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Ulysses and the Sirens (1891) by John William Waterhouse Well, Odysseus is in the news, and given our theme of music, mythology, and the Return phase of the hero’s journey, I remembered the Sirens’ song he faced on his return home. Now, the recent movie didn’t stick perfectly to the original text, and my musing here strays outside the canonical Campbellian lines, but it all set me to musing about things that keep us from getting home to our own Ithacas…and how music can distract us. The Sirens posed a dangerous temptation, and I wondered whether all those wonderful tunes on our playlists might tempt us in the same way. In light of how mythology has described Sirens—and there are other, non-lethal examples—there seems to be a paradox at work in how songs can sidetrack, and/or inspire, our lives. Let’s do inspiration first. Sirens’ song as inspiration When I was in high school, my friend Arnie’s father had the best stereo system anyone had ever seen (heard!) and, after school, we would hightail it over to his house before his dad got home to crank up some Black Sabbath, Steppenwolf, Led Zeppelin, and Yes to completely inappropriate decibel levels. Oh brother, was it good. The experience created a kind of bliss that, honestly, served me well in later years as inspiration for my work, my art, and my thinking; the kind of music-induced bliss that suspends normal consciousness—without the assistance of, say, mescaline or psilocybin, ahem—and allows the mind to wander (and then wonder) about new territories, out there beyond the fences of socially sanctioned careers or lifestyles. Philosophically speaking, this understanding of music is precisely what you find expressed, at length and in relatively turgid prose, in Schopenhauer's discussion of aesthetic arrest and the role music can play in freeing one from the tyranny and imposition of the will. I think most us went through something like this in the early 70s and, c’mon, nothing much has changed. Cranking up the tunes cracks you open to wonder at a somatic level, bypassing the habituated brain functions that reinforce socially prescribed ways of being. A lot of those old songs (if you haven’t, go back and listen to Steppenwolf’s Monster) are still on my playlist along with stuff like tunes from Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert, Billy Strings and, I guess, The Tales of Hoffmann. Anyway, that’s just me. Music returns me to a place that feels like home, to my authentic self, and to something deeper and truer than what I understand myself to be. You’ve probably had that experience. Music as a return to your deeper truths. Music that floats your boat. Outside of Homer’s mythology, Sirens play much happier roles. In Plato (in the completely weird and surprising “Myth of Er” at the end of his Republic—really, go Google it), the celestial spheres are warded by Sirens whose songs harmonize to sustain the architecture of the universe. Cool, right? And in Tolkien (Tolkien counts as contemporary mythology, doesn’t he?) the Ainur sing the cosmos itself into existence. So if we’re talking about Sirens, these examples are pretty desirable ways music can float your boat back to the safety of a home port. “Having a bad day? Having trouble figuring out the meaning of your life? Just listen to the music of the spheres that created the universe, that’ll sort you out. What, don’t have any? No worries, here’s some Joni Mitchell.” Anyway, all that sounds great. The Siren song of music can elevate and inspire us to “return” to our higher, better, selves. Yay! But. What about those Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey? They aren’t there to inspire—they do exactly the opposite. Homer’s Sirens are there to tempt you from your adventure, to sidetrack you, to keep you from ever returning home. So, Sirens can be good and awful? Hm. Songs of enchantment and ruin How to make sense of this paradox? As mythological, as metaphors, Sirens should be able to tell us something about our own lives. The inspiring version is pretty familiar, as described, but I started to wonder how that same music, our own Siren-song playlists, might tempt us from our personal adventure, and sidetrack us into non-action. I kept thinking of that phrase: “music floats your boat” and found a paradox hiding in it—one that’s even worse than the upcoming, horrible pun. When we say something like “music floats your boat,” it follows that there might be a pair-of-docks at which you might disembark. Whew. Sorry about that. These two kinds of Siren describe a Muse-ickal pair-of-docks, what Campbell might describe, monomythically, as the razor’s edge between the Two Worlds. Music can inspire us to 1) engage with living-in-the-world and 2) music can amuse-us-to-death. Music can awaken the possibilities of the great adventure or rock you gently to sleep in your parents’ basement … forever. Musical bliss can open the doors of perception that let you see the adventure in front of you or lull you into the dopamine maze of endless streaming in a Fun House of musical mirrors. Those are the two worlds we’re called to navigate and the ports of call offered by these two different kinds of Siren. Tricky. “Don’t worry about that Golden Fleece. Take a nap.” Interesting, right? Yeah, but there’s more bad news. I was optimistic when I started musing about all this, but I have to say, we’re in a much more dangerous situation than Odysseus was. Today, the technology that delivers all the blissful music-you-could-ever-want, much less listen to, has made the Sirens’ song industrially efficient. Algorithms are now in place to keep you clicking blissfully away for as long as possible, while continuously monitoring your preferences in order to feed you back your own preferred ear candy, chock full of delicious and nutritionally empty calories. To what end? The same as Homer’s Sirens: to keep you immobilized with the sweet diabetes of candy-corn-music-as-commodity. Homer’s Sirens are now streaming across all the navigable channels of social media, and the Muses have been monetized. Perhaps we’re doomed? Maybe. But here’s a solution: what if we took a lesson from Odysseus? What would it mean to bind ourselves to the masts of our adventure, plug the crews’ ears with beeswax, and have them row us safely past the shoals, and temptations, of today’s Sirens? Something to think about. Thanks for musing along. MythBlast authored by: Mark C.E. Peterson is a Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies and past president of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture. Originally from Honolulu, raised in Minneapolis, Uppsala, Sweden, Chicago, Mobile, and Toronto. I’ve lived in Riga and Shanghai and West Bend, Wisconsin. A practitioner of taijiquan and kundalini yoga for over 40 years, I'm also a member of the Ukulele World Congress. This MythBlast was inspired by the Return stage of the hero's journey and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces we speak with Rupert Spira about the meeting place between the Direct Path and the mythic imagination. Rupert Spira is a teacher, author, speaker, and former ceramic artist whose work explores consciousness, non-duality, meditation, and the nature of lasting peace and happiness. His books include The Nature of Consciousness, Being Aware of Being Aware, You Are the Happiness You Seek, and The Shining of Being. Drawing from Advaita Vedanta, Kashmir Shaivism, Sufism, Buddhism, Zen, and mystical Christianity, Rupert’s teaching invites us to look directly into the nature of experience and recognize the awareness that is prior to thought, belief, identity, and the story of the separate self. Before becoming widely known as a teacher of non-duality, Rupert spent decades as a ceramic artist, a background that gives his work a rare sensitivity to form, beauty, silence, and attention. Today, through his books, retreats, conversations, meditations, YouTube channel, Substack, and the Luminous meditation app, he continues to guide people toward what he often calls our true nature: the simple awareness of being. Together, Tyler and Rupert explore Joseph Campbell’s understanding of myth as a symbolic journey beyond the limited ego and into a deeper ground of being. They discuss the relationship between myth and direct recognition, the difference between progressive paths and the pathless path, the separate self as a story, poetry, pottery, beauty, the hero’s journey, spiritual integration, and love as the felt recognition of our shared being. This is a conversation about the stories that help us, the stories that limit us, and the possibility of recognizing what is prior to all stories: the quiet, radiant awareness in which life appears. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "What is the Sirens’ song? It is the song of the mystery of the universe that makes it impossible to go on with mere phenomenal work." -- Joseph Campbell Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 169 Jung, the Self, and Myth See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Ferdinand Runk. View of the Vltava Valley Perhaps I came to classical music a bit late in life. I had little exposure to it growing up. In my midwestern 1960s house, it was country music mostly, and what always seemed to me a strange musical mashup: popular standards sung by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, or Peggy Lee, and restrained, smooth jazz á la Stan Getz or Chet Baker that was the music du jour. Before proceeding, I would like to focus this MythBlast on the Return portion of Joseph Campbell’s notion of the hero’s adventure. This year, we’ve explored Separation and Initiation, and now, to complete the cycle as we circle back to another calendrical beginning—rather like James Joyce’s Liffey River circles back, connecting to itself in Finnegans Wake—we come to the Return. Joseph Campbell writes in Creative Mythology, “The self is void, the world is void; heaven, earth, and the space between are void: in this rapture, there is neither virtue nor sin” (60). The Rapturous void, a lovely nothing, Joyce called it, constellates the energetic rivers of life running in and around and through us, creating and sustaining life everywhere, circulating back into and through the void from which it arises. The void isn’t an absence of something, or a lack. Shadows and holes have locations and even qualities of temporality, but they don’t consist of matter. Nothing is not a negativity contingent on some positive something. Joseph Campbell borrowed Joyce’s term monomyth to describe what he would eventually call the hero’s adventure. Joyce, incidentally, used monomyth exactly once—in Book III of Finnegans Wake, shortly before he describes HCE’s unravelling ego dissolving into the larger flow of Dublin history, language, and the Liffey River he uses to symbolize the eternal return or recurrence. Nothing remains itself for long in this book, but all of it returns transformed. But I was going to say when Truth broke in with all her matter-of-fact about MythBlast themes and monomyth, it wasn’t until I was an undergraduate that I listened, really listened, to a piece of classical music. I’d taken a liberal arts elective class called “Music Appreciation.” It was a one credit course taught by a middle aged man who was clearly handsome once, but by that time seemed to have gone to seed. He was tall and slim, with a shock of steel-gray hair, a deeply lined face, and spoke in a hypnotically sonorous voice. Though he was very wry and funny, a whiff of sadness wrapped itself around him and seemingly threatened to extinguish an already guttering flame. On the first day of class, that marvelous voice informed us that there would be no exams; the only way to earn less than an A in the class was failing to show up or failing to respond to his question if he happened to call on you during class. All he wanted, he explained, was for his students to listen. He then placed an album on the turntable, and I was transfixed from the first delicate, lyrical notes of the flute. The Moldau, the German name for the Vltava river, has been one of my favorite pieces of music ever since. Its recurring theme reminds me that a return is the beginning remembered in the light of experience. This thought reminds me that I’m always already on the heroic adventure. The cycle of six symphonic poems collectively called Má Vlast, The Moldau being one, is Bedřich Smetana’s musical love letter to the Czech nation and her people. The Vltava River flows across northern Bohemia, through Prague, and is sometimes referred to as the Czech national river. The piece opens with a soft, warm, yet lively lyrical flute, soon to be joined by a clarinet evoking the image of two bubbling springs. These emerge from the mountainous Bohemian forest, running through the Czech countryside, through Prague, finally merging with the Elbe River about 48 kilometers north of Prague, passing through Germany on its way to the North Sea. The flute and clarinet begin to develop the main theme gently, smoothly, as the river grows and continues its way through the wooded countryside. Soon, horns and trumpets sound a brief fanfare that diverts the listener from the theme just long enough to interrupt the river’s musical flow. What’s being hunted along the river’s bank remains unclear. The tonal shift may feel confusing or startling; one might even wonder for a disconcerting moment what’s being pursued by the hunters—is it me as I flow along with the river? Perhaps the river itself is being pursued? Strange thoughts swirl for only a moment until one realizes the hunters are martialling toward the flushed game. Such a fanfare in classical music has long signaled a hunt. It’s the sort of symphonic shorthand in use long before Smetana, but as his program notes names the section as a hunting scene on the riverbank, no guesswork is required. After the hunt’s brief interruption, the music returns to its familiar theme—its Idé Fixe, gathering to itself the influences of Czech culture, growing and surging, becoming more robust as it travels along until we witness a wedding scene. The wedding section is a polka that takes us off the river to join in the celebration. This is not random or incidental to the theme or the river’s flow. This symphonic poem is a celebration of Czech culture and proud national feeling. The polka is a Czech folk dance—its origins are Bohemian, mid-19th century, right around when Smetana was writing, and where his family is from—so using it here isn't filler, or "look at the peasants enjoying life" music; it's a specific national image that his Czech audience would recognize immediately as their own. The music leaves the river's perspective for a while and joins the village; it’s the last "ordinary human world" material before the piece becomes darker, more interior and strange as we return to the river and move into night, encountering water nymphs and the strange shadows cast by moonlight. Not only the music, but our listening selves, too, have crossed a threshold. The world we’ve entered is strangely enchanted, populated with ethereal forms and nymphs—the nocturnal, mythic middle of the piece. But joy comes with the morning and the main river theme returns, although it soon breaks into tumultuous dissonance as the river enters the St. John’s Rapids. The rapids no longer exist, long submerged under a large reservoir, but in Smetana’s symphonic poem we can still experience the chaotic, churning whitewater brought back to life by the dissonant notes of woodwinds and brass, whirling strings, crashing timpani and cymbals, and tumultuous unresolved chords. Smetana composed this piece while Czechoslovakia was living under Austrian rule, and he wanted this section to musically evoke the hardships, oppression, and battles that faced his countrymen and the Czech nation. Just as the dissonance reaches a crescendo, the familiar main musical theme returns transformed; a major key swells majestically as the Vltava enters Prague—the same tune, yet not the same. Experience, the energy of a country and her people, and memory have transformed it. The Vltava flows beneath Vyšehrad, a historic, tenth-century fort that local legend says is the first settlement on the site that would eventually become Prague. The castle was sacked during the Hussite Wars in the fifteenth century, eventually falling into disuse and ruin. It underwent a renovation in the seventeenth century following the Thirty Years' War, after which the Hapsburg monarchy took over Czech lands. This reminds me of the poet Rainer Maria-Rilke and his Eighth Duino Elegy, in which he writes: And we: spectators, always, and everywhere, turned toward everything and never outward! It overfills us. We arrange it. And it falls apart. We arrange it once again and fall apart ourselves. This, to me, is the essence of the human project: to be transformed—sometimes undone—by experience and then return to the always-ongoing project of living. One powerful yet often overlooked return is to remember the beginning in the light of experience. We will then see, perhaps, ourselves as a different creature, holding memories of the old, certainly, but with a renewed vision for the future, and the realization that life itself—like the river—is transcendent. The falling apart is inevitable, but so is the return to being, the inevitable return to ourselves. The falling apart is inevitable, but so is the return to being, the inevitable return to ourselves. This is the brilliance of Smetana’s composition. The heroic return needs no narration. It is simply a melody carrying an archetypal, mythical pattern through thirteen minutes of orchestral time. The theme returns and returns, yes, but enriched by experience each time. As do we. Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson is a writer, depth psychologist in private practice, teacher, speaker, and Director of Publications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His work explores the status of myth after belief—what it means to take myth seriously in a world where its metaphysical claims no longer hold in any straightforward way. He is the author of The Mythopoetic Impulse and a Skeleton Key Study Guide for Pathways to Bliss. His current writing pushes against the dominant tendency to treat myth as a repository of timeless meanings or archetypes, arguing instead that myth functions as a form that brings the mind into contact with its own limits—where coherence breaks down and the desire for explanation remains. Before his work in psychology and mythology, Olson worked as a police officer in North Dakota and Arizona. There, he encountered the world less as a smooth narrative than as rupture—moments of consequence without clear origin, human situations that resist explanation or moral symmetry. That experience continues to inform his understanding of myth—not as a system that resolves the world into meaning, but as a form that emerges in proximity to what cannot be made coherent. In both his clinical practice and his writing, Olson is interested in how people live with those limits—how meaning persists, not as resolution, but as a problem that cannot finally be solved. This MythBlast was inspired by the Return stage of the hero's journey and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast EP 52: The Occidental Tradition part 3 In this final installment of The Occidental Tradition, recorded during Joseph Campbell’s 1973 visit to the Blaisdell Institute, Campbell turns toward the role of myth, symbol, and ritual in modern Western life. In a wide-ranging and conversational exchange, Campbell explores the symbolic traditions embedded in Christianity, art, American history, and even the imagery of the dollar bill. He reflects on the gradual disappearance of shared ritual in modern culture, the enduring human need for ceremonies of belonging and transformation, and what can happen when that need is left without meaningful forms. From the funeral of John F. Kennedy and the rituals of political life to football games, protest movements, religious imagery, and the work of artists and visionaries, Campbell argues that our symbolic inheritance has not entirely disappeared. The symbols, he suggests, are still all around us—we have simply forgotten how to see them. In his closing commentary, host Bradley Olson considers what it means to live among the remnants of older symbolic worlds, and whether myth can still help us give form to the mysteries of death, grief, love, belonging, and the experience of being alive. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "So that stream, that running stream which is the running stream of time, the River Ganges, the River Liffey, the River Jordan, whatever river you want, becomes symbolic of the flow of time. And so it’s given commonly a feminine name. And when you go into the water in baptism and come out again, it’s like going into the mother womb and coming out in rebirth. The water is the Goddess." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning, 54 The Adventure of Being Alive See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Child Ballads (2013) by Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer My memory is often elusive, hiding names or dates I am attempting to recall. And yet, when a random song from the 90s comes on the radio, I can recite every word. Music seems to serve as a powerful mnemonic device. But we know this about music. Consider the alphabet song or nursery rhymes. To this day, I can recite the preamble to the Constitution because my elementary school teacher taught us with a song. Melody and meter have proven to be abiding memory aids. The bards of old held stories in song. An epic poem like the Odyssey was recalled as it was sung. One can imagine the music itself helped the story stay in the storyteller's mind while transporting the tale into the listener's heart. In this way, myth, memory, and music intertwine. Songs tell stories Songs tell stories today too. One that immediately comes to mind is “Tam Lin (Child 39)” by Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer. Released in 2013, “Tam Lin” retells a medieval Scottish ballad about a man captured by fairies. The only way Tam Lin can return to human life is if his lover, Janet, holds him through a series of fantastic transformations, a key part of the initiation phase of the hero’s journey. Mitchell’s skill in bringing ancient myth to life for modern audiences, as she does with Hadestown, an adaptation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, comes through in “Tam Lin.” Guitars accompanied by harmonic vocals hold the ancient tale in a simplicity that lets the story take center stage, allowing one to imagine this fairy world for themselves. It’s as if the musicians are simply telling us a story with a bit of song— the melody weightless and timeless, like myth. Ethereal and eerie, the song describes mythical themes of picking flowers that summon fairies and magical worlds that live beyond our own. Repetition builds toward a shapeshifting sequence, and the lyrics begin to form an incantation, giving the song an air of magic that makes the transformations seem even more profound. Tam Lin’s metamorphosis embodies the hero’s journey initiation phase with a series of trials that test Janet’s resolve and Tam Lin’s readiness to return to the human world. These tremendous transformations seem to also speak to the tumultuous changes life brings. From a wolf to a bear and finally a lion, all said to be wild and terrifying, both Tam Lin and Janet are unwavering during the initiatory experience. Through each transformation, Janet refuses to let go, showing how steadfast love can hold us through it all. Mitchell and Hamer’s fidelity to the older ballad captures the story’s mystery, and their musical prowess allows the tale to permeate the depth of the listener’s soul. Artistic consciousness gives the medieval story modern resonance, recapitulating it for our time and demonstrating how music can keep stories present in our cultural memory. Mnemosyne’s Daughters Music not only helps us remember but also keeps stories alive in song. Memory and music are intertwined, and perhaps this is why we also see a relationship between music and memory in myth. In Greek mythology, the Titaness Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory. According to Hesiod’s Theogony, Mnemosyne knows “what is, what will be, what was” (qtd. in Paris, Pagan Grace: Dionysos, Hermes, and Goddess Memory in Daily Life, 124). So she is not simply concerned with recalling the past, but with how the past is in relationship with the present and future. Mnemosyne weaves threads of story on the loom of time. While we engage memory daily to remember where we placed our keys or what we need from the grocery store, this is not necessarily Mnemosyne’s domain. She enters the scene when we look back on the cumulative history of our lived experience. As we pull memories from the storehouse of our minds, we bring the past into presence according to its relevance to our current situation. Through this act of recollection, the fragments of events stored in our minds are given a form, a semblance of order, a cohering narrative. Ultimately, our lives are given a story. And it is here that Mnemosyne presides. Memory then is not simply a recollection of facts, but rather an act of mythopoesis. And perhaps this is why Mnemosyne’s daughters are the nine Muses. Often known for their creative influence on artists, the Muses bestow divine insight on the earthly domain, connecting the celestial with the terrestrial. They are the conduits of the divine song of the universe pouring into the world. As mother of the Muses, memory is in relationship with music. One of the gifts Mnemosyne’s daughters bestow is song. The Muses inspire the artist who then pours their rhythms into us. As Joseph Campbell explains, “Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives” (On the Hero’s Journey, 39). In times of transformation, music often accompanies us. We make playlists to listen to as we process the emotions. And memory is often here too, as we try to make sense of what is happening to us, ask how we got here, and how to get beyond this moment. As Campbell says, “Are you going to try to hang onto what you have been, or are you going to let today burn you into something else?” (Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, 259). Which is the apotheosis of the initiation phase, when the old self succumbs to the flames and a new one is born from the fire of experience. Memories, present experience, and future hopes all intermingle as we also metaphorically transform from wolf to bear to lion. Memory is not simply a recollection of facts, but rather an act of mythopoesis. Ultimately, we work with our story until our “history is transformed to revelation” (Goddesses, 261), until we can hear the Muses’ song of creative inspiration open our own imaginings so we can tell a new story. Restoration through Remembering Singing stories isn’t just for nursery rhymes or oral traditions; it's a form of storytelling that lets stories breathe and move, showing how meaning can persist across time. Music helps us remember by keeping stories alive, breathing them anew for each generation of listeners, and helping us make meaning. Memory, then, is more than mere retrieval. Every act of remembering reshapes the past into current relevance. Remembrance is a making, an act of restoration. Mitchell and Hamer's recording of “Tam Lin” is an example of a musical form durable enough to survive centuries of forgetting. The music allows the myth to move us in the present as we witness how the bards of old live on in today's artists, evoking meaning in the depths of our being. Something in us is still listening for the divine song the Muses first poured into the world. Perhaps the invitation is to brave the adventure, to witness and surrender to our own initiatory transformation from wolf to bear to lion, all wild and unknown to us, until Mnemosyne weaves new identities onto the stories of old, and the Muses wrap us in their song to carry us home to ourselves. May Mnemosyne see fit to inspire the Muses’ song. MythBlast authored by: Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD is a mythologist and writer based in Texas. She serves as the Director of Operations for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is a contributing author of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide. Stephanie is also a co-founder of the Fates and Graces, hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers. Her work focuses on the intersection of mythology, religion, and women’s studies. For more information, visit stephaniezajchowski.com This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast “What if the greatest adventure of your life began with someone else's unfinished dream? Laura Carney is a writer, memoirist, and longtime copy editor whose work has appeared in publications including Good Housekeeping, People, Washington Post, Maria Shriver's The Sunday Paper and Runner's World. But it was a deeply personal story that would become her bestselling memoir, My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free.” When Laura was twenty-five, her father was killed by a distracted driver, leaving behind more than memories. Hidden away was a handwritten list of sixty dreams he had written as a young man -dreams he would never have the chance to fulfill. Years later, Laura made the extraordinary decision to complete the list herself, transforming an unimaginable loss into a journey of courage, healing, and self-discovery. In this heartfelt conversation, we explore Laura's remarkable journey, the enduring influence of Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, synchronicity, forgiveness, and the surprising ways our relationships with those we've lost continue to evolve. Together, we reflect on what it truly means to embrace life fully, and how sometimes the path to becoming ourselves begins with answering a call we never expected. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives." -- Joseph Campbell On the Hero’s Journey, 3 Hell & Transcendence Q&A See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Joseph Campbell remains one of the twentieth century's great scholars of mythology—a well-deserved reputation, but it can obscure another aspect of his work. Long before I read all of Campbell's writings, I was struck by the way he wrote. It has a quality unlike most academic writing, in that it borrows as much from art and literature as from scholarship. He moves effortlessly from Joyce to Sanskrit, from medieval romance to modern psychology. He makes Isadora Duncan seem less like a troubled, tragic figure and more like a brilliant theorist of dance. He wrote not so much academically but in a style I was familiar with—cadence, pacing, and beautiful prose—from reading the likes of Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, or Thomas Mann. Looking back, I responded to Campbell because he didn’t construct an argument so much as create an atmosphere that made ancient myth breathe and the old, distant world come alive. While compiling the latest Joseph Campbell Essentials book, On Creativity, I combed through his collected works, unpublished writings, and lecture transcripts. His beautiful prose, so elegant in its strength and balance, sturdy and modern, prevented long, complex sentences and thoughts from buckling under their own weight. Yet those same sentences managed to maintain just the faintest whiff of romanticism. I don’t think this was merely a stylistic preference of the author. I think it reflected Campbell's own experience of how creativity works. A message to you of your own being Often, we assume that art is the product of creativity— a communication from the artist to the public. Campbell sees art and creativity differently. He tells us that “Art is a message to you of your own being” (On Creativity, 5). The primary communication flows not from the artist to a receptive audience, but from our own, sometimes unrecognized depths to ourselves. The artist simply creates the conditions for that communication. That aligns with Campbell’s understanding of myth: it doesn't tell you what to think; rather, it evokes recognition. Something in you responds to something in the story. Meaning is disclosed rather than explained. In this way, myth functions very much like art: it doesn't bridge the gap by explanation, rather, it creates the conditions for an event—an experience—to unfold.' In discussing James Joyce's theory of art, Campbell says that art orients us to something more than a new way of seeing. That art, at its best, produces what Joyce called aesthetic arrest, which carries us beyond desire, fear, and literality. Campbell senses that this is a significant breakthrough: when arrested by a work of art, we experience the transcendence that manifests through it, a transcendence of which we ourselves are a manifestation. The object doesn’t disappear; if anything, it becomes more fully itself. What changes is our relationship with it. We no longer see a mere thing in the world. We realize the same energy of life—fecund, creative, inexhaustible—moves through us and it. This experience extends beyond art to nature, literature or any creative endeavor, and perhaps most especially to another human being. This may be what Campbell means when he says that artwork should produce "an epiphany, a revelation" (85). He contrasts this with the desire to teach a lesson or to improve the world. The great mythologies, he argues, sought not to improve the world but to harmonize ourselves with it. The distinction matters because Campbell is implying we should be less concerned with what it means than with what it actually does. An epiphany does not necessarily provide new information. It makes something present to us—something is now somehow more alive to us. Campbell calls that presence radiance. The artist arranges the world’s elements so that, through them, we may experience the light of consciousness that all things both conceal and reveal. The creative act is not simply a matter of imposing one's intentions upon a blank canvas, a page, or other inert material. Campbell describes the artist as discovering an implicit form already living in the work and learning to recognize it as it emerges. This is the astonishing alchemy of the encounter between the maker and the material that neither could have expected. Creation requires consenting to being changed by what one is creating Perhaps creativity becomes initiatory at this point. To create requires, in some measure at least, consenting to being changed by what one is creating. The old methods and forms of understanding should not, and perhaps cannot, always be carried forward. Campbell speaks of the courage to release the past, "to die to the world and to come to birth from within" (112). This is unmistakably the language of initiation. Death carries forward life; something must be relinquished for something new to emerge. And perhaps what we’re initiated into is not a body of secret knowledge occulted by the material forms of the world but rather, we’re initiated into the world itself: its radiance, its mystery, and—importantly—its mortality. Campbell remarks that “the grand lines of nature” are reflected in death, suffering, and sorrow, and the artist's task is to view and affirm them beyond fear and desire (77). The epiphany, then, is not an escape from life into transcendence. It is the recognition of transcendence already existing within life, the realization that the world we ordinarily pass through without seeing is always more alive, more mysterious, and more terrible than we had dared imagine. Understood this way, creativity becomes one of the more efficacious ways we learn to live. It teaches us to relinquish the world we thought we knew while simultaneously experiencing the world itself more deeply. The discipline of creativity asks us to remain open to what is emerging, even when that emergence requires the death of something familiar, even of something loved. Perhaps that’s why creativity can feel so much like initiation. Life continually asks the same thing of us that the creative act asks of the artist: to release what has become routine, domestic and fixed, and attend to what is coming into being, while simultaneously recognizing that the old, familiar life we cling to must be relinquished in order to more fully live the life that beckons us. This, I think, is what makes On Creativity more than a collection of Campbell's reflections on creativity, artists, and artistic practice. Creativity, for Campbell, is not confined to the studio or to the page. It’s a way to enter a deeper relationship with the world and with the deeper movements of one's own life. The artist learns to attend to what is struggling to emerge rather than simply reproducing familiar ideas and forms. The same could be said of living. We are continually tempted to return to forms and concepts that at one time served us well, even though they’re now antiquated, inadequate to face possibilities we cannot yet see clearly enough to name. One of Joseph Campbell's great gifts was pointing out that the creative act and the mythic imagination inhabit the same territory. Both ask us to encounter what lies beyond the familiar furnishings of consciousness. Both can bring us to a moment when the unseen becomes visible. And both can change our relationship to the world without dictating what that relationship ought to be. Perhaps this is why Campbell could move so freely among mythology, literature, psychology, and art. He cared less about maintaining boundaries between disciplines than about what became possible when they fertilized one another. If creativity is a form of initiation, it is not an initiation into some hidden world in or beyond this one. It is an initiation into this world, exactly as it is, but seen in all its radiance, a radiance that illuminates what ordinarily remains hidden. The artist arranges the colors and forms of the world so that, for a moment, we see that radiance held within them. Myth does something similar. And perhaps life itself presents us with the same task over and over again: to become attentive enough to see what’s emerging, courageous enough to release the past, and receptive enough to discover that what seemed to be merely ordinary has been extraordinary all along. That may be the deeper promise of creativity. It does not rescue us from the conditions of life. It immerses us into them more completely. Conceiving of creativity this way is often discomfiting, but it teaches us to sharpen our vision, to dwell, however briefly, in a world whose mystery exceeds our understanding. And, for my money, that beats comfort every time. One may discover great satisfaction in living into the mystery of becoming—even while knowing that becoming also means passing away; living without the need to explain life but instead have the rapturous experience of being alive. In Campbell's vision, explanatory collapse is not a defeat so much as an important—even necessary—constituent of rapture. Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson is a writer, depth psychologist in private practice, teacher, speaker, and Director of Publications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His work explores the status of myth after belief—what it means to take myth seriously in a world where its metaphysical claims no longer hold in any straightforward way. He is the author of The Mythopoetic Impulse and a Skeleton Key Study Guide for Pathways to Bliss. His current writing pushes against the dominant tendency to treat myth as a repository of timeless meanings or archetypes, arguing instead that myth functions as a form that brings the mind into contact with its own limits—where coherence breaks down and the desire for explanation remains. Before his work in psychology and mythology, Olson worked as a police officer in North Dakota and Arizona. There, he encountered the world less as a smooth narrative than as rupture—moments of consequence without clear origin, human situations that resist explanation or moral symmetry. That experience continues to inform his understanding of myth—not as a system that resolves the world into meaning, but as a form that emerges in proximity to what cannot be made coherent. In both his clinical practice and his writing, Olson is interested in how people live with those limits—how meaning persists, not as resolution, but as a problem that cannot finally be solved. ntures of all kinds. 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Photographer: Gus Philippas Of all the treasured things that music provides, I can think of none more valuable than how it makes us feel both sensually and emotionally—the way it bypasses our rational guard and soaks into the deep registers of felt sense. Hence, the expression “to feel the music.” In fact, we feel it so much that it compels us to engage in highly irrational behavior. Just put on the right song, and people suddenly begin to move in odd ways: spinning in circles, flopping their arms, accomplishing (apparently) nothing of practical value. Mythologically speaking, we can say that music is a means of crossing the threshold from the practicalities of the day-to-day into the more intimate world of the unconscious, marked (in this case) specifically by emotion. With music, beauty is pretty much unavoidable. However, the feel of the notes and the message of the lyrics can often be dark, expressing sorrow, struggle and loss, all of which ironically serve to deepen its beauty. These darker elements reflect a rather large portion of the content we encounter during times of transformation. But then, here is where the deep work transpires—where the soul puts down roots. The place I’m speaking of is found in the Initiation stage of the Hero’s Journey, which falls in the cycle’s center, between the Departure and the Return—fittingly, in the thick of it. [For a concise rendering and general refresher, see Stephen Gerringer’s “The Hero’s Journey and Joseph Campbell.”] In The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell aptly titles the first part of initiation The Road of Trials. But here, we won’t be looking at how music initiates transformation in us (which it surely does). Rather we will consider how our initiations shape music—specifically, in the voice. For this, Citizen Cope (né Clarence Copeland Greenwood) will be our guide. In addition to nuancing Orson Welles’s classic film Citizen Kane, his stage name describes one particular thing that we all must do (i.e., “cope”) during so many of our initiations—especially the uninvited kind. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that we all share in suffering, which quite literally invites a gloss of compassion (from com- “together” + pati “suffer”). The “citizen”-component reinforces this idea of sharing by acknowledging the collective, and of being a part of it. So, from the very outset and in the name alone, all are invited into his fold. Citizen Cope’s music reflects many of the hallmarks of one who’s traveled the Road of Trials. But more importantly, it shows the kind of beauty and depth that can come from one who has not only slogged through his fair share of trials but also has accepted and integrated them. You may ask, what are these challenging trials that qualify him to be the seasoned soul that I’m portraying here? Well, I didn’t even look into it. In keeping with the spirit of his music, I think that simply being human is quite enough. But more to the point, a long history of trials can be “heard” in his music, the meanings of his lyrics and, most notably, in his voice. The soul behind the voice Cope’s (if I may) voice is saturated with sincerity, passion and an unwavering fidelity to the real. And, here, I mean “real” more in the vernacular sense—as in “keepin’ it real,” which is a means of acknowledging and respecting what is, as it is, even if it’s difficult. But if I’m to address (and guess) what exactly is going on in the voice of this singer, I need to lay a little groundwork. For starters, we’d be wrong to categorize voice as simply another instrument since, unlike all the others, its body is literally the body, indicating a uniquely personal level of intimacy. Beyond being merely sounds that we make, voice is a medium that reveals the character or personality of the speaker: his or her fundamental (and situational) dispositions, intentions, emotions, perspectives—even their history. In short, voice announces the presence of “someone”—really, of a soul. When soul comes into the conversation (as it so often does in music) and shows itself through the voice, we’ve crossed over from the concrete into a dimension of abstractions. Suddenly, we’re dealing with something that’s highly complex and possesses very indistinct boundaries. We cannot clearly see its face, so to speak. Yet, this apparent impediment makes way for a deeper encounter because its face has become more permeable, and the speaker’s presence (from the listener’s perspective) is amplified. And, as with any feature in music, we are able to experience something as vague as one’s “presence” through the application of equally vague modalities like feeling, intuiting, and even imagining. Long ago, I was fortunate enough to have had a class on voice with Peter Elbow, who at the time was deeply invested in the subject. But in that context, we were attending to the voice one hears while reading silently—a context that Robert Frost describes as “somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination” (Introduction, A Way Out). In that class, I learned that resonance is the finest and foundational distinguishing criterion of voice. Resonance is versatile and permeating. It straddles the worlds of the physical and the emotional. We feel, physically, the drone of an engine. But we also can feel (emotionally) some good “vibes,” or we might say “that book really resonated with me.” In this way, resonance has a unifying capacity. I also learned in that class that voice thrives in subtlety, and that its intimacy far surpasses the more forceful phenomena like volume—in fact, it’s often the softer, more relaxed voice that possesses the richer resonance. This is unmistakably the case with Cope’s singing voice, and perhaps reflects certain more soulful attributes like openness and acceptance—especially as applied to the trials we’re handed. Individuation, uniqueness and timbre In myth, the pattern is that the journeys of our heroes and heroines culminate in the completion of some