Stephen Gerringer
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Norland,
This observation of yours rings true:
. . . the fact that they are both real and unreal, here and not-here, manifestly self-evident and suddenly gone.
This very elusiveness is an important quality of the phenomenological exploration of UFOs. Whereas the positivistic approach, with its vulgar concept of existence, sees in this elusive quality nothing but a regrettable and painful LACK of information.”
And, a few lines later:
This lack of substantial identity is an essential part of their phenomenology. In their very designation as ‘Unidentified,’ the shape of the unknown is made manifest dream. As Jung pointed to the basic structure of our knowledge of them, it consists in the simple fact that ‘something is seen, but one doesn’t know what.’ (CW10: ¶591)”
I believe you “knocked it out of the ballpark,” so to speak, with this MythBlast – and not just the essay, but every entry in this exchange is well worth the read. What a wonderfully relevant and immediate example of how mythologizing isn’t just something that happened in the long ago, but remains a dynamic, ongoing, unconscious process informing culture yet today.
Sunbug,
Hope you don’t mind if I add a thought in response to this question you raise:
Briefly on to my other question speaking of the need for rituals.
Sometimes I wonder if some rituals are born more out of the head and intellect than the heart?
Or maybe it’s a balance of both?”Ritual takes many forms – but the point of ritual, at least according to Campbell, Eliade, and others, seems to be to open a portal and propel us past surface realities, into an experience of a deeper reality underlying the world we perceive with our senses. Ritual allows us an experience transcendent to, yet in harmony with, that of the physical senses. A living ritual has a numinous, dream-like, surreal component – that sense of participation mystique, as Campbell labels it, using a term borrowed from Levy-Bruhl. Ego breaks down, and one’s sense of self both dissolves, and expands beyond, individual identity. Like in a play (drama, come to think of it, having evolved from sacred rituals), we suspend our disbelief, and participate in the myth.
That doesn’t seem to happen with rituals constructed by intellect alone.
In his introduction to Primitive Mythology, the first book of the four volume The Masks of God, Joseph Campbell makes a compelling case that ritual has its origins in play.
He segues into the subject by telling the story of a professor’s four year old daughter, who is playing on the rug with three burnt matches while her father writes at his desk. Considerable time passes, and then the daughter screams in terror and comes running into her father’s arms, crying “Daddy, Daddy, take the witch away! I can’t touch the witch anymore!”
The little girl had been playing Hansel, Gretel, and the witch with the matches (ironically enacting a myth, so to speak – fairy tales are often the traces of earlier mythologies); though she knows the match is just a match, the little girl, caught up in her play, also believes the match is a witch.
Drawing then on Johan Huizinga’s groundbreaking work Homo Ludens (“Man the Player”): A Study of the Play Element in Culture, Campbell makes the connection between play and ritual, both of which occupy a play-sphere where the prevailing logic is “make believe” – aka, acting “as if”:
“This vivid, convincing example of a child’s seizure by a witch while in the act of play may be taken to represent an intense degree of the daemonic mythological experience. However, the attitude of mind represented by the game itself, before the seizure supervened, also belongs within the sphere of our subject. For, as J. Huizinga has pointed out in his brilliant study of the play element in culture, the whole point, at the beginning, is the fun of play, not the rapture of seizure. ‘In all the wild imaginings of mythology a fanciful spirit is playing,” he writes, “on the border-line between jest and earnest. . . . As far as I know, ethnologists and anthropologists concur in the opinion that the mental attitude in which the great religious feasts of savages are celebrated and witnessed is not one of complete illusion. There is an underlying consciousness of things ‘not being real.’
And he quotes, among others, R.R. Marett, who, in his chapter on “Primitive Credulity” in The Threshold of Religion, develops the idea that a certain element of ‘make-believe’ is operative in all primitive religions. ‘The savage,’ wrote Marett, ‘is a good actor who can be quite absorbed in his role, like a child at play; and also, like a child, a good spectator who can be frightened to death by the roaring of something he knows perfectly well to be no “real” lion.’
‘By considering the whole sphere of so-called primitive culture as a play-sphere,’ Huizinga then suggests in conclusion, ‘we pave the way to a more direct and more general understanding of its peculiarities than any meticulous psychological or sociological analysis would allow.’ And I would concur wholeheartedly with the this judgment, only adding that we should extend the consideration to the entire field of our present subject.” (Primitive Mythology 23)
Campbell then examines the play element in the Roman Catholic mass, and rituals of other cultures, noting that “Belief––or at least a game of belief––is the first step toward such a divine seizure.” (Theater, as well, which has its origin in ritual, is grounded in that play logic – the suspension of disbelief).
