MythBlast

Subscribe

Subscribe to the Foundation’s email list to receive a weekly MythBlast newsletter along with occasional news and special offers from JCF.

Each week, an author in the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s community contributes an original essay interpreting our monthly theme and a featured Campbell work. This little blast of mythology—a MythBlast—forms the centerpiece of our weekly newsletter, which also contains curated selections from our archives.

Subscribe today to receive a weekly email with this springboard into myth, storytelling, and the work of Joseph Campbell.

FEATURED WORK BY JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine

In Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, Joseph Campbell explores the symbols, themes, and functions of many goddess figures, following them through their transformations across cultures and epoch.

LEARN MORE

The Wise Eyes of the Goddess: Star Wars' Maz Kanata and Two of Mythology’s Most Powerful Archetypes

embodying two of the most enduring archetypes Joseph Campbell identified in his studies of mythology: the Wise One and the Mother Goddess. In doing so, Maz Kanata offers a new way of seeing what it means to guide a heroic figure.

John Bucher, PhD

18 minutes ago6 min read

2 views

Dreams from the Deep: The Sacred Restlessness of the Seeker’s Path

At the heart of the Seeker's journey lies what we might call a "sacred restlessness"—that divine discomfort that propels us beyond comfortable boundaries.

Jason Batt

Apr 207 min read

921 views

Saving Private Ryan and the Archetypal Search

They pool their courage and skills. The collective capacity of a team of Seekers is far more than the sum of each individual’s.

Joanna Gardner, PhD

Apr 136 min read

805 views

“Tango with the Rango”: Dancing with Identity on the Seeker’s Path

Each of us may have varying degrees of the Fool, the Lover, the Trickster, or the Seeker active within.

Scott Neumeister, PhD

Apr 66 min read

596 views

Trickstering: Casablanca and Resistance

Instead of being a conclusion, archetypes are instead flowing metaphors that exist and move both within us and outside ourselves

Leigh Melander, PhD

Mar 234 min read

803 views

Tricking the Trickster

The Trickster mirrors shadow qualities; Jung, nevertheless, stresses this figure is by no means the face of evil.

Stephen Gerringer

Mar 237 min read

1,048 views

Willy Wonka: Trickster

When the Trickster is at work, you don’t always know you were being tested until it’s too late.

Mark C.E. Peterson

Mar 166 min read

973 views

The Trickster's Dream

The trickster jars the ego into a new perspective by subjecting it to frustration, embarrassment, terror, confusion, ruin

Craig Deininger

Mar 96 min read

1,129 views

Mulholland Drive and the Otherworlds of Myth

It is heroic to reckon that the fire-bringers will illuminate, perhaps even enchant, those lost highways and twin peaks that are necessary

Teddy Hamstra

Mar 27 min read

1,061 views

A man and woman looking at each other on a boat in Paris.

To All the Lovers, Lost and Found

For my entire life, romantic Love was supposed to last forever. That was the goal: Find "the one." Fall in Love. Live happily ever after.

Torri Yates-Orr

Feb 235 min read

1,226 views

Love Meets Fate and Destiny at the Movies

Kristina Dryža explores the role fate and free will play in The Lover's life in the 2011 film The Adjustment Bureau.

Kristina Dryža

Feb 167 min read

1,656 views

Desire Along the Witches’ Road

Agatha All Along is not a love story per se. It is a superheroine fantasy with aspects of horror, comedy, and adventure. But, love is here

Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD

Feb 97 min read

865 views

My, She Was Yar

Love is the inducement to individuation, to becoming who one is

Bradley Olson, PhD

Feb 26 min read

765 views

The Divine Mayhem of What’s Up, Doc?

Divine powers such as the Fool’s can burst in unannounced and turn everything upside down.

Joanna Gardner, PhD

Jan 266 min read

777 views

“This Is Madness”: C-3PO as the Neurotic Fool

While the Tarot Fool inattentively walks over the cliffside, Threepio is hypervigilant for cliffs of all kinds: a neurotic Fool.

Scott Neumeister, PhD

Jan 195 min read

912 views

We Have Heard the Chimes at Midnight

I think that Falstaff is, perhaps, Shakespeare’s most vividly human, most fully realized and embodied figure of all the characters...

Bradley Olson, PhD

Jan 127 min read

848 views

Experience the Power of Myth at the Movies

Since its inception, the cinematic experience has been recognized as a container for something larger than itself.

John Bucher, PhD

Jan 55 min read

982 views

The Beautiful Lie That Leads To Renewal

I think that we long for a fundamentally aesthetic experience, the experience of beauty and transcendence to which mortal flesh can hold to

Bradley Olson, PhD

Dec 29, 20247 min read

1,304 views

Standing Still: The Soulstice of the Dark Night

This was a soulstice—an enforced standing still of my physical and spiritual aspects.

Scott Neumeister, PhD

Dec 22, 20245 min read

1,195 views

"No More Horizons"?

every initiation on the Path is a kind of death and renewal, a doorway that once marked a limit, the horizon of what we knew or believed.

Mark C.E. Peterson

Dec 15, 20245 min read

714 views