of myth, therefore, pushes toward the creation of new worlds of truth in time. Rather than a fixed essence, existential truth grows and develops in time. So what Heidegger writes about art is in every sense applicable to the power of true myth defined as: “the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art then is the becoming and happening of truth ” ( Poetry, Language, Thought 69). The transcendence of this event of truth is the real power that sets us free. Rather than correctness or adequation to a thing, the concept of truth in the existential sense becomes a concept of freedom. Truth as freedom in mythic creation opens the creative space in which we learn to become true  ourselves. In touch with the event of truth in myth, we experience the transcendence of creative being itself as the spirit of our authentic selves. 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 3, and Romance of the Grail Latest Podcast In this bonus episode, Campbell answers questions following his 1971 lecture, "Primitive Rites & Traditions", at Esalen Institute. He first speaks about the differences between male and female rites in various times and places and then gives an overview of his interpretation of the meaning of the "Virgin Birth". Listen Here This Week's Highlights “The logics of image thinking and of verbal thinking are two very different logics. I’m more and more convinced that there is, as it were, a series of archetypes which are psychologically grounded, which just have to operate, but in whatever field is available to them. In the myths, they are represented pictorially. There’s a big distinction to be made between the impact of the image, and the intellectual and social interpretation and application of the image.” -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 27 The Dynamic of Life (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Two Alaska Iroquois masks on display, ca.1900. California Historical Society “From very early—around four or five years old—I was fascinated by American Indians, and that became my real studying. I went to school and had no problems with my studies, but my own enthusiasm was in this maverick realm of the American Indian mythologies.” —Joseph Campbell ( The Hero’s Journey , 6) The maverick realm of Native American mythologies ignited the transcendent passion for mythology that Joseph Campbell is known for. The Native American spirit inspired Campbell to study myth and beyond; it revealed to him a world of wonder and philosophic insight. After all, as Aristotle famously put it, “a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders).” ( Metaphysics 982b19) Native American Mythologies extend their wonders and wisdom far south of the border, spreading mythography across three subcontinents: North, Central, and South America. If we were to travel with native leaders across these native lands, we would experience a variety of rituals and customs, strange languages and symbolism, all bearing testimony to the rich creativity of the indigenous mythological imagination. At the same time, we would also be struck by a fundamental sense of agreement, a common-sense wisdom, everywhere shared by indigenous peoples across the Americas—and beyond. The wisdom of the peoples Struck by this remarkable archetypal sympathy among Native peoples, Chief Oren Lyons—a faithkeeper of the Turtle Clan, esteemed member of the Onondaga Council of Chiefs, Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy)—gives testimony to this profound accord of Native American Wisdom. When he visited the Maya in Central America, despite not knowing the language, the specific dances, or rituals, somehow “I know what’s going on,” said the Iroquois Chief. “It’s always the same,” he continued, “Thanksgiving to the creation. Thanksgiving to the life-giving forces of the earth” (“ Tree Media: Oren Lyons on the Indigenous View of the World " 15:20-52). There is a shared font of wisdom that unites indigenous peoples across the earth. Rather than a secret anti-rational or “mystical” doctrine reserved for the privileged few, however, the Wisdom of the Peoples gives itself out as the plainest of rational common sense. Otherwise it would not be of the people. There is a shared font of wisdom that unites indigenous peoples across the earth As Chief Lyons reiterated, it comes down to the most elementary lessons of human coexistence, such as the principle of sharing, about which the Council of Iroquois Nations found themselves in “profound agreement,” summing up their treaty in the emblem: “one dish, one spoon.” Everyone deserves one dish, one spoon. No one should go without. Food and shelter, healthcare and education, are all human rights and not privileges for those who can afford them. Understand, we are all in the same boat, etc. Such are the simple lessons we used to pass to our children: don’t think only about yourself, learn to share; don’t fight, make peace. Be grateful to the earth. Respect the natural environment and its biodiversity, your elders, etc. These lessons seem so childishly simple, and yet, as Chief Lyons observes, everything in our capitalist culture is hell-bent on giving us the “opposite instruction”: think only about yourself; care only for your private gains and benefits; amass more wealth and power; be content to serve your corporate masters, and do not concern yourself with the fate of others. “And they’re rewarded for that” ( 14:00-15:07 ), says the Chief Elder, thus underlining the madness of so-called Western civilization. For the sake of this narcissistic lifestyle, representing the triumph of hyper-individualism, our society rewards sociopaths, liars, thieves, and scoundrels. Dismantling the colonial gaze This is not a controversial claim. All native people across the globe are in full agreement with a growing consensus among young people: our system, in its current shape, causes a lot more harm than good. Placing