Some rituals arise spontaneously – it may take a while before you even tumble to the fact that what you are doing is a ritual –and then often, there is some intention involved, and your intellect is engaged. But I would say that effective rituals – those that have a deep, profound, emotional impact (composed of living symbols, or what Campbell, borrowing from Jungian psychiatrist John Weir Perry, calls “affect images”) felt in body and soul, rather than just going through the motions – are akin to artistic creations, drawing more on intuition, spontaneity, and imagination.
Well said, Norland! The following especially rings true:
But the threat to the collective existence of humanity you asked me about has always been ourselves, homo homini lupus, the collective shadow of humanity. This is the deeper source Jung alludes to but it points not to a single thing but to a whole confluence of factors, a network of interdependencies that pit us not only against ourselves, with our ridiculous nuclear capabilities, but also against Nature and Life on Earth as we stand near the precipice of ecological catastrophe to add to our nuclear threat.”
The era of UFO sightings certainly tracks with the beginning of the nuclear age. I have the vaguest memory of a drill in first grade where we practiced hiding under our desk in the event “the bomb” was dropped: just a drill for this little kid, but the fodder of nightmares for my parents.
Of course, though we still have the capacity to blow ourselves up many times over, the likelihood of nuclear war no longer occupies the forefront of public consciousness the way it did during the Cold War; nevertheless, between pandemics and climate change, an existential threat to all humanity, and perhaps all life on Earth, remains.
Certainly there are plenty of hooks in UFO sightings on which those projections of our fears are able to snag and catch; at the same time I do find it intriguing that, in the popular imagination, these potential visitors from outer space are considered both a potential threat on the one hand, and a potential savior on the other, with perhaps the technology and wisdom to save us from ourselves – the ultimate deus ex machina?.
Jung doesn’t deny there might be some objective reality to these encounters – indeed, he notes, even back in the fifties, that there did seem to be evidence of, well, something – though what most concerns him are the psychic projections we make onto these phenomena regardless of whether they are real.
Whether these sightings are of physical objects, mental projections, or a combination thereof, the ambiguity and uncertainty speak to the mystery, which strikes me as an essential quality of the experience. This has been happening for at least three-quarters of a century, yet, despite the plethora of sightings, it’s not anything we are able to nail down. There seems to be something there, but nothing we can know for sure, including whether or not the something is a something. Now, with the Pentagon files public, evidence does seem to be mounting, but not enough to dispel the uncertainty.
So I am curious, Norland, where you stand on the subject? Stepping away for a moment from the psychological and mythological implications, do you believe UFOs are real? And if they are, then what the heck are they?
Hey There, Sunbug,
Nothing wrong with challenging Joseph Campbell – that was something he expected as a scholar, and embraced. Indeed, as his colleague David Miller (author and professor of comparative religions) has pointed out, on more than one occasion Campbell was delighted to discover he had been in error. (Miller offered an example of bumping into Campbell right after Joe learned he had been wrong in his understanding and interpretation of Melanesian myths and rituals – the man was almost ebullient; Campbell’s bliss wasn’t to be right, but to increase his knowledge and understanding).
Briefly, identifying “the hero” with the muscular ego is not at all unusual. James Hillman – friend and colleague of Campbell – does exactly that, and I believe Joe himself had no trouble with that sense, especially at the start of the journey (when most heroes-to-be, from Luke Skywalker to Moses to King Arthur are most pre-occupied with ego concerns).
In conversation with Bill Moyers, Campbell observes, ““A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” That can be someone who risks their life or sacrifices oneself for others, or for an ideal. As any good scholar, Campbell defines his terms to distinguish this usage of “hero” from popular usage, as well as that of other thinkers. (Ayn Rand, for example, is also closely identified with “the hero” – but in her conception, a hero never sacrifices him or herself for others, always acting out of self-interest – a polar opposite to Campbell’s reference to heroes in myth).
So, from one perspective, over the course of the hero’s journey, an individual ego (someone pre-occupied with his or her own ego concerns) is challenged and transforms as that ego dies and is reborn as a Self, focused more on wholeness and concerns beyond just one’s own ego.