great task. But the invisible and understated inner event is their transformation. They return changed, initiated into a higher order of presence or being—well, something like that. Psychology calls this the individuation process, and it’s of paramount importance. Carl Jung frequently addresses uniqueness as one of the chief attributes (and expressions) of one who’s highly individuated. They are simply aligned with who they are—with their one-of-a-kind selves. Sure, it goes much deeper, but that’s the gist. But, if we are to listen for individuation in the voice that expresses it, then timbre is surely our term. Aside from being a really cool-sounding word (pronounced TAM-ber), it is also referred to as a particular sound’s “fingerprint.” Primarily, timbre lets us know that it’s Jim (and not Bob) who’s answered the phone. All instruments, for example, have a unique timbre (even when playing identical notes). For instance, the heavy raindrops of the piano compared to the bright summer breeze of the flute (please forgive the bad poetry). From a more structural angle, timbre is a subcategory of tone (just as tone is a subcategory of voice). The primary distinction is that timbre is subtler (and more complex) than tone. In other words, a voice may have a generally sad or angry or thoughtful tone, but to describe its timbre, we are forced to employ highly figurative terms like “gravelly,” “dusky” or “silky” (or like in my moment of bad poetry, above). One last thing about individuation and uniqueness and I’ll shut up: they summon the idea of destiny—that is, one’s (fittingly) “calling,” or their “vocation” (the etymological root of which happens to be the same as voice). Mythologically speaking, we can say that music is a means of crossing the threshold from the practicalities of the day-to-day into the more intimate world of the unconscious Sincerity Okay, those are the parts I can offer in so little space, so let’s get back on the road of trials and the honing of souls. It’s not my intention to glorify the hard and heavy, but rather to address that mysterious side of it that enriches the soul, the character and (of course) the voice that reveals these. That said, I would place sincerity at the top of my list in describing Citizen Cope’s voice because this powerful force works wonders in the arts of keeping it real, of dialing down the drama and noise to let that which is shine through. Here’s some good advice from Jung on the matter: “Whatever you do, if you do it sincerely, will eventually become the bridge to your wholeness, a good ship that carries you through the darkness...” (Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume I, 358-59). And now I’ll leave you to the good ship of Citizen Cope, to hear what you will in the voice. Although there are many good songs to choose from, I’m compelled to recommend “Son’s Gonna Rise.” Just click here to commune. Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Craig Deininger has been writing for the JCF Mythblast series since 2018. He has taught at Naropa University, Studio Film School in Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he earned an MFA in poetry. He also earned an MA and PhD in Mythology and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He has counterbalanced his studies with manual work in fields like big ag farming, landscaping, commercial fishing, trail-building, framing houses and so on. He is grateful to have somehow made it to later life after too many outdoor misadventures in backpacking, rock climbing, hiking and, especially, trying to get too close to wildlife that doesn’t want to be gotten-too-close-to. His poetry has appeared in several literary magazines including The Iowa Review, and his first book of poetry Leaves from the World Tree was co-authored with mythologist Dennis Patrick Slattery and published by Mandorla Books. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In Part Two of The Occidental Tradition, recorded at the Blaisdell Institute in 1973, this episode features Joseph Campbell leading an informal and wide-ranging discussion on education, mythology, and the Occidental tradition. Campbell begins with the sacred syllable Om, exploring waking consciousness, dreams, and the silence that lies behind words and images. He describes dreams as a personal entrance into the world of myth, where individual experience opens onto larger, universal patterns. He also recounts a remarkable mythological wedding ceremony held in the volcanic landscape of Iceland. Drawing upon Norse symbolism, ritual, music, movement, and the natural environment, the ceremony becomes an example of how mythology can be lived rather than merely studied. The conversation then turns toward education and Campbell’s belief that Western students should encounter Eastern traditions while also developing a deeper understanding of their own cultural inheritance. He emphasizes the Occidental tradition’s focus on individual responsibility, the discovery of one’s unique path, and the courage to enter the unknown. Host Bradley Olson offers an introduction and commentary, providing historical context for this spontaneous and revealing conversation. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Choosing what verse form you are going to use in poetry in relation to what it is you are going to say, the echoing of one consonant against another: it is all rhythm, to be conceived of in terms of sensuous rhythmic effects that touch you. Certain rhythms render certain responses." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, 250 Slaying The Dragon See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Photo by Ueli Frey Three summers ago, I sat in a workshop led by my Italian colleague, Mariella Assunta Giusti. She asked the room: When does childhood end? She didn’t wait for a response. The answer is simpler than you think, she explained, and harder than you might imagine. We leave childhood when we stop trying to go back, back to the parents we needed and didn’t get, back to the past we wished would have been. How do we do this? We become brave enough to grieve, to look straight at what happened in our childhoods that never should have, and at what should have happened but never did, and stay with our sorrow…instead of trying to get anything back. I’ve carried Mariella’s words with me ever since, and I hear their echo in the opening verse of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”: I took my love, I took it down Climbed a mountain and I turned around And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills 'Til the landslide brought me down That’s what Mariella was telling us: turn around, look honestly at your own reflection, and let the landslide (the grieving) take you down. Recently, I’ve begun to understand all this in a new light. The call to adventure…to solve the unsolvable When you and I arrive into this world, we’re ready for forty-six people to scoop us up and hold us tight, pressing us to their chests for nine hours each day. We’re ready for these forty-six people to hurry to our side when we cry, arriving in twenty-five seconds or less, offering a comforting presence. That’s the world our minds expect because two million years of life in villages (small bands of thirty to 150 people raising children together) wired us for nothing less. We’re greeted instead by two parents living in a consumer culture that demands they make it on their own. They can’t possibly give us what we expect, because two exhausted people can’t be a village. This is our ordinary world, insufficient from our first breath. So childhood becomes a call to adventure, a call to solve an unsolvable problem: how do I turn two people into the village my mind and heart ache for? A road of trials…each step dismantling a version of ourselves Off we go, walking down a road of trials. It’s made up of six childhood steps, each an attempt to solve the unsolvable, each destined to fail. It starts with patience: we wait, certain our parents will soon become the village we need. But the waiting stretches on and nothing changes, so we shift to protest: we kick, scream, cry, throw temper tantrums, because these are social signals telling our parents to come close. And it works, for a moment… but they don’t stay, because they have jobs, bills, dishes, and exhaustion of their own. Protest is failing, so we turn to performance, the most costly trial: we study our parents’ faces and learn to become the child we think they want: funnier, quieter, tougher, sweeter, whatever earns their gaze… but still, nothing, and now we’ve lost track of who we actually are. Enter consumer culture, offering two more trials. First, its army of advertisers promises us, children who trust what we’re being told, that if we just purchase the right stuff, all will be well: with a new frisbee, Dad will step outside and play with us. And if we add the sparkling hula hoop, Mom will join in too. But when the frisbee and hula hoop arrive, Dad and Mom don’t. So consumer culture brings us to school and teaches us that achievement earns visibility, and soon we’re convinced doing more will get us seen and then our parents will finally stay. Again, no luck. We give it one more go. We pinpoint the moment in our past we’re sure broke everything, the divorce, and we try to undo it, trying to bring our parents back together. We’re certain this will take us to the life we’re meant for…but the place we’re trying to return to only exists in memory, softened and simplified. This is Campbell’s underworld: a series of reasonable steps, each one failing, each one dismantling a version of the self we’re sure could win. There was The Patient Child; the Loud Child; the Performing Child; the Child with the Right Things; the Child Who Achieved Enough; and The Child Who Could Undo The Past. One by one, they fall away. This dismantling is painful, but after twenty-five years sitting across from people as a therapist, I can confidently say: Dismantling is not the tragedy; fighting against it is. When we resist the dismantling, it can’t do its work. We end up stuck in three of the trials, performing, purchasing, and producing, hoping one day these will finally pay off. When the landslide brings us down, we’re freed to rise up and rebuild. Today, reflecting on Mariella’s words from her workshop three summers ago, I understand them through the lens of lost villages: growing up means surrendering the hope that our parents will become the village we’ve always needed; and giving up on the belief that any of the childhood trials, the ones we once embraced with all our might, can take us to that village. As Mariella instructed, we have to grieve what we needed but never received, the village that was our home for two million years, imprinted in our minds, still in our souls. Or in the words of Stevie Nicks, we must let the landslide take us down: Well, I've been 'fraid of changin' 'Cause I've built my life around you But time makes you bolder Even children get older And I'm gettin' older, too Ah, take my love, take it down Oh, climb a mountain and turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down When the landslide brings us down, we’re freed to rise up and rebuild. That’s what happened to me when I was just six years old. What the dismantling makes possible…not emptiness, but insight and action One December afternoon, crouched on the carpet with my friend Michael, our action figures in full battle, Michael suddenly drops his toy, points to the Santa Claus figure on the shelf, and smirks, You don’t still believe, do you? I shout back that of course I do, because what kind of question is that? But Michael’s words have planted seeds of doubt, and they quickly spread. By nightfall, tucked under covers, I’m mourning the loss of the red-suited man I’d believed in my entire life, the man I’d written heartfelt letters to, penned in crayon. I lie there, sinking into post-Santa grief, when something flickers in the back of my mind: If that jolly old man is out of the picture, then who’s been leaving gifts under the tree? That’s when I see it: It’s been Mom and Dad this whole time. They’d intercepted my letters to Santa, read my Wish List, pushed through crowded malls to find hidden treasures, and wrapped each one…just for me. Now, my tears aren’t from sorrow; they’re from awe at the love that’s been here all along, working behind the scenes. I leap out of bed, eager to wrap Mom and Dad in the biggest thank you my small arms can deliver. Because for one magical day each year, they did it, they were my village. This is what the dismantling makes possible: not emptiness, but insight. We see our parents not as the village they keep falling short of being, but as two people who loved us with everything they had, two people who, one day each year, pulled off something magical. And… When we finally grieve the loss of our dream world, we make room for the beauty hiding in the world we’ve been given. Rather than trying to turn two exhausted people into a village, we start showing up in places where groups of people gather, on pickleball courts and in knitting circles, slowing down with others, lingering where we once hurried, hearts open. In time, we discover among them a disparate group of people who feel like they belong to us, and we start weaving, stitching them together, creating a village of our own making. Stevie Nicks’ song ends with a return to the hills: Ah, take my love, take it down Oh, climb a mountain and turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down Oh, the landslide will bring it down It’s the same imagery from her opening, but this time it doesn’t sound like fear; this time, she’s welcoming the landslide. MythBlast authored by: Carl R. Nassar, PhD, CIIPTS, is a writer, researcher, clinical trainer, former university professor, and psychotherapist. His writing is part-science, part-story, exploring what both research and lived experience have taught him… that our sweetest ending is not individual triumph, but reunion, a return to connection, kinship, and the village. Carl lives in Colorado with his wife, Gretchen, and their daughter, Kaila. www.carlnassar.com This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast “What if the greatest adventure of your life began with someone else's unfinished dream? Laura Carney is a writer, memoirist, and longtime copy editor whose work has appeared in publications including Good Housekeeping, People, Washington Post, Maria Shriver's The Sunday Paper and Runner's World. But it was a deeply personal story that would become her bestselling memoir, My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free.” When Laura was twenty-five, her father was killed by a distracted driver, leaving behind more than memories. Hidden away was a handwritten list of sixty dreams he had written as a young man -dreams he would never have the chance to fulfill. Years later, Laura made the extraordinary decision to complete the list herself, transforming an unimaginable loss into a journey of courage, healing, and self-discovery. In this heartfelt conversation, we explore Laura's remarkable journey, the enduring influence of Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, synchronicity, forgiveness, and the surprising ways our relationships with those we've lost continue to evolve. Together, we reflect on what it truly means to embrace life fully, and how sometimes the path to becoming ourselves begins with answering a call we never expected. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say “yea” to it all." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, 20 Kundalini Yoga: Enlightment and Dharma See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Photo from magnific.com My Initiation The nexus of culture and the environment has driven the mythic imagination for millennia, shaping human civilization and its development pathways. Music in particular has been a medium to reconnect people, nature and the cosmos. Music, as well as other art forms, has allowed communities worldwide to express the mythic imagination, the changing nature of global and local ecosystems, the shifting balance between people and nature, as well as their fears, hopes and collective visions for the future. For the past twenty-five years I have been with the United Nations, having led our work around the world on the sustainable development agenda, helping combat the planetary crisis of climate change and loss of ecosystems. We have also empowered local cultures and sustained communities' efforts to combat poverty and inequality. This has been my pollen path—the center of my life’s work. I have encountered much beauty during my global UN assignments: the planet’s diverse ecosystems and our multiverse of cultures and mythologies. My journey has also entailed many challenges which ecosystems and communities face in achieving a future of sustainability and resilience. Embracing the connection between culture and the environment is a key priority in this regard. Mythic harmonies in the Himalayas My career initiation started not behind a desk but on a mountain, shaped by mythic experiences, music and the power of nature. My first UN assignment, in the mid-1990s in the Garhwal region of the Indian Himalayas, involved my working with one of the world’s leading experts on mountain ecosystems to better understand the implications of rapid climate change and biodiversity loss for local cultures and communities. The Himalayas,known as the “Third Pole,” are the highest peaks on the planet. Their glaciers and rich waters are the source of some of the world’s oldest civilizations and mythic traditions. The Garhwal region of the Himalayas is a center of yogic culture and home of the ascetics since millennia, with deep reverence for the surrounding heavenly mountain systems and the mythic tales that accompany them. Garhwal is also home to the famous Chipko movement, led by women rural villagers in the 1970s. Their original “tree hugger” sustainability campaign gained global resonance, inspiring nonviolent actions for social justice and ecological protection worldwide. Like any initiation, my experience entailed trials and tribulations, including the various development challenges faced by local communities which were the subject of extensive field work. But the most impactful part of my initial journey as a UN practitioner was connecting with communities on ways local culture shaped their relation with nature. A particularly inspirational experience was joining local traveling musical theatre groups connected with a local ashram. Their work focused on reconnecting people and nature through mythology. The traveling bands adapted ancient Vedic myths about the Himalayas, accentuating pre-existing ecological themes and integrating modern aspects of climate change and biodiversity loss. This conveyed messages on the connection between humans, nature and cosmos via musical performances and village theatre that reenacted myths. This served as a medium for conveying and preserving inherited wisdom via mythologies on both the age-old and modern dimensions of ecological crisis and community resilience in Himalayan society. Music has allowed communities worldwide to express the mythic imagination, the changing nature of global and local ecosystems, the shifting balance between people and nature, as well as their fears, hopes and collective visions for the future. Music and theatre conveyed, through the power of myth, both fears and challenges, as well as hopes, visions for the future and collective wisdom on the importance of balancing people and nature. The sharp sounds from the artisans’ traditional string instruments intertwined with the deep drumbeats, generated a sacred atmosphere in which the theatre performance unfolded, with actors adorned in colorful costumes depicting mythical characters. All around were the thrusting waves of sound from the sweeping mountain winds and from the rural villagers themselves, some speaking about the story being conveyed, some joining the chorus, others laughing or crying during scenes of the performance. I was inspired seeing the artisans’ commitment to sustainability and their creativity in mobilizing ancient myths to reconnect people and nature. This was a formative experience, shaping my lifelong career focused on the role of culture in building robustness for communities and the environment. As my first UN assignment, it showed me in a real, visceral way how mythic imagination and storytelling are the roots of resilience for local and indigenous communities across critical ecosystems in the Himalayas, and indeed the world over. Rhythms from the archipelago After my time in the Himalayas, my next UN assignment took me to Indonesia, an archipelagic nation of over 17,000 islands. Sitting along the Ring of Fire, the archipelago is one of the world’s most ecologically and culturally diverse regions, a complex system of remote island ecosystems and communities. This complexity is reflected in Indonesian mythology, emerging over millennia, as well as in its rich forms of music, dance and art. This stage of my initiation involved time with the communities around Mount Bromo on the eastern edge of Java, near Bali. Mount Bromo is an ancient volcano, part of a chain at the center of a massive caldera formed over 30,000 years ago, surrounded by a black mantle of sand generated by ash over time. Bromo is named after Brahma, the lord of creation in Vedic mythology—a testament to the life-giving nature of volcanoes and their role in the cosmogony, or mythic original stories, here and globally. Beyond our work supporting local efforts to address climate impacts on communities and sustaining vital forest, mangrove and coral ecosystems, I was privileged to participate alongside a group of shamans and yogis in Kasada, an ancient cultural tradition of the local community. Starting in a temple at the base of the volcano, we sat cross-legged at the centre of the open air courtyard of the complex, adorned in traditional attire. Slowly, the sound of a music ensemble started to reverberate across the black stone structure. This was the ancient Gamelan percussion instrument system. A group of musicians began to play, at first slowly, then at a rapid pace, with Gamelan’s classic rhythmic and cyclic structure. This features complex polyrhythms, conveying the complexity of nature and the cosmos. Gamelan’s smooth rhythmic nature, utilized in traditional Javanese and Balinese spiritual ceremonies, uses a cyclical and repetitive harmonic flow rather than a linear one, symbolizing the repeating aspect of nature and society. This initiated our experience. Then with the shaman and yogis, we entered a deep meditation, devoid of sound, immersing ourselves into self-realization. This commenced at night and lasted approximately six hours. We arose at sunrise the next day, welcoming the day with the rhythmic chanted of “aum.” The circularity and singularity of the Gamelan rhythm aligned with the chanting of “aum.” As Campbell has noted, “aum” represents the cycle of life with three sub-dimensions of the character—representing creation, sustenance and death—and a fourth dimension being the silence underlying them, from which the cycle emerges and to which it returns (The Power of Myth, 286-87). Awakening from the meditation, I realized how the Gamelan expressed our pathway through this cycle, towards a soundless unity and singularity. Via the meditative process,we became one with the complex fabric of life on Earth and across the cosmos. The long walk towards the volcano of Mount Bromo was a meditative experience in itself. We joined a procession up the volcano’s side, led by the shamans, and sprinkled provisions of fruits, flowers and other items into the crater as fumes rose from its depths. After the intensive ceremony, I understood first how the archipelago’s diverse cultures express a mythic balance between society and nature through its music and arts. I also witnessed how the spirit of Gamelan infuses overall culture and ways of life. This was a formative experience into the nexus of nature and culture, carried forward through my term in Indonesia for many years thereafter, advancing resilient communities and ecosystems. Reverberations to the future Building on my initiation and six years of UN deployments in India and Indonesia, I have continued on my pollen path over the past twenty-five years. Further UN assignments took me to places like China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Belize and Jamaica, each for five-year terms. Additionally, through our work supporting countries and communities combating inequality and ecological decline, I experienced the multiversal ways that communities, nature, and cosmos address these challenges through myth and culture. Myths contain the deep spiritual and ecological intelligence of local and indigenous communities, continuing to vitally contribute to global goals of reconnecting people and planet, and crafting more inclusive, nature-based futures. This is rooted in local experience. As Campbell noted, the multiverse of cultures and ecosystems across the planet show that “These are the eyes of the Earth. And this is the voice of the universe” (The Power of Myth, 40). What else? MythBlast authored by: Kishan Khoday is a Fellow at the Joseph Campbell Foundation, serving in a pro-bono capacity to support research and analysis of the role of mythology in advancing goals of sustainability and resilience. A planetary scientist and international lawyer, Kishan has practiced with the United Nations for over 25 years, leading local cooperation with communities, governments and change makers to combat inequality, advance nature-based solutions and develop capacities for transformation change. Kishan has been a thought leader on the nexus of nature, culture and development, having traveled to over fifty countries and serving in UN country assignments across Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and the Caribbean. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In Part Two of The Occidental Tradition, recorded at the Blaisdell Institute in 1973, this episode features Joseph Campbell leading an informal and wide-ranging discussion on education, mythology, and the Occidental tradition. Campbell begins with the sacred syllable Om, exploring waking consciousness, dreams, and the silence that lies behind words and images. He describes dreams as a personal entrance into the world of myth, where individual experience opens onto larger, universal patterns. He also recounts a remarkable mythological wedding ceremony held in the volcanic landscape of Iceland. Drawing upon Norse symbolism, ritual, music, movement, and the natural environment, the ceremony becomes an example of how mythology can be lived rather than merely studied. The conversation then turns toward education and Campbell’s belief that Western students should encounter Eastern traditions while also developing a deeper understanding of their own cultural inheritance. He emphasizes the Occidental tradition’s focus on individual responsibility, the discovery of one’s unique path, and the courage to enter the unknown. Host Bradley Olson offers an introduction and commentary, providing historical context for this spontaneous and revealing conversation. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Rhythm is the instrument of art." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, 249 On Consciousness See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

The Odyssey (2026) © Universal Pictures The last book of the New Testament offers this warning: I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city. Moses says something similar in Deuteronomy, and the authors of Proverbs also echo those warnings. But the old myths are not frozen in amber, nor are they fixed, unchanging narratives. They have their own lives; they grow and evolve over the ages. I think the best way to understand myths is that over time they undergo a kind of geological sedimentation—the slow, continuous accumulation of cultural, psychological, and historical meaning deposited by every generation that finds something of importance in them. That’s one of the key things that makes myths myth. Contemporary storytelling that employs a text as ancient as Homer’s The Odyssey consists of more than merely adapting a well-known Greek epic poem. Consciously or not, the contemporary adaptation is adding to three millennia of interpretive sedimentation. Christopher Nolan's cinematic adaptation of The Odyssey is merely the latest example of this process. Rather than delivering a literal translation of Bronze Age epic poetry, Nolan layers Roman mythology, Victorian poetry, and a contemporary understanding of the psychology of trauma into a cohesive visual-narrative landscape. In doing so, he shifts the mythic journey from a physical voyage across the Mediterranean to an internal exploration of a haunted contemporary psyche. The scope of this “geologic” approach becomes clear in how the film handles its first major departure from the familiar text: the physical staging of the Trojan War. The Trojan Horse, for example, was never a central plot point in Homer’s text. In reality, the horse is barely mentioned in The Odyssey, recalled only in nostalgic asides, or bittersweet memories—most notably through the song of the blind bard Demodocus in Book 8 and the retrospective reflections of Menelaus in Book 4. Nolan intentionally ignores this Homeric absence and shows us the twists and turns, if you will, of Odysseus getting the great horse inside the walls of Troy and onto the screen to serve as a visceral centerpiece. To build these scenes, Nolan bypasses Homer entirely and mines the plot devices of Virgil’s Aeneid, written seven centuries later. By importing Virgil’s deceptive Greek soldier Sinon into the narrative, the film absorbs a distinctly Roman skepticism. Odysseus is no longer viewed through the uncritical heroic lens of classical Greece; instead Virgil reframes him as the coldly calculating architect of mass slaughter. The legendary military trick is stripped of its romanticism. Nolan uses the wooden shell of the horse as a psychological pressure cooker, capturing the claustrophobic terror of men hiding in tomb-like darkness. The legendary military trick sets the stage for an epic journey characterized almost entirely by terror and psychological dissociation. Indeed, the film profoundly alters the theological framework of Homer’s tale, particularly as it regards the goddess Athena. In the original epic, the relationship between the goddess and the hero is nearly constant and deeply intimate. Athena walks beside Odysseus, alters his physical form, and influences his thoughts because, for the ancient Greeks, inspiration was something quite literally given to, or instilled in the human mind by the divine. Nolan’s film completely ignores this classic paradigm, and Athena doesn’t serve as a comforting companion; instead, she appears as a jarring, haunting image that periodically and abruptly intrudes upon Odysseus's consciousness. The idea of Athena as an unwanted, intrusive image speaks directly to the existential condition of the twenty-first century. In a secularized world that has effectively banished the sacred, humanity no longer sees the hand of a god in the movements of wind and tides or in a sudden stroke of luck. Instead, the modern individual experiences the divine as an unsettling psychological intrusion that shatters our illusions of absolute autonomy and perhaps even causes us to question our sanity—as C.G. Jung put it, the gods have become our diseases. Because the heavens remain silent for the vast majority of his journey, Odysseus alone is left responsible for his own survival and his own guilt. Athena’s occasional, hauntingly atmospheric appearances leave both the protagonist and the audience with a profound sense of existential impoverishment that moves us, along with Odysseus, to confront a universe in which we have locked the gods away in the deep recesses of the unconscious. For Nolan’s Odysseus, the burden of absolute free will ultimately prevents any possibility of a deus ex machina and a traditional Homeric restoration. When Odysseus finally reaches the shores of Ithaca, the besieged domesticity of his palace does not offer peace, but a very literal nostalgia—algia meaning pain and nostos meaning homecoming. Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” offers us a great insight toward understanding Odysseus: “I cannot rest from travel,” Ulysses says. Odysseus has come to be the embodiment of the indestructible impulse to life that keeps moving forward simply because it is alive. In this sense he’s been volatilized, he’s become a character who has fundamentally dissolved into pure, perpetual movement. He’s the personification of momentum; the man who cannot rest, who endures, who can only exist in a state of striving. Stability to Odysseus is an alien idea, and that makes a return to ordinary life an impossibility. And yet, paradoxically, there is Odysseus’ unrelenting desire for home. Tennyson’s poem resolves the paradox by placing Ulysses at home until old age reveals that long dormant, restless—even manic—urge to abandon his hearth and "sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars." Tennyson gives his hero a crew of old mariners to accompany him into the twilight knowing full well that he has no comrades left. Every single soldier who left Troy with him was consumed by monsters or swallowed by the sea. For an aged Odysseus to sail westward with an imaginary crew would be a senescent delusion, the tragic unraveling of a broken mind. Yet Tennyson’s vision is so beautifully rendered that we pay no mind to its implausibility. Nolan, on the other hand, resolves the paradox between domesticity and movement by staying true to Odysseus’ nature, suggesting that the true homecoming is not a return to a physical place regardless of its palatial comforts, but is instead a willing acceptance of the only alternative his own fate has left him. In this way, Nolan transforms "home" into an internal anchor—a stabilizing ideal, a psychological state of peace and radical acceptance. Furthermore, by placing Penelope on the ship alongside her husband who has lost every comrade to violence, the film transforms Tennyson’s Ulysses and his lonely, manic urge to "sail beyond the sunset" into a shared act of compassionate grace. Odysseus and Penelope do not set sail to conquer a new horizon; they don’t sail as a means of escape from responsibility. They sail because a profound emotional truth has been discovered: domestic stability for both of them has become an impossibility, and motion is the only expression of life that they have left. In this brilliant, modern layering of a 3,000-year-old sedimentary myth, Nolan has, consciously or not, reminded us of our need to return to these ancient narratives when our contemporary explanations of life fail us. We do not need to keep Homer unchanged and frozen in time or ward off any changes to his poem with the threat of dire warnings. What we need is to let the pressures of our own historical moment add a fresh layer of sediment to the story. Ultimately, I can’t stress this enough: Nolan’s cinematic myth functions precisely as myth always has. Myth serves humanity as something like psychological technology for a secular world, giving form to what cannot be mastered so that it can, at least, be thought. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson is a writer, depth psychologist in private practice, teacher, speaker, and Director of Publications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His work explores the status of myth after belief—what it means to take myth seriously in a world where its metaphysical claims no longer hold in any straightforward way. He is the author of The Mythopoetic Impulse and a Skeleton Key Study Guide for Pathways to Bliss. His current writing pushes against the dominant tendency to treat myth as a repository of timeless meanings or archetypes, arguing instead that myth functions as a form that brings the mind into contact with its own limits—where coherence breaks down and the desire for explanation remains. Before his work in psychology and mythology, Olson worked as a police officer in North Dakota and Arizona. There, he encountered the world less as a smooth narrative than as rupture—moments of consequence without clear origin, human situations that resist explanation or moral symmetry. That experience continues to inform his understanding of myth—not as a system that resolves the world into meaning, but as a form that emerges in proximity to what cannot be made coherent. In both his clinical practice and his writing, Olson is interested in how people live with those limits—how meaning persists, not as resolution, but as a problem that cannot finally be solved. The Odyssey: Myth, Movie, and Modern Meaning Explore Campbell’s Insights and Contemporary Takes With the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is diving into the epic’s timeless power. We’ve gathered Campbell’s wisdom on the classic tale, alongside fresh perspectives that bring its themes to life today. From ancient lessons to modern interpretations, there’s so much to discover. Visit our Odyssey Page Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Cover of Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence shot by Guy Webster Crossing the threshold: entering the darkness This year, MythBlast invites us to explore the stages of the Hero's Journey through music. The current theme is Initiation, the stage in which the hero crosses the threshold and begins the long work of transformation. My first impulse was to write about Frank Sinatra's “My Way,” a song I have always loved. Yet another melody kept returning, quietly but persistently, until it became impossible to ignore: Simon & Garfunkel's “The Sound of Silence.” Paul Simon wrote the song in 1963, during a period of profound uncertainty in American society. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Cold War, racial tensions, the wave of military dictatorships across South America, and the emergence of the counterculture all formed part of the historical backdrop. The song captured something deeper than political unrest; it expressed the growing isolation of people living in an increasingly technological and impersonal world. More than sixty years later, it remains uncannily contemporary. Our landscape has changed, but its anxieties remain. Wars continue. Political polarization deepens. Digital technologies—and now generative artificial intelligence—fill every empty space with information, images, and voices. Never before have human beings been so connected, and perhaps never before has genuine listening been so difficult. The song opens with one of popular music's most recognizable lines: "Hello darkness, my old friend..." Darkness is not merely the absence of light;mythically speaking, it is the threshold itself. Joseph Campbell reminds us in The Hero with a Thousand Faces that once “having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials” (81). Initiation begins not with certainty but with ambiguity. Before wisdom comes disorientation. Before revelation comes silence. The “darkness” Simon addresses is less about despair and more about the unknown region every initiate must enter. Campbell observed that myths begin where ordinary consciousness reaches its limits. Only then does another form of knowing become possible. The following verse deepens this movement inward: "A vision softly creeping..." The image is remarkably Jungian. What approaches the ego rarely arrives dramatically. Instead, the unconscious announces itself quietly, almost imperceptibly, through dreams, intuitions, symbols, fleeting emotions, and unexpected images. These experiences often emerge while consciousness is occupied elsewhere—or asleep. As an analytical psychologist, I often witness how modern life encourages people to remain permanently occupied, precisely to avoid encountering this inner landscape. Yet Jung insisted that the unconscious is not merely a repository of forgotten material. It is also profoundly creative, containing unrealized possibilities for psychological growth. Campbell likewise understood myth as a bridge between conscious life and those deeper dimensions of collective human experience. The hero's initiation is therefore not simply an external adventure; it is an apprenticeship in listening. The trial of noise: learning to listen Years ago, I visited an anechoic chamber at the University of Campinas in Brazil, a room engineered to absorb nearly all sound reflections. Many people imagine absolute silence as emptiness. My experience was the opposite. The silence possessed an almost physical density, as though it had substance. Rather than hearing nothing, I became acutely aware of my own presence. That experience returned to me while reflecting on Simon's song. Silence is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of attention. Ironically, silence has become increasingly elusive. Campbell describes initiation as a sequence of trials and revelations, and perhaps one of our contemporary trials is simply finding enough interior space to hear ourselves. Our world has grown astonishingly noisy. Earbuds accompany us through streets, airports, supermarkets, and parks. Notifications interrupt every pause. Algorithms compete relentlessly for our attention. Even moments once reserved for contemplation are now filled with podcasts, playlists, videos, or scrolling. The challenge is not technology itself. I enjoy podcasts—including those produced by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Their intimate format often recalls the warmth of old radio broadcasts, creating the pleasant illusion that someone is speaking directly into one's ear. Technology can certainly nourish reflection. The difficulty arises when constant stimulation leaves no room for interior dialogue. Simon captures this paradox brilliantly when he describes "people talking without speaking" and "people hearing without listening." Those lines seem almost prophetic in the age of social media. We exchange enormous quantities of information while genuine conversation often becomes increasingly rare. In clinical practice, many psychologists encourage patients to establish healthier boundaries with digital life—not because technology is inherently harmful, but because endless distraction can become a sophisticated defense against self-knowledge. Why does silence unsettle us? What might we hear if we stopped filling every available moment? The prophets of silence: finding the soul in an age of distraction Campbell often noted that revelation follows withdrawal. Across mythic traditions, the hero repeatedly enters forests, caves, deserts, mountains, or the underworld before returning transformed. These places matter less as geographical locations than as psychological conditions. They represent spaces where external noise subsides enough for another voice to emerge. Toward the end of the song, Simon offers one of its most haunting images: people worshipping the "neon god." Written decades before smartphones or artificial intelligence, the metaphor feels astonishingly current. The neon god is not technology itself but our tendency to mistake distraction for meaning, visibility for wisdom, and constant connection for genuine relationship. The song closes by reminding us that "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls." This final image suggests that wisdom rarely appears where we expect it. Like myth itself, revelation often hides within ordinary life, waiting to be recognized. The sacred does not always announce itself from mountaintops. Sometimes it whispers through overlooked places, chance encounters, dreams, graffiti, works of art, or a song that unexpectedly refuses to leave our minds. Perhaps this explains why “The Sound of Silence” continues to resonate across generations. It is more than a 1960s protest song. It is a contemporary narrative about initiation. Silence is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of attention. Its enduring power lies in this reminder: the greatest obstacle to hearing the soul is seldom external oppression. More often, it is the endless accumulation of noise that keeps us from crossing the threshold into ourselves. Campbell's famous invitation to "Follow your bliss" might often have been misunderstood as a call to pursue happiness. Yet in Campbell's sense, bliss is not comfort. It is alignment with one's deepest vocation. Discovering that vocation requires listening deeply enough to distinguish the authentic inner voice from the countless voices competing for our attention nowadays. That may be one of the defining initiations of our own historical moment. The hero of the twenty-first century does not necessarily need to retreat permanently from the world. Rather, the challenge is to participate fully in modern life without surrendering the capacity for silence. The journey asks us to cultivate an inner space where dreams, symbols, imagination, and intuition can still be heard beneath the relentless rhythm of contemporary existence. For in the end, “The Sound of Silence” reminds us that silence is never truly empty. It is where the soul and the myths have always spoken. 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 the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this special bonus episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, author, mythologist, and longtime friend of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Phil Cousineau returns to discuss his new book, The Wisdom of The Odyssey. In conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Phil explores why Homer’s ancient epic continues to speak so powerfully to the modern world, especially as Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation brings The Odyssey back into popular culture. Together, they reflect on Odysseus’ long journey home not simply as an adventure story, but as a map of the soul - a timeless meditation on memory, exile, temptation, self-control, wisdom, and the deep human longing to return to what is most true. This conversation invites us to ask what our own odysseys are teaching us, what we may have forgotten along the way, and what wisdom we are being called to bring home. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "What is the fourth syllable in the three-syllable word aum? It is the silence that is before and after aum is pronounced. That is the totality of the word and of the world now: you have the silence — that is to say non-being — and aum, which is being. Neither exists without the other.” -- Joseph Campbell Myths of Light, 34 "Seeing Through The Symbol" See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Odysseus's Homesickness by Alexander Rothaug. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing … Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. —C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces I first heard Jefferson Starship’s “Find Your Way Back” (from 1981’s Modern Times) in high school, before I had left the nest for a greater adventure. I loved the music itself, right from the opening picked, descending guitar line, which immediately signaled the song’s melancholic tone. Many years would pass, however, before the lyrics spoke to me and I could echo the opening words: “It’s been a long, long road / Since I packed up and left on my own.” Only later in life did the song hit me with its mythic truth: the journey away is always the first step toward the journey back. This is the essence of Initiation, the phase of the hero’s journey where the seeker, having braved the adventure, now dares to face trials, to confront their shadow, and to begin the arduous work of returning home. “Find Your Way Back” is more than a simple love song; it’s a modern initiation anthem, a musical map of the soul’s path from exile to reunion. Joseph Campbell often spoke of the hero’s journey as a metaphor for the human experience of growth. The Initiation phase in particular is where the hero, having left the ordinary world, endures trials and begins the process of reintegration. In “Find Your Way Back,” the narrator is deep in this phase. They are not just physically distant from “her heart”; they are emotionally and spiritually adrift, carrying a “heavy load” of regret, longing, and the weight of their choices. The song mirrors the hero’s journey, in both its lyrics and music. The verses, with full-band energy, describe the descent (“I seem to find love where I ramble”). But then, as if to underscore the arresting quality of the summons, the band drops out in each of the first two choruses, leaving only a muted guitar and high keyboards to carry the call to return: “Find your way back to her heart.” The bridge then offers a dramatic key change and a revved-up and rockier sound. When the lyrics then reveal the reckoning (“I wish I could go back in time … And get it right from the start”), the band shifts into double-time—a sonic rebirth and a lift toward the return. Odysseus’ rambling way back If “Find Your Way Back” is a song of Initiation, then The Odyssey is one of its mythic predecessors. Odysseus, too, is a hero in the throes of this phase for much of the epic. His trials, from the Cyclops to Circe to Calypso, aren’t just obstacles; they’re rites of passage, forcing him to shed his old identity as a warrior and emerge as a man capable of ruling Ithaca in partnership with his wife, Penelope, with wisdom and humility. The song and The Odyssey exhibit striking parallels. The narrator’s “long, long road” echoes Odysseus’ ten-year voyage, as much about inner transformation as about covering distance. The line “I carry a heavy load” could be Odysseus’ lament after losing his crew or enduring Poseidon’s wrath, let alone the traumas of the Trojan War. And the repeated chorus of “Find your way back to her heart” mirrors Odysseus’ singular focus on returning to Penelope, the ultimate symbol of home and restoration. But the most compelling connection is the theme of return as rebirth. In The Odyssey, Odysseus doesn’t just go home; he becomes someone new. He sheds his old self—the brash, prideful warrior who left Ithaca—and returns as a man who has faced his own mortality, his own flaws, and the consequences of his actions. Similarly, the narrator of the song isn’t just trying to reunite with a lover; they are trying to reclaim an interior part that they lost along the way, a part they have only realized in the humility of their humanity. The song’s final verse, the narrator’s futile wish to “start all over somehow,” embodies a moment of mythic reckoning, akin to Odysseus weeping on Calypso’s shore and realizing the cost of his detours. The Hymn of the Pearl: the voice of the eagle Another surprising and ancient parallel to “Find Your Way Back” lies in the Hymn of the Pearl—a Gnostic poem from the Acts of Thomas. In the hymn, a prince is sent from his heavenly home to retrieve a pearl but falls into a deep sleep in Egypt, forgetting his mission and his royal origins. Only when a letter in the form of an eagle from his father, the king, reaches him does he awaken, remember his purpose, and begin the journey back. The echoes of the lyrics here are also uncanny. The prince’s forgetfulness mirrors the narrator’s rambling in the song, as if he, too, has lost sight of his true path and the courage of his convictions. The eagle from the king is the song’s “voice” that in essence says, “Find your way back.” And the pearl? It’s the same as the song’s “heart” or Odysseus’ Ithaca/Penelope: the ultimate boon, the thing the hero must reclaim to complete the journey. The Hymn of the Pearl, The Odyssey, and “Find Your Way Back” all revolve around the same mythic truth: the journey home is often a journey of remembering. The prince forgets his mission; Odysseus loses his way; the song’s narrator disregards their path. But in each case, the call to return—whether it’s a letter, a divine intervention, or a mysterious voice—awakens them to their true purpose. The mythic pull of home Campbell would argue that this is the power of myth in music and story: they evoke the universal patterns that define our lives. “Find Your Way Back” does exactly that. It’s a modern myth, a song that taps into the same archetypal energy as the Hymn of the Pearl and The Odyssey. It speaks to the part of us that has wandering feet but a homesick heart. And the echoed and harmonized repetition of the word “Back, back, back, back…” at the song’s end reminds us of the hope we hear in harmonizing our intention with what lies at the end of the adventure. The way home isn’t just about distance; it’s about remembering who we are. The way home isn’t just about distance; it’s about remembering who we are. Whether it’s a prince’s pearl, a king’s partnership with his queen, or a lover’s heart, the mythic call is the same: find your way back. And perhaps most importantly, this song invites us to see our own lives as mythic. When we hear Jefferson Starship’s tune, we’re not just listening to a song about re-finding love; we’re hearing a call to our own initiation. We’re being invited to ask: what is the “heart” in your life you are being summoned back to? What is the “pearl” you’ve been sent to retrieve? What is the Ithaca you’re trying to reach? MythBlast authored by: Scott Neumeister is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, and mythic pathfinder from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his PhD in English from the University of South Florida in 2018. His specialization in multiethnic American literature and mythology comes after careers as an information technology systems engineer and a teacher of English and mythology at the middle school and college levels. Scott coauthored Let Love Lead: On a Course to Freedom with Gary L. Lemons and Susie Hoeller, and he has served as a facilitator for the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Myth and Meaning book club at Literati. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this special bonus episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, author, mythologist, and longtime friend of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Phil Cousineau returns to discuss his new book, The Wisdom of The Odyssey. In conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Phil explores why Homer’s ancient epic continues to speak so powerfully to the modern world, especially as Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation brings The Odyssey back into popular culture. Together, they reflect on Odysseus’ long journey home not simply as an adventure story, but as a map of the soul - a timeless meditation on memory, exile, temptation, self-control, wisdom, and the deep human longing to return to what is most true. This conversation invites us to ask what our own odysseys are teaching us, what we may have forgotten along the way, and what wisdom we are being called to bring home. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "And then you have the shamanic experience of the Northern peoples, the Siberians, and down in South America. And what it’s associated with in the North and the Americas is the song. Every shaman has his song that takes him away. There have been descriptions of how a person first hears his or her song, walking along a seashore or being in in a forest. There’s this experience and from then on he’s overtaken." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero's Journey, 76 A New Mythology - The Planet See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Joel Brodsky; Distributed by Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons The sound of the threshold Leather pants. Sweat. Whiskey. The low, hypnotic pulse of John Densmore’s drums. Robbie Krieger’s flamenco-infused guitar winding like smoke through Ray Manzarek’s swirling, trance-inducing keyboards. And at the center of it all, Jim Morrison moved like a man both summoning and being consumed by something primordial. The Doors’ self-titled debut album exploded onto the scene on January 4, 1967, arriving just as the cultural and psychological currents of the 1960s were erupting into public consciousness. A Doors concert was less like a performance than an initiation into a different timeline, one that tempted the listener to cross a threshold into the depths and toward the power of the unknown…or so I had been told. As an older millennial, I first discovered The Doors through my parents’ record collection. I was probably 12 or 13 years old, listening to “Light My Fire,” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Riders on the Storm,” “Moonlight Drive,” “The End,” and “People Are Strange” on original vinyl from the 60s and 70s. Even decades later, the music pulses with something primal, rebellious, and deeply alive. I didn’t necessarily understand what I was feeling, or why I was so drawn to it. All I knew was that it felt magnetic and mysterious to that younger version of Tyler. Looking back, finding those albums in my parents’ closet felt less like simply discovering music from another generation and more like receiving an invitation into some ancient and unknown part of myself. Now I see that The Doors were initiating me into the deeper currents of being human and the shadowy terrain of the unconscious. A bowstring released Years later, I had the privilege of speaking with The Doors’ drummer John Densmore on JCF’s The Podcast with a Thousand Faces. We explored the energy of the 1960s, the mythic power of music, Joseph Campbell, and, of course, Jim Morrison. One of my favorite moments came when Densmore described Morrison as someone tightly wound for years, until the band’s sudden success released him like a bowstring snapped all at once. In many ways, the 1960s carried that same energy. Beneath the polished surface of postwar America lay enormous reservoirs of repression: sexuality, grief, racism, rebellion, ecstasy, spiritual longing. When those forces finally broke through, they did not arrive gently. Music became one of the great release valves. It gave rhythm, sound, and body to energies that had been buried underground. And few artists embodied that explosive force more completely than Jim Morrison. Listening to The Doors, I recall Joseph Campbell’s observation that mythic images are reflections of the energies and potentialities living within us. The power of music, like myth, is that it gives energetic expression to forces that often remain hidden beneath ordinary consciousness. It does not just entertain us. It helps us feel what is moving through us. In Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, Campbell states, “One can say that the images of myth are reflections of spiritual and depth potentialities of every one of us. And that through contemplating those, we evoke those powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves.” Morrison seemed to intuitively understand how to summon these forces through music, poetry, sexuality, and performance. At times, he appeared almost shamanic, channeling the ecstatic and chaotic energies of a generation hungry to feel fully alive. Now I see that The Doors were initiating me into the deeper currents of being human and the shadowy terrain of the unconscious. Into the Belly of the Whale But opening oneself to immense psychic energies is not the same thing as integrating them. So, what happens when these energies erupt without guidance, ritual, or understanding? What happens when the doors of perception open faster than the psyche can integrate what comes through? Morrison’s struggles with addiction, excess, and self-destruction suggest one possible answer. The same forces that made him magnetic also seemed to consume him. Perhaps this is part of Morrison’s tragedy: he could summon the fire, but he could not always contain it. In that sense, Morrison was not simply performing Dionysian energy; at times, he seemed to become a vessel for it without fully understanding what he was embodying. In Campbell’s language, this is the danger of the Belly of the Whale, that dark interior space where the familiar world falls away and the old self begins to dissolve. Such a descent can be initiatory, but only if it eventually leads to return and reintegration. Without that return, the descent can become disorientation, possession, or collapse. The body as mythic terrain In my work as an acupuncturist, I’ve seen how the body carries what the conscious mind cannot fully process. Grief settles into the lungs. Anger and repression stagnate the liver and create heat. Fear contracts and drains vitality from the kidneys. What remains unfelt or unexpressed does not simply disappear; it waits beneath the surface, often emerging as symptoms, compulsions, or destructive patterns until it can finally be met with awareness. In that sense, the process of healing itself becomes initiatory, not because we avoid the descent, but because we learn how to return from it with discernment and integration. Ancient systems of medicine and mythology both understood this: human beings are not purely rational creatures. We are emotional, instinctual, symbolic beings, shaped by forces deeper than thought alone. Health depends not on suppressing these forces or blindly surrendering to them, but on learning how to enter into relationship with them and give them wise expression. Joseph Campbell’s work resonates so powerfully in my own life because it reveals that myths are metaphors for the energies that animate and propel us. We may never fully understand or control these deep impulses, but the more clearly we see them moving through myth, the more skillfully we can respond to them within ourselves. And at times, we may even learn to give them form, as Morrison did, through poetry, music, performance, and art. Returning from the Descent Campbell wrote that myth is “the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation” (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3). Perhaps this helps explain why music still moves us so profoundly. In a fragmented modern world, artists (musicians among them) become the vessels through