profits over people, it is committed to the destruction and ruthless exploitation of our environment, our labor, and our very souls. There is nothing that is not for sale within the frameworks of global capitalism, including the human soul. Rather than promoting “democracy” and “freedom,” the interests of a tiny minority takes precedence over the common good—nay, even over the survival of entire peoples, life forms, and ecosystems. There is something absolutely crazy about the system, something that runs against the exercise of reason and common sense. It is no wonder that its ideological matrix profits from the irrationalist “mythic” core of our belief systems and pet theories. Power centers do not want a population to think rationally, to think critically, structurally, about the economic logic of the system that determines and shapes our entire society. It does not want us to see through the basic ideological fantasy that underlies it, namely, the Hobbesian idea that human beings are fundamentally selfish and greedy, and badly in need of a Master. Enemy of the state If we are true seekers of Native American wisdom, however, we cannot get on board this irrationalist bandwagon which opens the door to a narcissistic appropriation of myth as a tool for our success in a capitalist system. We need to be critically aware that this narcissistic appropriation of the other is an extension of the colonial gaze that already frames our study of mythology. As we approach native cultures, we must wrestle with our own unconscious prejudices and beliefs, powerful ideological fantasies that have been driven into us since we were children playing cowboy and Indians. This objectifying and exoticizing gaze is itself derived from hegemonic power structures and material conditions which we take for granted in the West. These economic and political structures have a powerful ideological or “spiritual” hold over Western readers, who are in every way predisposed—or “educated”—to side with imperialist projects of any description. Smuggling the colonial gaze into the study of Native American Wisdom, we do not notice the fatal contradiction inherent in the “metaphysical” violence of our objectifying quest. The patronizing adoration of indigenous culture, the dismissal of their common-sense wisdom as childish or archaic—all speak to the symbolic violence of this colonial gaze. But this violence of cultural appropriation is only an offshoot of the quite real, murderous violence that has always accompanied colonial projects throughout their history. Placing Native bodies in the killing fields of genocidal conquest, the colonial gaze is by definition in full support of imperialist domination over Native peoples and their lands. As the all-seeing eye of “Western interests” with its well-funded capacity to unleash hell on earth, the imperial gaze is ready to annihilate anyone standing in its way—not excluding women and children, schools and hospitals. Accelerating climate catastrophe and socio-economic breakdown, supporting genocidal wars and courting nuclear holocaust, this disastrous mindset is driving us today, full force, to the literal brink of extinction. In the ideological matrix of cultural capitalism, Native American wisdom can only appear as the enemy. Chief Lyons expressed as much when he said that “the American structure” is everywhere giving us “instructions” to go directly against the principle of sharing, that is, against the communitarian sense and socialist vision of the Wisdom of the Peoples. Within the hegemonic space of this selfish culture, “you have an instruction that’s contrary—v ery contrary to this concept [of sharing]” ( 15:08- 15:17 ). How do we subvert and dismantle the colonial cage? Not without a revolution of thought and vision. 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 Welcome to the fourth season of Pathways with Joseph Campbell! This episode entitled, "The Psychological Basis of Freedom", was recorded at Bennett College in North Carolina in 1970. Host, Bradley Olson introduces the episode and gives commentary after the lecture. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Black Elk was a Lakota Oglala Sioux who had in his youth a mystical vision of the destiny before his people. He saw “the hoop of his nation,” as he called it, as one of many hoops, and all the hoops interlocking, and all of them expressing the same humanity. The hoop of his little nation had to be opened out and become one of many, many hoops of many, many nations." -- Joseph Campbell , Myth and Meaning , 24 Joseph Campbell — Jung, Pedagogy, and Projection of the Shadow (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

When invited to explore the Wise archetype, I found myself facing an inner battle: which story to choose? Which trilogy to follow? Star Wars  (dear Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi!) or The Lord of the Rings , where Gandalf stands as the very embodiment of the Wise Old Man? Strangely, my heart chose the latter. Strangely, because Star Wars  belongs more to my generation, while Tolkien's world speaks most vividly to my daughter’s. Yet this was not a decision of the mind. It was a choice of the heart—and so I invite you to walk with me through this story. "We are going on an adventure" Like Star Wars , The Lord of the Rings  offers a curious kind of beginning. It does not unfold from the start, for Tolkien had already crafted a larger mythos around it. Instead, the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring , immerses us midstream into a vast world: Frodo Baggins, a humble hobbit—small of stature, large of heart—is entrusted with a perilous quest to carry the One Ring to the fires of Mount Doom. He is joined by loyal Samwise Gamgee and aided by companions from all walks of Middle-earth: Aragorn, heir to Gondor’s throne; Legolas the elf; and Gimli the dwarf. Above all, there is Gandalf, at first the