Photo by Ueli Frey Three summers ago, I sat in a workshop led by my Italian colleague, Mariella Assunta Giusti. She asked the room: When does childhood end? She didn’t wait for a response. The answer is simpler than you think, she explained, and harder than you might imagine. We leave childhood when we stop trying to go back, back to the parents we needed and didn’t get, back to the past we wished would have been. How do we do this? We become brave enough to grieve, to look straight at what happened in our childhoods that never should have, and at what should have happened but never did, and stay with our sorrow…instead of trying to get anything back. I’ve carried Mariella’s words with me ever since, and I hear their echo in the opening verse of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide”: I took my love, I took it down Climbed a mountain and I turned around And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills 'Til the landslide brought me down That’s what Mariella was telling us: turn around, look honestly at your own reflection, and let the landslide (the grieving) take you down. Recently, I’ve begun to understand all this in a new light. The call to adventure…to solve the unsolvable When you and I arrive into this world, we’re ready for forty-six people to scoop us up and hold us tight, pressing us to their chests for nine hours each day. We’re ready for these forty-six people to hurry to our side when we cry, arriving in twenty-five seconds or less, offering a comforting presence. That’s the world our minds expect because two million years of life in villages (small bands of thirty to 150 people raising children together) wired us for nothing less. We’re greeted instead by two parents living in a consumer culture that demands they make it on their own. They can’t possibly give us what we expect, because two exhausted people can’t be a village. This is our ordinary world, insufficient from our first breath. So childhood becomes a call to adventure, a call to solve an unsolvable problem: how do I turn two people into the village my mind and heart ache for? A road of trials…each step dismantling a version of ourselves Off we go, walking down a road of trials. It’s made up of six childhood steps, each an attempt to solve the unsolvable, each destined to fail. It starts with patience: we wait, certain our parents will soon become the village we need. But the waiting stretches on and nothing changes, so we shift to protest: we kick, scream, cry, throw temper tantrums, because these are social signals telling our parents to come close. And it works, for a moment… but they don’t stay, because they have jobs, bills, dishes, and exhaustion of their own. Protest is failing, so we turn to performance, the most costly trial: we study our parents’ faces and learn to become the child we think they want: funnier, quieter, tougher, sweeter, whatever earns their gaze… but still, nothing, and now we’ve lost track of who we actually are. Enter consumer culture, offering two more trials. First, its army of advertisers promises us, children who trust what we’re being told, that if we just purchase the right stuff, all will be well: with a new frisbee, Dad will step outside and play with us. And if we add the sparkling hula hoop, Mom will join in too. But when the frisbee and hula hoop arrive, Dad and Mom don’t. So consumer culture brings us to school and teaches us that achievement earns visibility, and soon we’re convinced doing more will get us seen and then our parents will finally stay. Again, no luck. We give it one more go. We pinpoint the moment in our past we’re sure broke everything, the divorce, and we try to undo it, trying to bring our parents back together. We’re certain this will take us to the life we’re meant for…but the place we’re trying to return to only exists in memory, softened and simplified. This is Campbell’s underworld: a series of reasonable steps, each one failing, each one dismantling a version of the self we’re sure could win. There was The Patient Child; the Loud Child; the Performing Child; the Child with the Right Things; the Child Who Achieved Enough; and The Child Who Could Undo The Past. One by one, they fall away. This dismantling is painful, but after twenty-five years sitting across from people as a therapist, I can confidently say: Dismantling is not the tragedy; fighting against it is. When we resist the dismantling, it can’t do its work. We end up stuck in three of the trials, performing, purchasing, and producing, hoping one day these will finally pay off. When the landslide brings us down, we’re freed to rise up and rebuild. Today, reflecting on Mariella’s words from her workshop three summers ago, I understand them through the lens of lost villages: growing up means surrendering the hope that our parents will become the village we’ve always needed; and giving up on the belief that any of the childhood trials, the ones we once embraced with all our might, can take us to that village. As Mariella instructed, we have to grieve what we needed but never received, the village that was our home for two million years, imprinted in our minds, still in our souls. Or in the words of Stevie Nicks, we must let the landslide take us down: Well, I've been 'fraid of changin' 'Cause I've built my life around you But time makes you bolder Even children get older And I'm gettin' older, too Ah, take my love, take it down Oh, climb a mountain and turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down When the landslide brings us down, we’re freed to rise up and rebuild. That’s what happened to me when I was just six years old. What the dismantling makes possible…not emptiness, but insight and action One December afternoon, crouched on the carpet with my friend Michael, our action figures in full battle, Michael suddenly drops his toy, points to the Santa Claus figure on the shelf, and smirks, You don’t still believe, do you? I shout back that of course I do, because what kind of question is that? But Michael’s words have planted seeds of doubt, and they quickly spread. By nightfall, tucked under covers, I’m mourning the loss of the red-suited man I’d believed in my entire life, the man I’d written heartfelt letters to, penned in crayon. I lie there, sinking into post-Santa grief, when something flickers in the back of my mind: If that jolly old man is out of the picture, then who’s been leaving gifts under the tree? That’s when I see it: It’s been Mom and Dad this whole time. They’d intercepted my letters to Santa, read my Wish List, pushed through crowded malls to find hidden treasures, and wrapped each one…just for me. Now, my tears aren’t from sorrow; they’re from awe at the love that’s been here all along, working behind the scenes. I leap out of bed, eager to wrap Mom and Dad in the biggest thank you my small arms can deliver. Because for one magical day each year, they did it, they were my village. This is what the dismantling makes possible: not emptiness, but insight. We see our parents not as the village they keep falling short of being, but as two people who loved us with everything they had, two people who, one day each year, pulled off something magical. And… When we finally grieve the loss of our dream world, we make room for the beauty hiding in the world we’ve been given. Rather than trying to turn two exhausted people into a village, we start showing up in places where groups of people gather, on pickleball courts and in knitting circles, slowing down with others, lingering where we once hurried, hearts open. In time, we discover among them a disparate group of people who feel like they belong to us, and we start weaving, stitching them together, creating a village of our own making. Stevie Nicks’ song ends with a return to the hills: Ah, take my love, take it down Oh, climb a mountain and turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down Oh, the landslide