April 10, 2022
When Mythology Meets Dance and Sounds
Monica Martinez
I first heard of the 11th-century bronze Shíva Naṭarāja statue in 1991, while watching Power of Myth—the television series that made Campbell famous in Brazil, at least to me and others of my generation. In...
April 3, 2022
Heroic Fear, Foolishness, and Creative Ecstasy
Leigh Melander
To begin, I offer you two words: Atychiphobia. Kakorrhaphiophobia. Dive into them past the vague gloss of vowels and consonants as we are wont to do with unknown words; say them aloud, and you will...
March 27, 2022
When the Adventure is a Drag
Mark C.E. Peterson
The Joseph Campbell Foundation MythBlast Series has spent March musing about The Adventure and reading Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss which, let’s face it, sounds exciting: filled with presentiment, and descriptive of that happy flow state...
March 20, 2022
A Call to a Collective Adventure
John Bucher
In 1968, singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson tried to make a phone call and heard a sound familiar to anyone that remembers the age before cell phones. Beep, beep, beep, beep. The sound not only informed the...
March 13, 2022
Tossing the Golden Ball
Catherine Svehla
Myths do not ground, they open. James Hillman In The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Campbell revealed the myth of the hero’s transformation and invited us to locate our lives in this myth. When you...
March 6, 2022
Joseph Campbell reminds us in Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation: Perfection is inhuman. Human beings are not perfect. What evokes our love – and I mean love, not lust – is the imperfection...
February 27, 2022
The King Who Saved Himself From Being Saved
Bradley Olson
Heroism and Adventure, the theme of this month’s MythBlast Series essays, seem to me to be a linked pair. Reflexively, I think, we imagine adventure as a going out, an extension into the world, a...
February 20, 2022
The River Erdman
Diane McGhee Valle
Jean Marion Erdman (Feb. 20, 1916 – May 4, 2020) was a dancer and avant-garde theatrical artist who was married to Joseph Campbell for 49 years until his death in 1987. In celebration of Erdman’s birthday,...