Grey : the wise wizard who recognizes the deeper stakes of the journey—not merely the fate of a ring, but the survival of the world itself. In May 2024, a conference took me to Australia, and I found a chance to bring my daughter to New Zealand. There, among the green hills of Waikato, we walked through Hobbiton. I had expected to remain composed. Yet when we stood before the round green door of Bag End, I half-expected Bilbo himself to greet us. Inside the Green Dragon Inn, the warmth was almost tangible, as if the hobbits were just around the corner. And yet, amidst all the wonder, I felt something missing: the quiet presence of the Wise One. In today's world, it seems rarer than ever to encounter true eldership. Wise Ones wanted When this MythBlast call came to explore the Wise One, I knew at once where to turn. Still, I chose to revisit the trilogy ( The Fellowship of the Ring  [2001], The Two Towers  [2002], and The Return of the King  [2003])—to let it be fresh in my mind and heart. My daughter, now twenty-eight, delighted in the task, making burnt popcorn that tasted better than any gourmet snack could. I am now fifty-eight, more attuned than ever to the deeper textures of archetypes. And so, over three long Saturdays, we watched Gandalf once again offer himself in sacrifice so that the younger ones might continue their journey. Yet sacrifice, in its true sense, is not an end. As revealed by the close of the second film (and by now, I trust, this is no spoiler), Gandalf returns, transformed. No longer Gandalf the Grey, he becomes Gandalf the White—cleansed, potent, radiant. The very word "sacrifice" comes from the Latin sacrificium , meaning "to make sacred." In surrendering himself, Gandalf is not diminished. He is reborn. A psychological transformation Through this death and resurrection, Gandalf undergoes a psychological and archetypal transformation—a journey echoing through countless mythologies. He emerges not merely older, but wiser: not merely a keeper of memories, but a bearer of the sacred flame. In The Portable Jung , Joseph Campbell notes that Jung’s archetypes are “the a priori  Forms of Mythic Fantasy” (p. xxxi), shaped only as they are filled with conscious experience. Gandalf’s journey is one such form: a living myth, filled out by courage, sacrifice, and renewal. There is an important distinction here. The Wise One is not the same as the Old One. Age alone does not confer wisdom. Where the Old One clings to what has passed, the Wise One releases, transforms, and renews. As Christian Roesler compellingly argues in Deconstructing Archetype Theory , the process of psychological transformation —not static traits—gives archetypes their power and universality. Gandalf embodies this dynamic spirit. He stands not as a relic of past glories, but as a living guide, willing to sacrifice and be remade for the sake of those who come after. He reminds us that true eldership is not about possessing knowledge—but about embodying wisdom. Where the Old One clings to what has passed, the Wise One releases, transforms, and renews. And perhaps, if we listen closely and are open enough, we too are invited to walk that path. MythBlast authored by: Monica Martinez is a Brazilian writer, researcher, and professor whose work bridges communication, narrative, and Jungian psychology. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP) and a postdoctoral degree from UMESP, exploring how stories shape identity and transformation. A clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst trained by IJEP, she maintains a private practice in São Paulo. Martinez teaches at the University of Sorocaba (Uniso) and coordinates the JORLIT research group on Literary Journalism and Transformative Narratives. In 2024, she completed her second postdoctoral project at Universidade Fernando Pessoa in Portugal, expanding her inquiry across oceans. She has authored several books and articles on literary journalism and psychological storytelling. Mother of Laura, 28, she believes in the enduring magic of narratives to heal, guide, and renew the human spirit. 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 "For those who have not refused the call, the first encounter of the hero-journey is with a protective figure (often a little old crone or old man) who provides the adventurer with amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass. . . . The hero to whom such a helper appears is typically one who has responded to the call. The call, in fact, was the first announcement of the approach of this initiatory priest. But even to those who apparently have hardened their hearts the supernatural guardian may appear." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces , 57, 60 Life is Always on the Edge of Death See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Mural entitled Sun Goddesses, a collaboration by artists Fin DAC and Kevin Ledo, in the Wynwood Arts District of Miami, Florida. The human woman does give birth as the earth gives birth to the plants. She gives nourishment as the plants do. So, woman magic and earth magic are the same, they are related. And the personification, then, of this energy which gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. And so, it is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, but also in the earlier planting culture systems, that the goddess is the mythic form that is dominant. Joseph Campbell, Power of Myth with Bill Moyers , 209-210 Worshiping nature and women appears in many classical myths. Aphrodite is born from the foam of the sea, when Cronus castrates his father Uranus, and throws his severed genitals into the sea. According to some less bizarre and cruel myths, she was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. Desirable and beautiful, she restores youth, fertility, and beauty to those who respect her. She was married to Hephaestus, but was constantly unfaithful to