In the month of April, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating the impending release of several new editions of two Campbell classics, The Mythic Dimension and Primitive Mythology, both coming soon as eBooks and audio books. ……… Both works delve…
Mythology and the Hero’s Journey became pervasive throughout film culture and history as generation after generation turned to Joseph Campbell and The Hero with a Thousand Faces. With his guidance, countless filmmakers have come to see image as symbolic, character…
Today, March 20th, is the first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere! Here in Flagstaff spring will arrive at exactly 9:15 AM, in accordance with a common tradition in the Northern Hemisphere of placing the start of Spring at…
Editor’s Note: This month, we are celebrating the breath of spring in the air in the Northern Hemisphere. In this Practical Campbell essay, Stephen Gerringer follows a single mythic image, letting it take him wherever the wind blows, originally published…
“Skating away — skating away — skating away on the thin ice of the new day.” – Ian Anderson, “Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day)” War Child . March in the Catskill Mountains…
Last week JCF, through its new arrangement with Amazon, made available a new digital edition of Joseph Campbell’s The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension. As I have remarked recently in this very space, Flight remains, perhaps, my most favorite…
A few days ago, I came across this sentence from Joseph Campbell in his essay “Symbol Without Meaning” in The Flight of the Wild Gander. “The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems, and social organizations of the agriculturally…
Editor’s note: As we celebrate inspired teaching and learning this month, we are excited to share the ideas and work of one of JCF’s Board members, Kwame Scruggs, PhD, exploring his extraordinary work with young Black men on the intersections…
The Joseph Campbell Foundation and New World Library are, later this month, releasing The Flight of the Wild Gander, one of Campbell’s most important, and popular, collection of essays. In these essays, Campbell is at his pedagogical best, his esurient intellect…
What makes an inspired teacher? As we step into February, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating teaching that breaks open our ideas, challenges our assumptions, and invites us to see the world full of glistening possibility. More than anything, Joseph…
After the stock market crash in the late 1920’s and struggling to find a job, Joseph Campbell decided to seek adventure in travel. He found himself on the coast of Northern California. Bob Walter, Joseph Campbell Foundation President writes in an essay on Campbell’s life:…
Yesterday, January 15th, we in the U.S. celebrated Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This federal holiday, declared by Ronald Reagan, was established in 1983. Other cities in the U.S. had been honoring Dr. King since 1971, and even though a…
For those of us following the Julian calendar which probably includes most anyone reading an e-mail on the Internet, I imagine, a new year has just begun; an opportunity to turn the page, to open a new chapter in the…
In the birth of a new year and in the darkness, and for a lot of us in North America right now, serious cold of winter, I am struck by how people have for thousands of years turned to the…
The title of this MythBlast is borrowed from the title of this Mark Strand poem: ______ Even this late it happens: the coming of love, the coming of the light. You wake and the candles are lit as if by…
Editor’s Note: This week, a very special message on the divine wisdom of play in a holiday season from philosopher, theologian, and founder of A Network for Grateful Living, Brother David Steindl-Rast, who for many years at Esalen used to join our Mythological…
Meister Eckhart, a German theologian born in the mid-13th century, once remarked that if the only prayer one ever uttered was “thank you,” that would be enough. Eckhart reminds us of how important it may be to actually give voice…
Animal exuberance, this mystery of play, is very close to (if not identical with) the basic impulse of genius in the arts. The power of great art to purge us—to release us, for a moment, from the jungle-melancholy of hungering,…
Our theme at the Joseph Campbell Foundation this month is gratitude. We are celebrating both Campbell’s ideas and works, and all of the people around the world who have brought their own particular genius to the ongoing relevance and understanding…
Note: We continue our theme of gratitude this November, with an article written by former teacher and JCF Rights and Permissions wrangler, Michael Lambert. As we do, we thank all of the people who bring mythology to life around the world…
Editor’s Note: This month, we are celebrating gratitude…our gratitude for Campbell’s ideas and work in the world, and for all of the thousands of people who are a part of JCF’s mythological community around the world. We begin this month by…
If you peel back the frivolous mask of a holiday that inspires $8.4 billion in candy; decorations; and costumes sales for little kids, grownups looking for a moment of escapist fantasy, and long-suffering pets; you’ll find a swirling memories of much a…
The Joseph Campbell Foundation is releasing a new e-publication entitled Art as Revelation, one of the last pieces that Campbell wrote and finished before his death. As David Kudler remarks in his Editor’s Note at the end of the piece: This was one…
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