In 1862, John Henry “Professor” Pepper summoned a ghost in front of a live audience. Though the illusion he used dated back at least as far as 16th century Italy, this particular visitation was just in time for a renewed fascination in the afterlife with the peak of Spiritualism, a belief that the dead are not gone but exist alongside the living, reachable and sometimes even visible to those who know how to pull aside the veil. Professor Pepper made a fortune showing “Pepper’s Ghost” to audience members looking for just such a spectacle throughout the late 19th century. As the trick lost its novelty, though, Pepper decided to reclaim relevance by using his understanding of the illusion to debunk Spiritualism, gathering audiences with the promise of explaining how the effect was done — only to find that those who believed in ghosts weren’t terribly convinced, or even concerned, by this “proof.” The fact that Spiritualists still practice today is, perhaps, an example of the triumph of belief over provable fact: even though the mechanics of Pepper’s Ghost and other illusions are revealed, the story is too compelling to be solved for good. Debunkers can — and have — spent entire lives and fortunes compiling evidence that runs contrary to a belief in spirits among us. They offer a million dollars for just one certifiable photo of a real ghost. The contests run decades without a claimant, and this has no impact at all on the conviction of believers. While skeptics and cynics pull out their hair, anyone who has read Shakespeare knows that a ghost is never just a glob of floating ectoplasm or a trick of the light, and attempts at gathering physical evidence to better understand the ineffable are solidly beside the point. To quote Douglas Adams: “If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.” Myth, like any organic thing, has to be approached with some understanding of its behavior before dissecting it does any good. Joseph Campbell writes about the perils of missing metaphor in a 1986 article for the Houston Chronicle: “If myth is translated into literal fact, then myth is a lie.” This is an expansion of an concept he speaks on in his earlier works, including the collection Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal: I think what happens in our mythology here in the West is that the mythological archetypal symbols have come to be interpreted as facts. Jesus was born of a virgin. Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Jesus went to heaven by ascension. Unfortunately, in our age of scientific skepticism we know these things did not actually happen, and so the mythic forms are called falsehoods. The word myth now means falsehood, and so we have lost the symbols and that mysterious world of which they speak. In the deification of the material — or is it a materialization of the deity? — we lose a universe of meaning. The symbols aren’t gone, exactly, but Campbell points out that they’re generally relegated to the psychiatric: “It was Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Jacob Adler who realized that the figures of dreams are really figures of personal mythologization. You create your own imagery related to the archetypes.” The tarot deck has long been a staple of the Spiritualist’s toolbox for seeking wisdom from the spirits (or the unconscious, depending on the practitioner) through associations with the archetypal. Perhaps the most self-referential card in the deck is the Hermit, a figure who represents this spirit of wandering the in-between in search of spiritual clarity. As illustrated in Pixie Smith’s iconic deck, the Hermit doesn’t spend his days shut away in a damp hovel on the wrong side of the hedge. He may be separate from society, but he’s not sequestered; a Hermit’s life is one of seeking, and seeking is a living thing that takes place on foot. The Hermit seeks the occult — the true sense of the word, meaning the obscured or hidden — that impacts you so entirely you lose yourself as an individual and see your place in the cosmos. Campbell refers to this as the “sublime.” The sublime encountered between you and your chosen destination may tell you more than arriving at your destination ever could. The Hermit’s background may look to be an empty blue — uncharacteristically empty, compared to Smith’s other illustrations — as he wanders through it alone at twilight, but the space isn’t empty at all, and in fact represents a deeply important aspect of the spiritual journey. Rebecca Solnit writes about this phenomenon of the substantive in-between in “The Blue of Distance,” an essay from her 2005 book A Field Guide to Getting Lost: The color of that distance is the color of an emotion, the color of solitude and desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains. The “blue of distance” is, technically and literally, a mirage. The mountains you’re walking toward aren’t blue; if you try to close in on that enchanting blue place, the illusion will fade and you’ll see all the colors you’re used to from back home. By then you may realize too late that the blue was the point. Art critic and writer John Berger expresses the risk of taking that blueness literally in an essay from one of his final books, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance: Every day people follow signs pointing to someplace which is not their home but a chosen destination… some are making their journeys for pleasure, others on business, many out of loss or despair. On arrival they come to realize they are not in the place indicated by the signs they followed. They now find themselves at the correct latitude, longitude, local time, currency, yet it does not have the specific gravity of the destination they chose.[…] They are beside the place they chose to come to. The distance which separates them from it is incalculable. Maybe it’s only the width of a thoroughfare, maybe it’s a world away. The place has lost what made it a destination. It has lost its territory of experience. The blue between here and there isn’t supposed to be concrete. It isn’t the destination, but neither is it empty. The cat doesn’t purr because it’s a vital function, but because it’s communicating comfort or stress. The ghost appearing onstage may be an illusion created by physical trickery, but the nature of its creation is irrelevant to the meaning of a ghost; the vital thing about Banquo appearing to Macbeth isn’t that he’s a literal haunt, but the fact that his apparition symbolizes Macbeth’s terror and guilt over Banquo’s murder. Campbell’s response to this misunderstanding of symbology is to encourage a more Zen understanding of metaphor — that is, by reminding us that the visible plane isn’t the moon itself, but the finger pointing toward it: “The mythology of a people presents a grandiose poetic image, and like all poetic images, it refers past itself to principles that are mysterious and ineffable” (emphasis mine). “The question,” Campbell writes, “is whether or not there can ever be a recovery of the mythological, mystical realization of the miracle of life of which human beings are a manifestation.”

When I began structuring this essay in my mind, trying to make a rational attempt to contemplate the meaning of the hermit’s card (number 9), a song spontaneously took over and started resonating in my heart. Initially, I tried to suppress it (silly me!). ‘Round up the usual suspects,’ as Captain Renault famously said in Casablanca (Warner Bros, 1942). But as we often find, attempting to suppress something only makes it more enticing and alluring, and the song persisted within me. Consequently, I decided to give it a voice, realizing it served as a splendid metaphor to introduce the card! I go with my lantern, And she goes with me. Above, the stars are shining bright; Down here on Earth, shine we The light went out, I’m going back home Sway, sway lantern. My daughter, Laura, and I started singing this song almost a quarter of a century ago when she was two years old and attending the Waldorf Micael School in São Paulo, but it still echoes in my fondest memories when winter approaches. Originally written in German, the song is sung with slight variations in Waldorf School kindergartens all over the world to celebrate the arrival of the winter season. This celebration typically occurs in the Northern Hemisphere around Saint Martin’s Day on November 11th and in the Southern Hemisphere in June. In Brazil, this European-origin festival is celebrated during Saint John’s time on June 24th. It is also a major celebration in the city of Porto, Portugal to this day. It is a festival that prepares us for the quieting of nature outside and, if we allow it, within ourselves. After all, the cold climate and the longer nights foster an attitude of introspection. As I hold The Hermit card from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck in my hands, I see a bearded old man holding a lantern in his right hand and a staff in his left hand. Like the Fool’s card, he is a pilgrim, a wanderer. His wisdom is imparted through his journey. The lantern is lit and placed in front of him and in the distance, mountains suggest that he has completed his journey and has returned to guide us. His solitude indicates the benefits of withdrawing from the chaotic everyday world to turn inward. He wears a serious, trustful expression and we may connect him to the archetypal figure of the elder or the sage if we wish. As such, he is the one who finds meaning in the chaos of life, as Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav suggests in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (CW 9, Part I, § 74). The card depicts a person encouraging us to search within ourselves and seek our own internal light. It’s akin to a busy day at work when, at day’s end, we yearn to return home promptly, seeking the solace and company of our loved ones. What I see in this card is that, especially during childhood and youth, it’s important to have a guiding figure outside of ourselves with whom we can connect. Most studies in psychology emphasize that this is a crucial aspect of feeling safe, of continuing to grow and understand oneself better and act confidently in the world. Eventually, adulthood and maturity arrive. These guiding figures start to become scarce in the external world. Many people come to realize that they carry wounds, small or large, and that the individuals playing the roles of father, mother, or caregivers naturally had their flaws. After all, they are only human, despite bearing the mantle and sword of maternal, paternal, wise man, or wise woman archetypes. This brings us to the Greek myth of Chiron, the Hierophant, who acts as a bridge between earthly knowledge and that which surpasses what the intellect can fathom. Chiron’s injuries transformed him into the Wounded Healer, someone who, through his own pain, could better comprehend the pain of others. It’s an illusion to think we can heal all psychological wounds. Sometimes, it’s about embracing and tending rather than solving. When the masks fall—and it’s crucial that they eventually do—the moment arrives to willingly withdraw a bit from the world and connect with the Hermit residing within us. Doing so, we grant the archetype the chance to reveal the light it carries within each of us. The knowledge that even in the darkest night of the soul, the light remains within us is reassuring. We discover that we have the psychological resources to face our challenges after all. In such moments, the Hermit archetype can emphasize the right to make choices for us, but also expresses the duty to take responsibility for them. Discovering our unique way of existing in the world comes with its costs, particularly if we choose to deviate from the traditions that provide collective protection. It’s important to be prepared to bear the price. When we turn to the Hermit’s card, we cannot help but notice the seeker traveling alone. It’s one of the phrases that struck me the most in The Power of Myth when Joseph Campbell mentioned that at this stage of the hero’s (or heroine’s) journey, it may be beneficial to have someone as a companion, but it is also okay to be alone. For me, the lesson is that in the heroic journey we undertake throughout our existence, we enter this world alone and we will depart alone as well. There’s no need to fear. After all, between these two moments symbolizing the ultimate mystery, we encounter numerous allies, guardians, heralds, shapeshifters, tricksters, and mentors from the outside. If we are fortunate, we will encounter antagonists and, if we’re very lucky, a great villain to teach us how to confront our own shadows. However, the inner guidance, The Hermit, is always there, patiently waiting, just within the reach of a breath. And if we’re wise, we can observe the inhalation and exhalation of nature’s seasons, revealing the opportune moments to turn inward and outward in a rhythmic pattern throughout the year. We can utilize this wisdom as a metaphor, akin to how Jung correlates the phases of life with the seasons, and as life progresses, we traverse the spectrum from Spring to Winter. You can listen to the sweet English version of the Waldorf song by searching for ‘I go outside with my lantern’ and ‘Waldorf lyrics’ on your preferred search engine. However, here is the version I found used in U.S. Waldorf Kindergartens: I go outside with my lantern, my lantern goes with me Above the stars are shining bright, down here on Earth shine we. The cock does crow, the cat meows, la bimmel, la bammel, la boom. ‘Neath heaven’s dome till we go home, la bimmel, la bammel, la boom. When I finished writing this text, or rather, when the text finished writing itself, I was humming ‘La bimmel, la bammel, la boom. Balanga, Balanga, lampião’ And it felt so good!” Monica Martinez Primavera de 2023

The hermitage offers the seclusion required to hear one’s inner voice, a knowing that is often drowned out in the noise and bustle of daily life or, even worse, silenced by society’s enculturation. For people like me, breaking through the internalized restrictions of society requires an internal struggle, our own voices entangled with what we have been told to be. In such circumstances, solitude becomes all the more necessary to differentiate the driving forces in one’s life. Perhaps this is why I have always been fascinated by the stories of female mystics in their hermitages. For instance, in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, Parzival’s cousin, Sigune lives in a hermit’s cell. Dedicating her life to prayer, she exists on the margins of the Arthurian court and is, therefore, not bound by her courtly responsibilities. Her hermitage frees her from the repressive societal rules pertaining to women. In some ways, this bestows her with social power she would not otherwise hold. She is known for her wisdom and receives nourishment directly from the Grail every Saturday evening (438, 439). Sigune’s strength is found not in her aristocratic rank or wealth, but rather in the wisdom she has found in the seclusion of the hermitage. Sigune separated herself from society and committed to a life of poverty and prayer. Eschenbach’s Sigune resembles the female mystics who arose during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries who also separated themselves from the world in order to devote their lives to prayer. Their vivid visions were often seen as threatening, but being divinely inspired, they were not threatening to God. As the medieval scholar Caroline Walker Bynum explained, “When religious superiors denied the cup or the host to women…Christ often fed them directly in visions” (Bynum 118). These female mystics challenged the societal spaces that were not available to them by finding wisdom within. The Hermit card offers a similar invitation. In Myths of Light, Joseph Campbell tells a story told to him by Ramakrishna, a story of a tiger who was raised by goats. The tiger grew up believing it was a goat because goats were the only family this young tiger knew of the world. The tiger ate grass, grazed the fields, and bleated as goats will do. And yet, the tiger always felt out of place, unfulfilled, and experienced an unsettledness that seemed to be ever-present. One day, while the herd grazed, a large elder tiger hunting for food pounced on the herd. The goats scattered, but the young tiger held its ground; an instinctual impulse from within urged the small tiger to challenge this aggressor. The large tiger looked down in astonishment, asking why this small one lived amongst the goats. The young tiger answered with a bleat and then continued to eat grass. The strange response disturbed the aged tiger. To see one of its own so disconnected from its true nature was upsetting. There had to be something done about this situation. So the elder tiger grabbed the young one by the scruff of the neck and took it to a nearby pond. “Look,” the elder tiger said, “You are not a goat. You are a tiger.” The young tiger appeared confused, but the elder tiger kept at it, teaching the young one day-by-day the various experiences of a tiger. Eventually, the tiger nature within the young one awoke and took hold. Driven by something deep within, the young tiger stretched out as far as its body would allow and released the uncertain rumblings of what might be interpreted as a roar. At least, for the elder tiger, it was a vision of what might be possible once the young one embraced its true nature. Campbell returned to this story often, finding it meaningful, he said, for it showed how we are each a tiger living among the goats, mirroring the behaviors surrounding us and silencing the pull from within to become something different, something more, something that is more genuinely ourselves. Campbell found within this story an invitation to ignite our inner light. As Campbell states, “go into the forest, and in the forest of the night, find the tiger burning bright in your own profound depths” (138-140). For the young tiger who thinks of itself as a goat, this process of finding one’s inner light begins by separating from the herd. The image of the Hermit evokes this journey. One must disconnect from society to find one’s own inner light, the tiger burning bright in our own depths. In the Rider-Smith-Waite deck, the Hermit carries a lantern, illuminating the pathways in the darkness. The Hermit invites us to leave the material world in order to illuminate our internal world. We maneuver these depths not with our intellect but by following our intuitive wisdom, by learning to see in the dark. The paradox of this journey is that to find one’s own light, one must venture into the dark, for it is the darkness that teaches us how to find the light within.

I pulled the card, turned it over, and there it was…Death. My stomach turned at the sight of it. It was a sunny day in New Orleans and I was captured by the atmosphere of the city. Having my Tarot cards read seemed adventurous at the time, after all, a Southern Baptist from Texas would never do such a thing! I was mesmerized by the rhythm of the shuffling cards and the delight as each card was turned over to reveal a curious image. I waited with anticipation to be told what it all meant, until the Death card revealed itself. I couldn’t take my eyes off the image. Some of the information I received that day was welcome and some less so, much like life. But the feeling of dread at the sight of the Death card loomed over the ordeal. This moment, at least as memory recalls, was my first lesson in how to hold endings. Facing our own mortality is one of the most influential catalysts in our decision-making. Peering into death’s unknowns evokes fear and we attempt to preserve our lives at all costs. In Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell suggests that the experience of death, and how we as humans conceptualize that experience, is central to the myth-making function. The way in which our ancestors welcomed or resisted death informed the earliest myths, determining the “ultimate structuring of the psyche and its dreams” (The Masks of God, Vol. 1: Primitive Mythology, 120). The threads of this mythology live within the myths we know today. And yet, in the Tarot, we draw the Death card time and again, nudging us to create a deeper relationship to Death in order to understand Death’s connection to life. Furthermore, in the Tarot, the Death card is symbolic. Its appearance heralds a change rather than our impending demise. And while Tarot cards such as the Tower suggest external change as the structures around us crumble, Death is much more personal. It invites a turning inward to something spiritual or psychological that must die in order for something new to be born. In the Rider-Smith-Waite deck, Death is bedecked as a knight, rides a white horse, and in the background the sun rises at the break of dawn. The image displays the cyclic connection between ending and beginning. Each summons the other. And in the Marseille deck, Death wields a scythe, illustrating the dark reality that the harvesting of one life nourishes another. Much like the Reaper’s scythe, the image connects death with new life, the ongoing cycle of death and renewal. Both images capture the mystery of transformation. The Death card dismantles us. It dissolves some aspects of our lives in order to create the space for something new. Sometimes, such change is welcome. Often, it is met with resistance and heartache. Either way, we are left changed. Some new form of life has presented itself to us, and we grow and develop into this new aspect of ourselves. And then the cycle repeats. Tiny deaths happen again and again in our lives, changing and shaping us. From each of these experiences, we learn about letting go. The process of releasing what no longer serves us is essential for expanding into that which does. The image of Death then appears less daunting, for we know how to make our way through these tiny deaths in our lives. We come to a deeper understanding that these tiny deaths are not our literal end but rather, an ending that offers another beginning. Campbell states in Tarot Revelations that we pass through to what he calls the mystery of “the Image of God within us” (25). The pathway to the immovable space within oneself is achieved by living through the painful experiences in life. Each tiny death in our life teaches us how to let go so, finally, when our time comes to an end we can welcome Death as an old friend. In this way, death – how we conceptualize it, our relationship with it, and understanding of it – permeates how we imagine our lives. If we find life holds a linear pattern with a beginning, middle, and end, then death leaves us in stasis, frozen in time. We then have a finite amount of time to prove our worth, to get ourselves together enough to leave a lasting impression. Like a statue atop a tomb, we are solidified, remembered by our greatest accomplishments or our worst deeds. However, if we find life holds a cyclical pattern, continually transforming from birth to death and then rebirth, then death is the next stage in an ongoing cycle. Death is the regeneration of life. We are forever a work in progress. Our ideas about death inform the stories we tell about our lives. The myths we hold dear not only tell us how death transforms us but also how to live, and hopefully live well for the generations after us. In an attempt to relate to the chaotic aspects of the human experience, we create myths that point beyond themselves, into the vast unknown, the ineffable. To stare into such depths unguarded is akin to staring at the sun without solar glasses. We are blinded. Mythology presents pathways to follow, ways in which to live a life, many of which are informed by how we imagine our death. Our myths teach us resistance to death or a willingness to succumb to it, the ways in which a life is transformed, or not. But ultimately, mythology helps the world make sense. Our stories work as protectors, shielding us from the unknown so that when we must approach it, we don’t stare into the abyss alone. Myths hold the mystery but can’t contain the fullness of it. As Campbell explains, “the imagery of myth … can never be a direct presentation of the total secret of the human species, but only the function of an attitude, the reflex of a stance, a life pose, a way of playing the game.” (Primitive Mythology, 121). And death is always a part of the game. Campbell offers an invitation. We are always welcome to change our attitude, take a different stance, or imagine a new way of playing the game. Myths evolve and change, and the invitation of the Death card is to do just that. It beckons us to take off the glasses, stare into the unknown, and imagine differently. I return to the tarot often. When I pull the Death card now, I still sense resistance, and at the same time, I welcome the change. I know it will be uncomfortable, but the process is familiar. New life emerges from that which can no longer be sustained and I have learned how to hold endings. Life has taught me how to play the game.

I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. – Percy Shelley, The Cloud October is a good month to curl up with a pumpkin spice latte and muse about Death, especially here in the northern hemisphere where autumn is rolling toward winter.  You probably noticed that this year's Mythblasts have revolved around the symbolic import of trump cards taken from tarot decks, many from different eras and, appropriately enough, this month we’ve been looking at  the tarot card representing “Death.”  Comfy?  Here we go. The Tarot is a wheel of symbols endlessly orbiting in a metaphorical Milky Way with a black hole at the center. A lot of metaphors work like that: circling something you can't see into but still indicating its presence and effects.  Death is a particularly good case study for us here since it is pretty much the ultimate black hole of human existence: we don’t get to experience it ahead of time and therefore we can’t know for certain whether our relational mythologies are… well, relating us properly.  Death is the Great Abyss that doesn’t stare back.  What we see when we look is nothing and, because, in this particular metaphor where light stands in for thought, even our thinking about Death can get sucked into nothing – a nothing we cannot even think about as nothing. It's enough to make one a bit dizzy.  Fortunately, impassable event horizons notwithstanding, here's one thing we do know: the function of myth is to link us to the world in which we live, and to make that world meaningful to us. Campbell is famous for pointing out that a lot of the mythology we live with describes a world that hasn't existed for over a thousand years. That's true. Things are still dying, much as they always have, but our understanding of Death has changed across the centuries.  Have our myths also adjusted? This month is an occasion to re-examine traditional mythological symbols about Death in light of what we've come to believe and discover over the last few centuries. Let’s have a look: Here’s the Death card from the Marseilles Tarot (c. 15th century), Campbell’s favorite deck.  His view, in fact, is that this entire deck follows on the heels of Dante and was designed as a symbolic representation of Dante’s life work. What we have here is a very traditional symbol of death personified as a skeleton and cutting off life with his scythe.  The imagery itself is taken from Greek representations of either Chronos or Cronus, depending on whether you understand the metaphor as harvesting wheat or castrating your father. (The idea of castration, symbolic and real, is more important than may appear here.  For a real thrill ride, have a look at this month’s text, Masks of God, Vol 1: Primitive Mythology, in which Campbell details the puberty rituals among aboriginal Australians.) While this image worked perfectly well for a few hundred years, one of the most commonly available tarot decks (the Rider-Waite-Smith deck from 1909) updated the symbolic representation. These cards became a hit when US Games bought the rights and sold a gazillion copies starting in the early 70’s. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck shows Death riding a Pale Horse in concurrence with the description of Death in the Revelation of St. John 6:8 at the end of the New Testament and, as it turns out, the end of the world.  The cards were created by Pamela Colman Smith at the direction of A.E. Waite, and borrows heavily from the Golden Dawn symbolic lexicon. This is a terrific symbol/myth/metaphor for death if (if!) we accept the New Testament’s understanding of Death as the terminal moraine of a Divine glaciation, punctuating all life – and all death to boot. It references the inexorable linear timeline of the Christian tradition: creation – stuff happens – apocalypse. I’d love to make a joke here about Dante never going out of style, but if he hasn’t gone out of style, his three-story universe (Hell, Earth, Heaven) has been considerably revised. The universe isn’t what it used to be - Heisenberg and that crowd blew up by physics during the last 100 years -  and our mythology is still trying to catch up. Death isn’t what it used to be either.  If physics became indeterminate, so has Death.  Think of the variations and gradations we have today that didn’t exist 100 years ago.  100 years ago, when you were dead you were dead, but today? Today there’s brain dead and heart dead and stages in between where we still can argue about whether or not someone is “really” dead. Our understanding of Death has had to accommodate changes in technology (respirators and heart bypass machines) and evolve with our rejection of fundamentalist religious certainties. By contrast Freda Harris's card shows Death, again depicted as Father Time swinging his scythe: this time he isn’t harvesting or castrating the world, but spinning out a helix of interconnected threads, weaving new patterns in a tapestry of time rather than slicing off the ends.  New figures swim in those vortices. The image suggests that Death is a process of transition rather than an ending. Death as transitional.  Isn’t that closer to how we understand death today?  We can reinterpret the symbol not only as the death of an individual, but as a representation of how “death” happens all the time as we change.  We become something new when we understand something new, as our ignorance falls away. Parts of our life are taken from us or thrown off; we shed our psychological skins, like the snake in the corner of the card, and arise to unbuild our lives again. Death in this case can mark the transitional moment when we go from who we thought we were to who we might really be. That transition is always painful and fraught and terrifying. What better metaphor than death? Personally, I think many of us like this particular symbolic death most of all: Thanks for musing along! Latest Podcast In this bonus episode, Joseph Campbell answers questions following the lecture that he gave with the same name from EP 26. It was recorded in 1967 at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and is the second lecture in the series Mystical Experience and the Hero’s Journey. Host Bradley Olson offers an introduction to some of the ideas discussed by Campbell in the Q&A session. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Life is but a mask worn on the face of death. And is death, then, but another mask? ‘How many can say,’ asks the Aztec poet, ‘that there is, or is not, a truth beyond?’" -- Joseph Campbell The Mythic Image (p. 160) Kundalini Yoga: Crown Chakra — Becoming One with the Beloved (see more videos)

Some may think it presumptuous for a living person to write of death, and while I agree writers should save paper and time by sticking to what they've experienced, Death is a partner with whom I (and you) have already danced. In birth we are torn from the “actionless waters” of bliss and thrust into a state of total insecurity and trauma: The congestion of blood and sense of suffocation experienced by the infant before its lungs commence to operate give rise to a brief seizure of terror, the physical effects of which…tend to recur [in our waking-life]...whenever there is an abrupt moment of fright (Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. 1: Primitive Mythology, 57). If you’re alive, you’ve experienced Death. Now, our only guarantee is we’ll encounter Death again. Shall we get to know our first and final friend a little better? I invite your eyes to rest on the Tarot’s image of Death. Do not rush along, but find a place to dwell: Death, a skeleton in black armor, seems to dominate the scene. It is mounted on a steed above the dead king and the king’s mourning subjects. In the distance is a river. Is it the Styx? The background is rendered in a chilly blue, reminiscent of Monet’s exclamation: “terrible how the light runs out, taking color with it.” Anyone with a keen thought or eye might suspect that the Death card represents the End. And as most tarot card hobbyists know, if the card is placed in the reversed position, it represents lethargy, petrification, or sleepwalking. Regardless of the card’s rotation, death-experiences, whether physical, psychological, or spiritual, are never trivial. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, the poet begins his adventure by descending through the levels of hell until he comes to the lowest. Here, lost souls are submerged in a frozen lake, many in reversed positions; immobile, actionless. The lake remains frozen because Death personified continuously flaps his wings, producing a petrifying wind. Even Dante, still warm and living, feels half-alive during his encounter with Death: I did not die, nor did I stay alive. Imagine, if you have the wit, what I became what I became, deprived of either state (Inferno, XXXIV, 22-27). Fortunately, Dante did not remain neurotically immobile, but stayed close to his guide, Virgil, who did not retreat from nor succumb to Death, but took hold of the monster and climbed its body further downward. Despite his bewilderment and fear that he was somehow “heading back to Hell,” Dante continued to climb until making it beyond “the point to which all weights are drawn from every side,” and climbing through the darkness of a hidden passage found again “the world of light” (Inferno, Canto XXXIV, 81-134). I, too, take hold of the Death Tarot card to examine it closer. Slowly, my initial macabre impressions dissolve into the golden color of morning (perhaps after a night of mourning) that breaks over the foreground of the card. I see the sun rise between two distant towers. I blur my eyes to uncover the next revelation. The image contains more white than black- Death rides a white horse, and its banner over all is a white rose! On such a rose, my eyes find rest. The Greek Chloris, deity of flowers, once discovered the dead body of a lovely nymph. Upon seeing the dead creature forgotten and alone, lost in the morning-mist of an overcast forest, Chloris transformed the nymph into the most beautiful flower yet. With help from Zephyrus, Aphrodite, the three Graces, the West Wind, Apollo, and Dionysius, the dead nymph was reborn as the queen of flowers: the rose. The beloved one in the Hebrew poem Song of Solomon, is the “Rose of Sharon” and her lover beckons her to rise, “For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone… Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away” (KJV, Song of Solomon, 2:1). In the Christian tradition, Eve is the facilitator of human suffering and death. As an answer to such suffering, the Virgin Mary (her symbol, a white rose) becomes the facilitator of everlasting life. These truths-beyond-facts point to a rapture that quiets the chilling flutter of Death’s deceptive wings, a “thread,” as D.H. Lawrence wrote when facing down oblivion, that “separates itself from the darkness,” resulting in a “Flush of rose…filling the heart with peace” (D.H. Lawrence, The Ship of Death). After descending into hell, encountering Death, and literally coming out on the “other side” (by crawling even further down), Dante ascends the mountain of Purgatory, and enters Paradise where the monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, brings Dante to the “White Rose of Paradise, the eternal home of both Mary and Eve. And around this rose, flit the “saintly soldiery of Christ…as a swarm of bees…Aimed sight and love upon a single goal,” a pollination of peace. Nor did so vast a flying throng, coming between the flower and the light above, obstruct the looking up or shining down. For the light of God so penetrates the universe, according to the fitness of its parts to take it in, that there is nothing can withstand its beam (Paradiso, XXXII, 19-24). Just as Nicodemus asked Jesus how a man could be born when he is old, or enter a second time into his mother’s womb, we may now be asking must we literally die before we can experience death’s rapture? The world’s mythologies respond with a resounding, “No!” In East Africa, a Basumbwa folktale describes Great Chief Death as half beautiful and half rotten. Those who encounter Death and choose to wash and perfume his beautiful aspects, instead of fussing over the parts of his nature that must be, are blessed by Death in Life (Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. 1: Primitive Mythology, 110). Death isn’t an end with a capital E, but merely a threshold passage. A crisis, to be sure, but one we’ve endured before—and one we can endure again, and again, and again—for as long as we dare to live. Eternity is now, as the Buddhist understands: Waves appear to be born and to die. But…waves, although coming and going, are also water, which is always there…Enlightenment for a wave is the moment the wave realizes it is water…When you [achieve such enlightenment]...you will have no trouble building a boat that can carry you across the waves of birth and death…You will know that nirvana, the Kingdom of Heaven, is here and now (Thich Hnat Hanh, Living Buddah, Living Christ, 138). When you are plunged into dark immobilizing waters, realign yourself, be mindful, and dwell deeply in the present moment, knowing you are doing the best thing you can and have all you need (your “little ark,” “oars,” “cakes & “dishes,” “wine,” and “all accouterments fitting and ready for a departing soul”). Then, with a “strong heart at peace,” look Death in the face. You may find a beautiful rose. Latest Podcast In this episode, we embark on a journey where the worlds of dance and mythology converge. Our guest today, Nancy Allison, is a New York-based dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, and educator who has not only danced on stages around the world, but has also expertly woven the threads of dance, myth, and storytelling into her life’s work. Nancy Allison was a member of Jean Erdman’s Theater of The Open Eye from 1976 – 1985. At The Open Eye she also distinguished herself as a leading interpreter of Erdman’s solo dance repertory of the 1940s and 50s. She is the executive producer and featured dancer of the three-volume video archive Dance & Myth: The World of Jean Erdman. Since 1986 she has performed Erdman’s solo dance repertory throughout the US and abroad and has presented Erdman’s work at national conferences and institutes. For more information about Nancy and to find all three volumes of the Dance and Myth Series visit: http://jeanerdmandance.com/events.html Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Eternity is not a continuation of time. Eternity is a dimension of here and now. And we have eternal life now. This is what is meant by “The kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do not see it." -- Joseph Campbell An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michel Toms, p. 78 Joseph Campbell — Jung and the Right and Left-hand Paths (see more videos)

“But the human being is the only animal capable of knowing death as the end inevitable for itself, and the span of old age for this human organism, consciously facing death is a period of years longer than the whole lifetime of any other primate.” Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, p. 85 “Do you guys ever think about dying?” Barbie, Barbie We called it “Barbenheimer,” a reference to the simultaneous release (July 21, 2023) of two very different films with nothing in common except for their box office ambitions. Barbie (Warner Bros. Pictures, 2023) draws initially on a nostalgia for a personal past, while Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures, 2023) directs our gaze toward an unthinkable collective future. Critics suggested that this was Warner Bros. attempt at counterprogramming—give the audience a real alternative. Surely, three hours contemplating the apocalyptic consequences of nuclear fission weapons systems will leave a vast percentage of the public desperate for lighter fare. No one anticipated Barbenheimer. “AMC theaters, the largest chain of its kind in the world, recently announced that upwards of 20,000 patrons have purchased tickets for a double feature” (Yahoo! News). With tarot card number 13 as the prompt for this month’s reflection, I am inspired to make the case that death united the cinematic pairing on the Barbenheimer opening weekend. Executives at both Warner Bros. and Universal are banking on our capacity as an audience to contemplate our own extinction. In contemplating her own extinction, Barbie initiates the hero’s journey in what seems an almost deliberate evocation of Inanna’s famous descent to the underworld. Her relationship with Ken has its parallel in that of Ishtar and Tammuz, Venus and Adonis, Isis and Osiris, Mary and St. Joseph and, of course, Inanna and Dumuzi. As the University of Pennsylvania recently posted on their ancient Mesopotamia site, Inanna “does not have a spouse per se, but has an ambivalent relationship with her lover Dumuzi/Tammuz.” That has Ken all over it. (It seems that patriarchy has a competing theme in the very fabric of our collective unconscious: man as supernumerary.) While Innana meets her shadow side in her sister Ereshkigal, Barbie learns the facts of life from Weird Barbie (played by Kate McKinnon), who tells her she must leave Barbieland. From the “great above” she set her mind toward the “great below… To the nether world she descended… And let’s not forget the accessories. Barbie has more accessories than Inanna, but she would approve of the goddess’ couture: Lapis lazuli, gold ring, necklace, shugurra crown. With each degree of passage into the nether regions, an accessory is discarded until she is, in Campbell’s words, “the naked goddess.” With a vulnerable heart, stripped of her defenses, she experiences the unthinkable: her own demise. It is the awareness of death, according to James Anderson, a Kyoto University primatologist, that “may be one of the cognitive differences between us and [other] great apes” (discovermagazine.com). And it is the awareness of death that accounts for the strange affinity between two superficially different audiences: the cosplay crowd and the ban the bomb bunch. In the other eponymously named film, Oppenheimer, our hero seeks out his more famous mentor, Albert Einstein and they have a conversation about the possibility of the end of the world, and their part in it. We do not actually get to hear the words aloud until the end of the story, but the men are, as Barbie put it, thinking about death. But they’re thinking about death on a scale which would make her fully rotatable head spin.  Oppenheimer foresees, like John of Patmos (author of the Bible’s scariest book, Revelations), the end of the world, but without those opaque, first millennium symbols. Still, it’s the same idea. Patmos and Alamos provide the eschatological roadmaps particular to their times. Armageddon this way. One big difference between the Patmos and Alamos—the former was a vision, the latter an historical event. On July 16, 1945, the world’s first A bomb was detonated and for the first time eye-witness accounts superseded existential fantasies. Turning to the Bhagavad Gita for context if not for guidance, the “father of the A-bomb” found these words which he uttered aloud with the most dreadful self-awareness: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” The Gita also provides theological absolution to Oppenheimer:  Dharma (duty) must be fulfilled and the bloodshed cannot be held against him. Small consolation. Neither Cillian Murphy’s Oppy nor Margo Robbie’s Barbie can ever return to their respective happy places, his with the chalk boards and adoring students, hers populated with variations of herself in a world without conflict. Campbell would recognize the characters’ reactions as perfectly appropriate to the encounter with mortality. "The concerns of house, village, and field boundary fade, and the lineaments of a dark mystery appear gradually from the night that is both without and within. The mind is summoned to a new task; one, however, which, like suffering and rapture, is a grave and constant factor in the experience of the human race” (Masks of God, Vol. 1: Primitive Mythology, p. 160). Robert Oppenheimer finds solace in the image of Vishnu, the immortal charioteer whose effulgence rivals the explosion witnessed at the Trinity Test Site: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky,” the physicist and Sanskrit scholar remembers from verse 11 of the Gita, “that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.” Shocked at his own handiwork, the Princeton academic becomes a kind of renunciate, giving up any further pursuits of building a better bomb. Barbie’s awakening reminds us of a different chariot ride. Remember how Shakyamuni (Buddha’s tribal name) snuck out of his palace with his driver, Channa, witnessing for the first time, old age, sickness, and death? Barbie’s chariot is a pink Corvette. Instead of Channa at the reins, she has Ken in the back seat. But the destination remains the same: a trip to human reality, and we’re along for the ride. The movie ends and the audience disperses. Some gather by the ice cream parlor, many dressed in pink, head to foot. Don’t be fooled. Pink is no longer the color of frivolity and this after-theater crowd is, I believe, the visible symptom of a maturing civilization. You know a civilization is maturing when its movies are warnings and its toys harbor thoughts of death. Latest Podcast In this episode entitled, “The Quest For The Grail”, Joseph Campbell discusses the Grail Legends. It was recorded in 1967 at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and is the second lecture in the series Mystical Experience and the Hero’s Journey. Host Bradley Olson introduces the lecture and offers a commentary at the end. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life’s joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life." -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth (p.129) The Adventure of Being Alive (see more videos)

The problem with towers is that they’re already high up. And then there’s this other problem called gravity, accompanied by its heavyweight siblings grave (as an adjective or as a noun) and gravitas—in short, all things down and that bring us down. So it’s the “high-up” element that sets the stage. Simultaneously, in psychological terms, high-up implies conditions like ambition and egoic inflation, and even  (in milder contexts)  comfort and security. These abstract psychological correlates are good to keep in mind while this inquiry attempts to attend more to the vehicles of the metaphors—that is, to the images per se. As a brief reminder, and I think a good way to emphasize the heart of the matter, metaphors “need” concrete images to summon emotions and concepts from levels of perception that exist in the more intimate strata of the human psyche—namely, imagination, personal association, intuition, and so on. This dynamic is one of the greatest values to the detailed imagery in any of the cards of the Tarot deck. In short, through these channels, the “data” that is prompted by the image is always (and in a deeply human context) more “accurate” than what standard abstract conceptual exposition could ever hope to accomplish. That said, this essay is abundant in abstractions. But this is the only way that can be taken short of writing a poem around the topic, or of the reader simply gazing at the image of the Tower card and leaving it at that. Anyway, without further ado, let’s dive into it (so to speak). Most would agree that getting blasted by lightning from one’s seemingly secure tower (that of course took so much time and work to build) and thence sent plummeting headfirst, and partially on fire, accompanied on all sides by random debris (also partially on fire) down to the cold hard rocks below is bad. We naturally wish to preserve ourselves from such episodes. Banisters, for instance, are a popular architectural feature, preserving us from potential falls. However, to a mythologist, all such content is ambiguous. Whether in a fall or in a thing that preserves us from falling, both contain their positive and negative values. So our tower which preserves us from exposure to dangers also obstructs our contact and involvement with the world. We are safe, but also we are alone, walled in, imprisoned. This can be the case even if our tower is fine and luxurious. Let me add also that the problem is not in the tower per se—we all have them and, indeed, need them. Rather, it is in the kind of towers we build or inhabit, and that we are mindful of inevitable collapses and falls. The presence of the paradoxical (and often ironic) evolutionary values that accompany a fall slowly accrues in the awareness of those who study myth, to whom a fall is an initiation into transformation on behalf of, and upon, the soul. The root mythological metaphor of the soul’s transformation is contained in the underworld motif and in the characters, narratives, and images that inhabit it. Hence, we have so many downward (either physically or conceptually) and death-like initiation-catalysts: baptisms by water (drowning), fasting (starving to death), shamanic initiations that involve illness, deprivation, and psychedelics (physical dilapidation and losing one’s mind), and let’s not forget lightning bolts, which in the case of the Tower card, deals the initiating blow. Most obvious is that our inflation or excessive self-preservation which places us high-up is perhaps precisely what attracts the lightning-stroke. As it is in the natural world, the higher the object, the more likely it is to be struck. And let’s also consider that sometimes it is not we who place ourselves high-up, but rather that we are placed there by an outside agent. As a practical (albeit mild) example, it may have been pleasant being lifted up when you were receiving great praise from the boss at the workplace, but the next day, you may receive some subtle lightning-strikes from all the other smaller towers (i.e., envious coworkers) around you. In his master’s thesis, A Study of the Dolorous Stroke: On Wasteland Imagery in the Arthurian Legends, Joseph Campbell addresses an unusual image that occurs in several Arthurian-literature sources. He quotes: And in the midst of the chamber was a great table, and of very rich silver, placed upon four legs of silver; and upon this table was a great basin of gold, and within this basin stood a lance, perpendicularly, point downward, and any one looking at it would have marveled because it was not inserted, nor supported, nor fastened anywhere. (Romance of the Grail: The Magic and Mystery of Arthurian Myth 173) The lance described above is the object that is used to wound the grail-king through his thighs which, of course, fells him. And then (and quite literally like a tower) the castle magically crumbles in ruin and many are killed or wounded. These events are precipitated by the lance—our metaphoric lightning-bolt counterpart—which, like actual lightning, is neither “supported” nor “fastened” anywhere. Within his thesis, Campbell addresses many different mythologies from around the world in which this theme occurs—sometimes with a sword in place of a lance—and eventually, he refers to the weapon (in its general, archetypal sense) as the “lightning lance.” He also addresses it as a fertility symbol, which is quite fitting to our present inquiry into the Tower card since we could say that the fall, the downward direction, whether it be to the mythological/metaphorical underworld or simply down into the ground, is where fertilization and subsequent rebirth/renewal transpires. Most interesting to me however, is that it is this “dolorous stroke”—via lance, sword or lightning—that in the Arthurian mythology initiates the great quest to heal the wounded king, who by the way is also known as the “Fisher King'' which you may recognize in the substrata of T. S. Eliot’s infamous and notoriously mythic poem “The Waste Land.” I’d like to close with a somewhat negligible solution to managing the tower-lightning problem—although “negligible” is better than the alternative “nothing”—and simply suggest (to myself, perhaps most of all) that one should do well in building towers, in fact plenty of them, but maybe try to keep them small, cozy, and, especially, low to the ground. Thanks for reading!

September smuggles us across the Equinox, the border between Summer and The Fall. That phrase, The Fall, does a lot of work when you’re talking about a blasted Tower. And it’s important to consider that borders, all borders, are overseen by the God of War, Mars.  Where there’s a border, there’s a Tower. Sometimes the crossing is easy, sometimes it’s a mess.  Sometimes Border Patrol and Customs won’t let you bring your baggage across, and you have to leave everything behind. Any attempt to storm the gate can mean ruin. This can be as true metaphorically as it is literally.  If I were paraphrasing T.S. Eliot I’d say something like: … between the mythos and the logos, between practice and theory, between narrative and explanation, between wisdom and understanding, falls the shadow.This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.- T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men Which brings us to The Tower of the Tarot and, naturally, The Tower of Babel. One unlocks the other. There are some jaw droppingly suggestive paradoxes buried in the rubble of this metaphor. Let’s jump into the deep end of the debris field. The Tower card in the Tarot references an earlier, more famous Tower—this one: The LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. 6 And the LORD said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” 8 ( Genesis 11:6–9 NRSV) In other words: using bricks and a design of their own genius, humans attempt to cross the border between Earth and Heaven, from the temporal to the eternal (to count up, as it were, to infinity), and it blows up, spectacularly, in their face.  They’re cast down, foiled by the presumption of their own engineering, blasted by the Divine Power, and then left dazed and confused. The word “Babel” itself picks up these themes.  As you’d expect, the word means “confusion” but it also means, etymologically, the “Gate of God”.  How to make sense of this apparent paradox? One obvious metaphor here: when the finite tries, finitely, to reach the infinite we are thrown back in confusion. Or Whenever you try to build a Gate of God, using bricks created by engineering and science, reason won’t get you there. Or, a bit more subtly, You can’t use the algorithms of normal, rational consciousness to reach a religious understanding any more than you can count up to infinity.  It just doesn’t work like that.  When you try, confusion is all that results. There’s a lot buried in the debris. I keep two examples in mind. The first one comes from reading the work of both honest-to-goodness mystics as well as the bat-swarm of more contemporary, earnest, spiritually inclined authors. Have you ever noticed that a lot of mystical literature typically begins by explaining that it’s impossible to comprehend the ineffable and transcendent, consciousness-shattering splendors surrounding the incandescent mystery of God (or samadhi, enlightenment, bliss, ecstasy, take your pick)? And then they’ll remind their readers that, as impossible as it is to comprehend the majesty of Divine Power, it’s even more impossible to describe it in words? — and then they try to describe it anyway?  For pages.  And pages.  And pages. Yeah, me too.  Look, you can’t say, “This is beyond our ability to think or describe!” and then go ahead and subject the rest of us to volumes of unintelligible (but sacred) word salad as you attempt to describe it. That unintelligibility is the babble of apes who have fallen from the Tower when they try to approach that-which-you-can’t-count-up-to. By the way, you may have had this experience yourself.  I know I have—and over nothing nearly as grand as building a Tower to God. If you’ve ever spent any time in meditative practice, like prayer, yoga, or qigong, you’ve probably had the surprisingly satisfying experience of quieting your mind and getting that burst of endorphin release. Have you ever tried to explain what that’s like to someone who hasn’t had the experience?  You sound like you’re babbling, to them at least.  I learn a lot from student’s faces, for instance, when I’m trying to explain ideas like the categorical imperative or how logic works. And that isn’t even mystical, it’s just difficult. The other example is the metaphor painted into the falling figures in Frieda Harris’ tarot card.  The attempt to build a tower into spiritual, mythological, consciousness using the bricks of reason always causes chaos. The figures cast down from the tower in Harris’ illustration have assumed geometrical forms which has always suggested to me that the rationality with which they approached the infinite, now made explicit, was the underlying cause of their own destruction, represented here by fire, just as Noah’s world was overwhelmed by water. The Tower warns us that when we approach the limits of conscious comprehension – as one does both in physics as well as spiritual pilgrimage – our rational constructions are shattered into bits, along with our expectations and conditioning paradigms, and we’re thrown, necessarily, into metaphor: from the language of science and explanation across the border into the language of myth. P.S. It’s always nice to have a little dessert after a meal like that.  Digging into the literature surrounding the Tower of Babel, I discovered that the philosopher Derrida had, unironically, used it as a metaphor for the impossibility of translation.  But adding deconstruction to Babel put me in mind of my favorite philosophy joke.  This one: Q: what do you get if you cross a Deconstructionist with a Mafia Hit Man? A: You get an offer, you can’t understand.

In the intricate tapestry of the Tarot, the sixteenth card stands as a potent symbol of upheaval and transformation, the tumultuous nature of the human journey. This card, known as The Tower, resonates deeply with the wisdom of mythologist Joseph Campbell, who explored the universality of the hero's journey and the transformative power of chaos. As we delve into the archetypal landscape of The Tower from Campbell's perspective, we uncover layers of meaning that illuminate the human quest for self-discovery and growth. Which, between you and me is, in most cases, not done without pain. Joseph Campbell, renowned for his concept of the Hero's Journey, emphasized that myths are mirrors of the human psyche, reflecting universal themes that transcend cultural boundaries. The Tower card, with its vivid imagery of a towering structure struck by lightning and figures plummeting, encapsulates this notion. Let's take a closer look at card sixteen. The Tower is in the process of falling down or being destroyed, perhaps by fire or lightning. The forces of “heaven” (the Self) are “angry” (“listen to me!”) and attacking the structure (the Ego). In the Waite-Rider-Smith deck, a crown has been blown off by the impact, and two human figures (an elder and a young person) are catapulted from the windows. The social mask (persona) that served so well until then, either in the construction of the Ego towards adulthood or in its deconstruction in maturity, is no longer balanced, and the divine part of the psyche (self) is generating a rattle to see if the mask can be peeled off like an old snake skin that needs to be shed so it can grow. The fall from the tower parallels Campbell's "belly of the whale" stage, wherein the hero faces a perilous ordeal that is often characterized by the disintegration of the ego. This phase signifies the descent into the unconscious where the hero must confront their deepest fears and challenges. Campbell viewed this ordeal as an essential part of personal growth, as a profound encounter with the hidden aspects of the psyche that must be reckoned with in order to achieve transformation. The Tower, in its catastrophic imagery, mirrors this descent into the abyss—an archetype Campbell would recognize as a critical element in the hero's transformative journey. It's an easy Subject to think about and reflect on, but rather difficult to digest when you're going through it. In 2020 (two or three weeks before the global pandemic lockout) I was working in Paris and stopped to rest for a few days in Florence before returning to Brazil. There, I intended to buy a new tarot card deck. Serendipitously I came across the Golden Tarot—a beautiful gift set including a faithful reproduction of the historic Visconti-Sforza tarot deck and a book describing its history and symbolism—in a neighborhood bookstore. Looking back on those days, I am still surprised that I was in doubt about whether to buy it or not, despite its affordable price (I suppose it may have been because it was missing the purple satin cloth for readings it usually goes along with the box). Fortunately, the box accompanied me on the flight back home and was a source of inspiration during the difficult times of coping with Coronavirus. The Sforza deck, commissioned by the Duke of Milan in the 15th century, is a significant precursor to modern Tarot decks and provides a fascinating glimpse into the evolution of Tarot symbolism. I learned, from reading its accompanying book, that four cards had to be recreated in modern times, for they were lost from the original Visconti-Sforza tarot deck at some point in history: The Tower, The Devil, the Three of Spades (not by chance called La Sinistra – left –in Italian, meaning delusion), and the King of Diamonds. I am not sure about the missing King of Diamonds – the book suggests it would mean a person who wants money but doesn't work to get it. However, it never hurts to remember Campbell talking about the mentality that reigned in the Middle Ages and how people of that time literally believed in figures like God and the devil. Therefore, the absence of The Tower (as well as The Devil, and La Sinistra) may represent a narrative tampering—tampering by someone in the Middle Ages, who pilfered the cards so that there would be no representation of evil in the beautiful cards decorated with real gold. But, of course, this hypothesis is my fantasy rather than historical fact. The Tower's collapse and the figures plummeting suggest a confrontation with personal and collective shadows, challenging individuals to grapple with aspects of themselves that have been suppressed or ignored. From Campbell's perspective, this confrontation is integral to the hero's journey, as it paves the way for growth and self-integration. Campbell's exploration of mythology and symbolism sheds light on The Tower's potential for personal enlightenment. Just as the hero, amidst trials and tribulations, ultimately discovers the elixir of transformation, so too The Tower card offers an opportunity for self-discovery. Campbell asserted that the journey's ultimate boon is self-realization and integration—a state of being that transcends ego and embraces a deeper understanding of interconnectedness. The Tower, with its violent upheaval, provides the impetus for this transformative journey. It catalyzes the destruction of old structures that hinder personal growth, and leads to the revelation of a more authentic and resilient ego. Ok, the old structure is crumbling. What do we do now? The Tower's chaotic energy resonates with Campbell's interpretation of myth as a psychological blueprint for navigating life's challenges. Mythology, in Campbell's view, serves as a repository of collective wisdom that can guide individuals through the labyrinth of existence. The Tower's symbolism, marked by lightning and destruction, aligns with Campbell's notion of mythic events as representing internal psychological processes. Just as lightning illuminates the darkness and reveals hidden truths, the upheaval depicted in The Tower card unveils the hidden aspects of the self. Through this lens, The Tower can be seen as a wake-up call inviting individuals to embrace chaos, if it presents itself, as a catalyst for transformation. The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung used to say “when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside, as Fate” (Aion, CW 9ii). So, the call here may be to open up and deal with the situation in an adult, autonomous way, without waiting for the necessary transformation process to be present by external means. Throwing yourself off the symbolic tower is difficult, but letting yourself stay in the burning building can be even more psychologically lethal. This universality underscores the card's resonance as a mirror for personal experience, and invites individuals to navigate their own heroic journeys. After all, Campbell's concept of the "monomyth" underscores The Tower's universal significance. The monomyth, or Hero's Journey, posits that all myths share a common structure reflecting the human psyche's universal stages of growth and transformation. The Tower card, despite its variations in imagery across different tarot decks, encapsulates a core archetype that resonates with the monomyth's stages: call to adventure, ordeal, confrontation with the shadow, and ultimately, transformation. Finally, The Tower emerges as a powerful emblem of chaos, transformation, and self-discovery. In the light of Campbell's insights into the hero's journey, mythic symbols, and the transformative power of the unconscious, The Tower reveals its deeper significance as a catalyst for personal growth. As lightning strikes the tower and figures plummet, myth and archetype intertwine, inviting individuals to embrace the chaos and upheaval that propels them into a realm where profound transformation is possible. Just as the hero faces trials and descends into the unconscious, so too does The Tower card beckon the individual to journey inward, ultimately echoing Campbell's call to embrace the mythic adventure of being yourself, confronting one’s shadow, and emerging transformed.

Following my June contribution to JCF's MythBlast essay series, a friend asked about Joseph Campbell's personal experience with tarot. According to Campbell, his introduction to the tarot occurred in 1943, as friend and mentor Heinrich Zimmer discussed the symbolism of playing cards. Zimmer died unexpectedly soon thereafter, and Campbell didn’t give tarot much thought until 1967, when the subject came up during a Q & A session following a lecture at Esalen. A few days later Campbell contacted his friend, Richard Roberts, an authority on tarot. Roberts offered to read Joe’s cards; the results were compelling enough that Campbell purchased three separate tarot sets (the Marseilles deck, an Italian deck, and what today is known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck). His exploration of their imagery prompted a collaboration with Roberts on a book about the symbolism of the tarot (Joseph Campbell and Richard Roberts, Tarot Revelations, 3 - 4). However, Joseph Campbell’s interest was that of a mythologist. When asked whether he “believed” in the tarot, Campbell replied as follows: No, I don’t do anything like that. I just see. I can show you how it works and what a beautiful thing it is. It gives you a program for life, what the concerns are in the different stages of life and what the spiritually lower and spiritually higher attitudes are toward the experiences of life at different stages (Campbell, The Hero’s Journey, 176). In that same conversation, Campbell observed that tarot offers clues to “the mystery.” Though he didn’t consult the tarot as a means of divination, Campbell did regularly contemplate the imagery of the cards, albeit in a most non-traditional way: Joe swam 44 laps in the Olympic-sized pool at the New York Athletic Club every day, keeping track of where he was by swimming two laps for each card of the major arcana! What turned Joseph Campbell on about the tarot was its symbolism. Symbols are essentially images, whether visual or verbal, with a multitude of associations—personal and collective—compressed into each, conveying a broad range of meanings at once complementary and contradictory. Take for instance, this month’s theme, Card XVI in the major arcana: The Tower. Most versions of this card depict a tower, struck by lightning, in the process of collapsing. In a tarot spread, The Tower is often assumed to signal danger, crisis, and destruction. But, of course, it’s more complicated than that. A deeper understanding can be achieved by examining the many different facets of this image. We encounter multiple types of towers in both history and myth. This of course includes watch towers that are part of defensive fortifications (“towers, turrets, and armed keeps”). Then there are what I call “towers of power,” which are associated with either national prestige or economic power (from the Eiffel Tower in Paris, to Wall Street skyscrapers in New York). There are towers that serve as prisons: Rapunzel, locked up in a witch’s tower with no door and only one window; Gandalf, imprisoned atop the tower Orthanc at Isengard by the wizard Saruman in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings; Prince Kamar al-Zaman, confined to an old stone tower in a tale from 1001 Arabian Nights; and then all sorts of historical figures, including Anne Boleyn, Sir Walter Raleigh, and even Guy Fawkes, who have been held captive in the Tower of London. There are towers that serve as a refuge for introspection, separating one from the mundane concerns of the surrounding world. Examples include poet Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House on the California coast, the stone tower Jung built at Bollingen, and even the proverbial “ivory tower” of academia (though that last has morphed into a pejorative term today). And then there are towers that serve as a conduit between heaven and earth, such as the ziggurats of ancient Mesopotamia and the step pyramids of Mesoamerica, as well as church spires, minarets, and Buddhist stupas. The ancient cities of Sumer, Akkad, and Babylon, from whose mythological systems much biblical myth was derived, were organized roughly in quarters, with a towering temple of the presiding god at the center. This “height” or “ziggurat,” as it was called, at the summit of which heaven and earth came together, was symbolic of the axis mundi, the world center, where the vitalizing energy of eternity entered the revolving sphere of space-time—as known from the revolving night-sky (Campbell, The Mythic Dimension, 196). The top of a tower offers a far-seeing, unrestricted view of the world around one – a powerful metaphor. However, a perspective that may at one time have been entirely appropriate can become constricted and confining when long-held beliefs no longer serve. Hence the lightning strike depicted on the tarot card, signifying an external event that heralds abrupt change. When such rapid change occurs in our lives, it’s often experienced as disruptive and catastrophic. We all too easily grow comfortable with the status quo, no matter how unsatisfactory. It often takes blowing up those prison walls before one is motivated to venture out into the unknown. That lightning can take many forms. It might be the loss of a job, a humiliating failure, the death of a loved one, or any major life transition. This is always traumatic at first, as the only life one knows is irrevocably changed, but these events often anticipate the beginning of a new and more rewarding life. In the myth of the Tower of Babel, that external change takes the form of God “confounding the language” so that humans building the tower, who previously spoke with but one tongue, can no longer understand one another – and so they end up scattered around the world. The resulting multiplicity of languages marks the end of the old order, and the beginning of the world we know today. The mythical figure of Babel is in this connection doubly appropriate, since it was actually in the early city-states of Mesopotamia, ca. 3500 B.C., that the original foundations were laid of all higher (i.e., literate and monumental) civilization whatsoever; so that it was indeed from the Levant, and even specifically, those early temple cities of the towering ziggurats, that all branches of the one great tree of the four domains of civilization have stemmed (Campbell, Myths to Live By, 62). Stepping away from myth and into the contemporary world, we witnessed this dynamic play out in its most tragic and concrete form with the 9/11 attacks that collapsed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. In a matter of minutes, the long-held assumption of America’s impregnability dissolved; the old order disappeared as the United States realized it shares the same vulnerabilities to fanatical extremism as the rest of the world. Given such examples from myth and modern life, it’s easy to understand the trepidation that greets the Tower card when it appears in a spread. That was certainly my initial reaction when first introduced to tarot many decades ago. Fortunately, in the years since, my favorite mythologist has helped expand my vision. In discussion of this card, Joseph Campbell references one of his favorite authors: James Joyce, whose chief literary model was Dante, in both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, lets the sound of a thunderclap represent the moment of the humbling of his hero’s pride . . . In Finnegans Wake, the fall from his ladder of Finnegan, the great builder of cities and towers, is to the sound of a hundred-lettered word composed of thunder syllables from many tongues: “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!” (Campbell and Roberts, 20-21). And the next was a thunderbolt hitting a tower, the Tower of Destruction, which is . . . the tower of evil being smashed by the thunderbolt of God’s destruction of all of your tight ego-system relationships (The Hero’s Journey, 172-174). Over the past thirty years I have indulged in tarot not to divine the future, but as a means of re-imagining and mythologizing my life. When I do draw the Tower card, instead of reading it as a harbinger of disaster, I take it as a prompt to ponder what I am holding on to that no longer serves. But even in those rare instances when I pull The Tower as I happen to be experiencing major upheaval in my life, Campbell provides the guidance with which to face the inevitable: Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment – not discouragement – you will find the strength is there (A Joseph Campbell Companion, 38).

According to the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, the fifteenth Arcanum of the Tarot introduces us to the “intoxication of counter-inspiration” (p. 401). Throughout this year’s MythBlast series focusing on the Tarot, the authors have been researching and writing about the metaphors and symbols contained within the Major Arcana. What, then, is the devil card a metaphor or symbol of? It may assist our contemplations to place ourselves at the intersection of two fields of discourse. One being the Jungian Shadow and the other the metaphysical Doppelgänger (negative human double). The Shadow is generally thought to be an animated, personified, interior aspect of our psyche. It’s an aspect that is primitive, instinctive, and often reactionary. For most of the time, we’re only partly conscious of it, if indeed we recognize it as a reality at all. The anonymous author here brings our attention to its presence: “Good does not combat evil in the sense of destructive action. It ‘combats’ it by the sole fact of its presence. Just as darkness gives way to the presence of light, so does evil give way before the presence of good.Modern depth psychology has discovered and put into practice the therapeutic principle of bringing unconscious complexes to the light of consciousness. Because – so it affirms – the light of consciousness renders the obsessional complex not only visible but also impotent” (p. 421). Once our awareness of its presence has been evoked, we can then employ the light of consciousness to transmute the destructive effects of darkness and evil. It’s helpful here to remember and appreciate that the Shadow can also contain parts of our psyche that the conscious self has not yet apprehended or heeded. It can also contain what Carl Jung termed the “Golden Shadow,” our submerged creative potential. And let’s not forget that the Shadow often contains collective and societal aspects too. So then, in one sense, we can say that the Shadow is the antithesis to the goals of a higher and more refined personal or collective Identity. It’s the counter-inspiration. Given this, the Shadow (golden or otherwise) is the ‘other side’ of us – invisible – yet bonded to our psyche. Yet it’s our working with individual and collective Shadow material that enables the light to both find its focus and visibly manifest the invisible aspects within the psyche. The Meditations on the Tarot author continues on this theme: Light drives out darkness. This simple truth is the practical key to the problem of how to combat demons. A demon perceived, i.e. on whom the light of consciousness is thrown, is already a demon rendered impotent. This is why the desert fathers and other solitary saints had so much experience with demons. They cast their light on them. And they did so as representatives of human consciousness in general, for whoever withdraws from the world becomes representative of the world; he becomes a ‘son of man’. And being a ‘son of man’ the solitary saint attracted the demons haunting the subconscious of mankind, making them appear, i.e. bringing them to the light of consciousness and thus rendering them impotent (p. 421). Once the light has strengthened and ripened as a discerning faculty within us, it then has the potential to neutralize destructive elements within the psyche. Yet as myth-loving people, which us MythBlast readers surely are, we know that we must simultaneously hold paradoxical teachings like casting a light on the adversary to make it impotent, and using the light to render visible the totality of who we really are. It behooves us to hold the contradiction of employing the light to drive the demons out, while yet knowing that it’s this very light, which brings visibility and awareness of our wholeness. Now let’s turn our attention to the already-mentioned Doppelgänger, a somewhat different concept. Traditionally, this has been thought of (or experienced) as an actual metaphysical identity, not only as an aspect of the psyche. This entity also shows itself to be cold, calculating and in opposition to our personal and collective Zeitgeist. In literature, the adversary naturally moves between the Shadow and Doppelgänger identities, once again inviting us readers to embrace the importance and power of contradictory thinking. The Doppelgänger is variously personified across different legends and narratives, and the following are some fictional accounts of the Doppelgänger. In Goethe’s Faust, there is the cleverness of Mephistopheles, with whom Faust makes a pact, which is really his own distorted reflection, or double. Then there is the criminal, if not evil, Mr. Hyde, in the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As well as Klingsor (the Duke of Terra de Labur) in the Grail legend. Klingsor is an enemy of the Grail motive and impulse and fortifies himself in the Château Merveil, which is really an occult, oppressive energy field. Here, the sorcerer Klingsor draws nourishment from impurities within the human heart. What’s interesting in all these narratives is that the Doppelgänger is mostly an adversary, and yet this adversary is a part of us too. And a necessary part at that. It’s the Doppelgänger that can propel us forward. It does this by making us confront and address those aspects of our psyche that require refinement and enhancement, and so in this respect, the Doppelgänger has a ‘redemptive’ role. In certain settings, that’s its precise mandate. So then, in a rather circuitous way, it can be an incredibly valuable helpmate on our path of soul development. “Here it is not a question of the annihilation of the demon, but rather of changing its field of activity and the place – or, rather, mode – of its existence,” the anonymous author states (p. 422). With this ‘change of mode,’ we mature by changing our relationship to the external and internal conflicts and contradictions that we all face. We recognize that without the necessary visibility of both the Shadow and Doppelgänger presences, over time, a matter-blinded consciousness would develop within much of the human population ... a consciousness that is blind to perceiving higher soul realities and has no working faculties for intuitive perceptions. Wakefulness therefore comes from rendering visible the very things that put us to sleep. By shining light on both the Shadow and Doppelgänger, we can embrace their revelations and heed Joseph Campbell’s advice: “Well, one of the problems about being psychoanalyzed is, as Nietzsche said, ‘Be careful lest in casting out your devils that you cast out the best thing that’s in you’” (Asian Journals, p. 221). Working thoroughly and diligently with this Tarot card, I trust that the devil will bring out the best in you.