him, kidnapping lovers, starting wars because of her arrogance, and disrupting the love affairs of those who disrespected her. During one sexual encounter with Ares, her husband Hephaestus covered them with a metal wire, so that all the gods would laugh at their adultery. Aphrodite promised fidelity to Hephaestus, but Hermes saw this act of two lovers and fell madly in love with her. From this next adultery of hers, Hermaphrodite was born, a young man with a woman's breasts and long hair. Hermaphroditism arises as an idea in the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy. Aphrodite was constantly causing trouble, but also solving problems, granting wishes and giving back life, beauty and immortality. Paradoxically, she helped establish patriarchy, a society that James Brown describes as: This is a man's, man's, man's world But it wouldn't be nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl Through the centuries that followed in this men's world, Aphrodite suffered oppression and persecution, and her followers went through metamorphosis. However, the love, fertility, and beauty she represents is found in other shapes and forms in different cultures over the history of patriarchal rule. The women-guardians of the patriarchy of Mediterranean culture are best illustrated by the line of the "Mother Goddess“ Maria Portokalos in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002): “Let me tell you something. The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.” Aphrodites all over the world know how to turn heads, and at the same time keep the paterfamilias order, pretending that they are only the neck and not the head of the house. Famous sentences of the baby boomer generation, including "Now I'm going to call your father" or „Just wait till your dad comes home," simulate the power of the male principle in society, while actually showing the true power of the goddess–the guardian of the order who controls and gives birth to life and love. Aphrodite Archetypes Joseph Campbell asserted that the deity is the personification of energy. Mythology is something that is woven into our reality but is not a fact per se. It is metaphoric and symbolic in relation to reality. Female deities around the world personify the same metaphorical energy of love, fertility, lust, and birth. The Greek Aphrodite, the Phoenician Astarte, the Egyptian Isis and Hathor, the Babylonian Ishtar or the Sumerian Inanna, the pre-Islamic Arab goddess Al Uzzi, the Nordic Freya, and the Aztec Xochiquetzal ruled the cultures of the first agricultural cities. These goddesses are imprinted with comparable and compatible archetypes of love and passion. However, the “enemy of lust” in the form of Christian teachings appeared in the Middle East and soon spread throughout Europe. Aphrodite or Venus became assimilated as the Mother of God in the new popular religion, where she remains partly until the Renaissance and partly today. In the Eastern traditions, the Indian name for a woman is Maya-Shakti-Devi, which means: "Goddess who gives life and mother of all forms." Patience of the Goddess These rulers of all forms, through the flexibility of the cervical vertebrae with which they turn the governing structures, show a great power of adaptation and metamorphosis throughout history. The Goddess archetypes have, incredibly in the face of patriarchal power, survived persecution throughout the ages. For example, women who had cats did not get sick during the plague epidemic. Cats eat mice, and mice carry the plague. Thus the patriarchal leaders reasoned that those women must be immune to the Black Death by conspiring with Satan, and they need to be burned at the stake. Even fairy tales, echoing this reasoning, depict witches as the proud owners of black cats. In many cultures, the archetype of the feminine principle is demonized through conservative religious dogmas, which become expressed in explicitly patriarchal and warrior societies. Obstruction of the talents and gifts of the goddess of love and beauty, through feelings that cause joy, mirth, or happiness, originates from some sort of witch hunt on the goddesses. Just as in state systems, where oligarchies, autocracies, or dictatorships make rules, so in social systems, not tied to any particular monotheistic god, the rules for morality, behavior, and appearance in public were imposed on women. Since the flexible goddesses' necks skillfully turned and swiveled through the ages, thus guarding the order, they adapted to different forms of demonization, always knowing that survival and the source of all life was within them. So, they were patient, because even the Bible’s patriarchal slant cannot dim this truth about love: Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 1 Corinthians 13:4 Return to the Goddess The patience of Mother Earth and persisting feminine principles in the context of morality and social arrangements will certainly be of significance in our modern society, which is on the verge of a global war. The patriarchal-warrior and profitable industrial concept of our age has already made Mother Earth, old Tiamat, very angry. Global warming, apocalyptic weather changes, meaningless patriarchal laws and rules, production of henchmen-warriors and obedient workers in our education systems, greed, corruption, destruction of nature, wars, and tensions raging among nuclear powers, are not the product of Aphrodite's whims, but of testosterone from gods of thunder and warriors, who think that by erecting fences and drawing borders, the land they conquered belongs to them. The Goddess archetypes have, incredibly in the face of patriarchal power, survived persecution throughout the ages.  