will bring it down It’s the same imagery from her opening, but this time it doesn’t sound like fear; this time, she’s welcoming the landslide. MythBlast authored by: Carl R. Nassar, PhD, CIIPTS, is a writer, researcher, clinical trainer, former university professor, and psychotherapist. His writing is part-science, part-story, exploring what both research and lived experience have taught him… that our sweetest ending is not individual triumph, but reunion, a return to connection, kinship, and the village. Carl lives in Colorado with his wife, Gretchen, and their daughter, Kaila. www.carlnassar.com This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast “What if the greatest adventure of your life began with someone else's unfinished dream? Laura Carney is a writer, memoirist, and longtime copy editor whose work has appeared in publications including Good Housekeeping, People, Washington Post, Maria Shriver's The Sunday Paper and Runner's World. But it was a deeply personal story that would become her bestselling memoir, My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free.” When Laura was twenty-five, her father was killed by a distracted driver, leaving behind more than memories. Hidden away was a handwritten list of sixty dreams he had written as a young man -dreams he would never have the chance to fulfill. Years later, Laura made the extraordinary decision to complete the list herself, transforming an unimaginable loss into a journey of courage, healing, and self-discovery. In this heartfelt conversation, we explore Laura's remarkable journey, the enduring influence of Joseph Campbell, the Hero's Journey, synchronicity, forgiveness, and the surprising ways our relationships with those we've lost continue to evolve. Together, we reflect on what it truly means to embrace life fully, and how sometimes the path to becoming ourselves begins with answering a call we never expected. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging. Negativism to the pain and ferocity of life is negativism to life. We are not there until we can say “yea” to it all." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, 20 Kundalini Yoga: Enlightment and Dharma See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Photo from magnific.com My Initiation The nexus of culture and the environment has driven the mythic imagination for millennia, shaping human civilization and its development pathways. Music in particular has been a medium to reconnect people, nature and the cosmos. Music, as well as other art forms, has allowed communities worldwide to express the mythic imagination, the changing nature of global and local ecosystems, the shifting balance between people and nature, as well as their fears, hopes and collective visions for the future. For the past twenty-five years I have been with the United Nations, having led our work around the world on the sustainable development agenda, helping combat the planetary crisis of climate change and loss of ecosystems. We have also empowered local cultures and sustained communities' efforts to combat poverty and inequality. This has been my pollen path—the center of my life’s work. I have encountered much beauty during my global UN assignments: the planet’s diverse ecosystems and our multiverse of cultures and mythologies. My journey has also entailed many challenges which ecosystems and communities face in achieving a future of sustainability and resilience. Embracing the connection between culture and the environment is a key priority in this regard. Mythic harmonies in the Himalayas My career initiation started not behind a desk but on a mountain, shaped by mythic experiences, music and the power of nature. My first UN assignment, in the mid-1990s in the Garhwal region of the Indian Himalayas, involved my working with one of the world’s leading experts on mountain ecosystems to better understand the implications of rapid climate change and biodiversity loss for local cultures and communities. The Himalayas,known as the “Third Pole,” are the highest peaks on the planet. Their glaciers and rich waters are the source of some of the world’s oldest civilizations and mythic traditions. The Garhwal region of the Himalayas is a center of yogic culture and home of the ascetics since millennia, with deep reverence for the surrounding heavenly mountain systems and the mythic tales that accompany them. Garhwal is also home to the famous Chipko movement, led by women rural villagers in the 1970s. Their original “tree hugger” sustainability campaign gained global resonance, inspiring nonviolent actions for social justice and ecological protection worldwide. Like any initiation, my experience entailed trials and tribulations, including the various development challenges faced by local communities which were the subject of extensive field work. But the most impactful part of my initial journey as a UN practitioner was connecting with communities on ways local culture shaped their relation with nature. A particularly inspirational experience was joining local traveling musical theatre groups connected with a local ashram. Their work focused on reconnecting people and nature through mythology. The traveling bands adapted ancient Vedic myths about the Himalayas, accentuating pre-existing ecological themes and integrating modern aspects of climate change and biodiversity loss. This conveyed messages on the connection between humans, nature and cosmos via musical performances and village theatre that reenacted myths. This served as a medium for conveying and preserving inherited wisdom via mythologies on both the age-old and modern dimensions of ecological crisis and community resilience in Himalayan society. Music has allowed communities worldwide to express the mythic imagination, the changing nature of global and local ecosystems, the shifting balance between people and nature, as well as their fears, hopes and collective visions for the future. Music and theatre conveyed, through the power of myth, both fears and challenges, as well as hopes, visions for the future and collective wisdom on the importance of balancing people and nature. The sharp sounds from the artisans’ traditional string instruments intertwined with the deep drumbeats, generated a sacred atmosphere in which the theatre performance unfolded, with actors adorned in colorful costumes depicting mythical characters. All around were the thrusting waves of sound from the sweeping mountain winds and from the rural villagers themselves, some speaking about the story being conveyed, some joining the chorus, others laughing or crying during scenes of the performance. I was inspired seeing the artisans’ commitment to sustainability and their creativity in mobilizing ancient myths to reconnect people and nature. This was a formative experience, shaping my lifelong career focused on the role of culture in building robustness for communities and the environment. As my first UN assignment, it showed me in a real, visceral way how mythic imagination and storytelling are the roots of resilience for local and indigenous communities across critical ecosystems in the Himalayas, and indeed the world over. Rhythms from the archipelago After my time in the Himalayas, my next UN assignment took me to Indonesia, an archipelagic nation of over 17,000 islands. Sitting along the Ring of Fire, the archipelago is one of the world’s most ecologically and culturally diverse regions, a complex system of remote island ecosystems and communities. This complexity is reflected in Indonesian mythology, emerging over millennia, as well as in its rich forms of music, dance and art. This stage of my initiation involved time with the communities around Mount Bromo on the eastern edge of Java, near Bali. Mount Bromo is an ancient volcano, part of a chain at the center of a massive caldera formed over 30,000 years ago, surrounded by a black mantle of sand