[mythistorian]

Thank you Johanna, I love your questions as well which could inspire whole tomes and disquisitions in this exciting field of mythological studies. As we know, these are complicated questions which admit of no easy answers.

You are quite right that the “loss of myth” often bemoaned by conservatives is actually a boom when viewed from the progressive side, as this ‘absence of a Master (Signifier)’ is always the precursor of a revolution of the collective spirit which is brewing inside. It is, as you say, a kind of “dark night” of the collective soul in which our little individual life-boat finds itself: in the midst of pandemic, mass shootings, militarism, and ecological disaster already breaking down the walls of our collective (social and ideological) defense mechanisms.

As to your question about which myths might help us navigate through this crisis, you will not be surprised to hear from me advocacy for the Popol Vuh as what I call The Wisdom of the Peoples, which comes fully equipped with a kind of primordial critique of capitalistic hyper-individualism. At the same time, it is the story of the creation of a New Dawn of consciousness such as the one we find ourselves in but without any guarantees. And it does involve a profound descensus ad inferos to face the Lords of Death, the Underworld Masters of Xibalba, engaging in mortal competition through a “Ballgame of the Sacrifices” which ultimately decides the fate of the cosmos. I highly recommend it!