Aphrodite, no matter how capricious, forgives and grants wishes. Goddesses tend to give, not take, life. Their purpose primarily is to give birth, not to conquer. They have many faces and names and have suffered much in turning men's hot heads. Aphrodite's gift is one of the most important gifts of all the “pagan” gods: unconditional love and the birth of life. It is necessary to respect this through the understanding of the gift of life that we have, through love and unity in the desire for the beautiful and good, as well as through the preservation of nature and the respect of the Earth Goddess, which should be passed unharmed as a legacy to the next generations. 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 Power of Myth  Episode 5, and Goddesses Latest Podcast In this episode of Pathways, Joseph Campbell speaks at the Cooper Union in New York City in December 1967. He explores the "mythology of love" - from eros to agape and beyond. Host, Bradley Olson introduces the lecture and gives commentary at the end. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The human woman does give birth as the earth gives birth to the plants. She gives nourishment as the plants do. So, woman magic and earth magic are the same, they are related. And the personification, then, of this energy which gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. And so, it is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, but also in the earlier planting culture systems, that the goddess is the mythic form that is dominant." -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers 209-210 The Virgin Birth (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Saving Private Ryan (1998) Paramount Pictures On a visit last fall to the American Cemetery in Normandy, I saw the grave markers of two American brothers side by side who died in the Allied operation to liberate France in 1945. But after Robert and Preston Niland sacrificed their lives, the U.S. Army realized that two other Niland brothers were in the war as well: one missing in the Pacific theater and another fighting in Europe. The Army’s fateful decision to reassign the living Niland soldier away from the front would later inspire Steven Spielberg’s 1998 film, Saving Private Ryan . In the movie, the Army realizes that three out of four sons of a fictional Mrs. Ryan have been killed in action, and the fourth, Private James Ryan, is lost behind enemy lines in the chaos following D-Day. The Army hierarchy understands that this mother of many must be spared the insupportable grief of losing all her children, the way the Greek goddess Demeter had to be spared the grief of completely losing her child Persephone. In this way, Mrs. Ryan resonates with a mythic figure whom Joseph Campbell calls the “Great Mother” ( Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine , eBook 91).  So the Army sends a squad of Rangers on a collective journey into the underworld of Nazi-occupied France to find Private Ryan, the Great Mother’s lost child. The Rangers must scour a wasteland of war to find one unremarkable soldier among thousands dressed exactly like him. In searching for Private Ryan, the squad assumes the mantle of the Seeker archetype. The courage to search Saving Private Ryan  is an imaginal plunge into the full-body commitment soldiers make to war: its horrors and hurts, its blood and its brawls. From the famous sequence that recreates D-Day to to the final fight protecting a strategic bridge, the immediacy and realism of the film’s battle scenes testify to the courage required to put oneself in harm’s way in order to save others. The Seeker archetype requires courage, too. The Seeker appears when something is missing, lost, or not yet achieved—in other words, a situation of vulnerability. Although the search can lead to discovery and new knowledge, the Seeker must accept that there’s no guarantee they’ll like what they find, if they find anything at all. They can only search from a place of not-knowing. Will they find what they seek? Will they win or lose? Live or die? These unknowable questions take on heightened urgency for Seekers in wartime and therefore require heightened courage.  Still, the Saving Private Ryan  Seeker squad sets out. They encounter deadly distractions and competing priorities. They make hard decisions. They keep going when everything seems impossible. They pool their courage and skills. The collective capacity of a team of Seekers is far more than the sum of each individual’s.  A team of Seekers If a wartime Seeker summons a special kind of bravery, a team of wartime Seekers leads to a surge of Seeker courage. What’s more, each Seeker trusts the rest of the team to play their part, freeing everyone to focus on their own tasks. Each functions as a safety net for the others and for the mission. If one falls, others will step into the breach, dress wounds, carry the search forward. In addition to greater combined courage, this increase in focus and resilience are gifts of a collaborative, collective hero’s journey. For more about collective journeys, I highly recommend the work of John Bucher , the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Executive Director, starting with his MythBlast A Call to a Collective Adventure .  Saving Private Ryan ’s Seekers might look like each other from a distance, but they have unique and complementary skills: captain, technical sergeant, medic, sniper, light machine gun specialist, translator. In other words, anyone can be a Seeker, and each soldier represents a particular capacity that this search requires. Seeking alone, none could succeed, but when each lends his powers to the search, they can save the Great Mother from further suffering. The collective capacity of a team of Seekers is far more than the sum of each individual’s.  