Stephen Gerringer
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Mars,
Sorry to take so long to respond. Exchanges on these message boards unfold at a much more leisurely pace than the speed of social media. When I read something profound, I often have to let it sit and simmer in the back of my mind for several days for the full flavor to come through. I have to say your words certainly strike a chord (speaking of “hitting the bull’s eye”).
What resonates most for me is your concluding thought:
On metaphors, the menu is not the meal: your perception of reality is not the reality, but only your perception of it, and hence it is not the reality. Ceci, c’est n’est pas une pipe. Your senses are impaired, your vocation crippled.”
Yes! A thousand times, yes!
When we encounter an object in the external world, we don’t observe the actual “thing in itself” (Kant’s dinge an sich), but an image formed by our senses (not that this is anything new for you). The rose I see is perceived differently by a dog, or a butterfly, or an amoeba encountering that same rose. Our senses, in conjunction with the mind (considered a sixth sense in Hindu/Buddhist metaphysics), in effect construct the universe out of metaphors – the subjective sensory images we perceive. Archetypal psychologist James Hillman offers imagination as the organ through which we perceive and engage “reality” – which could be described as a projection of the interior world onto the external universe.
I find myself bringing this back to myth (as metaphor), which then serves as both the womb, and the substance, of experienced reality.
We can expand this theme and approach mundane reality as we would a dream, where everything we experience, everything we encounter, has a symbolic value that deepens and enriches life. Life as a waking dream is a perspective adopted by the many cultures that value oracles. Hence, everything bears significance: the appearance of a rainbow or an abrupt shift in the flight of a bird speaks volumes to an African pygmy or Australian aborigine, as does an I Ching spread to a Taoist adept. “All that exists is but a metaphor,” to paraphrase Campbell’s favorite quote from Goethe (“Alles Verganglich ist nur ein Gleichnis.”). We can interpret, analyze, and engage the stuff of life just as we can the stuff of dream, if we view life with a mythic eye.
Does embracing the metaphor that consensus reality is as illusory and transitory as dream somehow negate the searing pain I feel when I touch a hot stove? Hardly. On one plane, I can recognize that I “am One with” a brick wall – but it doesn’t follow that I’ll decide to physically become one with that wall while zipping along the freeway at ninety miles an hour. That would be reading the metaphor a mite literal . . .
The mythical perspective is in addition to that of waking consciousness – not to replace rational thought and ego consciousness, but deepening and enhancing our experience.
Shaheda,
Your dreamtime encounters with the deceased mirror my own experiences last summer into fall (August through November of 2019). During that time I was visited by a host of shades: my late mother (who passed the previous year) appeared with my father in one dream I recorded, and on her own in three other dreams (in fact, this “I see dead people” dream series began with a dream where my mother breathed into my mouth – not artificial respiration, but gently blowing warm breath as a ritual act of sorts); a good male friend who passed some 14 or 15 years ago, at age 49, appeared in two dreams (in one of which I recounted for him a tale of Zeus shattering the gold and glass body of the son of Hecate with a thunderbolt – though I am unaware of Hecate having a son); a former girlfriend and one of my best friends, whom I had known since seventh grade, appeared in two dreams; another romantic interest, 13 years my junior, who beyond our brief dalliance also became one of my closest friends, only to die a few weeks shy of her 49th birthday, showed up in a significant dream; another good friend in his seventies appeared in a dream of mine just weeks before his passing in October; and then a trio of well-known figures who had recently passed – Philip Seymour Hoffman, Leonard Nimoy, and billionaire David Koch – put in cameo appearances.
Several possible explanations come to mind – one of which may be that you and I, Shaheda, are people of a certain age, who know a good many more friends, relatives, and confidantes who have passed away than we did at age 20 … or 30 … or 40 (I’ll stop there, but you get the idea); as a result, could just be there’s an expanding pool of friends who have died that our psyches can draw on to populate our dreams.
The other possibility – just as likely, if not more so – is that the images of the dead serve as a bridge, whether to the underworld (“the other side”), or to Jung’s “collective unconscious,” bringing, as you put it, “messages from the other side of the veil” – which resonates with the dream act of Mary passing in the carriage with her grandparents over the Bridge of Gold and Silver into the otherworld. (Frankly, I’m not terribly concerned about drawing a distinction between the realm of the dead and the collective psyche; subtle differences there may be, but the congruence between the two seems apparent).
