Stephen Gerringer
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Hello James,
Refocusing on the theme of this thread (the hero’s journey as a collective adventure), in most instances the hero of a myth or story does not know he or she is a hero – and, conversely, the one who thinks of oneself as the hero is generally either a villain (Vladimir Putin the current example of the latter), or, at best, a fool.
Nor does awareness of the elements and stages of the hero’s journey, as Joseph Campbell describes it, allow us to “manage” that journey. We don’t choose the hero’s journey; rather, it chooses us, emerging from the circumstances of one’s life.
What knowing the trajectory of the hero’s journey provides is the opportunity to locate where we are on that map – but I can’t then decide “okay, I’m going to cross the First Threshold now, start interviewing potential Guides and Helpers, and then plan to Meet the Goddess three weeks from now and schedule Apotheosis by the start of summer.” However, I can recognizes those elements as they unfold, which provides a measure of affirmation and confidence in meeting the moment.
Some of the difficulty of expanding our understanding of the hero’s journey beyond the individual relates to that same dynamic. As Campbell points out, we can’t decide to have a new mythology, nor can we construct a new myth, no matter how much it seems we need one; rather, any coming mythology must emerge naturally. There are any number of possibilities out there, elements that may well contribute to a new worldview – but we are deep in the bubble at the moment, and have no idea what form a new mythology may take (indeed, I doubt it will be thought of as a mythology at all, but simply what is).
Your observation that
There are of course other dimensions to Ukraine’s ongoing nightmare that is literally unfolding by the minute, but the planet now in some ways is so interconnected that one crisis can often affect other countries as well.”
comports well with Campbell’s assertion that
This unification of the planet into one society is becoming apparent to everyone as an economic fact; and when it is an economic fact, then it is a fact indeed . . .” (Interview with E. Bouratinos: Emilios Review, 9-30-85)
In this moment of intense and violent state-sponsored conflict, it’s hard to deny that reality: a war between two nations in eastern Europe spills far beyond their national borders. Even if there were no sanctions at all, the economic impact is global. Obviously energy prices will go up. Ukraine and Russia both export grain around the world (accounting, for example, for a significant share of Egypt’s food supply, which means that nation will have to find other sources on the world market); this interruption in supply, even were there no sanctions at all, can’t help but create a domino effect that will increase poverty and hunger, especially in third world countries, while impacting the entire world.
Factor in the cumulative effect of the unprecedented (and, frankly, unanticipated) massive sanctions on Russia, and we see how interconnected the world is. A century ago such sanctions would have little immediate effect – but because Russia is plugged into the global economy, their national economy is collapsing. A silver lining to this horrible tragedy is that China and, ultimately, all nations (including the U.S.) are learning that political and military actions have unintended repercussions, which increases the incentive for peaceful, diplomatic resolutions to differences between nations.
Events are in motion that may indeed transform the planet – but transformation is not all “happy happy joy joy” – it’s often quite painful.
So, stepping back for a moment and re-imagining the Hero’s Journey as a collective movement, where do we find ourselves on that journey – a question that brings us back to John Bucher’s essay:
There seems to be a universal dissatisfaction with our ordinary world—the type of dissatisfaction that inexorably pushes individuals and cultures toward the next stage that Campbell described, the call to adventure. While we might struggle to articulate it and argue about the language that should be used around it, our collective society is sensing something like a call—a call to adventure.” (emphasis mine)
Will we answer that Call?
Up to this point, it would have seemed not (that call has been sounding for years, with Putin’s attacks on Chechnya and Georgia, his participation in the repression of the uprising in Syria, and the annexation of Crimea) . . . but the Refusal of the Call does not put an end to the Hero’s Journey so much as increase the pain and raise the stakes – which brings us to where we are now.
I have to admit, I am impressed, so far, with the global response to the invasion of Ukraine – I am thrilled, and more than a little surprised, to see the U.S., NATO, and the EU stepping up – and even more so, the near universal condemnation of the Russian warlord’s action at the UN. Perhaps the Call is being heard, and answered.
If so, we have a sense of the road ahead – and that is what gives me hope.
jbonaduce – Manifest Destiny (and the related concept of American exceptionalism) has definitely played a major role in shaping our identity as one people.
I do think the example Campbell provides stands out because it is so powerful – one doesn’t have to look for mentors and magical helpers, a descent to into the Underworld and such, because those are readily apparent: by the time “the children of Israel” emerge as a people in history, that origin tale is baked into their collective and individual psyches, with the most sacred rituals practiced over millennia continuing to reinforce that identity.
Though the American mythos is effective, I can’t imagine it having such a lasting influence: should our country fall and the population be scattered to the four winds, I doubt our descendants two thousands years from now would identify as Americans no matter where in the world they live. Perhaps that is because of a lack of ritual (we do have some, but those are primarily secular and lack a sense of the numinous), and perhaps because we give more credence to the countervailing myth of rugged individualism. In the U.S. we exalt the individual and tend to be suspicious of collective action (often labeling any suggestion of community-based solutions as “socialism”). Even the waves of immigrants that built our nation weren’t part of a mass migration of one people, but literally millions of individuals from a wide range of nations and ethnicities, each on their own hero’s journey.
I love your idea of re-framing the American experiment as a collective Hero’s Journey, discussing our history in terms of a collective Call to Adventure (e.g. what pulled us out of the ordinary world where we were colonies subject to an empire, prompting us to seek our own destiny), our guides and helpers, the thresholds we crossed, a death-and-rebirth initiation, etc.
Which brings us back to John’s essay, and where we find ourselves now. As he points out, we are seeing this theme of “taking the adventure together” emerge in popular art and entertainment (from “the fellowship of the ring” in Tolkien’s work, to the Starship Enterprise), which reflects a deeper sense that something is missing today:
There seems to be a universal dissatisfaction with our ordinary world—the type of dissatisfaction that inexorably pushes individuals and cultures toward the next stage that Campbell described, the call to adventure.”
Of course, one can’t stage manage a myth – but an awareness of this dynamic at work in the larger society does help me process what is going on right now, and provides a sense of hope that we will find our way.
Tiago – a great question, but one of interest far beyond the topic of this thread (frankly more relevant to The Works of Joseph Campbell forum, where it is likely to be seen by more eyes) so I answer it in a new thread I’ve started here. Click on the link, and drop a brief reply to that post there so I’ll know you’ve seen it.
Hope that helps answer your question.
mythbooks25
I wish I knew! The reference to this incidence in the bio of Campbell by Stephen and Robin Larsen (A Fire in the Mind) just says the following (on p. 84):
Beach, out of her own considerable understanding of Joyce, took the time to initiate Campbell; and heaped him with books that would help him understand the many-layered historical and mythological context of what he was reading. ‘That changed my career,’ he said.”
Not a lot to go on there. Best we can do is speculate, which doesn’t get me very far.
I would like to think Sylvia Beach pointed him toward Freud, Jung, Goethe, and such – but he first read Freud a few years before, in 1925, and his introduction to Carl Jung came the year after encountering Joyce, reading Jung’s seminal work, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (later translated into English originally under the title of Psychology of the Unconscious, and today is known as Symbols of Transformation), while learning German and Sanskrit at the University of Heidelberg 1928-1929 (damn impressive – Jung is an ambitious read in any tongue; boggles my mind that Joe was able to read and absorb it in the original as he was just learning the language!). The same holds for Goethe’s work, some of which he also read that year in German.
I thought I had stumbled across a clue on learning young Joe had given a copy of Sir James Frazer’s The Golden Bough to Angela Gregory, his closest friend in Paris, when she left for the United States – but turns out Campbell had cited Frazer in his Master’s thesis, on the basis of which he earned that Proudfit scholarship that paid for his year at the Sorbonne in Paris, and then Heidelberg.
At this point, it remains a mystery, at least to me . . .
Andy (androoshka) asks
How did you find that reference, Stephen?”
I have all Campbell’s volumes in both print and Ebook formats – so I entered Schelling’s name in the search field of each Ebook. Only found one hit, in Creative Mythology, and then I tracked that passage down in the physical text for the page number.
Andy (aka aqndrooshka), you ask
So do people discuss these weekly resources referrals? Or does it have some other purpose?”
Each week there are are new offerings on JCF’s home page: a featured video clip of Campbell; a featured audio clip from a lecture; a Joseph Campbell quotation; a mythological resource; and a MythBlast essay from a contemporary mythologist, psychologist, artist, thinker, etc. All these offerings are loosely related to the theme under discussion in that week’s MythBlast. (Also, at the start of every month, we post a free download from Campbell’s work that stays up for four weeks).
I seem to recall we had recently had discussions here in Conversations of a Higher Order (COHO) touching on the afterlife, so I thought I would share that week’s Mythological Resource.
You also write
Interesting bio details of Campbell’s personal experiences with ritual, astrology and so on. Where did you hear about those adventures?”
Various places. There are wonderful details in the Joseph Campbell bio by Stephen and Robin Larsen, A Fire in the Mind. I’ve also had access in the past to Campbell’s personal journals (I once transported a couple volumes from the Foundation’s office in the Bay Area, back in the brief period when JCF had a physical office, to the archives at OPUS near Santa Barbara – so, for a few days before the drive down I guarded them closely in my home, and those days stayed up nearly all night poring over the pages while wearing white archivist’s gloves).
I have read Erman’s Die Ägyptische Religion and still consult it as needed (I am much better at reading German than speaking it – far more practice). I have all four volumes of The Masks of God in German; much as I love Campbell in English, his prose seems to me to have even greater depth in German – many of his favorite thinkers and most important influences are German.
(In France at the Sorbonne on a Proudfit scholarship after earning his Master’s Degree, Campbell found all the best scholarship on his subject was in German – so he applied and was approved for an extra year of funding, and transferred to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied German and Sanskrit. While there – and just learning German – he read Jung’s seminal Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, translated into English as Symbols of Transformation – Volume 5 of Jung’s Collected Works – which precipitated Jung’s break with Freud . . . damn impressive, considering reading Jung can be an ambitious undertaking in English.
(If you ever have the chance to visit Joseph Campbell’s personal library on one of the campuses of the Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California, and you pull books in foreign languages off the shelf and open them, you’ll find his margin notes in a German book in German, in French tome in French, in a Sanskrit text Sanskrit, and so on; he even taught himself Russian at one point. This is also why some passages from Campbell includes in his work from other authors often can’t be found in exactly that form in published translations, because Joe read them in the original and supplied his own translation.)
As for this question:
So if I want to follow the rigorous and systematic academic work of JC – what titles do you suggest I look at?
I thought the answer to that would better fit in The Works of Joseph Campbell forum, so I started a new thread here.
No they aren’t, kanzan. The HighBridge audio is the soundtrack to video recorded in New York City; the talks in Series III Volume I (“The Mythic Novels of James Joyce”) of The Joseph Campbell Audio Lectures were recorded at Esalen in Big Sur, on the California coast. However, they cover the same ground with significant overlap – Campbell spoke often on this theme.
Thank you, Myrmidion, for your beautiful, bittersweet verse. Having reached a certain age, it definitely resonates!
Definitely looking forward to diving in to the second season and exploring Ted’s depths – hard to be so positive without one hell of an unexplored shadow (that may have to wait a few weeks – so many balls in the fire and irons in the air, which is kind of how it feels, right now – and, short as each episode is, it’s impossible to watch just one at a time).
Ted’s mini life-and-rebirth experience in Liverpool the first season (which, as you note, just hints at what is to come) helps crystallize a thought that’s been bouncing around the edges of my conscious awareness for some time:
Campbell, in Pathways to Bliss, observes that he sees a rewarding life as series of hero journeys, one after another, which rings true for me. But I’ve also noticed that embedded within the trajectory of the hero’s journey, at least in my experience, are lots of “little” hero’s journeys. I like that way of re-imagining it, which for me suggests a resonance between the fractal nature of myth, and of the cosmos at large.
Love the idea of you writing a follow-up, whenever you get around to it, not that I’m in any rush (considering I’m lagging a season behind everyone else).
Raised on the Disney version (the gentle kiss that transforms the frog into a prince), I read the tale in the original language in college for my German literature class – major epiphany! That violent burst completely changed the experience (and vastly improved the impact of the story) for me.
I am curious, Catherine – that golden ball which the princess treasured so much fades from the tale once the frog returns it. I don’t want to read to much into this, but I am intrigued. Relating that to my experience (because, of course, the universe revolves around me), I notice the desire that motivates me to get off the couch and out the door (the Call?) often seems unrelated to the adventure that follows.
Have you any thoughts on what happens to that golden ball?
WARNING: There Be Spoilers Here!
In late January I purchased a new iPhone, which included three free months of Apple TV – so just last week, nearly six months after this conversation started, I finally completed Season One of Ted Lasso, and now I get what everyone was talking about! (As my old therapist used to say, “Better latent than never!”).
So much I would love to respond to, including thoughts on toxic masculinity, or the difference between “doing the rightest thing” (which relates to my choices and my behavior) and being judgmental (which, in the context it’s used here, relates to drawing conclusions as to the motivations, actions, and behavior of another).
However, no idea if anyone is still listening, or still interested (and, even though I’m caught up to where everyone else was in August, I imagine most have now completed Season 2, which may well change the calculus).
Nevertheless, thought I might as well bump this up to the top of the MythBlast queue by sharing a thought or two, and see if anyone else, whether or not they participated in the initial discussion, might have something to add.
Instead of tackling everything, I figured I’d focus on this response from Gabrielle, replying to Sunbug:
You’ve really touched on something I’ve been thinking about lately with de-centering the story from Ted to any of the other characters, especially female characters. Maybe one day I’ll be able to write a piece about Rebecca and Keeley, a fascinating dynamic that packs a major punch in understanding the feminine — but also, vitally, the masculine as it presents in someone outside of the male characters. You’re quite right in calling Ted the Call. It was difficult for me to see how Ted himself changed over the course of the first season, rather he was a catalyst for change in others. I’m about to start season 2, and I expect to see some development there for him.”
I love Keeley’s character! I confess I initially wrote her off as shallow, superficial, and sex-obsessed; definitely took a few episodes to realize she is the most self-aware character in the series (love how she describes herself to Rebecca: “I’m famous for being almost-famous”), in many ways the moral center of the show. How Rebecca responds to Keeley’s friendship, long before the team owner’s attitude toward the club franchise itself changes, is what first clued me in to Rebecca’s yearnings, and her capacity for change. The friendship between these women is a true delight, far beyond the all-too-common television stereotype.
In many ways I see Keeley and Ted as kindred spirits – unassuming, non-judgmental, and authentic. Both bring to mind one of my favorite Campbell quotes:
The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and whos on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.” (Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, 149)
I agree, Gabrielle – the relationship between Keeley and Rebecca is worth a thread all its own, especially in how they relate to the masculine.
What else catches my attention here is the observation that it’s difficult “to see how Ted himself changed over the course of the first season.”
I have a different take on that. Yes, he’s still the same affable Ted Lasso at the end of the season as at the start, but he does undergo a dramatic, life-altering transformation, one accompanied by its own death-and-rebirth experience (that panic attack at the karaoke bar in Liverpool in Episode 7, followed by Sassy’s somewhat unexpected, very intimate visit to his motel room).
Though it’s not exactly front and center, Ted’s marriage has been falling apart. No one is the villain here, though his wife, Michelle, does seem to find Ted’s unrelenting positive thinking cloying. Her unhappiness provides his Call to adventure; Ted would not have taken this coaching position if he hadn’t thought the space it provided might somehow help heal his marriage.
Two things come to mind as a result. One is that not every woman is seeking Ted Lasso’s brand of sensitive, caring, vulnerable masculinity (something I bumped up against more than once in my single years, much as I would have wished it otherwise).
Though Ted seriously wants to hold onto his marriage (in many ways, that’s how he defines himself), something is definitely missing: Ted is not a whole person. His obsession with hanging on to the marriage through thick and thin ignores the needs of the person he loves, or believes he loves (indeed, the person he loves and who loved him no longer exists). All the drama in the locker room strikes me as secondary; the primary conflict is inside Ted (that’s my other take-away). That’s resolved, once he is able to let go what had died and become whole in himself.
Or not (I figure that’s what the second season explores).
Of course, that’s just my perception. [Actual user experience may vary]
Gabrielle – thank you for essay and the ensuing conversation. I seriously doubt I would have been moved to binge this series were it not for your thought-provoking analysis.
androoshka writes:
Hey Stephen, I followed this link, and it eventually took me to a page on Amazon where the book can be bought – is this what you intended?
Not exactly – my intention was simply to draw attention to the description of the Mythological Resource highlighted that week on JCF’s home page (I am fascinated by Egyptian mythology, with several works on hieroglyphs as well as myths on my shelves – including the German text of Adolf Erman’s 1909 Die Ägyptische Religion). However, I don’t select each week’s resource; I assume the inclusion of the Amazon link was to provide the easiest and most ubiquitous access to the resource (given my druthers – and Amazon’s dominance of the booksellers’ market – I would prefer including a link or two as well to other independent online bookstores, like Powell’s).
Of course, that depends on the nature of the selection: this week’s resource – SurLaLanne Fairytales – is a website, so no direction to a bookstore at all.
Your mention of Joseph Campbell’s “new agey” following is well taken. Campbell wrote for a popular audience, but grounded his work in scholarship, and in science – so at JCF we sometimes walk a fine line between the two.
Certainly Joe had no problem with “things that go bump in the night”: he cast his own astrological chart, as well as that of others, “as a kind of mythological Rorschach” in the words of his biographers – which helped affirm his and Jean’s compatibility in his mind before they were married (eventually giving up that practice because “they gave me a feeling I knew too much about people; you know you get these intimate things. . .”); Campbell also observed a Pueblo rain ceremony that began with nary a cloud in the sky and ended with a drenching downpour; and he was surprised, after participating in a yamabushi fire walk ceremony in 1955 in Japan (decades before fire walking became a New Age trend in Marin County), to realize his sprained ankle was healed and the swelling gone.
However, in his work his scholarship was rigorous – an approach reinforced by his work editing Heinrich Zimmer’s notes:
[T]he mistakes of Zimmer that I had to correct while writing and that I have discovered since, have discredited for me, as a final attitude, the rather slapdash intuitivism of my dear master. I am now for a very careful, meticulous checking after all the lovely intuitions: we have got to have both, if we are going to have a book.” (Asian Journals, 501)
Campbell also occasionally lamented “the women who suddenly discover the goddess, they know all about the mythology of Greece and Rome and everything within all of 20 minutes, because they are themselves ‘the goddess’ and they know by intuition all these things” (from an interview July 2, 1984, on WBAI’s “Natural Living”).
Some years ago JCF granted permission to use a Joseph Campbell quote to the author of what was eventually published as The Secret – which spawned a movement that associated Campbell, along with other teachers and thinkers, with what I think of as “wishcraft” (or “blisscraft”). Of course there is some overlap with “New Age” thought, but in my mind the primary difference between Joseph Campbell’s perspective and much of what has been identified as New Age philosophy is that Joe is not afraid of the dark: he says “yea” to life in all its ecstasy and its agony.
The Foundation finds the best way to provide pushback against those who would co-opt Joe’s message to fit a “happy happy joy joy” philosophy is to follow his scholarship (“a very careful, meticulous checking after all the lovely intuitions: we have got to have both”).
An astute observation, Brian – every point of comparison you raise rings true.
My initial thought on first hearing about the film was that it seemed to be lampooning the coronavirus response in the U.S.; whether or not the filmmaker intended that (hard to believe he didn’t, at least to a degree), I can understand why Adam McKay preferred to focus exclusively on climate change on the talk show circuit. After all, despite the existential threat human-accelerated global warming poses, much of the public seems a bit removed from the sense of immediate consequences, whereas we are all in the Covid bubble right now, with everyone’s vision obscured by the delusions generated under the “fog-of-war.” Passions are high on all sides; I imagine if McKay and the cast had focused on parallels to the pandemic, that would have alienated half the potential audience from the outset, feeling they were being attacked.
Though there is still of course a partisan divide over climate change, it doesn’t seem quite so, well, personal at the moment, despite the fact it is potentially far more disruptive than the virus to the planet overall, endangering animal and plant species as well as humans. And with decades of observation and study behind us, the science re human action accelerating global warming is far more conclusive than the science surrounding the pandemic, which continues to evolve as the situation evolves; even though the parallels with the pandemic seem clear, I suspect McKay is leaving it to the viewer to connect those dots, preferring to emphasize that widespread science denialism in our society long predates the emergence of the novel coronavirus. (Of course, the beauty of the comet as metaphor is that there is no ambiguity; ignoring it requires active, willful denial: “Don’t look up!” Ironically, shifting to the completely manmade tragedy unfolding in eastern Europe, “don’t look up” is the official stance imposed on the Russian populace by their warlord.)
What I appreciate about Norland’s thought-provoking analysis is his focus on the symbolism, including its psychological and mystical implications, which isn’t tethered to the film as just a metaphor for climate change or Covid – which, at least in my mind, brings us around to your questions, about how “we have severed myth and art from playing key roles in our collective consciousness.”
On a positive note, the film itself is an artistic response to your question. Despite the fact that “Don’t Look Up is a touch self-conscious and clumsy, I don’t see so much as didactic (advocating a specific course of action, which Campbell deplores in art), as turning a mirror on contemporary society.
Alas, it’s just a start . . .
Welcome to Conversations of a Higher Order (COHO), Andy! You may have noticed that these discussion forums don’t exactly move at the frenzied pace of social media; it sometimes takes days, weeks, months, or longer for a conversation to unfold – but there is an advantage to not feeling pressured to respond before the conversation scrolls off the screen and is lost in the ether, instead of having the leisure to allow one’s thoughts to simmer a bit and take shape before posting a reply.
Love the point you make about the limitations of defining myth, depending on one’s belief in a higher power.
No surprise that defining myth is a little like trying to staple your shadow to the wall; hence the impetus behind this thread of collecting as many definitions of myth as possible, both parallel and contradictory, in hopes of fleshing out our understanding. Of course, even definitions that seem at odds generally aren’t mutually exclusive: myth is more “both/and” rather than “either/or” . . . and being comfortable with paradox is an invaluable trait for any mythologist, amateur as well as professional.
By the way, your second post triggered a memory of maybe 15 or so years ago, when I was a featured guest at a three day event in Ojai that drew a number of people just starting out in myth, several of whom today are considered luminaries in the field. At the end of the long second day, a handful of us ended up in the organizer’s room sharing adult beverages and conversation on myth late into the night. At one point someone mentioned an obscure term – and suddenly most of us slipped out to our rooms (which were all nearby), and each returned carrying one or more reference works on etymology to continue the discussion – and right away I knew I had found my tribe! (I lean toward the expansive Chambers Dictionary of Word Etymology, but on the road I often travel with a beat-up paperback copy of John Ayto’s Arcade Dictionary of Word Origins)
I also appreciate the fungal episode you shared. Though it’s been a couple decades, I have indulged in dozens of mushroom experiences and LSD trips, along with the occasional doses of mescaline, peyote, and DMT. I have also recorded over a thousand dreams in a dozen or so dream journals the last three decades, and find an incredible resonance between the dream state and the psychedelic state, both of which tap into that archetypal strata which is the source of myth. That’s a subject worthy of of further discussion.
You might find interesting this thread, from the early days of this iteration of COHO in the Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum, on the spiritual uses of psychedelics. It’s been quiet for a long time, but feel free to revive it by adding your thoughts and/or sharing your experiences on the topic (which will bump it up to the top of the queue), or starting a new one on this or a related topic.
Thanks for joining in, androoshka. Feel free to poke around and jump into any thread that draws your interest, including those that seem dormant. Often all it takes to re-start a conversation is a fresh perspective.
Welcome to Conversations of a Higher Order (COHO), Andy! You may have noticed that these discussion forums don’t exactly move at the frenzied pace of social media; it sometimes takes days, weeks, months, or longer for a conversation to unfold – but there is an advantage to not feeling pressured to respond before the conversation scrolls off the screen and is lost in the ether, instead of having the leisure to allow one’s thoughts to simmer a bit and take shape before posting a reply.
Love the point you make about the limitations of defining myth, depending on one’s belief in a higher power.
No surprise that defining myth is a little like trying to staple your shadow to the wall; hence the impetus behind this thread of collecting as many definitions of myth as possible, both parallel and contradictory, in hopes of fleshing out our understanding. Of course, even definitions that seem at odds generally aren’t mutually exclusive: myth is more “both/and” rather than “either/or” . . . and being comfortable with paradox is an invaluable trait for any mythologist, amateur as well as professional.
By the way, your second post triggered a memory of maybe 15 or so years ago, when I was a featured guest at a three day event in Ojai that drew a number of people just starting out in myth, several of whom today are considered luminaries in the field. At the end of the long second day, a handful of us ended up in the organizer’s room sharing adult beverages and conversation on myth late into the night. At one point someone mentioned an obscure term – and suddenly most of us slipped out to our rooms (which were all nearby), and each returned carrying one or more reference works on etymology to continue the discussion – and right away I knew I had found my tribe! (I lean toward the expansive Chambers Dictionary of Word Etymology, but on the road I often travel with a beat-up paperback copy of John Ayto’s Arcade Dictionary of Word Origins)
I also appreciate the fungal episode you shared. Though it’s been a couple decades, I have indulged in dozens of mushroom experiences and LSD trips, along with the occasional doses of mescaline, peyote, and DMT. I have also recorded over a thousand dreams in a dozen or so dream journals the last three decades, and find an incredible resonance between the dream state and the psychedelic state, both of which tap into that archetypal strata which is the source of myth. That’s a subject worthy of of further discussion.
You might find interesting this thread, from the early days of this iteration of COHO in the Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum, on the spiritual uses of psychedelics. It’s been quiet for a long time, but feel free to revive it by adding your thoughts and/or sharing your experiences on the topic (which will bump it up to the top of the queue), or starting a new one on this or a related topic.
Thanks for joining in, androoshka. Feel free to poke around and jump into any thread that draws your interest, including those that seem dormant. Often all it takes to re-start a conversation is a fresh perspective.