For whom they all seek The mission makes no sense in a financial cost-benefit analysis—sending a squad of elite Rangers to find one nondescript private—but it is essential for the life force Mrs. Ryan represents. In other words, it makes soul sense. At home in the heartland, surrounded by endlessly vast wheat fields, Mrs. Ryan represents the bountiful Great Mother and the soul of America, or what Campbell might call the nation’s “power of life” ( Goddesses , eBook 219). Her silent presence permeates the film, from dying soldiers calling out for Mama (11:39, 1:31:18) to stories the squad tells about their mothers (1:09:20, 1:09:42, 1:09:58) to their many references to upsetting mothers back home (21:33, 43:22, 45:22, 1:39:09, 1:51:05). The movie’s plot runs on the truth that the Great Mother can only take so much suffering before the land begins to wither, and her sons represent a generation at risk. If they all die, the nation can’t survive. The image of the Great Mother also makes a sharp contrast to the Nazi metaphor of the Fatherland that seeks to own, occupy, and destroy those whom it considers lesser. When lost becomes found I love  Saving Private Ryan . I won’t pretend it’s an easy film to watch, but for me it serves as utterly effective myth-making: crafting the events of history with a dash of fiction to create a work of deep meaning and import that tells the soul’s truth. It’s a battle hymn to the courage of the Seeker archetype, to the capacities of a team of Seekers, and to the Great Mother whom they fight to protect.  Does the squad succeed in their seeking? Yes and no. They find Private Ryan, but six out of eight Rangers die in the process. Similarly, the imperfect moral code of the Allies triumphs over the absolutely immoral code of the Nazis after the cost of countless lives.  The Seeker in Saving Private Ryan  offers many suggestions for how to search: Scan the horizon. Keep moving. Protect those who can’t protect themselves. Serve, survive, save your companions. Devote yourself to what you love for as long as you can. Summon your courage, leap into the fray, and keep going especially when the search seems impossible. Remember that feeling fear is the only possible way to be brave. MythBlast authored by: Joanna Gardner, PhD , is a writer, mythologist, and magical realist focusing on creativity, goddesses, and wonder tales. She is the author of The Practice of Enchantment: MythBlast Essays, 2020-2024   and the lead author of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide . Joanna serves as director of marketing and communications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and as adjunct professor in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies program. She also co-founded and co-leads the Fates and Graces , hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers. For Joanna's updates and additional publications, you are most cordially invited to visit her website at joannagardner.com . This MythBlast was inspired by Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine and the archetype of The Seeker. Latest Podcast Francis Weller has spent his life restoring the sacred work of grief and deepening our connection to the soul. A psychotherapist, writer, and soul activist, Francis weaves together psychology, mythology, alchemy, and indigenous wisdom to show us how grief is not just personal but profoundly communal. His bestselling book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow, has guided thousands in embracing loss as a path to renewal. Through his organization, WisdomBridge, and his work with the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, Francis helps others navigate sorrow with ritual, story, and deep remembrance. In this conversation, we explore how grief can serve as an initiation into a richer, more connected life—and why reclaiming lost rituals of mourning is essential to healing both ourselves and the world. For more information about Francis, visit: https://www.francisweller.net/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The demand on the individual is that he give himself up for his community. That’s the mysticism of the warrior life, that he accepts death for himself. And there are rituals, or there used to be, for bringing about that shift of accent in the mind." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 195 The Radiance Behind All Things Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Shiva as Lord of the Dance (Nataraja), c. 11th century, Chola period, copper alloy, 68.3 x 56.5 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) I first heard of the 11th-century bronze Shíva Naṭarāja statue in 1991, while watching Power of Myth —the television series that made Campbell famous in Brazil, at least to me and others of my generation. In the book based on the 1988 PBS documentary , chapter VIII (named Masks of Eternity), Bill Moyers mentions it to Campbell, who briefly explains that Shíva's dance is the dance of the universe, since there is death and rebirth there at the same time in an eternal becoming.  Not by chance, when I went to India for the first time in 2014, I bought a small replica, which is at the entrance of my house in São Paulo. In this quarter of a century I have immersed myself in the studies of mythology, a wide scenario that was revealed to me when watching the conversations between Campbell and Moyers. So I was very happy to have the chance to read the book The Ecstasy of Being and come across, in part 1 of the Symbolism and the Dance chapter, the same Shíva image, but with a much more in-depth explanation of it. In it, Campbell talks about the tradition of opposites in the world mythological tradition. As it was peculiar to him, in his profound erudition, he moved with the same ease from tarot card 21, The World, to the Indian statuette, passing through the book of Genesis, Plato, and Tiresias, among others. At one point he even joked that you could continue to quote forever (which wouldn't be a bad idea, coming from him). But then he lands on the image of Shíva, for him the most eloquent and complete symbol of all opposites. At this point, I picked my little Shíva up and began to read the book's passage while searching it for Campbell's findings. Mine was obviously a rather simple replica of the 11th century original, but still there it was, the divine foot planted on the dwarf named Not-Knowing, while the left leg was raised with the foot pointing to the right. For Campbell, the first foot planted in the earth indicated the arrival of the soul in life and the second, raised, its release. Here we come and from here, one day, we take the exit door.  