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Mythblasts Category MythBlast

Towers: Managing One’s Falls and Renewals

The problem with towers is that they’re already high up. And then there’s this other problem called gravity, accompanied by its heavyweight siblings grave (as an adjective or as a noun) and gravitas—in short, all things down and that bring…

A Bolt from the Blue

Following my June contribution to JCF’s MythBlast essay series, a friend asked about Joseph Campbell’s personal experience with tarot. According to Campbell, his introduction to the tarot occurred in 1943, as friend and mentor Heinrich Zimmer discussed the symbolism of…

The Devil Is to Blame

A black and white drawing of a devil dancing

Once upon a time the devil was looking for the most effective weapon against God. The first demon proposed to tell people that there is no God. Another said it’s better to tell them there is no soul. The third…

Dynamics of the Diabolic

three horned devil

Our MythBlast essay series continues to explore the archetypal imagery of the tarot, focusing this month on Card XV in the major arcana: the Devil. For almost two thousand years those who practice the occult arts have been portrayed as…

What the Chariot Carries

A woman, in the desert, looking off into the distance. She appears to be on a journey.

“You’re going on a trip,” Great-Gramma Jennie told my mother. Mom was a child then, in the prewar years of the Great Depression. Grampa and my uncles left during the day for work and school, and Mom stayed home with…

How to Choose Directions in Life Wisely

The Chariot card is traditionally designed with the image of a strong male figure in a car conducted by two sphinx-like beasts; the dark one at the left side and a white one at the right side. The armored charioteer…

Chariot Reins and Skeleton Keys

The Chariot. A deity on a chariot with two sphinxes, one black and one white.

For the month of July we will be looking at what, in most tarot decks, is the seventh trump or major arcana card, the Chariot. In the tarot, the Chariot is largely about overcoming challenges, mastery of oneself and one’s…

The Sacrificial Wheel of Fortune

Icarus falling while Daedalus reaches out with open hands.

In Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce, Campbell embarks on a mythically based, archetypal study of James Joyce, beginning with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It is here that Campbell picks up the…

As Beatrice to Dante

One day, long ago, the ever-spinning Wheel of Fortune found me sitting at a desk in an open office workspace, my back to a room full of coworkers. Absorbed in a document on my computer, I had just reached an…

Around and Around

Wheel of Fortune Tarot Card

What, if any, is the value in consulting the tarot? In an age where the rational mind reigns supreme, all forms of divination would seem little more than the fading traces of archaic superstition. After all, how could anything so…

Requited Love

  There’s a story to every scar, physical or emotional. And the scar tissue almost always remains (in some form or another). Especially with heartbreak. We’ve all read enough well-meaning articles to know that we should walk away from  someone…

To Be Among You: The Mystery of Love

Lovers card from Modern Way Tarot

I am not exactly sure when I first heard “Wedding Song (There Is Love)” by Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul, and Mary, but I am quite sure it evoked what Joseph Campbell terms (in a reference from James Joyce) “aesthetic…

Love, Lovers, and Choices

The Lovers Tarot Card. A male and a female with angel above.

Joseph Campbell’s work is full of reflections on love. I like to think this is due to his successful marriage to his life partner, the dancer and modern dance choreographer Jean Eardman (1916–2020). In a Q&A session during Joseph Campbell’s…

An Angel Kissed by a Demon

A painting of a couple kissing, one with angel wings.

Have you ever been in love? I was. I fell in love with an angel kissed by a demon. That’s how I experienced the hormonal havoc of adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, and huge quantities of endorphins. It was as if I…

Between Heaven and Earth: The Hanged Man

Drawing of Yggdrasil showing two realms

“Therefore, our first impression of the Card plunges us into the heart of the problem of the relationship between man and gravitation, and the conflicts that this relationship entails,” states the anonymous author in Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey…

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