Stephen Gerringer
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Thanks, Mary, for emphasizing Johanna’s point about the suffering of Christ.
All too often those of us drawn to myth tend to overlook or ignore the Judeo-Christian-Islamic mythological nexus that informs modern society. Could be we are just drawn to what is sparkly and exotic, whereas the myths of the culture we grew up seems just the same-old same-old to many of us.
That’s a fruitful area for research for mythologists (maybe those from a culture outside the western nexus could better explore this, unencumbered by our baggage). Campbell does touch on this in Occidental Mythology (the third of four volumes in The Masks of God tetralogy), and Thou Art That. And then David Miller, professor emeritus of comparative religion and friend and colleague of Joe’s who served on JCF’s Board of Directors, goes there in his Christs: Meditations on Archetypal Images in Christian Theology, and Hells and Holy Ghosts: A Theopoetics of Christian Belief . . . and, of course, Carl Jung really dives deep throughout his Collected Works.
Hey There, aloberhoulser,
I’ll take a stab at your question “What does it mean ‘to reject the stereotype?'”
Recall that Norland’s remark about rejecting stereotypes was in response to my question about
the image of the ‘tortured artist.’ Some claim this is an unfortunate stereotype based on a few troubled souls (Vincent Van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, and Kurt Cobain all come to mind), a stereotype that gives rise to an assumption that the greater the torment, the greater the art – but your essay suggests suffering is part of the creative process.
Stereotypes are sometimes confused with archetypes – but in general, stereotypes represent lazy thinking, reducing an individual to a clichéd “type.” Dr. Tellez clearly rejects the cliché of the “tortured artist,” as well as that of the pleasure-seeking, hedonistic artist – as do I. (Mine was what Perry Mason would call a “leading question” – in this instance, a means of launching discussion.) And Norland did not disappoint with his response.
I’m not sure that has anything to do with “accepting the call.”
Of course, pain, suffering, malaise, or discomfort of any sort could indeed be a Call to Adventure – anything that serves to invite, inspire, or drive you to step out of your comfort zone. In my case, like my artist friend Chris I mentioned a few posts above, that pain had to grow incredibly intense before I was motivated to do something about it and change my circumstances.
My friend Chris’ psychotic break with reality was a reflection, or perhaps a consequence, of his Refusal of the Call. He never arrived at a moment where he knowingly stated, or decided, “I am accepting this call” – but he did reach a point where he stopped struggling to maintain a life that was poison for him (running his late father’s construction company, administering the family trust, etc.) and embraced a completely different reality, one in which he was “following his bliss” (not that he know he was following his bliss – he was just living a simpler, more fulfilling life).
That movement was indeed “accepting the call,” whether he knew that or not – which is when his psychological crisis resolved itself and he was able to paint again. He had died to his old way of life and the expectations family and society placed on him, and segued into a reality where he valued his art enough to devote his energies to it. Of course, life hasn’t been a bowl of cherries for him; roughly every ten years he does have another episode, but usually nothing so long lasting and debilitating as that initial descent into madness.
That too was my experience. (I’d recount my tale, but that would pull us into the weeds; Chris’ story covers essentially the same ground, with the advantage that he is a creative artist – much more relevant to the topic than my own experience.)
You mention you are 50, and those questions seem your overarching theme at this point – which raises the question of where you feel you are on your path. Are you bogged down somewhere on the Road of Trials (to borrow Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey framework), or have you not left the village yet, not sure where you bliss lies or what your call is?
Those may be questions you have to answer for your self. None of us have the ability to determine what another’s bliss is (no matter what I see on the outside, each of us is alone on the inside; I have no sense of your interior life, of what might be missing and what your bliss might be). Those are questions only you can answer . . .
Definitely appreciating what you say, Mars. Don’t worry too much about grammatical and other slips – we all do that. It’s just conversation on the internet, and not a doctoral thesis; what counts is that your point does come across.
“Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will ever read”.
A potent, succinct answer to the question I posed … Thank you for that, Jufa!
Your comments are well-taken, Jufa. Of course, here we are trying to foster discussion, so, especially in these early days, are raising thoughts and ideas likely to do just that.
But of course you are right that one must do more than just read and talk. I am curious – how do you “Practice The Presence” of God, other than reading Campbell, Goldsmith, and others? What form does that take for you – do you have a specific practice or meditation you follow? What call to action or personal work would you recommend to those who read your words about how to reach that higher consciousness?
Mars,
Makes sense that the Gaia concept is indeed geocentric (or heliocentric at best, as you and Toby agree). For those raised, though, in a belief system grounded in a specific region, nationality, ethnicity, or religion, it is indeed a start – a step outside their own bounded horizon (to borrow Campbell’s metaphor).
But you are right – whether our growing understanding of outer space, or inner space, mythology must expand beyond even the earth, taking into account the sublime wonder of all that is, which would seem but a sliver of what we apprehend.
Getting from here to there is the tricky part, especially given the tendency the past few years on the part of many around the globe to pull back into their own little “in-groups,” as Joe called them. This contraction is a reflexive but not altogether unexpected response. The question that arises is will humanity get past this?
Only time will tell.
Especially intriguing, as this clip is from 2014, so isn’t motivated by political animus toward the current administration in Washington. It does seem somewhat prophetic – and brings to mind a poem Campbell often shared:
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?– W.B. Yeats
What beast indeed?
Hi Juan,
Thanks for sharing that link. I appreciate that the essay doesn’t mention Joseph Campbell at all (though there are references to his fellow-travelers, Jung and Eliade, who shared that same interest in the resonance between psychology and myth). Campbell’s perspective is important, but not the only way to view myth.
(I am also intrigued by the author’s mention of some 500 different definitions of myth over 2500 years, which illustrates the shapeshifting aspect of myth.)
Of course, Western psychology often focuses on Greek mythology, which makes sense (with Jung sometimes referring to the gods as psychological factors, with gods of love, war (anger), motherhood, etc. personifying psychological and/or emotional states). We rarely wander east of Suez, as Campbell referred to it. The Greek pantheon is relatively small; the 20,000 gods in the Hindu pantheon suggest a more complex and elaborate grasp of psychological factors in play.
Personally, I came to Jung through Campbell’s work; a number of people come to Campbell through Jung’s work – clearly overlap, but different accents, as you note. Curious – did you start with myth, or psychology yourself?
I imagine you are one of the younger people on the forum, Alexander (at least at this early stage). I suspect though it’s not just you struggling with the need for social distancing and staying at home – in fact, since your comment, seems that attitude has caught fire in many places across the country (perhaps to our detriment).
I know I’ve had trouble focusing the last two months – haven’t been able to do much non-work related reading of late (finally started The Bird King, by G, Willow Smith – a devout Muslim who writes for Marvel, her first novel, Alif the Unseen, looked at the Arab Spring movement through the lens of magical realism – definitely comfortable with myth). I finally feel as if I might be finding a decent rhythm to life, but am still feeling unsettled.
Where is your training center (what country or state)? Are you still feeling adrift and at loose ends? Feels like we’re all caught in a vortex – a powerful mythogenetic moment. No telling what will emerge from here.
Hi Jufa,
You have been uncharacteristically quiet. Would love to hear more from you. In fact, I’m curious how you first came across the work of Joseph Campbell? What clicked for you?
Hi Priscilla,
Looks like your “hello” post inspired a few responses, though, somewhat typical of discussion forums, they have wandered off on intriguing tangents.
I’m curious if you have taken your “min-me” to any of the Disney theme parks yet (might depend on how old she is – but I assume if she’s enjoying space and biographies, she’s probably of an age to enjoy the immersive Disney experience).
I appreciate Johanna’s perspective on suffering and the Passion of Christ (the biblical tale of Job, also, depicts unjustified suffering – which indeed seems the lot of all humans).
Campbell describes Christ on the Cross as a bodhisattva figure (describing what he terms the bodhisattva formula as “joyful participation in the sorrows of the world”)
“All life is sorrowful” is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn’t be life if there weren’t temporality involved, which is sorrow – loss, loss, loss. You’ve got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent this way; for this is surely the way God intended it …
It is joyful just as it is. I don’t believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” And the way to wake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all …
“I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera – except that it hurts.”
(Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, 1988 Doubleday edition, pp. 80-81)
Myth certainly points in this direction – but also literature. I’m all for reviving the vitality of myth; in our secular age, however, a case can be made that it’s literature that speaks to the human condition and serves (along with certain films) as the medium for myth today.
Intriguing about the incarnation of the local deity being identified with the specific geographical region. In one sense, the same could be said of the biblical God and the Tabernacle of the Israelites; Yahweh wasn’t originally tied to a geographical region, but was the deity of a nomadic people. Eventually, once those nomads invaded Canaan and settled down, taking the land as their own, Yahweh, with the Temple Solomon constructed in Jerusalem, morphed into a local deity … who eventually was promoted to the top dog (alpha male god?) of all creation.
One major difference between the god of the Israelites and those of your local temples is that the Holy of Holies was veiled – not only was the High Priest the only individual allowed to enter, but the inner sanctum was walled off from view by a heavy veil. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that doesn’t appear to be the case with the garba griha – though they can’t enter the room that holds the divine presence, seems adherents are able to peer into the garba griha.
Such a rich conversation, and so much I’d love to respond to everyone – but rather than just tossing out a stream-of-consciousness word salad (my default setting – Gemini, you know), I’ve been letting my thoughts simmer in the back of my brain.
What keeps coming to the surface for me, Mary, is something you said that sparks a personal memory:
This is the reminder that while sometimes an idea comes from outside of the artist, a lot of the process nonetheless has to come from within as one does the actual work and that sometimes it is a deep and difficult process. If it is not a quick poem that writes itself, then some of the continuing work that we have to do on a larger work (can you imagine writing a Finnegan’s Wake of your own or a War and Peace?) has to be dredged up from inside ourselves. The sediment we bring to the surface can be residue from yesterday or from a thousand yesterdays ago. It can be an ancient pain as much as an ancient joy or yesterday’s sorrow as well as yesterday’s joy.
“The sediment we bring to the surface” takes me back almost three decades, to a year when I roomed in a house owned by a local artist (we’ll call him Chris, just in case someone on COHO is from my hometown). Chris painted primarily in pastels, but also oils, created prints, etc. At the time I was staying there Chris hadn’t made the leap to full time artist; he was running a company his father had left him, but every waking moment not spent on taking care of business (and many waking moments that should have spent on that), he was sketching, drawing, painting. Every bit of wall space in Chris’ home was covered with his paintings – some 50 of them – and he had an inventory of hundreds of pieces..
I often helped hang and re-arrange those paintings, which is when I noticed something intriguing. All of his paintings connected visually – not in terms of subject matter, but when I would place two or more paintings next to each other (or above and below), if I slid the paintings slightly one way or another, the bands of color at the edge of the frame would eventually connect, as if planned. This worked regardless of content (whether the image of a teakettle boiling on the stove, or cats asleep on a couch on a covered porch, or a train speeding through the night) or medium (oils, pastels, prints); they all flowed one into the other, the way dream images do.
At the time I was deep into Jung and company and doing a lot of dreamwork (that hasn’t changed); I found myself thinking of Chris’ images as archetypal expressions of the collective unconscious filtered through his subjective experience of psyche – or, more simplistically, as pictures of his insides.
This perception was reinforced after I moved out, as Chris faced a deep and traumatic psychological crisis (one that mirrored my own experience a few years earlier). As executor of his father’s estate, Chris was not only running the family business, but administering the family trust, which quarterly dispensed significant sums to multiple extended family members (aunts, uncles, cousins, as well as siblings), neither of which was Chris’ bliss (in the Campbellian sense of following your passion). Life would have flowed so much better if he had handed those responsibilities off to others and focused on his art – a step he wasn’t willing to take. Eventually, the business failed and the trust fund dried up.
This triggered a dramatic break with reality. I’m not sure what the eventual diagnosis was; over time he made less and less sense as he fell into psychosis – a slow, gradual process that took many many months to fully manifest.
When I would visit Christ during that long, slow descent into madness, not once did I find him working on new art (which had been his constant mode for years). Instead, he would take paintings off his walls and re-work them, then re-work them again, and again. It wasn’t unusual for Chris to touch-up his some of his paintings before then, but now the process trended toward oblivion: bright red colors would deepen into a cherry red, then gradually morph into a mahogany, then brown, until many of his best canvases finally faded to black.
Chris’ art wasn’t therapy – quite the opposite. Once he had slipped all the way into the abyss, all intentional creativity ceased (including the “touch-ups” that covered entire canvasses in black). It was as if the collective unconscious had swallowed up all his artistic expressions.
Much more to the story involving lots of drama – restraining orders, police actions, court-enforced therapy, and such – that isn’t really relevant to this post. It took a few years for Chris to return to any semblance of “normality.” Over time he became involved with NAMI (National Association of Mental Illness), and served as an advocate for those suffering from mental illness – but even then, it took another couple years of doing the inner work before he started painting again. Today, he is a versatile artist who is widely recognized in our local community; he is far from wealthy, but makes a living doing what he loves (I’ve purchased several of his pieces).
I wouldn’t describe Chris as a “tortured artist” – he suffered the way we all suffer when out of sync with psyche. What fascinates me, though, is how his art seems to mirror unconscious dynamics – that which is “dredged up from inside.” Today in his artistic expressions he is more aware of and in sync with those stirrings within – an ongoing process.
Thanks, Mary – I appreciate the way your own reflections triggered this chain of associations. Do they strike you as relevant, or have I wandered down my own personal rabbit hole?