I can make personal and mythic associations in such instances to the circumstances of my waking life (and I do) . . . but, in my experience, these are far more than just abstract symbols.
For example, my mother died at the end of the first week of June in 2018; exactly two weeks before she passed, I encountered in dream my best friend Lisa (who had succumbed to cancer a few months before, at the age of 48 – exactly half my mother’s age). We met in a doorway, as I was passing into a rustic lodge of some sort, and she was heading out. We fell into animated conversation – felt like we had so much to say to each other, so much catching up to do – and enjoyed a sweet exchange there on the threshold.
Lisa paused a moment to let me know she had been asked to use her place to host a party for my mother. She seemed about to say more, but then turned her head, as if becoming aware of some interruption. She peered back into the room to her right, seemed to recognize someone, called out “Hi Diane!” – and then turned back, smiled at me, and continued on her way. I looked past the door in the direction Lisa had been looking, and there, on a couch, was my sister, Diane, hair disheveled, face bloated, expression a grimace, looking as if she had had a rough night.
I stepped through the doorway, and then I woke.
As I opened my eyes in the waking world, I automatically reached for my phone. Turns out a text had landed at exactly that moment – 7 a.m. – from my sister; though I don’t recall consciously hearing it, that “ding!” must be what interrupted the dream! Diane’s text was alerting me to a change in plans later in the day; she was feeling under the weather after a shitty night’s sleep, having been awake since 2 a.m.
Frankly, I had spaced that we had plans to meet later in the day to discuss my mother’s situation. We don’t see each other that often, she wasn’t in the habit of texting me, and I don’t have different ring tones or message alerts for different individuals, so there is no reason my brain would have expected my sister was be texting me and so translated that realization into a subconscious dream image.
What I found myself wondering is, “How did Dream Lisa know?” The text from my sister alerting me she was sick interrupted the dream – just as, in the dream, my conversation with Lisa was interrupted when she turned to acknowledge my sister, who was clearly not well. (Lisa had met Diane only once, in passing, many years before – little reason for my psyche to connect the two.)
Dream Lisa telling me she was preparing a welcoming party for my mother might possibly be explained away as a function of subconscious associations: Lisa had died shortly before, my mother was dying now, so could easily be a soothing production of my unconscious psyche, reconciling me to the inevitable – there is a sort of logic to that.
But there is no way Lisa within my dream could have known that a message outside the dream from my sister was interrupting our exchange … and yet she did.
Not the only time an encounter in dream with a resident of the otherworld / underworld has bent the bonds of time and space, but this remains one of my favorites. Definitely reassuring to know preparations for my dying mother’s arrival were under way on the other side . . .
Mary,
Thank you for sharing your Big Dream, Mary! I find it enchanting, and appreciate your personal and mythic associations and amplifications. Clearly this dream has deep resonance, providing guidance and support throughout your life. Though I do enjoy discussing dreams, this one needs no elucidation from me (though each image triggers layer upon layer of associations in my mind, anything I add would reflect my concerns and the engagement of my waking consciousness, in the same way the imagery from another culture’s mythology can nevertheless stir one’s soul).
You write,
The patterns in one’s dreams as you discuss often coincide with patterns in our lives. Sometimes I have been surprised by how, looking back, I can see that a dream series involving a pattern has had such keys to unlock psyche and meanings of events in my life. Why did this or that have to happen? What was my dream pressing to tell me? Why did I wake from this dream feeling like there is something more I need to know? What does my psyche hold in its deep and/or dark that I should work on to improve myself and my life?”
So very true. I certainly will ask such questions when reviewing my dreams. At the same time, thanks in part to James Hillman’s influence, I have come accept that the dream realm is independent of, rather than in service to, waking consciousness; a dream is an animal in its own right (to paraphrase Hillman), whose intention is not to convey a specific, exclusive message for me.
Of course, when we practice dream work, the usual question is “What does the dream mean?” (though it sounds similar, I believe that is a much more simplistic approach, in search of a definitive, black-and-white answer, than the series of questions you shared in your approach to your dreams). Interpretation is thought to aim at meaning – but no dream dictionary will capture that ethereal flow. Dreams are beyond meaning, not at all linear and literal; dreams instead suggest a holographic structure with a multitude of meanings, parallel and paradox, enfolded in each image – much the same as the imagery of music, poetry, theater, and the other arts . . .
What, after all, is the meaning of those first four notes of Beethoven’s fifth, or that F-sharp buried in the middle of a Tchaikovsky suite? What is the meaning of a color dancing through a Jackson Pollack painting, or the tone Jerry Garcia wrings from his guitar?
That doesn’t mean I don’t find meaning in dreams, the same way one can find “meaning” in other natural phenomena (oracles, for example: a shaman may find affirmation, insight, or warning in an abrupt deviation of the flight of birds, or the way smoke unfurls when burning sage), but that’s a meaning I bring to it when I engage these images. Meaning arises in subjective consciousness – but even within one person different possibilities arise, in response to the manifold layers of association embedded in each image presented to consciousness. In inner work, multiple and sometimes contradictory interpretations serve to flesh out the vapors of dream, and so paint a multidimensional portrait of the polymorphic psyche.
I understand and embrace the differentiation between little (personal) dreams and Big (archetypal) dreams, as Jung (and Campbell, following Jung) explains it – yet I’m not wedded to that distinction. Certainly I’ve experienced dreams that are of an order and magnitude far beyond my little subjective ego concerns – and yet I’ve recorded so many hundred of dreams over the years and find the line between “little” and “big” is not always so clear.
[Dreamtime] is the time you get into when you go to sleep and have a dream that talks about permanent conditions within your own psyche as they relate to the temporal conditions of your life right now…
Now the level of dream of “Will I pass this exam?” or “Should I marry this girl?” – that is purely personal. But on another level, the problem of passing an exam is not simply a personal problem. Everyone has to pass a threshold of some kind. That is an archetypal thing. So there is a basic mythological theme there even though it is a personal dream. These two levels – the personal aspect and then the big general problem of which the person’s problem is a local example – are found in all cultures.
(Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, p. 47)
When I return months or years later to a dream recorded in my journal, I find the clearly personal elements that speak so clearly to my circumstances at the time of the dream now open out onto something deeper, something more; the further I go beyond the subjective layer, the more clearly I apprehend even the most mundane images opening a door into the archetypal realms of the collective psyche.
Subtle nuances speak volumes in dream. Pun imagery, verbal or visceral, humorous or obscure, runs rampant. Dream images, like all components of psyche, are fluid, quicksilver – and quicksilver, mercury, is ruled by Hermes, a trickster, god of communication (and miscommunication). Wherever one thing is also another, whether symbolic ritual or trivial pun, Hermes hides in the ambiguity, cloaked in paradox, putting the alchemical flavor into dream work.
In dream we are immersed in the stuff of poetry – images wet, electric, self-luminous, and fluid – a nighttime sensurround toon town theater in 3-D, in which we are sometimes audience, sometimes extra, sometimes star – at times, all three. Here we dance in elysian fields, bathe in the wellsprings of creativity and pure imagination. Is it any wonder patterns we find there point to energies manifesting in waking realities?
Dream helps us relate to these patterns, and can bring us into a conscious harmony with the natural rhythms of life – but that’s just one aspect, and not my default starting point. Rather, when a dream follows me up from the depths of the psyche and past the threshold of consciousness into waking life, my initial response is aesthetic arrest. I return to it time and again, not to penetrate its secret meaning, but to revel in the experience and appreciate the beauty, color, and relationship of the imagery (to one another, and to the whole) within the field of the dream.
Over time, individual images evoke associations and cry out for amplification, and something personal and powerful gets going . . . but my immediate reaction is simply
Wow!
Shaheda – perhaps you could post a link to your paper on death and dying and end-of-life care in our Share Your Work Corner?
Just chased awake for the third time tonight by a series of what most folks would call nightmares; I tend to think of them more as dream noir – elaborate, compelling presentations of dark themes amid an aura of danger.
Dreams the past week have been dark and luminous, fluid, electric, richly textured, colors deep and saturated, populated by figures known and unknown that form a network of complex, entangled relationships, offering passing flashes of potential futures.
Gratitude to Morpheus, who nightly conducts us to the netherworld of dream and unfettered imagination, of which the day world is but a ripple …
Curious to see what the next dream set brings.
Love “Come Together,” Mary.
Here is one of my favorites – the “Playing for Change” version of the Grateful Dead’s Ripple, performed by musicians from around the world (including Jimmy Buffet and David Crosby, as well as Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann and Jerry Garcia’s daughter Keelin, and a host of stellar musicians I did not previously know):
COHO’s filter holds posts with multiple links for approval, as that’s a common attribute of spam. Once we approve a post that includes multiple links, that person should be able to include more than one link in a post in the future without waiting for approval.
However, seems the filter also holds post that just includes a raw link: for example, if you say “I found this on https://www.jcf.org ” instead of “I found this at JCF” – so please use the hyperlink icon in your menu when posting links to somewhere else (looks a little like a diagonal paper clip).
Hope that helps . . .
I experienced the same sensation earlier when I visited your Meet & Greet post, typed my paragraph about a new dream topic, clicked submit, then noticed all the other posts in this thread had disappeared (I figured it was something I did).
Turned out the conversation in your Meet & Greet thread is so long that it merited a second page! (The initial post is pinned to the top of each new page in the thread, I assume so folks can refer back and stay more or less on topic).
Scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see a tiny 1 and 2. Click back a page, and you’ll be able to find Mary Ann’s post.
Mission Accomplished!
Lots of prep work last week for those of us active in the Foundation in advance of Sunday, when we delivered reports to JCF’s Board of Directors regarding our various areas of responsibility. With that behind me, I turned my attention back to these discussion boards, composing responses to several existing posts, as well as creating a few new topics – including a dream post in the Conversations with a Thousand Faces forum, titled Dream a Little Dream . . .
See you there!
Mary – just over a month has passed since your post here; I hope some of those shadow energies you were dealing with have dissipated over that time (not that the Shadow ever completely goes away).
And thank you, James, for posting these clips, which seem especially relevant in these Shadow-driven times.
I love Campbell’s description in the first clip above of the Shadow as a blind spot for ego (ego being essentially ” I,” “me,” how I experience/perceive myself – the face of one’s waking consciousness, so to speak.). As Joe succinctly points out in the second video snippet,
“The Shadow is the rejected, frightening aspect of your experience of life which then gets projected on to people – the ‘you’ that you are refusing to admit. It has terrifying, threatening qualities, but also encloses values, positive goals – values that you have not allowed to come into your life.”
That final clause is so important. “Shadow” does not equal “evil,” though whether its contents be positive or negative, it’s generally perceived, at least initially, as threatening to one’s conscious ego. Thanks to Joseph Campbell (and even more so, Carl Jung), I have learned to embrace my shadow, and that has made all the difference in the world, deeply enriching my experience of life.
Of course, Shadow is indeed that blind spot, a part of me I do not see that drives my behavior when ignored (sometimes, in extremes, almost to the point of possession).
My ego tends to think it is in charge – king of my psyche, so to speak, making only conscious, rational objective choices – so it’s particularly threatening and disruptive to my sense of myself to think some other entity might be making decisions for me (not realizing that this “other” is actually part of me).
Usually my first hint of shadow-driven behavior comes when my wife brings up something I do that she finds annoying, or a friend makes a joke (“that’s just like Steve”) that is at odds with the self-image in my head – observations that sting. (At least now, when I find myself getting a mite defensive, thanks to Jung I eventually realize that’s a clue to something I’m ignoring about myself – and once I stop ignoring it, the sting goes away.)
But where it really kicks in is with the nightmare.
These dreams tend to follow a general pattern: I’m in a house, apartment, or other setting where ruffians, gangbangers, thugs, criminals, zombies, or some such fearsome folk, individually or in a group, are trying to break into where I am – and the “Dream Me” is running around in a fever pitch, frantically trying to close windows and lock doors before they come in (often the locks don’t function, or the doors are rickety and none too secure even when I do manage to close everything in time). These dream personifications generally signify memories, traits, inclinations, and tendencies that I have stuffed, repressed, or hidden away (usually unconscious, on my part), but are surfacing, emerging from the unconscious, because they are relevant to my current circumstances.
Whether good, ill, or a mix of both, these are particularly disturbing to my ego, so I do my best to keep them from coming up – but these dream images are so frightening and terrifying to the waking me that they chase me back up out of the unconscious and I wake in an agitated state.
Through years of recording and working with my dreams, I am much better than I used to be at staying within the dream and opening the door to these threatening figures (though sometimes it takes two or three nights of this recurring pattern before I stop trying to shut them out or flee). Lo and behold, once I do open the door and face what had been frightening to me, these figures change (e.g. a threatening Doberman morphs into a playful golden retriever, or the gangbanger I feared turns out to be a gentle friend who offers me a beverage), the nightmarish quality evaporates and my memory of the dream on waking is suffused with a warm glow.
Of course, that doesn’t happen because I consciously will a change within the dream; rather, I’ve generally noticed the shadow threatening me in the dreams I record, which clue me in that there’s something I’m burying – so I start working with that, journaling about it, working with and “talking to” that scary image, asking it questions, which gives me a sense of what I am ignoring. As what had been unconscious becomes clearer, breaking through into waking consciousness in the day world, that change is reflected in my dreams.
But confronting and embracing the shadow can be frightening and traumatic – and even more so when we don’t recognize our shadow as shadow, but project those negative qualities out onto others.
There’s a lot of that going around at the moment in the larger world (major understatement, I know). Shadow is all over the news right now, permeating social media (as reflected, for example, in the behavior of so many “Karens” toward those who are different), and so much more. So many racial incidents the past few years, culminating in the George Floyd murder, are bringing our collective national shadow into consciousness as we come to terms with a seamy underbelly to American society that we have long ignored. It’s not easy confronting the Shadow, individually or collectively, much less embracing it, which is why there is so much turbulence and turmoil loose on the land.
Also wrapped up in our collective shadow is the rejection of science and reliance on magical thinking, whether in regards to the coronavirus crisis, or climate change and global warming, not to mention all the bizarre, paranoid elements of QAnon conspiracy theories infecting so many otherwise previously normal folks. There are significant segments of society, starting at the very top with the individual carrying our collective ego (if there is such a thing) in the Oval Office, which would be horrified to admit that our collective shadow even exists (“all lives matter”) , much less be willing to confront and embrace it, so there are very active, determined, persistent efforts to stuff, repress, and deny the very shadow behaviors that have brought us to where we are today.
As I process what’s going on outside my door, I am trying my best to step outside the paradigm of good and evil (have to admit it ain’t easy!), and frame the social dynamic more as a tension between consciousness and the unconscious collective shadow.
I have been impressed with the expansion of conscious awareness during the protests in late May and June – so many people I know have had a striking satori of sorts, tumbling at long last to an awareness of the real world experience of those born with brown skin in America, and so many have as a result changed their attitudes and behaviors for the better. That’s why we need to be aware not just of the negative consequences of our collective shadow, but also be looking for those “positive goals, positive values” contained in Shadow. They really are there, if we look in the right places.
Nevertheless, there is a counter-reaction as well – so much turmoil, anger, and active resistance to acknowledging that black lives really haven’t mattered much for so many of us born with the right skin color, along with resistance to the medical and scientific expertise on which our lives depend during the pandemic, and so much more. Ironically, many people I personally know who are among the most hostile, vocal, and vociferous in their responses are generally kind, well-intentioned, salt-of-the-earth people in most other areas of their lives. Most (but far from all) aren’t what I think of as evil in their interactions with friends, family, and neighbors in their day-to-day lives, but a great number could be described as, well, clueless to the unconscious dynamics driving their actions.
Their statements and actions reveal more about them than they know themselves (just as others can observe clues to my shadow in my own opinions and actions).
Is there a resolution in sight?
Hard to tell – but I don’t think the answer is to battle these forces to the death. Conquest of “the enemy” is itself a function of our collective shadow; the answer is not to fight (and, with no little irony, repress) those who exhibit these behaviors – that only feeds and strengthens our collective shadow. Yes, we should vote, we should be as active in our civic participation as possible – but what ultimately succeeds is not conflict, but the expansion of consciousness: bringing the shadow into the light.
I do wish I had a handy-dandy ten point program for doing that – but there is no quick, easy, and permanent fix. It takes commitment and compassion over the long haul to change that dynamic. And, though this, too, will pass – we will get beyond the current crises – the Shadow will always be with us. Even if we come up with an effective vaccine and treatments for Covid, even if we “solve” racism and reverse the worst effects of the climate crisis, other issues will arise.
However, I am grateful to Campbell and Jung and so many others for expanding my understanding of these unconscious processes in terms of my self, and the larger society as a whole.
As Lamont Cranston from those old time radio shows would say, “The Shadow knows . . . “
Johanna writes
Stephen-I am catholic and while that is troublesome on many levels it has given me some inkling into the magnificent and what is beyond our limitations to only accept epistemological evidence of what is. So-a prayer is held in my heart for your and your family’s safety in dealing with the conditions where you are.
Thank you, Johanna, for your prayers, which I will never discount. And though I understand what you mean when you allude to catholicism as “troublesome on so many levels,” nevertheless I am blown away by the accent on so much mythological imagery within that faith (more so, it seems to me, than most other Christian denominations, apart from maybe the Greek Orthodox communion).
My wife and I visited Italy two summers ago, our first trip there. Even apart from so many mythological artifacts from pre-christian cultures (Etruscan and Greek as well as Roman), and the mythological themes of so much Renaissance art, I was inspired by the Christian (as well as pagan) mythological imagery found in church settings. St. Peter’s was a mythic epiphany, as was the Sistine Chapel – who needs a sermon when everywhere one looks are mythological images that, to borrow a phrase from Campbell, “bypass the head and dilate the heart.” Mass at the Vatican was every bit as moving and profound for me as Buddhist, Hindu, and Native American ceremonies I’ve attended.
I wish you the best as you embark on the new academic year – and I share your fears, and your hopes, for the planet.
Welcome, Bill,
Bless Bill Moyers for those six episodes of the Power of Myth, airing on PBS some six months after Joseph Campbell passed, which introduced his mythological perspective to so many. Though Campbell was well known among a relatively small circle of scholars and creative artists (from George Lucas to the Grateful Dead) while alive, it was his wife, award-winning dancer and choreographer Jean Erdman who was the famous member of the family (he occasionally joked about being referred to as Mr. Erdman). Joe had no idea he’d achieve fame after he died.
As for your question, it can be difficult finding degree programs in myth. Rather than having its own field, mythology is generally treated as the bastard-child of academia, with courses in mythology usually part of some other discipline: anthropology, folklore, comparative religions, art, depth psychology (heck, even Joseph Campbell himself spent his teaching career in the literature department at Sarah Lawrence).
Here are a couple possibilities: Pacifica Graduate Institute, in Carpinteria (next door to Santa Barbara), California, has Master’s and Ph.D. programs in Mythological Studies (Joseph Campbell’s personal library of some 3,000 books is housed at Pacifica, and the OPUS Archives and Research Center located on campus includes the Joseph Campbell Collection)
And the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco offers programs in Archetypal Mythology (Campbell, Jung, Hillman, etc.) and Applied Mythology. (I believe they might offer online as well as on campus courses). I’m not so sure about schools outside California.
Hope that info helps.
Feel free to poke around, check out the other forums (though I’ll admit I’m surprised at all the vibrant, interesting exchanges even here in the “Meet & Greet” forum). You can just read, jump into an ongoing conversation, or start a discussion on a topic that interests you (if you’re not sure where to post, try the Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum – it’s our catch-all category for whatever doesn’t seem to fit elsewhere).
Bliss On!
I will endeavor to create a dream topic at some point today or early tomorrow – likely in the Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum.
The darker hypnagogic imagery intrigues me . . .
Shaheda and Mary Ann – I am definitely enjoying the conversation (I’m pleasantly surprised the “Meet & Greet” forum has actually provided a platform for so many profound, in-depth discussions, though it would be nice to nudge some of those participants to share some of those deep thoughts in some of the other forum categories here in COHO).
Along that line, I apologize for being slow to getting around to a initiating a dream discussion … though there is no rule that says everyone has to wait for me to bring that up.
(And this is where one of those winking face emoticons would come in handy – a sign of how successful Facebook has conditioned me.)
Linda, I’ll admit curiosity about your thesis on the principles of storytelling. If you don’t mind my asking, where are you matriculating? You mention your Ph.D. program is tied to education and teaching – is that the field your degree will be in?
At JCF we do everything we can to advance the study of myth – but mythology is in many ways the strange bastard child of academia. Only rarely is it its own field (Pacifica Graduate Institute comes to mind, and I believe Sonoma State in California offered a degree in myth at one point); usually mythology is a subset of some other field: cultural anthropology, religious studies, , folklore – heck, even Joseph Campbell himself taught in the literature department at Sarah Lawrence.
As for storytelling, I believe that is essential to teaching. For a number of years I taught English and Literature (and, occasionally, especially when on the wrong side of whomever happened to be principal that year, a section or two of algebra – not exactly my dessert class) in my junior high classroom. Storytelling was key to whatever success I enjoyed (even when teaching math!). In the years since, I fill in a few days a month for old friends and colleagues – and even when subbing, storytelling proves crucial, even when discussing the most mundane matters (heck, the kids respond so much better to an anecdote about little Donnie Gardner’s use of bathroom privileges in my classroom lo so many decades ago, and are far more understanding, than just having the rules laid down for them).
I am curious if you relate the principles of storytelling you uncover to the field of education – and would love to know who else, besides Campbell, you cite (whether Paul Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative, to Shel Silverstein and everything in between.