I looked carefully at the piece’s hand in front of me. Or rather, four hands and two pairs of arms. The right hand, stretched out to the same side, holds a little drum that goes tick-tick-tick, signaling the time that flows in everyday life. On the opposite side, however, the left hand holds a flame that sets fire to the clock's veil of time and represents Kairos, the sacred time, and also the destruction of the known. The second right hand is flat in front of the god, suggesting, according to Campbell, a “don't be afraid” gesture. The second left hand, in a position as if it was holding a baby in front of the body, points to the raised foot, suggesting that in the end it is all an illusion or, as Campbell says, “the promise of the release”. In my modest figurine I can't tell the difference, but Campbell says that the original Shíva´s bronze wears female earrings in the left ear and male earrings in the right—the usual representation of genders, considering the side of the body, in most traditions. In his hair there is both the crescent moon that symbolizes life and the skull that signifies its end. While everything dances in Shiva´s bronze, Campbell remembers that his face is absolutely inert, showing the immovable point of stillness within—with which, as we know, Campbell was familiar not from dancing, but from athletics in his college years.  Before moving on in his thoughts towards the dervishes, Campbell recalls that the dancing god is a symbol of the union of time and eternity. I take the figurine in my hands again. I see the dance of flames that regularly spring from the circle that surrounds Shiva and its complex symbolic conjunctions of opposites. And, as a Jungian analyst, I remember Jung and his notion of the coniunctio , the recombining of polarities such as day and night, masculine and feminine. But, also, Jung’s concept of the transcendent function, the manifestation of the energy that arises from the tension of opposites. Neither still nor in motion, so that if we were stuck in one of the polarities, we would miss its totality. However, it is precisely the union of these opposites that gives rise to a third, synthesizing element which gives life to a new perception of reality. And what comes to my mind is that, as Campbell used to say, mythology is the “song of the universe,” the whispered tune underneath the dance. The point where mythology meets both the dance and the music of the spheres.

Star Wars has always been powered by a timeless motif: wise mentors guiding the next generation of heroes and heroines toward their destiny. However, when the saga introduced Maz Kanata in The Force Awakens (2015), she was unlike any mentor we’d seen before. She offered guidance like the kind that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda had given Luke Skywalker, but there was something different about Maz—something distinctly feminine . Eye goddesses and visionary insights For a thousand years, Maz Kanata has overseen a lakeside castle—a raucous crossroads for smugglers, seekers, rogues, and royalty alike. She’s not a Jedi, but she’s keenly attuned to the Force. And although she stands just over three feet tall, her presence looms large. One of Maz’s most striking features is her oversized goggles, always perched atop her small orange face. These lenses allow her to see beyond surfaces, into the truth of those around her. It's a powerful metaphor with a deep history. Joseph Campbell noted the significance of feminine figures with exaggerated eyes, suggesting that ancient Eye Goddesses represented a shift from deities of fertility to those guiding spiritual growth ( Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine , 80). Maz’s role is not to give birth to the next hero. Her calling is to see deep within those that stand before her and speak the words they need to hear, pointing lost souls toward their true destiny. Han Solo knows this when he brings fellow rebels Rey and Finn to meet Maz, seeking wisdom for an impossible quest. Maz, seeing right through Han’s agenda and usual bravado, speaks not to the external task he’s come for help with, but to the internal journey that Han has been avoiding. Looking deep into his eyes, she says, “If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people. I’m looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run … Han, you’ve been running away from this fight for too long. Go home.” In a rare moment for him, Han Solo is left speechless. The myth behind the mentor: Campbell’s Wise One and Mother Goddess In the grand tradition of Star Wars ’ multi-layered mentors, Maz (Lupita Nyong’o) represents more than just another wise figure doling out advice. She taps into a mythic legacy stretching back thousands of years, embodying two of the most enduring archetypes Joseph Campbell identified in his studies of mythology: the Wise One and the Mother Goddess. In doing so, Maz Kanata offers a new way of seeing what it means to guide a heroic figure. Campbell argues that, early in the monomyth, the adventurer meets a “protective figure (often a little old crone … ) who provides amulets against the dragon forces he is about to pass” ( The Hero with a Thousand Faces , 57). This Wise One gives supernatural aid and tests worthiness. Later, in the stage Campbell calls “Meeting with the Goddess,” the hero encounters a maternal presence—“the epitome of beauty … mother, sister, mistress, bride”—whose embrace promises renewal and belonging (92). These two archetypes are frequently distinct (Merlin