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Myth is a holy ghost, moving effortlessly through boundaries while making sacred appearances that sometimes seem to come out of nowhere. It moves as a zeitgeist that has always resisted being confined to a single expression. It defies linear history, geographic borders, and profane attempts to capture and confine it. For some, it primarily manifested in oral tales; for others, it appeared in written words; and still, for others, it has been revealed through images and symbols.
In Creative Mythology, the final volume of his Masks of God series, Joseph Campbell explores images and symbols, stating, “Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies or reason and coercion” (6). It's perhaps no wonder that images and symbols are carried into our eyes on something as delicate as light itself. Campbell continues discussing this fragile relationship between symbols and light, saying, “The light-world modes of experience and thought were late, very late, developments in the biological prehistory of our species. Even in the life-course of the individual, the opening of the eyes to light occurs only after all the main miracles have been accomplished of the building of a living body of already functioning organs, each with its inherent aim … though our eyes and what they witness may persuade us ...” Hearing Campbell speak of light passing through the opening of the eyes and persuading our beliefs, I cannot help but think of how this also occurs in cinema.
Dream palaces and cathedrals
The moving images of myth have always struck me in ways that I haven’t always had language to describe. As a young boy, I was mesmerized by Star Wars, though not just by the spaceships and the Wookies. They transported me into a world much larger than the Texas landscape I grew up in. Entering that dark room, sitting with strangers, eating popcorn, and drinking soda felt magical, transcendent, and almost ritualistic. I wasn’t just transported into a different time in a galaxy far, far away. I was transported into something that felt beyond the experiences of reality and consciousness I had previously known.
Now, years later, I have come to recognize the similarities between theaters, temples, and cathedrals. All involve the coming together of the community to participate in spoken and unspoken rituals. The experience in the theater was not unlike my experience each Sunday at church. The bread and the wine were reflected in the soda and the popcorn, echoing the ancient practice of buying ritual corn before entering the temple. The movie theaters of the 1940s explicitly recognized the mythic connection, often referring to their venues as “Dream Palaces,” referencing the fact that both dreams and movies take place in the dark and often outside the conscious experience. Campbell famously described the dream as a personalized myth and the myth as the depersonalized dream (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, pg. 19). The 6200-seat Roxy Theater in New York City claimed to be “the cathedral of the motion picture” and offered what was akin to a religious experience for many attendees—an ecstatic event that inspired awe. That ecstasy came from the movies themselves and the surroundings in which they were presented—the cinema. Since its inception, the cinematic experience has been recognized as a container for something larger than itself. The art form of cinema is a container for the archetypes of ancient myth.
Cinematic sacred spaces
The movie theater remains a place where we go to enter another world. It was (and maybe still is) one of the only places you could go and sit in total darkness with strangers, experiencing something together. It was (and maybe still is) one of the only places where it was okay to cry in public. These factors, and dozens of others, made movie theaters special and even sacred for some. As a culture, we went to experience something we couldn’t experience by ourselves at home. When society began watching movies in their homes and then on their phones, noticeable confusion set in about that type of space the movie theater was. It became ordinary, less special, and no longer sacred, and in turn, people started behaving as if it was not a special place anymore—a reality that has kept many away from theaters in recent times. But I would suggest that for those with eyes to see it, cinema still holds all the power it ever did, even though we as a culture have slowly stopped recognizing it in its fullness.
Throughout its brief history, cinema has played a crucial role in identity formation for many and helped others negotiate significant changes in their identity. Films have reflected who we believed we were at the time of their creation and traced our transformation from one “world” to another. For these reasons and so many more, we have decided, here at the Joseph Campbell Foundation, to theme our 2025 MythBlast series around an invitation to experience the power of myth at the movies. We believe that in this age of screens, great value can be found in allowing those screens to act as mirrors, reflecting who we are and who we could be. We believe those reflections can lead us toward deeper insights into some of the most profound mythic questions that can be asked—what it means to be human, who we truly are, how we can experience life fully—and countless others. Over the coming months, writers and thinkers in this series will explore stories, characters, archetypes, and motifs of the screen that have made an impact on them individually or on us collectively. We hope that by better understanding mythic ideas through the lens of cinema, unforeseen understandings about our journeys might also be revealed to us all. So, we invite you to sit back, get comfortable, grab your popcorn, and experience the power of myth at the movies with us in 2025.
MythBlast authored by:
John Bucher is a renowned mythologist and story expert who has been featured on the BBC, the History Channel, the LA Times, The Hollywood Reporter and on numerous other international outlets . He serves as Executive Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is a writer, podcaster, storyteller, and speaker. He has worked with government and cultural leaders around the world as well as organizations such as HBO, DC Comics, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, A24 Films, Atlas Obscura, and The John Maxwell Leadership Foundation, bringing his deep understanding of narrative and myth to a wide array of audiences. He is the author of six influential books on storytelling, including the best-selling Storytelling for Virtual Reality, named by BookAuthority as one of the best storytelling books of all time. John has worked with New York Times Best Selling authors, YouTube influencers, Eisner winners, Emmy winners, Academy Award nominees, magicians, and cast members from Saturday Night Live. Holding a PhD in Mythology & Depth Psychology, he integrates scholarly insights with practical storytelling techniques, exploring the profound connections between myth, culture, and personal identity. His expertise has helped shape compelling narratives across various platforms, enriching the way stories are told and experienced globally.
This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Fool.
Latest Podcast
This episode of Pathways with Joseph Campbell, titled "The Harmony and Discord of Religions," was recorded at Brandeis University in 1958. At the time, Joseph Campbell was 54 years old and nearing the completion of Primitive Mythology, the first volume of his Masks of God series. In this lecture, Campbell offers an affirmative defense of comparative methodologies, exploring both the commonalities and differences among the world’s religious traditions.
This Week's Highlights
"I think that the movie is the perfect medium for mythological messages. The medium is so plastic and pliable and magic things can happen. And then the combination, you know, of fantastic landscape and possible modes of action and voyaging that we can hardly conceive of in good solid terms ... That’s a mythological realm, and movies could handle this kind of thing."
-- Joseph Campbell
The Wisdom of Joseph Campbell (© 1997 New Dimensions Foundation)
Tape 3, Side 1