generated by ash over time. Bromo is named after Brahma, the lord of creation in Vedic mythology—a testament to the life-giving nature of volcanoes and their role in the cosmogony, or mythic original stories, here and globally. Beyond our work supporting local efforts to address climate impacts on communities and sustaining vital forest, mangrove and coral ecosystems, I was privileged to participate alongside a group of shamans and yogis in Kasada, an ancient cultural tradition of the local community. Starting in a temple at the base of the volcano, we sat cross-legged at the centre of the open air courtyard of the complex, adorned in traditional attire. Slowly, the sound of a music ensemble started to reverberate across the black stone structure. This was the ancient Gamelan percussion instrument system. A group of musicians began to play, at first slowly, then at a rapid pace, with Gamelan’s classic rhythmic and cyclic structure. This features complex polyrhythms, conveying the complexity of nature and the cosmos. Gamelan’s smooth rhythmic nature, utilized in traditional Javanese and Balinese spiritual ceremonies, uses a cyclical and repetitive harmonic flow rather than a linear one, symbolizing the repeating aspect of nature and society. This initiated our experience. Then with the shaman and yogis, we entered a deep meditation, devoid of sound, immersing ourselves into self-realization. This commenced at night and lasted approximately six hours. We arose at sunrise the next day, welcoming the day with the rhythmic chanted of “aum.” The circularity and singularity of the Gamelan rhythm aligned with the chanting of “aum.” As Campbell has noted, “aum” represents the cycle of life with three sub-dimensions of the character—representing creation, sustenance and death—and a fourth dimension being the silence underlying them, from which the cycle emerges and to which it returns (The Power of Myth, 286-87). Awakening from the meditation, I realized how the Gamelan expressed our pathway through this cycle, towards a soundless unity and singularity. Via the meditative process,we became one with the complex fabric of life on Earth and across the cosmos. The long walk towards the volcano of Mount Bromo was a meditative experience in itself. We joined a procession up the volcano’s side, led by the shamans, and sprinkled provisions of fruits, flowers and other items into the crater as fumes rose from its depths. After the intensive ceremony, I understood first how the archipelago’s diverse cultures express a mythic balance between society and nature through its music and arts. I also witnessed how the spirit of Gamelan infuses overall culture and ways of life. This was a formative experience into the nexus of nature and culture, carried forward through my term in Indonesia for many years thereafter, advancing resilient communities and ecosystems. Reverberations to the future Building on my initiation and six years of UN deployments in India and Indonesia, I have continued on my pollen path over the past twenty-five years. Further UN assignments took me to places like China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Belize and Jamaica, each for five-year terms. Additionally, through our work supporting countries and communities combating inequality and ecological decline, I experienced the multiversal ways that communities, nature, and cosmos address these challenges through myth and culture. Myths contain the deep spiritual and ecological intelligence of local and indigenous communities, continuing to vitally contribute to global goals of reconnecting people and planet, and crafting more inclusive, nature-based futures. This is rooted in local experience. As Campbell noted, the multiverse of cultures and ecosystems across the planet show that “These are the eyes of the Earth. And this is the voice of the universe” (The Power of Myth, 40). What else? MythBlast authored by: Kishan Khoday is a Fellow at the Joseph Campbell Foundation, serving in a pro-bono capacity to support research and analysis of the role of mythology in advancing goals of sustainability and resilience. A planetary scientist and international lawyer, Kishan has practiced with the United Nations for over 25 years, leading local cooperation with communities, governments and change makers to combat inequality, advance nature-based solutions and develop capacities for transformation change. Kishan has been a thought leader on the nexus of nature, culture and development, having traveled to over fifty countries and serving in UN country assignments across Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa and the Caribbean. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In Part Two of The Occidental Tradition, recorded at the Blaisdell Institute in 1973, this episode features Joseph Campbell leading an informal and wide-ranging discussion on education, mythology, and the Occidental tradition. Campbell begins with the sacred syllable Om, exploring waking consciousness, dreams, and the silence that lies behind words and images. He describes dreams as a personal entrance into the world of myth, where individual experience opens onto larger, universal patterns. He also recounts a remarkable mythological wedding ceremony held in the volcanic landscape of Iceland. Drawing upon Norse symbolism, ritual, music, movement, and the natural environment, the ceremony becomes an example of how mythology can be lived rather than merely studied. The conversation then turns toward education and Campbell’s belief that Western students should encounter Eastern traditions while also developing a deeper understanding of their own cultural inheritance. He emphasizes the Occidental tradition’s focus on individual responsibility, the discovery of one’s unique path, and the courage to enter the unknown. Host Bradley Olson offers an introduction and commentary, providing historical context for this spontaneous and revealing conversation. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Rhythm is the instrument of art." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living, 249 On Consciousness See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

The Odyssey (2026) © Universal Pictures The last book of the New Testament offers this warning: I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city. Moses says something similar in Deuteronomy, and the authors of Proverbs also echo those warnings. But the old myths are not frozen in amber, nor are they fixed, unchanging narratives. They have their own lives; they grow and evolve over the ages. I think the best way to understand myths is that over time they undergo a kind of geological sedimentation—the slow, continuous accumulation of cultural, psychological, and historical meaning deposited by every generation that finds something of importance in them. That’s one of the key things that makes myths myth. Contemporary storytelling that employs a text as ancient as Homer’s The Odyssey consists of more than merely adapting a well-known Greek epic poem. Consciously or not, the contemporary adaptation is adding to three millennia of interpretive sedimentation. Christopher Nolan's cinematic adaptation of The Odyssey is merely the latest example of this process. Rather than delivering a literal translation of Bronze Age epic poetry, Nolan layers Roman mythology, Victorian poetry, and a contemporary understanding of the psychology of trauma into a cohesive visual-narrative landscape. In doing so, he shifts the mythic journey from a physical voyage across the Mediterranean to an internal exploration of a haunted contemporary psyche. The scope of this “geologic” approach becomes clear in how the film handles its first major departure from the familiar text: the physical staging of the Trojan War. The Trojan Horse, for example, was never a central plot point in Homer’s text. In reality, the horse is barely mentioned in The Odyssey, recalled only in nostalgic asides, or bittersweet memories—most notably through the song of the blind bard Demodocus in Book 8 and the retrospective reflections of Menelaus in Book 4. Nolan intentionally ignores this Homeric absence and shows us the twists and turns, if you will, of Odysseus getting the great horse inside the walls of Troy and onto the screen to serve as a visceral centerpiece. To build these scenes, Nolan bypasses Homer entirely and mines the plot devices of Virgil’s Aeneid, written seven centuries later. By importing Virgil’s deceptive Greek soldier Sinon into the narrative, the film absorbs a distinctly Roman skepticism. Odysseus is no longer viewed through the uncritical heroic lens of classical Greece; instead Virgil reframes him as the coldly calculating architect of mass slaughter. The legendary military trick is stripped of its romanticism. Nolan uses the wooden shell of the horse as a psychological pressure cooker, capturing the claustrophobic terror of men hiding in tomb-like darkness. The legendary military trick sets the stage for an epic journey characterized almost entirely by terror and psychological dissociation. Indeed, the film profoundly alters the theological framework of Homer’s tale, particularly as it regards the goddess Athena. In the original epic, the relationship between the goddess and the hero is nearly constant and deeply intimate. Athena walks beside Odysseus, alters his physical form, and influences his thoughts because, for the ancient Greeks, inspiration was something quite literally given to, or instilled in the human mind by the divine. Nolan’s film completely ignores this classic paradigm, and Athena doesn’t serve as a comforting companion; instead, she appears as a jarring, haunting image that periodically and abruptly intrudes upon Odysseus's consciousness. The idea of Athena as an unwanted, intrusive image speaks directly to the existential condition of the twenty-first century. In a secularized world that has effectively banished the sacred, humanity no longer sees the hand of a god in the movements of wind and tides or in a sudden stroke of luck. Instead, the modern individual experiences the divine as an unsettling psychological intrusion that shatters our illusions of absolute autonomy and perhaps even causes us to question our sanity—as C.G. Jung put it, the gods have become our diseases. Because the heavens remain silent for the vast majority of his journey, Odysseus alone is left responsible for his own survival and his own guilt. Athena’s occasional, hauntingly atmospheric appearances leave both the protagonist and the audience with a profound sense of existential impoverishment that moves us, along with Odysseus, to confront a universe in which we have locked the gods away in the deep recesses of the unconscious. For Nolan’s Odysseus, the burden of absolute free will ultimately prevents any possibility of a deus ex machina and a traditional Homeric restoration. When Odysseus finally reaches the shores of Ithaca, the besieged domesticity of his palace does not offer peace, but a very literal nostalgia—algia meaning pain and nostos meaning homecoming. Lord Tennyson’s poem “Ulysses” offers us a great insight toward understanding Odysseus: “I cannot rest from travel,” Ulysses says. Odysseus has come to be the embodiment of the indestructible impulse to life that keeps moving forward simply because it is alive. In this sense he’s been volatilized, he’s become a character who has fundamentally dissolved into pure, perpetual movement. He’s the personification of momentum; the man who cannot rest, who endures, who can only exist in a state of striving. Stability to Odysseus is an alien idea, and that makes a return to ordinary life an impossibility. And yet, paradoxically, there is Odysseus’ unrelenting desire for home. Tennyson’s poem resolves the paradox by placing Ulysses at home until old age reveals that long dormant, restless—even manic—urge to abandon his hearth and "sail beyond the sunset, and the baths / Of all the western stars." Tennyson gives his hero a crew of old mariners to accompany him into the twilight knowing full well that he has no comrades left. Every single soldier who left Troy with him was consumed by monsters or swallowed by the sea. For an aged Odysseus to sail westward with an imaginary crew would be a senescent delusion, the tragic unraveling of a broken mind. Yet Tennyson’s vision is so beautifully rendered that we pay no mind to its implausibility. Nolan, on the other hand, resolves the paradox between domesticity and movement by staying true to Odysseus’ nature, suggesting that the true homecoming is not a return to a physical place regardless of its palatial comforts, but is instead a willing acceptance of the only alternative his own fate has left him. In this way, Nolan transforms "home" into an internal anchor—a stabilizing ideal, a psychological state of peace and radical acceptance. Furthermore, by placing Penelope on the ship alongside her husband who has lost every comrade to violence, the film transforms Tennyson’s Ulysses and his lonely, manic urge to "sail beyond the sunset" into a shared act of compassionate grace. Odysseus and Penelope do not set sail to conquer a new horizon; they don’t sail as a means of escape from responsibility. They sail because a profound emotional truth has been discovered: domestic stability for both of them has become an impossibility, and motion is the only expression of life that they have left. In this brilliant, modern layering of a 3,000-year-old sedimentary myth, Nolan has, consciously or not, reminded us of our need to return to these ancient narratives when our contemporary explanations of life fail us. We do not need to keep Homer unchanged and frozen in time or ward off any changes to his poem with the threat of dire warnings. What we need is to let the pressures of our own historical moment add a fresh layer of sediment to the story. Ultimately, I can’t stress this enough: Nolan’s cinematic myth functions precisely as myth always has. Myth serves humanity as something like psychological technology for a secular world, giving form to what cannot be mastered so that it can, at least, be thought. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson is a writer, depth psychologist in private practice, teacher, speaker, and Director of Publications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His work explores the status of myth after belief—what it means to take myth seriously in a world where its metaphysical claims no longer hold in any straightforward way. He is the author of The Mythopoetic Impulse and a Skeleton Key Study Guide for Pathways to Bliss. His current writing pushes against the dominant tendency to treat myth as a repository of timeless meanings or archetypes, arguing instead that myth functions as a form that brings the mind into contact with its own limits—where coherence breaks down and the desire for explanation remains. Before his work in psychology and mythology, Olson worked as a police officer in North Dakota and Arizona. There, he encountered the world less as a smooth narrative than as rupture—moments of consequence without clear origin, human situations that resist explanation or moral symmetry. That experience continues to inform his understanding of myth—not as a system that resolves the world into meaning, but as a form that emerges in proximity to what cannot be made coherent. In both his clinical practice and his writing, Olson is interested in how people live with those limits—how meaning persists, not as resolution, but as a problem that cannot finally be solved. The Odyssey: Myth, Movie, and Modern Meaning Explore Campbell’s Insights and Contemporary Takes With the release of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is diving into the epic’s timeless power. We’ve gathered Campbell’s wisdom on the classic tale, alongside fresh perspectives that bring its themes to life today. From ancient lessons to modern interpretations, there’s so much to discover. Visit our Odyssey Page Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Cover of Simon & Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence shot by Guy Webster Crossing the threshold: entering the darkness This year, MythBlast invites us to explore the stages of the Hero's Journey through music. The current theme is Initiation, the stage in which the hero crosses the threshold and begins the long work of transformation. My first impulse was to write about Frank Sinatra's “My Way,” a song I have always loved. Yet another melody kept returning, quietly but persistently, until it became impossible to ignore: Simon & Garfunkel's “The Sound of Silence.” Paul Simon wrote the song in 1963, during a period of profound uncertainty in American society. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the Cold War, racial tensions, the wave of military dictatorships across South America, and the emergence of the counterculture all formed part of the historical backdrop. The song captured something deeper than political unrest; it expressed the growing isolation of people living in an increasingly technological and impersonal world. More than sixty years later, it remains uncannily contemporary. Our landscape has changed, but its anxieties remain. Wars continue. Political polarization deepens. Digital technologies—and now generative artificial intelligence—fill every empty space with information, images, and voices. Never before have human beings been so connected, and perhaps never before has genuine listening been so difficult. The song opens with one of popular music's most recognizable lines: "Hello darkness, my old friend..." Darkness is not merely the absence of light;mythically speaking, it is the threshold itself. Joseph Campbell reminds us in The Hero with a Thousand Faces that once “having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he must survive a succession of trials” (81). Initiation begins not with certainty but with ambiguity. Before wisdom comes disorientation. Before revelation comes silence. The “darkness” Simon addresses is less about despair and more about the unknown region every initiate must enter. Campbell observed that myths begin where ordinary consciousness reaches its limits. Only then does another form of knowing become possible. The following verse deepens this movement inward: "A vision softly creeping..." The image is remarkably Jungian. What approaches the ego rarely arrives dramatically. Instead, the unconscious announces itself quietly, almost imperceptibly, through dreams, intuitions, symbols, fleeting emotions, and unexpected images. These experiences often emerge while consciousness is occupied elsewhere—or asleep. As an analytical psychologist, I often witness how modern life encourages people to remain permanently occupied, precisely to avoid encountering this inner landscape. Yet Jung insisted that the unconscious is not merely a repository of forgotten material. It is also profoundly creative, containing unrealized possibilities for psychological growth. Campbell likewise understood myth as a bridge between conscious life and those deeper dimensions of collective human experience. The hero's initiation is therefore not simply an external adventure; it is an apprenticeship in listening. The trial of noise: learning to listen Years ago, I visited an anechoic chamber at the University of Campinas in Brazil, a room engineered to absorb nearly all sound reflections. Many people imagine absolute silence as emptiness. My experience was the opposite. The silence possessed an almost physical density, as though it had substance. Rather than hearing nothing, I became acutely aware of my own presence. That experience returned to me while reflecting on Simon's song. Silence is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of attention. Ironically, silence has become increasingly elusive. Campbell describes initiation as a sequence of trials and revelations, and perhaps one of our contemporary trials is simply finding enough interior space to hear ourselves. Our world has grown astonishingly noisy. Earbuds accompany us through streets, airports, supermarkets, and parks. Notifications interrupt every pause. Algorithms compete relentlessly for our attention. Even moments once reserved for contemplation are now filled with podcasts, playlists, videos, or scrolling. The challenge is not technology itself. I enjoy podcasts—including those produced by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Their intimate format often recalls the warmth of old radio broadcasts, creating the pleasant illusion that someone is speaking directly into one's ear. Technology can certainly nourish reflection. The difficulty arises when constant stimulation leaves no room for interior dialogue. Simon captures this paradox brilliantly when he describes "people talking without speaking" and "people hearing without listening." Those lines seem almost prophetic in the age of social media. We exchange enormous quantities of information while genuine conversation often becomes increasingly rare. In clinical practice, many psychologists encourage patients to establish healthier boundaries with digital life—not because technology is inherently harmful, but because endless distraction can become a sophisticated defense against self-knowledge. Why does silence unsettle us? What might we hear if we stopped filling every available moment? The prophets of silence: finding the soul in an age of distraction Campbell often noted that revelation follows withdrawal. Across mythic traditions, the hero repeatedly enters forests, caves, deserts, mountains, or the underworld before returning transformed. These places matter less as geographical locations than as psychological conditions. They represent spaces where external noise subsides enough for another voice to emerge. Toward the end of the song, Simon offers one of its most haunting images: people worshipping the "neon god." Written decades before smartphones or artificial intelligence, the metaphor feels astonishingly current. The neon god is not technology itself but our tendency to mistake distraction for meaning, visibility for wisdom, and constant connection for genuine relationship. The song closes by reminding us that "the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls." This final image suggests that wisdom rarely appears where we expect it. Like myth itself, revelation often hides within ordinary life, waiting to be recognized. The sacred does not always announce itself from mountaintops. Sometimes it whispers through overlooked places, chance encounters, dreams, graffiti, works of art, or a song that unexpectedly refuses to leave our minds. Perhaps this explains why “The Sound of Silence” continues to resonate across generations. It is more than a 1960s protest song. It is a contemporary narrative about initiation. Silence is not the absence of sound. It is the presence of attention. Its enduring power lies in this reminder: the greatest obstacle to hearing the soul is seldom external oppression. More often, it is the endless accumulation of noise that keeps us from crossing the threshold into ourselves. Campbell's famous invitation to "Follow your bliss" might often have been misunderstood as a call to pursue happiness. Yet in Campbell's sense, bliss is not comfort. It is alignment with one's deepest vocation. Discovering that vocation requires listening deeply enough to distinguish the authentic inner voice from the countless voices competing for our attention nowadays. That may be one of the defining initiations of our own historical moment. The hero of the twenty-first century does not necessarily need to retreat permanently from the world. Rather, the challenge is to participate fully in modern life without surrendering the capacity for silence. The journey asks us to cultivate an inner space where dreams, symbols, imagination, and intuition can still be heard beneath the relentless rhythm of contemporary existence. For in the end, “The Sound of Silence” reminds us that silence is never truly empty. It is where the soul and the myths have always spoken. MythBlast authored by: Monica Martinez is a Brazilian writer, researcher, and professor whose work bridges communication, narrative, and Jungian psychology. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of São Paulo (ECA-USP) and a postdoctoral degree from UMESP, exploring how stories shape identity and transformation. A clinical psychologist and Jungian analyst trained by IJEP, she maintains a private practice in São Paulo. Martinez teaches at the University of Sorocaba (Uniso) and coordinates the JORLIT research group on Literary Journalism and Transformative Narratives. In 2024, she completed her second postdoctoral project at Universidade Fernando Pessoa in Portugal, expanding her inquiry across oceans. She has authored several books and articles on literary journalism and psychological storytelling. Mother of Laura, 28, she believes in the enduring magic of narratives to heal, guide, and renew the human spirit. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this special bonus episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, author, mythologist, and longtime friend of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Phil Cousineau returns to discuss his new book, The Wisdom of The Odyssey. In conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Phil explores why Homer’s ancient epic continues to speak so powerfully to the modern world, especially as Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation brings The Odyssey back into popular culture. Together, they reflect on Odysseus’ long journey home not simply as an adventure story, but as a map of the soul - a timeless meditation on memory, exile, temptation, self-control, wisdom, and the deep human longing to return to what is most true. This conversation invites us to ask what our own odysseys are teaching us, what we may have forgotten along the way, and what wisdom we are being called to bring home. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "What is the fourth syllable in the three-syllable word aum? It is the silence that is before and after aum is pronounced. That is the totality of the word and of the world now: you have the silence — that is to say non-being — and aum, which is being. Neither exists without the other.” -- Joseph Campbell Myths of Light, 34 "Seeing Through The Symbol" See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Odysseus's Homesickness by Alexander Rothaug. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing … Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. —C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces I first heard Jefferson Starship’s “Find Your Way Back” (from 1981’s Modern Times) in high school, before I had left the nest for a greater adventure. I loved the music itself, right from the opening picked, descending guitar line, which immediately signaled the song’s melancholic tone. Many years would pass, however, before the lyrics spoke to me and I could echo the opening words: “It’s been a long, long road / Since I packed up and left on my own.” Only later in life did the song hit me with its mythic truth: the journey away is always the first step toward the journey back. This is the essence of Initiation, the phase of the hero’s journey where the seeker, having braved the adventure, now dares to face trials, to confront their shadow, and to begin the arduous work of returning home. “Find Your Way Back” is more than a simple love song; it’s a modern initiation anthem, a musical map of the soul’s path from exile to reunion. Joseph Campbell often spoke of the hero’s journey as a metaphor for the human experience of growth. The Initiation phase in particular is where the hero, having left the ordinary world, endures trials and begins the process of reintegration. In “Find Your Way Back,” the narrator is deep in this phase. They are not just physically distant from “her heart”; they are emotionally and spiritually adrift, carrying a “heavy load” of regret, longing, and the weight of their choices. The song mirrors the hero’s journey, in both its lyrics and music. The verses, with full-band energy, describe the descent (“I seem to find love where I ramble”). But then, as if to underscore the arresting quality of the summons, the band drops out in each of the first two choruses, leaving only a muted guitar and high keyboards to carry the call to return: “Find your way back to her heart.” The bridge then offers a dramatic key change and a revved-up and rockier sound. When the lyrics then reveal the reckoning (“I wish I could go back in time … And get it right from the start”), the band shifts into double-time—a sonic rebirth and a lift toward the return. Odysseus’ rambling way back If “Find Your Way Back” is a song of Initiation, then The Odyssey is one of its mythic predecessors. Odysseus, too, is a hero in the throes of this phase for much of the epic. His trials, from the Cyclops to Circe to Calypso, aren’t just obstacles; they’re rites of passage, forcing him to shed his old identity as a warrior and emerge as a man capable of ruling Ithaca in partnership with his wife, Penelope, with wisdom and humility. The song and The Odyssey exhibit striking parallels. The narrator’s “long, long road” echoes Odysseus’ ten-year voyage, as much about inner transformation as about covering distance. The line “I carry a heavy load” could be Odysseus’ lament after losing his crew or enduring Poseidon’s wrath, let alone the traumas of the Trojan War. And the repeated chorus of “Find your way back to her heart” mirrors Odysseus’ singular focus on returning to Penelope, the ultimate symbol of home and restoration. But the most compelling connection is the theme of return as rebirth. In The Odyssey, Odysseus doesn’t just go home; he becomes someone new. He sheds his old self—the brash, prideful warrior who left Ithaca—and returns as a man who has faced his own mortality, his own flaws, and the consequences of his actions. Similarly, the narrator of the song isn’t just trying to reunite with a lover; they are trying to reclaim an interior part that they lost along the way, a part they have only realized in the humility of their humanity. The song’s final verse, the narrator’s futile wish to “start all over somehow,” embodies a moment of mythic reckoning, akin to Odysseus weeping on Calypso’s shore and realizing the cost of his detours. The Hymn of the Pearl: the voice of the eagle Another surprising and ancient parallel to “Find Your Way Back” lies in the Hymn of the Pearl—a Gnostic poem from the Acts of Thomas. In the hymn, a prince is sent from his heavenly home to retrieve a pearl but falls into a deep sleep in Egypt, forgetting his mission and his royal origins. Only when a letter in the form of an eagle from his father, the king, reaches him does he awaken, remember his purpose, and begin the journey back. The echoes of the lyrics here are also uncanny. The prince’s forgetfulness mirrors the narrator’s rambling in the song, as if he, too, has lost sight of his true path and the courage of his convictions. The eagle from the king is the song’s “voice” that in essence says, “Find your way back.” And the pearl? It’s the same as the song’s “heart” or Odysseus’ Ithaca/Penelope: the ultimate boon, the thing the hero must reclaim to complete the journey. The Hymn of the Pearl, The Odyssey, and “Find Your Way Back” all revolve around the same mythic truth: the journey home is often a journey of remembering. The prince forgets his mission; Odysseus loses his way; the song’s narrator disregards their path. But in each case, the call to return—whether it’s a letter, a divine intervention, or a mysterious voice—awakens them to their true purpose. The mythic pull of home Campbell would argue that this is the power of myth in music and story: they evoke the universal patterns that define our lives. “Find Your Way Back” does exactly that. It’s a modern myth, a song that taps into the same archetypal energy as the Hymn of the Pearl and The Odyssey. It speaks to the part of us that has wandering feet but a homesick heart. And the echoed and harmonized repetition of the word “Back, back, back, back…” at the song’s end reminds us of the hope we hear in harmonizing our intention with what lies at the end of the adventure. The way home isn’t just about distance; it’s about remembering who we are. The way home isn’t just about distance; it’s about remembering who we are. Whether it’s a prince’s pearl, a king’s partnership with his queen, or a lover’s heart, the mythic call is the same: find your way back. And perhaps most importantly, this song invites us to see our own lives as mythic. When we hear Jefferson Starship’s tune, we’re not just listening to a song about re-finding love; we’re hearing a call to our own initiation. We’re being invited to ask: what is the “heart” in your life you are being summoned back to? What is the “pearl” you’ve been sent to retrieve? What is the Ithaca you’re trying to reach? MythBlast authored by: Scott Neumeister is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, and mythic pathfinder from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his PhD in English from the University of South Florida in 2018. His specialization in multiethnic American literature and mythology comes after careers as an information technology systems engineer and a teacher of English and mythology at the middle school and college levels. Scott coauthored Let Love Lead: On a Course to Freedom with Gary L. Lemons and Susie Hoeller, and he has served as a facilitator for the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Myth and Meaning book club at Literati. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this special bonus episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, author, mythologist, and longtime friend of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Phil Cousineau returns to discuss his new book, The Wisdom of The Odyssey. In conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Phil explores why Homer’s ancient epic continues to speak so powerfully to the modern world, especially as Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation brings The Odyssey back into popular culture. Together, they reflect on Odysseus’ long journey home not simply as an adventure story, but as a map of the soul - a timeless meditation on memory, exile, temptation, self-control, wisdom, and the deep human longing to return to what is most true. This conversation invites us to ask what our own odysseys are teaching us, what we may have forgotten along the way, and what wisdom we are being called to bring home. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "And then you have the shamanic experience of the Northern peoples, the Siberians, and down in South America. And what it’s associated with in the North and the Americas is the song. Every shaman has his song that takes him away. There have been descriptions of how a person first hears his or her song, walking along a seashore or being in in a forest. There’s this experience and from then on he’s overtaken." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero's Journey, 76 A New Mythology - The Planet See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Joel Brodsky; Distributed by Elektra Records, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons The sound of the threshold Leather pants. Sweat. Whiskey. The low, hypnotic pulse of John Densmore’s drums. Robbie Krieger’s flamenco-infused guitar winding like smoke through Ray Manzarek’s swirling, trance-inducing keyboards. And at the center of it all, Jim Morrison moved like a man both summoning and being consumed by something primordial. The Doors’ self-titled debut album exploded onto the scene on January 4, 1967, arriving just as the cultural and psychological currents of the 1960s were erupting into public consciousness. A Doors concert was less like a performance than an initiation into a different timeline, one that tempted the listener to cross a threshold into the depths and toward the power of the unknown…or so I had been told. As an older millennial, I first discovered The Doors through my parents’ record collection. I was probably 12 or 13 years old, listening to “Light My Fire,” “Break on Through (To the Other Side),” “Riders on the Storm,” “Moonlight Drive,” “The End,” and “People Are Strange” on original vinyl from the 60s and 70s. Even decades later, the music pulses with something primal, rebellious, and deeply alive. I didn’t necessarily understand what I was feeling, or why I was so drawn to it. All I knew was that it felt magnetic and mysterious to that younger version of Tyler. Looking back, finding those albums in my parents’ closet felt less like simply discovering music from another generation and more like receiving an invitation into some ancient and unknown part of myself. Now I see that The Doors were initiating me into the deeper currents of being human and the shadowy terrain of the unconscious. A bowstring released Years later, I had the privilege of speaking with The Doors’ drummer John Densmore on JCF’s The Podcast with a Thousand Faces. We explored the energy of the 1960s, the mythic power of music, Joseph Campbell, and, of course, Jim Morrison. One of my favorite moments came when Densmore described Morrison as someone tightly wound for years, until the band’s sudden success released him like a bowstring snapped all at once. In many ways, the 1960s carried that same energy. Beneath the polished surface of postwar America lay enormous reservoirs of repression: sexuality, grief, racism, rebellion, ecstasy, spiritual longing. When those forces finally broke through, they did not arrive gently. Music became one of the great release valves. It gave rhythm, sound, and body to energies that had been buried underground. And few artists embodied that explosive force more completely than Jim Morrison. Listening to The Doors, I recall Joseph Campbell’s observation that mythic images are reflections of the energies and potentialities living within us. The power of music, like myth, is that it gives energetic expression to forces that often remain hidden beneath ordinary consciousness. It does not just entertain us. It helps us feel what is moving through us. In Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, Campbell states, “One can say that the images of myth are reflections of spiritual and depth potentialities of every one of us. And that through contemplating those, we evoke those powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves.” Morrison seemed to intuitively understand how to summon these forces through music, poetry, sexuality, and performance. At times, he appeared almost shamanic, channeling the ecstatic and chaotic energies of a generation hungry to feel fully alive. Now I see that The Doors were initiating me into the deeper currents of being human and the shadowy terrain of the unconscious. Into the Belly of the Whale But opening oneself to immense psychic energies is not the same thing as integrating them. So, what happens when these energies erupt without guidance, ritual, or understanding? What happens when the doors of perception open faster than the psyche can integrate what comes through? Morrison’s struggles with addiction, excess, and self-destruction suggest one possible answer. The same forces that made him magnetic also seemed to consume him. Perhaps this is part of Morrison’s tragedy: he could summon the fire, but he could