vs. Virgin Mary), yet Campbell notes they can merge into a single figure who is at once crone-sage and nurturing goddess. Maz Kanata is one of those rare figures who seamlessly combines both archetypes. Maz Kanata offers a new way of seeing what it means to guide a heroic figure. Maz as the Wise One Like other crones and witches of myth, Maz stands at the liminal threshold between worlds—literally. Her castle on Takodana sits between the wild forest and the placid lake, a place of crossroads and decisions, between safety and peril. In her grand hall, Maz tests Rey and Finn with difficult questions, arms them with knowledge, and bestows a powerful talisman on the story’s heroine: Luke Skywalker’s lost lightsaber. Offering the saber isn’t just a cinematic moment—it’s a mythic one. In Campbell’s view, the hero's first boon is often a magical object given by a wise elder, designed to aid them against the forces of darkness. For Rey, this moment is a first glimpse of her greater purpose. Through this mentorship, Maz propels Rey across the “Refusal of the Call” into active participation in a galactic destiny. Maz as the Mother Goddess Maz’s style is different from other mentors we encounter in Star Wars . She is no stern, distant sage. She’s warm, playful, and fiercely protective. She teases Han when he first sees her, calling Solo’s sidekick, Chewbacca, her “boyfriend.” She hugs patrons at knee height. And in her roaring tavern, she enforces a single, simple rule: “ No fighting .” Her hall becomes a sanctuary—chaotic, but safe—where all manner of beings coexist under her maternal care. To Rey, abandoned, yearning for belonging, and just wanting to return home, Maz offers a motherly comfort fused with unflinching truth that she has never known. “The belonging you seek is ahead of you, not behind,” Maz counsels her. In this moment, she embodies a rare fusion of the Crone’s wisdom and the Mother’s compassion. Rey’s journey through the Underworld Campbell labels the first deep, interior crisis “The Belly of the Whale”— a plunge across a threshold into symbolic death and rebirth (74). In The Force Awakens , Rey quite literally descends below Maz’s hearth. Drawn by whispers, she enters a stone passage lined with relics and catacombs once used by Jedi, discovering Luke’s saber in a chest. Touching it quickly batters her psyche with a kaleidoscopic Force vision—masked corridors, falling Bespin vents, her adversary, Kylo, in snow. The basement is thus an underworld in miniature, where Rey’s old identity (“I’m no one from Jakku”) dies and the nascent Jedi is conceived. Rey flees from the saber, but runs directly into Maz, who offers it once more. “Take it,” Maz says. When Rey refuses, Maz respects her choice but speaks gently of the Force and of a light that has always been with her. The encounter fuses the roles of mentor and goddess into a single act of unconditional guidance. Rey accepts Maz’s invitation and takes the saber. Later, during her duel with Kylo Ren, she remembers Maz’s words—and awakens to the Force at last. A quiet, unwavering confidence In the vast Star Wars mythology, mentors sometimes split along two archetypal lines. Yoda embodies the sage but not the nurturer. Shmi Skywalker is a mother, but not a guide. Leia Organa eventually becomes both, but only after her heroic arc. Maz Kanta, however, arrives already complete and integrated. She is playful, wise, maternal, and fiercely attuned to the journey of others. Her example broadens what mentorship can look like—not through command or combat, but through the quiet, unwavering confidence that the Force lives within even the most unlikely soul. For the audience, she reminds us of something older than anything from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. True wisdom doesn’t just challenge the hero—it nurtures their process of becoming. MythBlast authored by: John Bucher   is a renowned mythologist and story expert who has been featured on the BBC ,  the History Channel ,  the LA Times ,  The Hollywood Reporter  and on numerous other international outlets . He serves as Executive Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation  and is a writer, podcaster, storyteller, and speaker. He has worked with government and cultural leaders around the world as well as organizations such as HBO, DC Comics, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, A24 Films, Atlas Obscura, and The John Maxwell Leadership Foundation, bringing his deep understanding of narrative and myth to a wide array of audiences. He is the author of six influential books on storytelling, including the best-selling Storytelling for Virtual Reality, named by BookAuthority as one of the best storytelling books of all time. John has worked with New York Times  Best Selling authors, YouTube influencers, Eisner winners, Emmy winners, Academy Award nominees, magicians, and cast members from Saturday Night Live . Holding a PhD in Mythology & Depth Psychology, he integrates scholarly insights with practical storytelling techniques, exploring the profound connections between myth, culture, and personal identity. His expertise has helped shape compelling narratives across various platforms, enriching the way stories are told and experienced globally. 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 "I can tell you I could easily recognize my own material [in Star Wars]. I thought it was marvelous. I was really excited. It seems to me in the history of Western art, this is a major work. It speaks to the multitude—it’s talking to young people and old people—those to whom the mythic imagery must be addressed. The elite can sit home and read and soak themselves in these great things, but it’s the general public that must be informed of these images and ideas." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 158 Kundalini Yoga: The God Syllable "AUM" See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter