Editor's note: As we celebrate inspired teaching and learning this month, we are excited to share the ideas and work of one of JCF's Board members, Kwame Scruggs, PhD, exploring his extraordinary work with young Black men on the intersections of story and identity. Through his nonprofit organization, Alchemy, Inc., Kwame has broken the barriers between the intellectual study of myth and the power of its application in real, creative, tangible ways. This article was originally published in Voices – Journal of the American Academy of Psychotherapists, Summer 2017: Volume 53, Number 2. Once upon a time, in a time when the sun rose in the west and settled in the east, in a land far, far away, more north than north, and more south than south, a countryman had a son, a boy only as big as a thumb, a boy called Thumbling. One day, on a day similar to today, the small boy asked, “Father, may I go out farming with you?” The father replied, “You are too small, a mere gust of wind could blow you away.” The boy began to cry hysterically. The father, for the sake of peace, placed the boy into his pants front-pocket and walked to the field. When he reached the field, the father took the boy out of his pocket and placed him in a freshly cut furrow. While he was there, a great giant came over the hill. The father, in an attempt to frighten his son into being good, asked him, “Do you see that tall monster? He is coming to get you.” The giant, having taken only two steps, was now in the furrow. Carefully, with only two fingers, he picked up little Thumbling, examined him, and without muttering a word, walked off with the farmer’s son. The father stood there in terror, unable to make a sound. His only thought was that he would never see his son again. We will return to this myth, The Young Giant, after some time. Common themes found in mythological stories are the foundational building blocks of our “alchemical process.” Relationship is the mortar that holds it all together. Mythological stories are roadmaps designed to guide us on our journey. All we need do is take the time necessary to decipher the codes. Myth is a universal language crossing time and history. It is the language of the unconscious and a vehicle to transport urban adolescents across the bridge to meaningful adulthood. Myth is a natural, transformative process for integrating the psyche and discovering one’s purpose in life. Commentary on The Young Giant: The Furrow My childhood furrow was being born Black, in a “nice” all-Black neighborhood, in Akron, Ohio. In myth, the hero often wears a mark to remind him of where he came from and to remind others who may not recognize him or her in the future because of the extreme change in the hero’s lifestyle and rank. I wear a tattoo noting my place of origin. A graduate assistantship at the University of Akron led me to a position in the university’s Upward Bound program where I counseled 6th-12th graders and attempted to maintain a relationship with students until their graduation from high school. I learned about African-based rites of passage and spirituality while volunteering in an after-school program that eventually introduced me to the work of Carl Gustav Jung, whose personal history and concepts of the collective unconscious, archetypes and synchronicity captivated me. Jung led me to the work of Joseph Campbell, mythology, and the common themes that permeate and inform all myths, no matter their origin. Upward Bound taught me how difficult it is to get young people to talk, especially Black males. Men and the Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of Men, by Michael Meade (1993), taught me that the power of myth is unleashed by how the story is told and interpreted. Alchemy, Inc., established in Akron, Ohio, in 2003, is a nationally recognized, award-winning, not-for-profit organization that assists in the development of urban adolescent males through the telling, discussion and analysis of mythological stories and fairy tales. The Young Giant is one of many myths we use. Group discussion and analysis of this introductory segment of the myth may require more than two hours as each youth awakens to how his individual story carries remnants of both the story being told and the personal stories being shared by others in their group. As an African proverb teaches: Rain does not fall on one roof alone. The young men in our groups feel safe sharing their personal stories because each time we meet together as a group, our alchemists, our adult storyteller/facilitators, create a temenos—a sacred space—through ritual before our storytelling begins. A temenos is a sacred piece of land, set apart from the profane world; a holy place; the spellbinding center of a circle; a protected space. Alchemy, Inc.’s logo, a mandala, represents our concept of temenos. The square is an indication of our wish to find our way in a chaotic world by introducing direction and coordinates. The circle, with no beginning or end, represents totality, wholeness, enlightenment, human perfection, and the final union of the masculine and feminine principles, the union of opposites that make up the total personality. The point in the center represents the self, as C.G. Jung states: …a kind of central point within the psyche, to which everything is related, by which everything is arranged, and which is itself a source of energy. The energy of the central point is manifested in an almost irresistible compulsion and urge to become what one is , just as every organism is driven to assume the form that is characteristic of its nature, no matter what the circumstances (1990, p. 357). The first meeting of all new groups begins with our alchemists apologizing for our generation’s failure to protect them. In myth, the hero never accomplishes his or her task alone. There is always assistance from a guide or a mentor. We convey our sincerity sometimes through tears, an abundance of humility, and deep respect for each student. We are not teachers with an aura of knowing everything. We are mentors with nothing to share until a student awakens to his desire for knowledge. Temenos is a sacred place where everyone feels safe because secrets are shared and held in strictest confidence. An alchemist must also share his own challenges in life, so the youth see we are not without our own struggles. When we trust our youth enough to share our wounds, they feel comfortable sharing their smallness with us. It empowers them and creates oneness in the circle, replacing hierarchy with the power of relationship. Our youth love when a teacher, counselor or administrator asks, “What goes on in that circle?” Our youth reply, “We can’t share it,” allowing them to rebel against authority with the support of other adults in authority. Myths are complex stories crafted for interpretation by each person who hears the story. Each myth is a warehouse of knowledge, a story told for its capacity to help us make sense of the world and to learn how to live more intensely within it. Unlike fairytales and folklore, which tend to have happy endings, mythical stories teach us great truths about being human. In myth, as in life, the gifts we carry for the world are often embedded in our wounds. We awaken to our gifts through the healing of those wounds. In Temenos, we sit in a circle by age, from youngest to oldest, to provide a sense of order and safety—where the older student provides care for the younger—and to define the boundaries of a safe environment. We tell myths to the beat of an African djembe drum. Drumming cultivates a sense of community, collaboration, oneness, and sacred space. The rhythm of the drumbeats reduces temporal distractions and creates a shared mental state. The longer we drum, the more connected our groups become. Our alchemists are required to memorize the myths they will tell and to understand the knowledge embedded within each story. We provide them with a script for each myth that includes: The myth segmented at strategic places in the story, with segment/story-specific questions designed to extract individual inspiration and insight that will engage the youth in dialogue; Commentary on the common themes and the major and minor topics addressed by the myth; and Quotes for the students to remember and record in their journals. The scripts are not written in stone. The alchemist is trained to help our youth relate to how the common themes in a myth may mirror an actual experience in their own lives. Their responses guide the ensuing dialogue. It is the alchemist’s responsibility to ensure that each youth looks objectively at his life situations; everyone participates; all responses are heard and respected; and all secrets remain within the circle. The first question we ask is, “What resonated with you in the myth?” We stress, repeatedly, “There are no right or wrong answers,” to avoid putting any student’s pride on display with a wrong answer and to create an ongoing dialogue. Students record their responses to the alchemist’s question in their personal journals. Journaling is a key program activity that aids students with writing and critical thinking skills by requiring them to delve deeply into the story’s meaning and apply it to their life experiences—the suppressed and repressed memories from the trauma in their lives. Group discussions about what resonated with them in the myth can take half an hour or longer to analyze and discuss, depending on the group’s collective response to the myth’s energy. By drawing on the experiences of the characters in each myth, participants are encouraged to reveal their own personal parallel stories, deepening their learning and growth by sharing their experiences with others, all in the safety of the temenos. As participants ingest the traits of the myth’s heroes, they incorporate the lessons and common themes embedded in these ancient tales into their psyche, a transformative process encouraging them to become the hero in their own stories. Common themes include: self-sacrifice; humility; perseverance; patience; asking for assistance; utilizing resources; overcoming obstacles; doing good deeds; betrayal; suffering; journeys; forgiveness; decision making; hope, courage; sorrow; passion; love; friendship; integrity. We will revisit Alchemy, Inc., after some time. For now, we will return to The Young Giant and examine how myth shapes all our lives. Commentary on The Young Giant: Feeling Small Thumbling feels small. Partly because compared to others, he is small. But also he feels small because his father tells him he is small. However, despite his diminutive stature, the boy still wants to experience the world. At this point in the myth, we pause and ask the students, “In what ways do you feel small?” It is a question that forces the students to go beyond their experience to that place for which they have not had words, to look into the great silence, transcend  their experiences, and give voice to their insecurities, shortcomings, and wounds. I answer this question by stating that America made me feel small simply due to the color of my skin, which is my wound. All humans are wounded. The wounding of the hero is a common theme in myth. It is almost always a special wound, one caused by an almost non-human feat. It is a figurative wound that all too often becomes a literal one. A common theme in myth is the king. If the king is not well, the entire village is not well. In life, if our king—who- or whatever that is—is not well, the other parts of our life that depend on the king’s wellbeing will not be well either. When our wounds act as the king in our life, we become victims of our life, not hero of our own story. James Hollis states: The child cannot incarnate a freely expressed personality; rather, childhood experience shapes his or her role in the world. Out of the wounding of childhood, then, the adult personality is less a series of choices than a reflexive response to the early experiences and traumata of life (1993, p. 13). Childhood trauma originates from events outside the child. Unattended, the rage turns inward, cascades down the generations, grows more complex, and creates a wasteland of the spirit where we live inauthentic lives, suppressing the impulses and desires of our own heart. Our wounds, our traumatic incidents, our passages through darkness, are all part of an archetypal story. The color of my skin is my scar, the wound I cannot outrun. In one of my earliest childhood memories, I am sitting alone, watching a black-and-white television. I see a large group of Negroes—or Colored people as we were referred to then—peacefully marching down a street. Angry White people are on both sides of the street yelling and screaming at the Colored people. White police officers, each seeming to restrain large, vicious, snarling dogs, march toward the Colored people. The police use fire hoses to spray water on the Colored people. I learned later that the pressure from those hoses could tear bark off trees. At the time, I assumed the people who looked like me must have felt pain. When the dogs were unleashed on the Colored people—who looked like me—I wondered, “Why are the White people doing this to all the people who look like me, who were just walking down the street?” As a child, I could not comprehend what was happening. My parents, like most Black parents of that time, did not talk about the injustices awaiting Colored children. My only conclusion, at that age, was it must be something to do with the color of their skin. Since my skin color was the same as theirs, it made the problem mine. In another memory, I am in our car with my parents, riding out of our all-Black neighborhood into an all-White neighborhood about seven minutes from our home. The houses and lawns are larger than ours and the neighborhood seems quieter and more peaceful, except for the graffiti message on one side of a building, “Niggers go home!” I vividly recall my sadness and the deep feeling of not being wanted or welcome. Back then, Blacks were always portrayed in movies and on television in the role of a butler, a clown, a waiter, a slave, or a savage, but never in the role of the hero. We were always the first to die or be the punchline of a White person’s joke. These early childhood experiences—a lie, handed down by society, over which I had absolutely no control— became my “I am less than” wound simply because of the color of my skin. Before we can heal children and youth, we must break the cycle of wounding and heal ourselves. I am 59 years old, and despite many achievements—two master’s degrees and almost a third in community counseling, a PhD in mythological studies and depth psychology, the creation of a successful organization, and the subject of a full-length documentary on youth in our program—I still experience extreme anxiety about being accepted and speaking in public. I still prefer to remain hidden in the background, in “the freshly cut furrow,” where no one can see me. Commentary on the Myth: Conversations with Our Fathers and Society Thumbling had a dialogue with his father, who reminded him of his small stature. This scenario allows us to engage our youth in discussions about their relationships and conversations with their fathers; 85% of our youth come from a fatherless, single-parent family. Any conversation about the father, which will be characterized by aggression and misunderstanding, if it takes place at all, allows our youth an opportunity to explore the relationships they will have when one day they become fathers. Three of our older youth, ages 23 and 24, are fathers. While most of my contact with these young men today is through FaceBook, I see young men with their children who appear to be active, engaged fathers. I like to believe our discussions of the father/son relationship encouraged their involvement in the lives of their children. I am fortunate. I lived in a home with both a mother and a father, as did most of the families in my Akron, Ohio, neighborhood when I was a child. My parents are strong, loving people, alive, enjoying their 67th year of marriage, and still loving and supportive. My father never told me I was small. I credit his strength and example with my being the man I am today. It was our society that played the role of the father in this myth for me. Questions we ask about this portion of the myth are: “What do you think of the brief conversation between the father and his son? Was the father’s intent good, or was it to shame his son for being too small?” Commentary on the Myth: Crying Thumbling’s crying created the opportunity for him to achieve his desire to go into the field with his father. We often find the hero in a myth crying and use this as an opportunity, while we are playing the drum and telling the myth, to reinforce that it is ok for boys to cry. We stress the importance of crying as a way to let others know something is wrong. In myth, if we behave as if everything is fine when it is not, the old man just keeps on walking. However, if he witnesses the boys on the castle steps crying, he will stop and offer a solution. When one of our young men shares his tears in the circle, they do not go to waste and are not shed in vain. We rub our tears into the head of our drums and in the future, each time we hit the drum, our tears resound throughout the room and enter the universe. Commentary on the Myth: Walking in the Same Rhythm as Our Fathers Oftentimes, the questions are preceded by saying, “What is said in this circle, stays in this circle.” Other questions we can ask in relation to The Young Giant are: “How do you think the father’s placement of his son into his pants front-pocket will affect the boy?” “The son is now walking in the exact same rhythm as his father—is this the way you want to walk through the world, the same way your father did or does?” For the next 30 minutes or longer we listen to their insights.” “Was it a good idea for the father to take his son with him into the field just to appease his crying?” “Are you in a rut or a groove?” Their profound responses—in extreme contrast to what we hear from so many parents, teachers and administrators—demonstrate these young men’s ability to think deeply and critically. Key Concepts of Our Process Our alchemy of psychological transformation is a developmental process that uses the discussion and interpretation of myth to assist youth in transcending the personality, moving forward to something larger than the self, and extracting the gold inherent in all youth, allowing them to become heroes within their own stories. Alchemy, Inc.’s approach to working with urban adolescents is an amalgamation of four developmental theories based upon: Joseph Chilton Pearce, Magical Child (1980) The Akan System of Life-Cycle Development (Mensah, 1993) C. G. Jung (1990) Joseph Campbell and common themes in myth (Scruggs, 2009) Generally speaking, adolescent males resist dialogue with adults. The urban Black male’s persona of toughness makes dialogue an even more daunting task, especially if it involves constructive criticism. Mythological stories create a gateway to dialogue. Using myth is ideal as a method of communication primarily because it allows one to remove  oneself from the situation, looking at the situation from above, objectively. It carries more power when used in a group setting, as comments from others forces one to rethink one’s position. Inherent in Alchemy, Inc.’s approach is the adaptation of concepts taken from the Akan system of life cycle development, an African philosophy of existence and a form of a rite of passage. Akan, which means “first,” are people from Ghana in West Africa. Recalling one’s purpose in life is of primary importance in the Akan system. It is a belief that everyone comes to this earth with a purpose; each person must live in an environment that nurtures his gifts, which, when given to his community, make the world a better place. Unfortunately, the process of birth and the harsh realities of life cause us to forget our purpose. Therefore, Alchemy, Inc.’s approach incorporates into our process of mythological storytelling Joseph Pearce’s (1980) concept of our biological capacity to succeed, and C.G. Jung’s (1990) concept of our capacity to self-manifest into what it is we are meant to become, no matter the circumstances. Urban Black youth have a general psychology and socialization of their own. A major difference between Black urban and suburban youth is their general lack of exposure to anything outside their immediate neighborhood, enforced by poverty, discrimination, location, and culture. As a population, urban Black youth do not venture far from their  neighborhoods. Their socialization with White people is generally in a subordinate relationship: teacher/student, coach/player, and police officer/criminal. Venturing outside their neighborhoods or engaging in an experience that is not normally considered “ being Black” is uncomfortable and confusing as Black youth attempt to make meaning of the experience. Attempts to explain this can result in further alienation. At some point, a youth makes up his mind to either stay back with the herd or move forward, leaving it behind. Underlying all this are the difficulties of family relationships—the often-absent fathers, the overwhelmed single mothers. Extra-familial problems are deficient schools, fractured communities, and negative media reporting combine to create negative perceptions of urban Black youth. The Power of Myth For statistical purposes, we define as a “core group” youth who are with us for seven years, a full developmental cycle, beginning in the 6th grade and continuing until graduation from high school. There is compelling scientific evidence that social and emotional development is integral to successful academic development. Our brains are hardwired to learn in a social and emotional way; myth is ideal to assist in this learning. We believe that by preparing youth for the vicissitudes of life through a group process based upon myth and relationship, we are inoculating them against the trauma they experience. The hero’s journey is really an apprenticeship in self-mastery and self-leadership, developing the individual skills necessary for anyone before he can effectively assume the mantle of leadership. When youth develop a sense of agency and belief in their ability to shape their own destiny, they have also, by default, developed a controlled response to the trauma that interferes with their ability to succeed in education and in life. More than 1,500 students have attended our program since its inception in 2004. Eighty students currently comprise our three core groups. In 2011, our Core Group 1 graduated 26 young men; 24 entered college, most with academic or sports scholarships. To date, 10 have graduated college: two have advanced degrees, one is presently in graduate school, two will graduate with bachelor’s degrees this year, two are still actively continuing their education, and two are working and attending school in the evening. This is the power of myth.

The Joseph Campbell Foundation and New World Library are, later this month, releasing The Flight of the Wild Gander, one of Campbell’s most important, and popular, collection of essays. In these essays, Campbell is at his pedagogical best, his esurient intellect leading readers into, not just scholarly revelations, but affectively thrilling emotional revelations as well. The Flight of the Wild Gander is an example of Campbell at the height of his intellectual and scholarly powers, and one of my perennial favorites. One of the essays contained in The Flight of the Wild Gander is “Bios & Mythos,” an essay exploring Campbell’s notion that mythology is not simply a psychological product of human cognition, but in fact, has its basis in physical, biological exigencies. Human animals, according to Campbell, are born staggeringly premature; at least twenty years too early, and perhaps as much as, referencing George Bernard Shaw, seventy years too soon. Quoting Géza Róheim, Campbell explains how a prolonged human infancy is traumatizing in ways that other animal species, even other apes, don’t experience. We humans are terribly dependent creatures over an inordinately long time, and as the result of such a dependency accompanied by its distorted illusions, defenses, and narratives, we must be subjected to a “second birth.” What, then, constitutes this second womb from which we must emerge? In “Bios & Mythos,” Campbell writes that it is “Rites, then, together with the mythologies that support them, [which] constitute the second womb, the matrix of the postnatal gestation of the placental Homo Sapiens.” Tradition, ritual, and myth is the second womb we occupy, and to emerge healthy, hale, and whole from this womb, we need extraordinary teachers acting as the cool, calm, experienced midwife. The “wild gander” in the title of Campbell’s book is a reference to just such a teacher. The Hindu honorific, Paramahamsa, which literally means supreme swan, i.e. Campbell’s gander, is given to teachers who are regarded as having achieved enlightenment. The hamsa, swan or wild goose, is recognized for its characteristics of grace, stamina, aesthetics, and commitment; qualities that all the best, most skillful teachers possess. Legend has it that the swan is the only animal capable of separating, once mixed, milk from water, an act symbolizing a profound ability for spiritual discrimination. The second birth is not without its hazards. Campbell notes, Misbirth is possible from the mythological womb as well from the physiological: there can be adhesions, malformations, arrestations, etc. We call them neuroses and psychoses. Hence we find today, after some five hundred years of systematic dismemberment and rejection of the mythological organ of our species, all the sad young men, for whom life is a problem (ibid). All the sad, lost, even nihilistic, young people are as they are for the want of skillful, generous, committed teachers—midwives—who themselves have learned to navigate swan-like the often treacherous waters of life gracefully; those who themselves are twice born, fluent in ritual and mythic life, and willing to help make sense of the seductive, terrifying, and powerful symbols, images, and narratives constituting the second womb; those teachers who inspire us to fly higher and farther than we ever could have imagined.

Yesterday, January 15th, we in the U.S. celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This federal holiday, declared by Ronald Reagan, was established in 1983. Other cities in the U.S. had been honoring Dr. King since 1971, and even though a federal holiday was finally instituted, a handful of states delayed in recognizing the holiday, and it was not until seventeen years later that all fifty states recognized and celebrated the holiday honoring a remarkable and remarkably courageous man who embodied a moral force that contributed to and shaped the evolution of civil rights in the United States and human rights around the world. The Joseph Campbell Foundation, with our publishing partners at New World Library, has recently launched another volume of Campbell’s work, The Ecstasy of Being: Mythology and Dance. The first part of this book consists of seven articles and one transcribed lecture published between 1944 and 1978. The second half of the book is a previously unpublished manuscript which bore the title, Mythology and Form in the Performing and Visual Arts. Now, lest it appear to be a non-sequitur, both of these men, Campbell and King, knew something about ecstasy. The English word, ecstasy, is derived from the Greek word, ekstasis, which literally means to be standing outside of oneself, carried beyond individual, rational thought to a psychosomatic state in which rationality and personal volition are suspended. The word has often been associated with mystical and prophetic states of being. Ekstasis dissolves the sense of a bounded, contained self inspecting and experiencing the world, it plunges one into a transcendent experience, an experience of the world, the universe even, as unified, timeless, unbounded, and harmonious. Campbell found this in some art and he found it in myth (powerful artistic images are also mythic images). In this volume, and in Art as Revelation, Campbell describes a kind of aesthetic arrest occurring when an individual encounters “proper art,” such an aesthetic arrest is ekstasis. Ekstasis is precipitated by an individual falling entirely and completely into beauty, into an idea, into a sensation, or the accretion of all three, a mythological image. There is often the feeling of a disturbing loss of self which may frighten and compel one to truncate the ecstatic moment, but if one can resist the temptation to terminate the experience too soon, one falls into what James Joyce described as the “rhythm of beauty” (The Ecstasy of Being, 99). In his last public speech prior to his assassination on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke in the “rhythm of beauty,” from ekstasis, transcending his, and his community’s fear and hope, resonating harmoniously with an imperfect world perfect just as it is. Ekstasis doesn’t translate well to conscious exposition, so one must resort to mythic metaphor: "And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out, or what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers. Well, I don't know what will happen now; we've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter to with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.  And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain.  And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And so I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man." Our familiar world may fall into disarray; the institutions upon which we rely may be less than reliable; fear, suffering, and loneliness may unleash cruelty and selfishness on people around the world; truth may live in exile and compassion may bitterly moulder, but the human capacity for ecstasy will continue leading many to the eternal, still point within—the point from which springs all creativity and the courage to engage life. Here we discover, Campbell says, “…the manifestation pouring forth from it… (35),” which is to say creativity and courage literally precipitate out of ecstasy, and a material change to the world is made manifest by living into the ecstatic revelation, creatively and heartfully shaping our efforts to address the challenges of contemporary life. I understanding that while my human life may be short, my soulful reach into the world’s future may be long. And as the result of the ecstatic revelation, one realizes that one may be happy, one need not worry about anything, one need not fear any man.

For those of us following the Julian calendar which probably includes most anyone reading an e-mail on the Internet, I imagine, a new year has just begun; an opportunity to turn the page, to open a new chapter in the story of our lives. Perhaps you’ve made resolutions this year about things you’d like to do, or do differently. Perhaps you’ve already broken them. No worry. Everyday is a chance to begin again. For many of us this new beginning is an opportunity to commit to an artistic vision that has struggled to stay alive inside us as we hurry about the life we think we’re supposed to be living. Making the commitment to give that vision the time, space and unconditional acceptance it needs to grow into its own unique form can often seem like an impossible challenge, especially if we are not used to doing it. As an art-maker for more than 40 years I can empathize with anyone facing this daunting challenge. As someone who had the unusual good fortune to work with Joseph Campbell and his wife, the choreographer, Jean Erdman for 20 years I was constantly nourished by his wisdom and her example of how to meet the challenges of an artistic life. In “Betwixt the Cup and the Lip”, one of eight articles in The Ecstasy of Being, the latest collection of his posthumous writing, Joe wrote: It is a basic principle of aesthetics that art is produced not out of fear, or out of hope, but out of an experience transcending the two, holding the two in balance, and revealing the wonder of the world-harmony that keeps in circulation (whether life be sorrowful or gay) the spheres of outer space, the electrons of the atom, and the juices of the living earth. So, the first job of the art-maker must be to put aside fear of failure, or hope of success and simply to experience the transcendent act of art-making. And what is involved in this “act of making”? The techniques, or specific activities of art-making are different, of course, for each form of art, and yet they all share an underlying commonality. As producer Jedadiah Wheeler so cleverly implied in 1987 when he coined the name “Serious Fun” for Lincoln Center’s summer performance festival, art-making involves nothing more and nothing less than the mystery of play, the very same play we are so charmed by watching lion cubs, wolf pups and human toddlers. And once again, as Campbell said in 1950 in “Symbolism and the Dance Part I”: Animal exuberance, this mystery of play, is very close to (if not identical with) the basic impulse of genius in the arts. The power of great art to purge us—to release us, for a moment, from the jungle-melancholy of hungering, frightened, or drearily bored mankind—derives from its transcendence of the usual biological emotions. Released from fear and appetite, and fascinated by a game, we lose our egocentric emphasis and discover suddenly, with an emotion of joy, that we can participate, in a spirit of free and charming geniality, with others—neither on their terms nor on our own, but in terms of a new and disinterested harmonization. Moreover, just as this delicious spirit of play is what is most human in the animals, so is it precisely what is most godlike in man. That is the meaning of the Indian image of the Cosmic Dancer. Siva does not create the world because of any hunger on his part, or any fear—any economic or political necessity—but in divine spontaneity: the universe, with all its beings, is the shimmer of his dancing limbs. And each of us is Siva in so far as he can live life as a dance. And each of us can be an artist in so far as he, or she, can release into the spirit of play, even for a short amount of time on a regular basis The outcome, the product, of this play need not concern us, especially not at the beginning.  The transcendence, the joy, is in the act of making.

In the birth of a new year and in the darkness, and for a lot of us in North America right now, serious cold of winter, I am struck by how people have for thousands of years turned to the warmth of hearth and community as they sought faith that spring would return. We seek connection with one another – to find the proverbial ties that bind us (a proverb that emerges from the earliest Pre-Indo European roots of the word connect, meaning to tie) – as we turn our faces to the firelight. It is our solace, and I think often our inspiration, and strength, and joy as humans wandering, and sometimes stumbling, through our lives. This sense of connection has been one of the gifts in my life as I’ve followed the beckoning of mythology, finding community who enthusiastically share stories and ideas. And as I think about this, I realize that this sense of weaving together, of tying people and ideas and places and stories together, was a core motivation for Joseph Campbell throughout his life and work. It is arguably his greatest genius.In 1983, Campbell spoke with New York Times Book Review Editor D. J. R. Bruckner, discussing the arc of a long career seeking and unfolding that weave, in a conversation rather appropriately entitled "Joseph Campbell: 70 Years of Making Connections." In one thought that captures a sense of how Campbell saw the interlacing of people, place, and ideas, about a moment early in his professional life, he says: .. I was five years without a job. I went out to California looking for one and settled down in Carmel, where I met John Steinbeck, who was also broke. That was an important moment for me, especially getting to know his collaborator, Ed Ricketts, who's the doctor in his novels. Ricketts was an intertidal biologist and I had been interested in biology from my school days. Talking with Ricketts, I realized that between mythology and biology there is a very close association. I think of mythology as a function of biology; it's a production of the human imagination, which is moved by the energies of the organs of the body operating against each other. These are the same in human beings all over the world and this is the basis for the archetypology of myth. For the last several years, I’ve had the rather remarkable privilege of working with the Joseph Campbell Foundation as a member of its board. It is an organization that lives and breathes that sense of connection; describing itself as “A Network of Information. A Community of Individuals.” JCF’s website has served as a metaphorical hearth for thousands of people around the world. In these beginning moments of a new year, I am particularly excited to see how a next generation of this sense of communitas is unfolding. Thank you for joining us!

The title of this MythBlast is borrowed from the title of this Mark Strand poem: Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of the light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves, stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows, sending up warm bouquets of air. Even this late the bones of the body shine and tomorrow’s dust flares into breath. In my personal associations, celebrations that occur on or around the Winter Solstice, like Christmas and Hanukkah, are entirely about hope. Even though it comes on the shortest day of the year and is ever only a moment, at the moment of Winter Solstice, light and dark are perfectly balanced and ancient humans recognize important information about the progress of the seasons which allows them to make triumph of light over the increasing darkness. Celebrating the birth, or rebirth in some cases, of solar deities at this time of year was, and is, a common theme across many cultures. Neolithic and Bronze Age solstice structures seem to abound in the Northern Hemisphere, and sites such as Stonehenge in the U.K., Newgrange in Ireland, the Goseck Circle in Germany, even the more recent Chaco Canyon and Cahokia in the U.S. are among the most well-known. Strand’s poem captures an aspect of the hope found in the symbolism, in the imagining of solstice, when he writes, “Even this late it happens,” suggesting that love and light, relief and comfort, may still be found long after one’s rational thought process has precluded their existence. We use the phrase “being in the dark” to describe all manner of discomfort, confusion, and ignorance; being in the dark is also often synonymous with being exposed to one’s fears. In the refrain of an Iron Maiden song, for instance, this sentiment is reflected in the lyric, “Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, I have a constant fear that something’s always near. Fear of the dark, fear of the dark, I have a phobia that someone’s always there.” In the darkness, one’s perceptual faculties seem altered and familiar shapes may acquire eerie or grotesque, threatening forms, and the play of shadows makes us imagine predatory somethings are moving nearby. Orienting oneself becomes increasingly difficult the darker it gets, and a solitary, noiseless, blackness unnerves and provides the perfect environment for one’s personal demons to run amok. As the Psalmist wrote: “…weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” The return of the light reassures, sunlight allows us to see more clearly, with more detail, with more color—light is primally soothing; if you don’t believe me, turn off your toddler’s night light. Something in us is reborn with the return of the light; we are reacquainted with possibility, with resilience, with vision, when the light returns. For these reasons and more, an organization called Suicide or Survive uses the winter solstice and its message of hope to “give thanks for the year that’s been, to remember loved ones, and to shine a light for hope by lighting a candle for the year ahead.” Contrary to Strand’s beautiful poem, candles don’t light themselves, someone must light them. But from the perspective of the dark-enshrouded beneficiary of the light, it does seem as though the candle lights itself. We need each other to make the darkness comforting, and when we can do that for one another, joy does come in the morning.Thanks for reading, and remember to leave the light on…

Meister Eckhart, a German theologian born in the mid-13th century, once remarked that if the only prayer one ever uttered was “thank you,” that would be enough.  Eckhart reminds us of how important it may be to actually give voice to the feelings of gratitude that we so often are aware of only as a sensation or a feeling of gratification, satisfaction, relief, delight, self-worth, competence, or a generalized sense of amour-propre. These are the feelings we have witnessing the babble of infants, the happiness of our children, the sounds of sea gulls and a breath-taking ocean view, soft summer nights and the sounds of crickets and flashes of lightening bugs, comfortable communities and loving friends. It’s impossible to not feel gratitude at the recognition of life at its best. But where do we find gratitude when life isn’t at its best—an arguably more important task. Perhaps not surprisingly, Campbell has something to say about this as well. In a 1976 Parabola magazine interview Campbell is quoted saying, “I’ve described in my books what I call the four main functions of myth […] The second is the cosmological function of relating us to the cosmos as now known in such a way that its mystery can be experienced, that we can relate to it with gratitude” (italics are mine). First, and this is extremely important, Campbell notes that the cosmological function relates us to the universe as we now know it; that somehow in the ongoing mytho-imaginal conceptualization of the universe, contemporary science and cosmological cartography have an important role to play. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, myth allows us to relate to the cosmos—the universe of all that exists, including everything that is in our lives and all that we presently experience—with gratitude. Finding and expressing genuine gratitude for everything we are experiencing is a tall order, a difficult thing to find within oneself in difficult times. And yet, finding gratitude in challenging times is an essential component that leads one to continue building the psychological quality called resilience. Resiliency is predicated upon a series of struggles—gratitude may be born of a single struggle—and a willingness to explore deeply for oneself the meaning of the impact of the events one faces and not dismiss or hurry through painful and often tragic situations by uttering the banal and insipid platitudes we all hear all too often in times of pain and tragedy. Gratitude results from being willing to sit with and slowly wander through, as best as one can, all the nuances of one’s life in this particular moment. I think it’s important to give voice to our gratitude, to say it aloud, or as Meister Eckhart put it, utter the prayer of thanks. It’s important to talk about gratitude even if only to ourselves, because as most of us have found, speaking about something, naming the experience, makes it seem more real. Words are magical that way. Witches and warlocks, for instance, cast spells via incantations, a word derived from the Latin word, incantare, which means “to chant upon,” and suggests that words somehow have the ability to materialize image, power, and desire, among other familiar artifacts of magic. In the Gospel of John is the phrase, “The word became flesh…” and that suggests to me that words, quite literally, matter. I am grateful for your reading and your interest in the work of Joseph Campbell; thank you.

Our theme at the Joseph Campbell Foundation this month is gratitude. We are celebrating both Campbell’s ideas and works, and all of the people around the world who have brought their own particular genius to the ongoing relevance and understanding of mythology. As you may know, Campbell spent almost fifty years married to one of the pre-eminent dancers of the 20th Century, Jean Erdman. Together, they created the Theater of the Open Eye, a home for dance and theater pieces that celebrated the intersections of myth and the performing arts. We are thrilled to announce a brand new book from our publishing partners at New World Library: Ecstasy of Being, a collections of essays written by Campbell on mythology and dance.  It’s edited by Nancy Allison, a choreographer, dancer and longtime creative collaborator of Jean Erdman’s, who is the founding Artistic Director of Jean Erdman Dance. As a former dancer, in gratitude to artists who keep myth alive in richly powerful ways, I’d like to share this excerpt from the chapter “The Jubilee of Content and Form": What do we learn? Well, we learn that over the entire inhabited world, in spite of many colorful and distracting variations of nomenclature and costumes, the episodes and personages of myth, legend, fairytale, and fable remain, and have remained throughout all time, essentially the same. Also we learn that these mysteriously constant personages and episodes are precisely those that have been upsetting or delighting us in our personal fantasies and dreams. Oedipus and Orestes, the Sun Bird and the Serpent are known not only to the scholar’s study but also to the lunatic asylum and the nightly pillow. Mythology, in other words, is not an outmoded quaintness of the past, but a living complex of archetypal, dynamic images, native to, and eloquent of, some constant, fundamental stratum of the human psyche. And that stratum is the source of the vital energies of our being. Out of it proceed all the fate-creating drives and fears of our lives. While our educated, modern waking-consciousness has been going forward on the wheels and wings of progress, this recalcitrant, dream-creating, wish-creating, under-consciousness has been holding to its primeval companions all the time, the demons and the gods. Apparently, then, the archetypal figures of myth undercut the rational interests of our conscious life, and touch directly the vital centers of the unconscious. The artist who knew how to manipulate these archetypes would be able to conjure with the energies of the human soul. For the symbols are as potent as they ever were. The artist who really knew their secrets might still play the magician—the priest of the potent sign—working marvels purging the community of its pestilential devils and bringing purity and peace. Only, we should tend to explain his effects in psychological rather than theological terms: the heavens and hells being now reinterpreted as chambers of the unconscious.And we should revere him no less than he was revered in the days of yore, when his poems conjured thunderheads and his dances moved the spirits of the soil. (pp 18-19, The Ecstasy of Being) I hope that your "educated, modern waking-consciousness" has a chance to find this mythological power in the art that you encounter this week.

In Anne of Green Gables, L. M. Montgomery wrote, “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” I understand her sentiment; oaks, maples, sumac are everywhere ablaze, the morning air is crisp enough to invigorate but not yet cold enough to drive one back inside. Animals are busy preparing for winter, preparations important enough that this time of year they don’t mind being watched by fascinated humans. Fall is beautiful everywhere I’ve ever experienced it. And yet, fall has always made me sad, made my hope a rather fragile thing, and therefore I relate more to Hemingway than to Montgomery, as he writes, “You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason” (A Moveable Feast). When cold rains continue to fall, one may well be comforted by the consoling power of myths. As you may already know, Joseph Campbell posited four explanatory functions of myth, the second of which is called the cosmological function, and it serves to illustrate and explain aspects of the natural world and, to some degree, the universe itself. For instance, a Huron legend tells of a deer and a bear who passed over the Rainbow Bridge and into the Sky Land where they fought. During a fierce and long battle, the bear’s flesh was torn by the sharp, cruel horns of the deer, and they both fled along the paths of the sky as the wolf arrived to break up the fight. As the deer ran, drops of the bears blood fell from his horns into the lower world turning the leaves of trees scarlet, yellow, crimson, and brown. The Huron say that each year the blood of the bear is once again thrown down from the sky onto the trees. The cosmological function of myth is an attempt to explain why the world is as it is, or perhaps more importantly, why we experience it as we do. To that end, the last of Campbell’s four functions is the psychological. Myths read through a psychological lens help us understand the unfolding of human existence, the challenge of living life with integrity, greater self-awareness, compassion, and community. When Hemingway wrote, “Part of you died each year when the leaves fell,” he is relating a psychological truth to a cosmological one; the death of hope, running out of time, a colder, darker world,  are all sentiments psychologically apropos to the fall season. Fall is a reminder that even the most beautiful, the most vibrant life ends. Life’s brevity, Autumn’s brevity--if these were not brief, would they be as beautiful? Autumn is a time of richness, of fullness, and it is the year’s last and loveliest reminder of just how beautiful this world is. Fall creates a kind of liminal space in which, nearly simultaneously, we must hold the whole of our own live’s most brilliantly colorful expressions as well as the knowledge that it will soon end--and it always ends too soon, and that it ends is right and proper and suitable for humankind. And such an awareness, coming I hope, before one’s brittle, shrunken, palsied leaf falls from the tree of life, is one of the last, and most meaningful realizations of a life lived following bliss.

Note: We continue our theme of gratitude this November, with an article written by former teacher and JCF Rights and Permissions wrangler, Michael Lambert. As we do, we thank all of the people who bring mythology to life around the world in creative ways, inviting people to engage their imaginations, creativity, and explore their sense of self as they do. Especially kids! Back in November of 2014, Bob Walter, President of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, received an email from Meghan Stengel Gardner, inviting a representative of the Foundation to visit her Wizards & Warriors Camp, a program designed around Joseph Campbell’s concept of The Hero’s Journey®. She was introduced to the work of Joseph Campbell through the acclaimed PBS video series, Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Bob handed it off to me since the camp is outside of Boston and I’m not that far away in Eastern New York. But life is full of details and this one slipped off the table and rolled under the couch. The universe, however, will not be denied its desires, so when I saw a post on a mythically oriented Facebook page I follow describing a summer camp program, with a picture of interestingly costumed kids, I clicked the link. Sure enough, Wizards & Warriors. I contacted Meghan, author of the Facebook post, and found that not only is she the founder of this camp program, but used to live in my neck of the woods and is good friends with people I know. Okay then. Road trip! I met Meghan outside Gann Academy in Waltham, Massachusetts, the summer home of Wizards & Warriors on a gray, drizzly August afternoon. Her passion for this work was immediately evident. She explained the basics of the program and took me on a tour of the facility, and wherever we went, we came upon costumed camp groups moving between activities. The costumes, it must be stated, are not Walmart quality rubber masks and nylon suits.  Meghan showed me the Logistics room, or the Command and Creation Center as she calls it, where costumes and props are stored and made and makeup is applied. Her daughter, Marin, a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art & Design, is the program’s costume artist and hand crafts much of what is worn by staff and campers. The campers, referred to as Heroes, at Wizards & Warriors actively participate in a mythic narrative that evolves day by day. There is no set script. Staff conference at the end of each day to determine where the story is going the next, as determined by the choices and actions of the campers that day. Consultants are utilized to ensure that the stories reflect accurately on the cultural traditions being expressed, and each year a different cultural tradition is researched and embedded into the narrative. Thus, the story seamlessly continues, year after year. Half of the stories utilized have to be from outside the European tradition. But it’s in the details that this program proves itself. “We hire teachers, we call them Guardians,” Meghan told me, “who design our story-based curriculum where the Heroes learn Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Literature, Latin, History, and much more in order to succeed in the adventures. We have seven year olds who can recite and demonstrate Newton's Laws of Physics because that's what's necessary so you can learn your first level of spells.” New spells have to be carefully researched and science based; if approved, they are added to the Book of Spells. “Heroes” record their adventures in The Book of Deeds kept in the Library. The stories now go back seven years. Though the work of Joseph Campbell is a primary inspiration for Wizards & Warriors, you don’t see his name very much. “Follow your bliss” is not posted on the walls. But you will find his ideas embedded within the DNA of the philosophy of this program’s design. A Hero, the campers are told, is a person of courage, honor and compassion. Then they are directed to define these words for themselves. “Our ‘Library,’ Meghan says, “is actually a Greater Spirit in our world, who bestows upon the Heroes clues about the stories as well as helping them engage in a discussion around how they can take what they are learning about at camp and apply it to their life outside of camp.  This is what we call ‘Transference.’” “Wonderment,” a new application in the planning stage, will consist of an online community to help the Heroes transfer their new skills into the rest of their lives, and share with each other the changes they experience both in themselves and in their outside communities. I left Meghan where we’d met. Though there was still a light drizzle, the sky to the west promised a finer day for my drive home. I promised Meghan I would share my experience with my colleagues at the Joseph Campbell Foundation, and how impressed I was that this program that speaks directly to, and fosters, the creative imagination of children in no way rides the coattails of Joseph Campbell’s notoriety. What she’s accomplished, it seems to me, is to have done what Campbell would want us to with his work: synthesize it into our own work which puts us in service to our passion to the fulfillment of not only ourselves, but to the larger community.

If you peel back the frivolous mask of a holiday that inspires $8.4 billion in candy; decorations; and costumes sales for little kids, grownups looking for a moment of escapist fantasy, and long-suffering pets; you’ll find a swirling memories of much a darker, more magical dancing with ideas of life and death. Since the Iron Age (about 600-800 BC) Celtic cultures have been marking Samhain, the end of the year at the death of summer, and an opening, if only for a day, into the world of the ‘other,’ of long-dead ancestors, lost loved ones, and the energies that sit outside of bright daylight’s logical understanding. Imagine, for a moment, living in a culture when the last harvests, cattle driven down from high summer pastures and slaughtered for winter, mark the end of the abundance of summer, and the cold darkness of winter lies ahead. It is a liminal time – liminal from the Latin for ‘threshold’ – a doorway into how humans wrestle with mortality, and both our fascination with and dread of death. Roman writers describe wild festivities (as they often did about the Celts and Gauls; pursed-lip morality about pagans being a fairly common thread in Roman writings) around the ritual bonfire.  What captures my imagination about their writings about Samhain, though, are the descriptions of Celts donning the skins of slaughtered livestock as central to their rituals, to honor, propitiate, and connect with those animals. With this image, the costumes of a contemporary Halloween suddenly seem to have far richer meaning, far deeper than the mumming and guising traditions of Celtic countries and their offspring, our fairly benign, secular, “trick or treat” nights out along suburban streets. In “Art as Revelation,” Campbell describes the work of “sympathetic magic” – evoking and invoking the spiritual world by adopting its personae. He quotes Abbe Henri Breuil, describing Paleolithic cave art: “hese are hunting or ceremonial masks, or either ghostly or mythical beings. The man with a mammoth’s head, the one with a bird’s head, and all the other masked beings, here or elsewhere, are perhaps hunters in disguise, ready to start on their expeditions. More probably they are members of the tribe performing some magic rite, or mythical beings from whom favors must be requested and who must be conciliated. (114) When we don the costumes of the mythical world, we imaginally enter into a relationship with the archetypal energies we are wearing. As I muse on how Stone Age peoples and Iron Age Celts sought connection with this magic, I find myself wondering if we are as far removed from this instinct as we assume. As you slip on a costume or mask this Hallows Eve, what sympathetic magic are you conjuring? Could you be inviting or perhaps protecting yourself from the archetypal energies you are wearing?

The work of Joseph Campbell continues to resonate with people all over the world. Currently, fifteen of Campbell’s books are published in overseas markets covering twenty-three languages. Of particular note is the success of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which has been translated into seventeen languages, with an eighteenth, Vietnamese, in production. Indeed, it recently came to our attention that Hero was referenced in a verse by the Russian rapper Oxxxymiron during a “rap battle” with another artist1. According to our Russian publisher, Vitaliy Stepanov at Piter Press, Oxxxymiron rapped about Hero for fully five minutes. The video of the event was released on YouTube in early August, and has already accumulated over 19 million views. According to The Calvert Journal, The Hero with a Thousand Faces “immediately sold out on Ozon, one of Russia’s biggest online stores." Joseph Campbell said, "I consider the artist the one who has to introduce us to the promised land in our own land, here and now. It's his vision that brings to us the vision of the spiritual radiance that shines through the world, which many of us do not see.” By using his art to bring the universal idea of the Hero’s Journeytm to his audience, Oxxxymiron is doing more than just helping sales, he is fulfilling that purpose. The work of Joseph Campbell shows us how our cultural differences can reveal our similarities, the essential elements shared by all human beings. While sales of foreign translations help the Joseph Campbell Foundation continue its work, it’s the spread of Campbell’s ideas that makes this work exciting. Especially today, when we seem besieged by turmoil, Campbell’s message of personal fulfillment through the hero’s selfless service to his or her bliss for the betterment of the community gives all of us hope that the world can be united through our common humanity. And that message is being read in Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Spanish, Polish, Korean and many more languages. Sincerely, Michael Lambert Rights & Permissions The Joseph Campbell Foundation