Mythblasts Category MythBlast

“If you sow lightly, you reap Lightly. And a good crop Requires the kind of soil Where seeds sprout a hundred- Fold, for even good seed Dries up in dried-up ground. What Chrétien sows—the seeds He scatters—are the start of…

I am thrilled to write on the MythBlast Series’ monthly theme, “The Heroism of Failure.” Especially on the failure part, because I feel so qualified in the matter—so much relevant content from my past to choose from! Strange though it…

This month, the concluding month of the year, our MythBlast Series theme is The Heroism of Failure. Perhaps it’s proper to explore this topic at the end of the year because in some sense, endings and failure are, I think,…

The inscription on the curved aluminum surface reads simply: “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” Signed,— alongside signatures from the three astronauts—Richard Nixon.  It’s…

This month’s MythBlast Series highlighted text is Joseph Campbell’s Myths To Live By. I leafed through my copy in Portuguese and nothing struck me. I like to think about things that make me curious to know more, and apparently there…

A few weeks ago, on October 25th, we observed St. Crispin’s Day. I recognize that it’s probably an exaggeration to say “we” observed it. This feast day was removed from the Roman Catholic Church’s universal liturgical calendar following Vatican II,…

Light and dark. Heat and cold. These are some of the primal archetypal polarities that underpin the world and its workings. For example, we experience these archetypes within the natural cycles of the earth. The Winter Solstice: dark and cold.…

I have noticed over the years, a characteristic of human beings–not quite a fatal flaw, but a potentially disabling one. It’s best described as the lack of congruence between the life they are living and the life they would like…

“I like the cover,” he said. “Don’t Panic. It’s the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody’s said to me all day.” Douglas Adams, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy The 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics was just awarded to three…

Halloween decorations sprang up suddenly, like giant mushrooms on front lawns all around my neighborhood this week—3 full weeks before the official holiday. (I’m writing this at the end of September so, technically, it’s a full month before the official…

In this MythBlast year of Decentering the Hero, this month’s theme is Fear. We often don’t seem to think about fear in relation to heroism. The heroic deed has usually been accomplished by the time we’ve heard or read of…

Sacred realms. It’s so easy to discuss such a topic in the abstract. But how can we discern and honor such places and spaces in our everyday lives, given the many issues and pressures that many of us encounter on…

The Goddess, on the other hand, is in everybody, in every place, and is every place; the business of recognizing her there is the business of this mythology. Joseph Campbell, Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (232) Our world is…

Entering a movie theater is a sacred experience for me. My only routine public confrontations are with those that ignore the warnings about respecting the sacredness of the experience. Living in Los Angeles, I have the privilege of visiting classic…

After a lengthy journey full of hardship and struggle, the final threshold has at last been crossed. The dragon’s been slain, the maiden rescued, the treasure recovered, and the kingdom restored. As our Hero takes a victory lap, credits roll…

In our physicalist, rationalist, demythologized, deconstructed and utterly modern world there is but little space in our mental field for what is deemed to be spurious, goddess notions. At best, the goddess is an interesting, curio relic within religious history…

Joseph Campbell states in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living that: Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he…

Recently I had an appointment with a dental hygienist I’d never met before. Making small talk, he asked me what I do. I told him I’m a mythologist, which means I study stories that have meant a lot to a…

Let’s begin by reminding ourselves that the term “the unseen aid,” along with so many other potentials for that title like “the Great Mother,” “the psychopomp/guide-of-souls,” “the wise old woman or man,” etc., are archetypes. If we are to approach…

On my first day of graduate school I became aware that the auditorium in which we gathered had formerly been a church. Despite efforts to secularize the place, a clear liturgical signature remained: a recessed marble basin for holy water,…

It’s interesting how a book can show us a crystal-clear picture of who we were, are, and maybe even will be. The Portuguese edition I have of A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, edited by Diane…

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change. This is the central verse of Earthseed, a religion promoted by the teenage protagonist of Octavia E. Butler’s 1993…

The theme for July at JCF is Community, a term that draws all sorts of positive, warm and fuzzy projections today. In its broadest sense, a community is a social group with interests in common. Nevertheless, in his description of…