Sure, many critics fall back on stereotype and claim “Heroes are always in it for themselves, see themselves as saviors, and will not take advice from others but will force their advice on others” – which seems more the description of a narcissist – no surprise . . . more than a few narcissists in their megalomania see themselves as heroic figures; nevertheless, I would take issue with projecting that pathology onto the concept of hero, any more than one would project the pathology of authoritarian control-freaks onto everyone who is a father.
(That criticism also ignores the fact that many of the “heroes” of literature and myth that Campbell references do not recognize themselves as heroes.)
I do understand the criticism of the hero going it alone. The hero is often left outside the dominant culture, and finds her or himself up against prevailing societal norms (from Jesus, for example, to the Buddha, or Picasso, or Martin Luther King, Jr.); naturally, those invested in the society prefer everyone go along to get along and simply conform.
But there is something to be said for the collective hero (e.g., Campbell notes the primary hero of the Tanach – or Old Testament – isn’t Abraham or Joseph or Moses or King David, but the children of Israel – a collective hero: the Chosen People, who conform to the trajectory of the Hero’s Journey). As Campbell’s friend and publisher (and JCF president) Bob Walter noted in conversation with William Shatner, Captain Kirk was not the hero of Star Trek; rather, the hero was the Enterprise – and her crew – which kept being reborn in future iterations in the Star Trek films and The Next Generation television series
. . . but the individual and the collective hero need not be mutually exclusive. As you point out, “the irony remains that the individual quest and realization of the universal consciousness shared by ALL are not antithetical to each other.”
However, I have over time come to realize it’s not necessary to rebut those who critique Campbell or come at myth from a different point of view. Sometimes those differences are a result of misunderstanding what Campbell is saying, and sometimes just a question of vocabulary – so the best approach, in my mind, is not to argue in a specific forum with those who take a contrary position, but do my best to convey Campbell’s perspective as clearly as possible (preferably in his own words), and let others take from that what they will.
Thanks for initiating this discussion, Sunbug. I have thoughts on your other post as well, but domestic responsibilities, alas, are calling. (I’m afraid my wife won’t allow me to refuse that quest . . .)
Shaahayda writes
Is Joe referring to one’s personal mythic forms?”
Not exactly – or rather, yes and no. Campbell is discussing what he discovered in the books in his library, which, unless they are addressed to him specifically, don’t contain “personal mythic forms”; rather, they reveal the workings of the unconscious in general, which does seem the subject under discussion. That’s the “no” part.
At the same time, it’s his introduction to the depths of the unconscious that allowed him to recognize how these were playing out in his own life – which is the “yes” part.
Sam Keen had just asked Campbell about the use of LSD and psychedelics in the Sixties. Here is a little more context:
“I think drugs have uncovered the unconscious depths in a society that is lopsidedly rational and evaluative. They have shown many people that the archetypes are in the unconscious. They are as real as tables and chairs. But the drug culture has been caught in the fuzzy end of things . . .
I prefer the gradual path––the way of study. My feeling is that mythic forms reveal themselves gradually in the course of your life if you know what they are and how to pay attention to their emergence. My own initiation into the mythical depths of the unconscious has been through the mind, through the books that surround me in this library. I have recognized in my quest all the stages of the hero’s journey. I had my calls to adventure, guides, demons and illuminations. In the conflict between the Celtic-Arthurian and the Roman Catholic myths, I discovered much about the tensions that shaped my past. I also studied primitive myths and Hinduism and later Joyce, Mann, Jung, Spengler and Frobenius. These have been my major teachers.”
“Man and Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell,” Psychology Today, July 1971
For me, it was both. Psychedelics – particularly LSD – opened that door. It wasn’t something I did to “party,” but to explore and find out more about myself – the deep Self – a task I approached with discipline and commitment, akin to the decades-long study of my dreams (in the process discovering the amazing resonance between the dream state and the psychedelic state).
The works of Campbell, Jung, Grof, and others helped me process those psychedelic experiences, in the same way Jung and Campbell and Hillman and others helped me process my dream life – these scholars, and the myths they explore, providing the clues that helped me “to pay attention” to the emergence of mythic forms in my own life.
But it started with acid, which provided an in-depth encounter with the personal and collective unconscious, along with the certainty that, in Joe’s words, archetypes “are as real as tables and chairs.”
What I did with that, and how I engaged those pre-existing energies, is where the personal comes in to play.
Shaahayda writes
Is Joe referring to one’s personal mythic forms?”
Not exactly – or rather, yes and no. Campbell is discussing what he discovered in the books in his library, which, unless they are addressed to him specifically, don’t contain “personal mythic forms”; rather, they reveal the workings of the unconscious in general, which does seem the subject under discussion. That’s the “no” part.
At the same time, it’s his introduction to the depths of the unconscious that allowed him to recognize how these were playing out in his own life – which is the “yes” part.
Sam Keen had just asked Campbell about the use of LSD and psychedelics in the Sixties. Here is a little more context:
“I think drugs have uncovered the unconscious depths in a society that is lopsidedly rational and evaluative. They have shown many people that the archetypes are in the unconscious. They are as real as tables and chairs. But the drug culture has been caught in the fuzzy end of things . . .
I prefer the gradual path––the way of study. My feeling is that mythic forms reveal themselves gradually in the course of your life if you know what they are and how to pay attention to their emergence. My own initiation into the mythical depths of the unconscious has been through the mind, through the books that surround me in this library. I have recognized in my quest all the stages of the hero’s journey. I had my calls to adventure, guides, demons and illuminations. In the conflict between the Celtic-Arthurian and the Roman Catholic myths, I discovered much about the tensions that shaped my past. I also studied primitive myths and Hinduism and later Joyce, Mann, Jung, Spengler and Frobenius. These have been my major teachers.”
“Man and Myth: A Conversation with Joseph Campbell,” Psychology Today, July 1971
For me, it was both. Psychedelics – particularly LSD – opened that door. It wasn’t something I did to “party,” but to explore and find out more about myself – the deep Self – a task I approached with discipline and commitment, akin to the decades-long study of my dreams (in the process discovering the amazing resonance between the dream state and the psychedelic state).
The works of Campbell, Jung, Grof, and others helped me process those psychedelic experiences, in the same way Jung and Campbell and Hillman and others helped me process my dream life – these scholars, and the myths they explore, providing the clues that helped me “to pay attention” to the emergence of mythic forms in my own life.
But it started with acid, which provided an in-depth encounter with the personal and collective unconscious, along with the certainty that, in Joe’s words, archetypes “are as real as tables and chairs.”
What I did with that, and how I engaged those pre-existing energies, is where the personal comes in to play.
Thank you, Tiago, for sharing this.
A couple questions:
Do participants need to be fluent in the Portuguese language?
And could you provide a sense of what form this will take? Is this a discussion group? And what results are expected (e.g., should participants plan to come to some sort of consensus conclusion? And is everyone expected to publish papers)?
Thanks – I figure the more info you can provide, the more likely individuals might be persuaded to participate.
Shaahayda,
Joseph Campbell’s reference to this guidance from Heinrich Zimmer is repeated in work after work after work, almost as often as he mentions the four functions of mythology, and phrased slightly differently each time, sometimes with more precision, sometimes less. Comparing all of these, along with the various formations in lectures, Campbell’s meaning becomes clear.
Here is my understanding:
First Best Things:
what are beyond words, beyond conception, beyond time and space – impossible to put into words.Second Best Things:
these are “second best” because they are attempts to talk about what is beyond words with words (i.e. attempts to talk about words by means of the Third Best Things), which is why they are misunderstood.Third Best Things: everyday conversation.
My old mentor, Heinrich Zimmer, had a little saying: the best things can’t be told—they are transcendent, inexpressible truths. The second-best are misunderstood: . . . metaphoric attempts to point the way toward the first. And the third-best have to do with history, science, biography, and so on. The only kind of talking that can be understood is this last kind. When you want to talk about the first kind, that which can’t be said, you use the third kind as communication to the first. But people read it as referring to the third directly; the image is no longer transparent to the transcendent.” (Pathways to Bliss)
“My friend Heinrich Zimmer used to say the best things can’t be said. This is one of them. The second best are misunderstood. That’s because the second best are using the objects of time and space to refer to transcendence. And they are always misunderstood by being interpreted in terms of time and space. The third best: that’s conversation. We’re using the third best in order to talk about the first and second best.” (The Hero’s Journey)
An example he sometimes uses is “God” – a mystery beyond human perception and conception. Most talk of God in religion uses words from every day conversation (God is “good” – or just, or vengeful, or merciful, or eternal . . . all of which are human qualities that are employed in a futile attempt to convey what transcends all conceptualization). Very much like trying to describe the color red to someone blind from birth (“red is hot” or “red means stop” or red is bright and cheery – all of which mean nothing to someone who never has and never will experience “red”), these efforts are misunderstood
. . . except by those who have had an experience of the transcendent (as Jung said, when asked if he believed in God, “I don’t need to believe – I know”).
Zimmer’s formulation is particularly relevant to discussions of mythology because of Campbell’s emphasis on myth as a prime example of second best things (i.e. metaphorical attempts to point the way toward the first best things).
That doesn’t make your question any less valid or intriguing; I suspect most misunderstandings are a result of gaps between the thoughts of two or more people – differences in expectation, understanding, emphasis, and nuance. But unless the misunderstanding you had 50 years ago revolved around a discussion of transcendent mysteries, it’s likely not an example of those “second best things.”
You write
Does one ever realize what was misunderstood? I ask this question, because it’s after 50 years, and just recently through a conversation, I realized I misunderstood, misjudged, misinterpreted, a pivotal event in my life. Had I not misunderstood, I would have not lived the life I am now living.”
It is rare to realize what has been misunderstood (especially when one’s whole life is built upon that misunderstanding). You don’t mention whether this misunderstanding was fortunate, or unfortunate – but sounds like the Trickster is in play here.
Campbell’s advice? To say “yea” to it all: “If you say no to any detail of your life, you’ve said no to the whole web because everything is so interlocked.”
I am curious what your reaction was when you realized there had been a misunderstanding. Shock? Regret? Or an “aha!” moment, where suddenly everything makes sense?
Shaahayda,
Joseph Campbell’s reference to this guidance from Heinrich Zimmer is repeated in work after work after work, almost as often as he mentions the four functions of mythology, and phrased slightly differently each time, sometimes with more precision, sometimes less. Comparing all of these, along with the various formations in lectures, Campbell’s meaning becomes clear.
Here is my understanding:
First Best Things:
what are beyond words, beyond conception, beyond time and space – impossible to put into words.Second Best Things:
these are “second best” because they are attempts to talk about what is beyond words with words (i.e. attempts to talk about words by means of the Third Best Things), which is why they are misunderstood.Third Best Things: everyday conversation.
My old mentor, Heinrich Zimmer, had a little saying: the best things can’t be told—they are transcendent, inexpressible truths. The second-best are misunderstood: . . . metaphoric attempts to point the way toward the first. And the third-best have to do with history, science, biography, and so on. The only kind of talking that can be understood is this last kind. When you want to talk about the first kind, that which can’t be said, you use the third kind as communication to the first. But people read it as referring to the third directly; the image is no longer transparent to the transcendent.” (Pathways to Bliss)
“My friend Heinrich Zimmer used to say the best things can’t be said. This is one of them. The second best are misunderstood. That’s because the second best are using the objects of time and space to refer to transcendence. And they are always misunderstood by being interpreted in terms of time and space. The third best: that’s conversation. We’re using the third best in order to talk about the first and second best.” (The Hero’s Journey)
An example he sometimes uses is “God” – a mystery beyond human perception and conception. Most talk of God in religion uses words from every day conversation (God is “good” – or just, or vengeful, or merciful, or eternal . . . all of which are human qualities that are employed in a futile attempt to convey what transcends all conceptualization). Very much like trying to describe the color red to someone blind from birth (“red is hot” or “red means stop” or red is bright and cheery – all of which mean nothing to someone who never has and never will experience “red”), these efforts are misunderstood
. . . except by those who have had an experience of the transcendent (as Jung said, when asked if he believed in God, “I don’t need to believe – I know”).
Zimmer’s formulation is particularly relevant to discussions of mythology because of Campbell’s emphasis on myth as a prime example of second best things (i.e. metaphorical attempts to point the way toward the first best things).
That doesn’t make your question any less valid or intriguing; I suspect most misunderstandings are a result of gaps between the thoughts of two or more people – differences in expectation, understanding, emphasis, and nuance. But unless the misunderstanding you had 50 years ago revolved around a discussion of transcendent mysteries, it’s likely not an example of those “second best things.”
You write
Does one ever realize what was misunderstood? I ask this question, because it’s after 50 years, and just recently through a conversation, I realized I misunderstood, misjudged, misinterpreted, a pivotal event in my life. Had I not misunderstood, I would have not lived the life I am now living.”
It is rare to realize what has been misunderstood (especially when one’s whole life is built upon that misunderstanding). You don’t mention whether this misunderstanding was fortunate, or unfortunate – but sounds like the Trickster is in play here.
Campbell’s advice? To say “yea” to it all: “If you say no to any detail of your life, you’ve said no to the whole web because everything is so interlocked.”
I am curious what your reaction was when you realized there had been a misunderstanding. Shock? Regret? Or an “aha!” moment, where suddenly everything makes sense?
This isn’t a question so much as a passing comment on the figure of Ariadne.
Roughly a decade ago I presented a lecture at the Gaia festival on the love of Dionysus and Ariadne. The deeper I delved into that imagery, the more I found their myth to be a bottomless well; I did my best to capture and convey a bit of the magic, but nothing I shared about Ariadne came close to Florentine author Roberto Calasso, whom I discovered the following year. He elegantly draws together so many conflicting accounts to embrace the paradox contained in her image:
Mythical figures live many lives, die many deaths, and in this they differ from the characters we find in novels, who can never go beyond the single gesture. But in each of these lives and deaths all the others are present, and we can hear their echo. Only when we become aware of a sudden consistency between incompatibles can we say we have crossed the threshold of myth. Abandoned in Naxos, Ariadne was shot dead by Artemis’s arrow; Dionysus ordered the killing and stood watching, motionless. Or: Ariadne hung herself in Naxos, after being left by Theseus. Or: pregnant by Theseus and shipwrecked on Naxos, she died there in childbirth. Or: Dionysus came to Ariadne in Naxos, together with his band of followers; they celebrated a divine marriage, after which she rose into the sky, where we still see her today amid the northern constellations. Or: Dionysus came to Ariadne in Naxos, after which she followed him around on his adventures, sharing his bed and fighting with his soldiers; when Dionysus attacked Perseus in the country near Argos, Ariadne went with him, armed to fight amid the ranks of the crazed Bacchants, until Perseus shook the deadly face of Medusa in front of her and Ariadne was turned to stone. And there she stayed, a stone in the field.
No other woman, or goddess, had so many deaths as Ariadne. That stone in Argos, that constellation in the sky, that hanging corpse, that death by childbirth, that girl with an arrow through her breast: Ariadne was all this.
Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony
This passage resonates on so many levels. The Female God of the Labyrinth is more than just a silly, lovestruck princess, to be abandoned on the beach once one’s monster is slain. Theseus may have completed his task, sparing Athens its human tribute, but he missed the boat (pun intended) when he let Ariadne miss the boat . . .
I’ll jump in on that, Mike, as I happen to have the reference at hand.
In the 3rd revised edition of the Hero with a Thousand Faces (© 2008 JCF, published by New World Library), it’s near the end of “The Road of Trials” section of the Initiation chapter, p. 89.
In the Princeton 2nd edition (which is text on the shelves of people who secured a copy between 1968 and 2008), it’s on p. 108.
Thanks, Cheryl, for drawing that connection. The proliferation of new tarot decks by contemporary artists certainly increases availability and access to one of the best tools for activating the mythic imagination, one I regularly draw on myself (I don’t often use the Rider-Waite cards; my go-to deck is the Haindl Tarot, created by the late German artist Herman Haindl, which adapts mythological imagery; the feeling-tone it conveys stimulates my imagination – I’ll post an image of Haindl’s Moon from the Major Arcana below. Sometimes I just love looking at the differences and similarities among the same card from multiple decks, knowing none are “right” or “wrong” but add additional layers and dimensions).
Just as dreams are valuable in helping uncover one’s personal mythology, so is the tarot, as well as other forms of divination. That’s worthy of a conversation all it’s own, rather than a post buried in a thread more focused on dreams.
Perhaps you wouldn’t mind starting a thread on the subject of the tarot as a tool for discovering one’s personal myth. I believe that would be valuable info for other forum participants (though might just be thee and me posting there at first). All you have to do is either click on the “Exploring Your Personal Mythology” breadcrumb at the top of this conversation (or click on this link), then scroll past the other topics and post your comment in the form at the bottom of the page (with a relevant topic title).
