What’s In A Name?
There is no doubt that Joseph Campbell’s words sing – and not just his prose, but the titles he chooses as well: The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Masks of God, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, all have a…
Mythblasts Category MythBlast
The Fires of Love-Death
All roots are dark, and the deeper they go the darker they get until they touch the light of the primal fire of the human soul. In Masks of God, Volume 1: Primitive Mythology, Joseph Campbell turns our gaze to…
Artistic Origins
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. ” Pablo Picasso What do we suppose Picasso meant by the above quote? How, exactly, does one “paint like a child”? Likely, this…
Origins are *Mythsterious.*
The mystery of the universe and the wonder of the temple of the world are what speak to us through all myths and rites—as well as the great effort of man to bring his individual life into concord with the…
THE MANDALORIAN and Dangerous Origins
Modern technology has given us more ways than ever before to discover the stories, the rituals, and the characters that make up our mythologies. The technology of the written word vastly changed the ways that myths were passed from one…
Sacrificial Origins
The search for origins has always figured among the greatest adventures of humankind in its epic journey on earth. “Who are we?” “Where do we come from?” “Where are we going?” These fundamental questions never fail to inspire philosophical wonder;…
The Festival of the Passing Forms
Over the coming year, we at the JCF MythBlast Series intend to explore Joseph Campbell’s great work, the four-volume series The Masks of God. The first quarter of 2021 will focus on The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology and some…
Rediscovering the Cosmic Navel
In “Cosmology and the Mythic Imagination,” from this month’s spotlight volume The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, Campbell takes us on a stellar romp through myths of the universe and humankind’s place in it. Tethered by a mytho-numerical umbilical cord,…
The Infinite Reach of Mercy
The December theme for the MythBlast series has been “The Still Point,” a reference to T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets. The still point is a poetic image that Joseph Campbell remarks upon several times in his book, “The Inner Reaches…
In The Stillness of Love’s Madness
If anyone doubted that the essence of the individual is thoroughly interwoven with the collective fibers of society, our continued state of social distancing and isolation is further proof of the case. Robbed of our participation in the collective, we…
The Hour Yields
I don’t remember who called with the news that my father had died. I don’t remember the conversation. All I remember is the daze in which I found myself putting on a coat, driving to a trailhead, hiking to a…
Where There Is No Path And No Gate
“Each entered the forest at that point which he himself had selected, and where there was no trail or path, at its darkest point.” Campbell citing the Grail legend. Romance of the Grail, p. 136 The great path has no…
Merlin, Mystic Master of Warrior Princes, and the Lost Art of Mentorship
Geoffrey of Monmouth penned a story in The Life of Merlin (Vita Merlini) that was of interest to Joseph Campbell as he explored the mysteries and motifs in Arthurian tales and the Grail Legend. He writes that Geoffrey’s work is…
The Round Table
There are only two references to the Round Table in Campbell’s most comprehensive study of the Grail Romances, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology. There he notes that “It was in Wace’s work that the first literary mention of the…
The Holiness of the Heart’s Affections
This month, we at JCF are highlighting Joseph Campbell’s Romance of the Grail, and I’m reminded once again of the very careful reader Campbell was, and his love for innovative literature. Medieval romances are certainly one example, and Modernist literature…
Thinking at the Edges of Joseph Campbell: The Future of the MythBlast Series
Anniversaries mark the important events of one’s life; they invite reflection on the past, why it’s mattered, and where we’ve come from. Simultaneously, anniversaries stimulate thinking about the future, where we want to go, and what remains to be done.…
In the Service of Creative Being
Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes“And he turns his mind to unknown arts.” Metamorphoses (Ovid, Book VIII, l. 188) As this pandemic rages on, exposing the structural flaws of an economic system bent on profit-making over the lives of ordinary…
“Myths don’t explain anything.” — Wait, what?
Here on the anniversary of the Joseph Campbell Foundation I got to musing about the service Joseph Campbell’s work has done for our world. My first thought was that bumper sticker. You’ve seen it: “Follow Your Bliss.” A bit hokey,…
One Forbidden Thing
Throughout the 1950s and 60s, a comic series called Forbidden Worlds made waves on newsstands, at dinner tables, and even in the Halls of Congress. In 1954, a Senate sub-committee holding hearings on the dangers of comic books pressured the…
The Outward Foundation for Inward Flowering
This September marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. One of the reasons I am so proud and honored to be a part of this organization is that JCF has never lost sight of its…
To Be Human Among Titans and Gods
In Sake and Satori (being the second volume of Asian Journals), Joseph Campbell provides an account of his travels in the Far East during the spring and summer of 1955. Addressing his time in Japan, (which comprises the bulk of…
MythBlast | A Most Rare Vision
In the Northern Hemisphere, much of July and August is commonly referred to as the “dog days” of summer. Swelteringly hot, heavy, stuffy days tint life with lethargy, ennui, or larghetto. The phrase, dog days, refers to the appearance of…
MythBlast | Penelope’s Loom
When Penelope tells her story to the stranger, who is Odysseus in disguise, she reveals how the loom strategy she used to keep the suitors at bay came from a divine source: “A god from the blue it was inspired…