which these forces continue to speak. The Doors endure, not simply as a band from the 1960s, but as a living example of music’s mythic function. They did not merely describe the undercurrents of their time. They gave those undercurrents a sound, a body, a voice, and a stage. Morrison, for all his brilliance and torment, became the figure at the threshold: the singer at the edge of consciousness, calling others toward the mystery while struggling to survive his own encounter with it. This is part of what still makes The Doors so compelling. Their music does not feel safely contained in the past. It still feels like the same doorway that I entered as a teenager, an initiation into the deeper mysteries of my own life. That said, when we “break on through,” personally or collectively, without myth, ritual, and consciousness, we risk being overwhelmed by what we encounter. Myth gives us a map for the terrain. Music gives us a way to feel and express the energies moving through it. And artists like Morrison and The Doors remind us that the threshold is powerful, mysterious, and potentially dangerous. Morrison ultimately did not find his way through that fire. He died at 27, and his life reminds us that initiation is not only descent into the unknown, but the difficult work of returning from that descent with the willingness and capacity to integrate what we have encountered. The task, then, is not only to cross the threshold, but to remain conscious of what we awaken when we do, and to give those awakened energies a form that can serve life rather than consume it. MythBlast authored by: Tyler Lapkin is the podcast producer and social media manager for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, where he hosts The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, exploring Campbell’s influence and the role of mythology in culture. Born and raised in North Lake Tahoe, Tyler developed a deep love for nature, skiing, and surfing. He earned a B.A. in History with a focus on Environmental Studies and Italian from UC Santa Barbara in 2004 before pursuing a Master’s in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Since 2010, he has practiced acupuncture in Tahoe City. A passionate traveler and photographer, Tyler has explored the world through hiking, surfing, and skiing. In 2023, he completed a meditation teacher training with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach and now teaches meditation courses online and in person. He is dedicated to storytelling, self discovery, and deepening our connection to nature and each other. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this special bonus episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, author, mythologist, and longtime friend of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Phil Cousineau returns to discuss his new book, The Wisdom of The Odyssey. In conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Phil explores why Homer’s ancient epic continues to speak so powerfully to the modern world, especially as Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation brings The Odyssey back into popular culture. Together, they reflect on Odysseus’ long journey home not simply as an adventure story, but as a map of the soul - a timeless meditation on memory, exile, temptation, self-control, wisdom, and the deep human longing to return to what is most true. This conversation invites us to ask what our own odysseys are teaching us, what we may have forgotten along the way, and what wisdom we are being called to bring home. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "One can say that the images of myth are reflections of spiritual and depth potentialities of every one of us. And that through contemplating those, we evoke those powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves." -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth, 258 The Hidden Dimension See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

In the Wee Small Hours © Capitol Records (1955) It was Sappho who first called Eros “bittersweet.” No one who has been in love disputes her. —Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet When Anne Carson invokes the ancient lyric poet in Eros the Bittersweet, she is pointing to the fact that love is never simply one thing, one experience, one emotion. It is something both bitter and sweet. How we translate Sappho’s word, however, should give us pause. The original Greek word, glukupikron, is more properly translated as “sweetbitter,” but that just sounds wrong to the contemporary English ear. It makes more sense, though, doesn’t it? Love never begins by being bitter; it’s always sweet at the beginning, and only later does it become bitter—gradually at first, and then all of a sudden. More than sweetness, the bitterness is an unexpected, unsettling awareness of a boundary, while sweetness dissolves and defers the irksome experience of finitude. In either case, to encounter Eros is to discover that we are not entirely self-contained, and that the object of our desire is always already vexingly outside our control. The sweetness is inseparable from the bitterness of the beloved’s distance. We tend to imagine mythological initiation as an ancient and rather dramatic affair: a youth led into a subterranean chamber by torchlight, or a medieval knight entering a dark forest at its thickest, most impenetrable point. But in modern life, our introduction to the sharp edges of love rarely occurs in such places. More often, it happens alone in the dark in the wee small hours around 3:00 AM, illuminated only by the glow of a cell phone’s Spotify playlist. In 1955, Frank Sinatra released In the Wee Small Hours. If you’re not familiar with this landmark album in the history of music generally, and the Great American Songbook in particular, please take fifty minutes or so right now and give it a listen. Widely recognized as the first true concept album, Sinatra recorded it in the middle of his long, public, agonizing separation and divorce from Ava Gardner. In fact, Sinatra even called it “the Ava album.” His brilliant arranger, Nelson Riddle, remarked, “Ava Gardner taught Frank how to sing a torch song." It’s an extraordinary album: musically precise, lyrically intelligent, and so very...Sinatra. “The Voice” was never shy about publicly psychoanalyzing himself—he once called himself “an 18 karat manic depressive,” and with this album he documented his katabasis, his own descent into love’s underworld. Here, he serves as a kind of Virgil, guiding us through the distinct, painful levels of the sweetbitter, and I want to focus on a few of the tracks that best embody the album’s initiatory qualities. “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning” “When your lonely heart has learned its lesson…” The title track, the first song on the album, sets the stage. We’re informed that this is a voyage of learning, as all initiation is, of course. But what exactly is the lesson our heart learns? The song frames this early morning wakefulness not solely as a space for lament or self-pity, but as a classroom of the soul. I recall James Hillman saying that what awakens us at 3:00 AM are those considerations demanding, needing, our attention. Nelson Riddle’s arrangement for this song is understated: a lonely, muted horn to establish the ritual container. The initiate has crossed the threshold and is descending, trapped in the void after the collapse but before any mature understanding can take place. It is not a matter of the ego “deciding” to go on a journey; it is the conscious mind being dragged down because its psychological attitude has reached an absolute limit. This is exactly how Sinatra sings "What Is This Thing Called Love?” This track captures the ego frantically trying to intellectualize its way out of the underworld. “What Is This Thing Called Love?” At this point in the descent, answers are needed because the question itself—What is this thing?—is an admission that the old ego-structure has no referent for this type of psychic experience. So the descent begins with confusion and interrogation. Interestingly enough, Cole Porter originally wrote "What Is This Thing Called Love?" in his typically urbane, insouciant pacing and style—the sort of song perfect for crowds and cocktails, for dancing amid peals of laughter in a night club or even a speakeasy. Sinatra and Riddle stripped all that away, slowing the tempo to something like a funereal dirge. When Sinatra asks what is this?, he isn't posing a philosophical or existential question. He is standing in the wreckage of his marriage to the woman of his dreams, demanding answers from a force that has left him completely undone—and of course it was always bound to; Hesiod called Eros “limb breaker”—both destroyer and creator who gives humans to know both flights of ecstasy and the steep, nauseating descents of despair. Naturally, in the midst of this catastrophe, the sophisticated easy-come, easy-go persona has all but disappeared, leaving only the disturbing realization: the ego is no longer in control. It is not a matter of the ego “deciding” to go on a journey; it is the conscious mind being dragged down because its psychological attitude has reached an absolute limit. “Ill Wind” You're only misleading The sunshine I'm needing Ain't that a shame It's so hard to keep up With troubles that creep up From out of nowhere When love's to blame So, ill wind, blow away Let me rest today You're blowin' me no good No good From questioning, from demanding answers, we witness the singer enveloped by a type of learned helplessness, a paralysis of the spirit. The lyrics are plaintive, or perhaps an attempt to bargain with the overwhelming forces of fate. And Riddle’s arrangement for this song is brilliant: woodwinds and strings mimic windstorms as though they’re whistling through a lonely apartment at 3:00 AM. The track transcends personal grief to capture the human condition, reminding us listeners that some forces in the human psyche are too massive to fight—they can only be endured. "This Love of Mine" Sinatra co-wrote the lyrics to "This Love of Mine" in 1941 when he was the featured vocalist for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. When he re-recorded it for this album in 1955, the song landed differently because of how he managed his breath. As a young singer, Sinatra had closely watched Dorsey’s trombone technique, noticing how he could play long, unbroken phrases seemingly without taking a breath. By parting the very corner of his lips slightly while maintaining his embouchure on the trombone’s mouthpiece, Dorsey could inhale without interrupting the musical flow. Sinatra realized that if he could replicate Dorsey’s seamless instrumental phrasing, he could use his voice the same way Dorsey used his trombone to carry the listener through an uninterrupted musical phrase or thought. On the 1941 recording, he sings the song as a conventional, mid-tempo big band ballad. On In the Wee Small Hours, he slows the tempo down, using that Dorsey-inspired breath control to stretch the lyrics into long, continuous phrases, while Riddle’s strings soften to match the velvety quality of Sinatra’s vocals. By the end of the track the struggle against the early morning wakefulness has ended in something like acceptance, or maybe just the determination to endure. By the end of the album, the wound has closed, forming something like a psychic scar—a permanent part of Sinatra's style. Life goes on; he doesn’t know who he will be, but he knows he will never be the same: I cry my heart out, it's bound to break Since nothing matters, let it break I ask the sun and the moon, the stars that shine What's to become of it, this love of mine? What will become of it, of course, is transformation. But these psychic transformations are hard to accomplish—and harder to endure. The psychic scar is no less real for being immaterial. While Eros inevitably proved to be adept as a “limb breaker,” we should remember that Hesiod also identified Eros as a foundational pillar of the primordial void out of which all of creation eventually issues. Eros is no small thing, and it begins to dawn on us why Sappho depicted Eros as a paradox. Eros isn’t only about limb breaking. When we’re wounded by love, the self comes into clearer focus; the scar reminds us of our own finitude—not just existentially, but in terms of limits and edges, too. A scar is a symbol of healing, not of failure. A scar—physical or psychic—is no longer an open wound, no longer a site of pain and fear. It is a monument to living, ontic evidence that you’re alive and still in the game. That’s the point of the initiation. It’s your lonely heart learning its sweetbitter lessons in the wee small hours of the morning. Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson is a writer, depth psychologist in private practice, teacher, speaker, and Director of Publications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His work explores the status of myth after belief—what it means to take myth seriously in a world where its metaphysical claims no longer hold in any straightforward way. He is the author of The Mythopoetic Impulse and a Skeleton Key Study Guide for Pathways to Bliss. His current writing pushes against the dominant tendency to treat myth as a repository of timeless meanings or archetypes, arguing instead that myth functions as a form that brings the mind into contact with its own limits—where coherence breaks down and the desire for explanation remains. Before his work in psychology and mythology, Olson worked as a police officer in North Dakota and Arizona. There, he encountered the world less as a smooth narrative than as rupture—moments of consequence without clear origin, human situations that resist explanation or moral symmetry. That experience continues to inform his understanding of myth—not as a system that resolves the world into meaning, but as a form that emerges in proximity to what cannot be made coherent. In both his clinical practice and his writing, Olson is interested in how people live with those limits—how meaning persists, not as resolution, but as a problem that cannot finally be solved. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this episode of The Podcast With a Thousand Faces, Joanna Gardner speaks with author, herbalist, naturalist, land steward, and boxing coach Vanessa Chakour. Vanessa’s work invites us into a deeper relationship with our inner and outer wilds. Through her books Awakening Artemis and Earthly Bodies, she weaves memoir, myth, plant medicine, animal kinship, and ecological healing into a powerful call to remember ourselves as part of the living Earth. In this conversation, Joanna and Vanessa explore rewilding as a return to our true nature, the healing power of boxing, the mythic force of Artemis and the fierce feminine, Joseph Campbell’s influence on Vanessa’s life and work, and the stories we must question, compost, and rewrite if we are to live in deeper kinship with the more-than-human world. Together, they ask what it means to come home to the body, to the land, and to the wild intelligence that has been waiting beneath the surface all along. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Love is not only a life experience, but also a mystical experience. In courtly love, the pain of love, the impossibility of fulfillment, was considered the essence of life." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion, 37 The Goddess and The Madonna See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter