MythBlast | Underworld Initiation in Our Age
Looking at my life, I cannot escape a basic fact: my individual existence is enmeshed in the life of the collective—not only my immediate family and friends, but in the larger institutions and systems...
Tagged: Joseph Campbell
MythBlast | Four Mysteries of Initiation in Pathways To Bliss
My first memories of Joseph Campbell are through my dad’s love for him. Dad played Campbell’s lectures on cassette tapes on long, sun drenched drives to visit our family’s patriarch in the desert. Ironically,...
MythBlast | Myths of Light — transcendence and reflection
It is the first day of spring as I sit down to write. The sun has entered Aries, the first sign in the Zodiac, marking the dawning of a new astrological year. The sun...
Joseph Campbell’s Correspondence available for the first time
We are excited to announce a unique new addition to the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell, Correspondence: 1927–1987! New World Library, Joseph Campbell Foundation’s longtime publishing partner, has released a fascinating collection of letters that...
MythBlast | 70 Years of the Hero’s Journey
The deeper my relationship with Joseph Campbell, the more I see him everywhere—and not just what I come across for the Campbell in Culture posts I help curate. The references we hear about, the overt mentions,...
MythBlast | Sustaining the Celebration
With the 1949 publication of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell accomplished the rare task of uniting wisdom with mainstream interest, presenting foundational patterns of human experience through the archetypal content embedded...
MythBlast | Why We Rise
The Role of Story in Crafting New Beginnings for Our Lives Most attribute the foundations of Western story structure to Aristotle. His simple idea that stories should have a beginning, a middle, and an...
MythBlast | A Toolbox For the New Year
This month, the first month of the new year, we begin again; and beginning again is, in fact, our theme for January at JCF. No doubt we’ll soon be inundated by numberless lists extolling...
MythBlast | Thus Were the Meditations of the Serviceable Mind
W.H. Auden once remarked that a real book reads us, an observation that seems right enough to me, and certainly seems right to apply to the work of Joseph Campbell. After all, Campbell spent...
MythBlast | Mysteries of the Feminine Divine
Six years ago I was literally elbow deep in the Joseph Campbell archives, retrieving dozens of audio cassette tapes on whose delicate ribbons were etched hours of Campbell talking about goddess myths. Between 1972...
MythBlast | Myths of Light
The Joseph Campbell Foundation will soon be releasing an ebook publication of Campbell’s Myths of Light, an utterly charming little book in which the attentive reader will be able to discern Campbell’s joy and...
MythBlast | The Uses of Myth: Disengage Your Arrows
In the month of April, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating the impending release of several new editions of two Campbell classics, The Mythic Dimension and Primitive Mythology, both coming soon as eBooks and...
MythBlast | Myth, Campbell & Film
Mythology and the Hero’s Journey became pervasive throughout film culture and history as generation after generation turned to Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. With his guidance, countless filmmakers have come...
Mythblast | The Secularization of the Sacred and Mythic Identification
Last week JCF, through its new arrangement with Amazon, made available a new digital edition of Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension. As I have remarked recently in this...
MythBlast | The No in Inspired Learning
A few days ago, I came across this sentence from Joseph Campbell in his essay “Symbol Without Meaning” in The Flight of the Wild Gander. “The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems,...
MythBlast | Temenos and the Power of Myth
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...
NewsBlast: Read Joseph Campbell’s Asian Journals – India And Japan
This month, we’re offering you a uniquely personal view of Joseph Campbell at a pivotal juncture in his life and work. At the beginning of his career, Joseph Campbell developed a lasting fascination with...
MythBlast | Mine and Yours: Wandering into Story
We tell stories about who we are, to understand what makes us different – what makes us alike – what connects us what our families might be and look like – and who our...
MythBlast | Telling Big Stories: Paradox & Personal Myth
“Tell me your myth that the whole world may turn to myth.” — Nikos Kazantzakis The Talking Heads were right. We can’t truly know where we are going without reflecting upon where we have...
MythBlast | The Boon of a Well-Furnished Mythic Toolbox
This past week, from Sunday, July 23rd through Friday, July 28th, Joseph Campbell Foundation President Bob Walter led a workshop called, Your Hero’s Journey® Redux: A Mythological ToolBox® PlayShop. Bob is a theatrical playwright and...
The MythBlast: The Word Divine
‘In the beginning, there was the Word.’ While this is obviously a prominent phrase in the Judeo-Christian psyche, it is not an idea unique to one culture. In origin stories from around the world, a...
MythBlast | Hopi Kachinas: The Essence of Everything
Every year in Northeastern Arizona, around July, the Hopi Tribe celebrates the Niman Kachina Festival. The word “Hopi” is shortened from Hopituh Shi-Nu-Mu, a Hopi word meaning “The Peaceful People.” An important use of the...
MythBlast: Mythic Play
When I first was drawn to myth, it was through play. My sisters and I, nerdily passionate children of academics, spent a lot of time playing “Greek Gods and Goddesses” in a father-made fort...