not always contain it. In that sense, Morrison was not simply performing Dionysian energy; at times, he seemed to become a vessel for it without fully understanding what he was embodying. In Campbell’s language, this is the danger of the Belly of the Whale, that dark interior space where the familiar world falls away and the old self begins to dissolve. Such a descent can be initiatory, but only if it eventually leads to return and reintegration. Without that return, the descent can become disorientation, possession, or collapse. The body as mythic terrain In my work as an acupuncturist, I’ve seen how the body carries what the conscious mind cannot fully process. Grief settles into the lungs. Anger and repression stagnate the liver and create heat. Fear contracts and drains vitality from the kidneys. What remains unfelt or unexpressed does not simply disappear; it waits beneath the surface, often emerging as symptoms, compulsions, or destructive patterns until it can finally be met with awareness. In that sense, the process of healing itself becomes initiatory, not because we avoid the descent, but because we learn how to return from it with discernment and integration. Ancient systems of medicine and mythology both understood this: human beings are not purely rational creatures. We are emotional, instinctual, symbolic beings, shaped by forces deeper than thought alone. Health depends not on suppressing these forces or blindly surrendering to them, but on learning how to enter into relationship with them and give them wise expression. Joseph Campbell’s work resonates so powerfully in my own life because it reveals that myths are metaphors for the energies that animate and propel us. We may never fully understand or control these deep impulses, but the more clearly we see them moving through myth, the more skillfully we can respond to them within ourselves. And at times, we may even learn to give them form, as Morrison did, through poetry, music, performance, and art. Returning from the Descent Campbell wrote that myth is “the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation” (The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3). Perhaps this helps explain why music still moves us so profoundly. In a fragmented modern world, artists (musicians among them) become the vessels through which these forces continue to speak. The Doors endure, not simply as a band from the 1960s, but as a living example of music’s mythic function. They did not merely describe the undercurrents of their time. They gave those undercurrents a sound, a body, a voice, and a stage. Morrison, for all his brilliance and torment, became the figure at the threshold: the singer at the edge of consciousness, calling others toward the mystery while struggling to survive his own encounter with it. This is part of what still makes The Doors so compelling. Their music does not feel safely contained in the past. It still feels like the same doorway that I entered as a teenager, an initiation into the deeper mysteries of my own life. That said, when we “break on through,” personally or collectively, without myth, ritual, and consciousness, we risk being overwhelmed by what we encounter. Myth gives us a map for the terrain. Music gives us a way to feel and express the energies moving through it. And artists like Morrison and The Doors remind us that the threshold is powerful, mysterious, and potentially dangerous. Morrison ultimately did not find his way through that fire. He died at 27, and his life reminds us that initiation is not only descent into the unknown, but the difficult work of returning from that descent with the willingness and capacity to integrate what we have encountered. The task, then, is not only to cross the threshold, but to remain conscious of what we awaken when we do, and to give those awakened energies a form that can serve life rather than consume it. MythBlast authored by: Tyler Lapkin is the podcast producer and social media manager for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, where he hosts The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, exploring Campbell’s influence and the role of mythology in culture. Born and raised in North Lake Tahoe, Tyler developed a deep love for nature, skiing, and surfing. He earned a B.A. in History with a focus on Environmental Studies and Italian from UC Santa Barbara in 2004 before pursuing a Master’s in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Since 2010, he has practiced acupuncture in Tahoe City. A passionate traveler and photographer, Tyler has explored the world through hiking, surfing, and skiing. In 2023, he completed a meditation teacher training with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach and now teaches meditation courses online and in person. He is dedicated to storytelling, self discovery, and deepening our connection to nature and each other. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this special bonus episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, author, mythologist, and longtime friend of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Phil Cousineau returns to discuss his new book, The Wisdom of The Odyssey. In conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Phil explores why Homer’s ancient epic continues to speak so powerfully to the modern world, especially as Christopher Nolan’s new film adaptation brings The Odyssey back into popular culture. Together, they reflect on Odysseus’ long journey home not simply as an adventure story, but as a map of the soul - a timeless meditation on memory, exile, temptation, self-control, wisdom, and the deep human longing to return to what is most true. This conversation invites us to ask what our own odysseys are teaching us, what we may have forgotten along the way, and what wisdom we are being called to bring home. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "One can say that the images of myth are reflections of spiritual and depth potentialities of every one of us. And that through contemplating those, we evoke those powers in our own lives to operate through ourselves." -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth, 258 The Hidden Dimension See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

In the Wee Small Hours © Capitol Records (1955) It was Sappho who first called Eros “bittersweet.” No one who has been in love disputes her. —Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet When Anne Carson invokes the ancient lyric poet in Eros the Bittersweet, she is pointing to the fact that love is never simply one thing, one experience, one emotion. It is something both bitter and sweet. How we translate Sappho’s word, however, should give us pause. The original Greek word, glukupikron, is more properly translated as “sweetbitter,” but that just sounds wrong to the contemporary English ear. It makes more sense, though, doesn’t it? Love never begins by being bitter; it’s always sweet at the beginning, and only later does it become bitter—gradually at first, and then all of a sudden. More than sweetness, the bitterness is an unexpected, unsettling awareness of a boundary, while sweetness dissolves and defers the irksome experience of finitude. In either case, to encounter Eros is to discover that we are not entirely self-contained, and that the object of our desire is always already vexingly outside our control. The sweetness is inseparable from the bitterness of the beloved’s distance. We tend to imagine mythological initiation as an ancient and rather dramatic affair: a youth led into a subterranean chamber by torchlight, or a medieval knight entering a dark forest at its thickest, most impenetrable point. But in modern life, our introduction to the sharp edges of love rarely occurs in such places. More often, it happens alone in the dark in the wee small hours around 3:00 AM, illuminated only by the glow of a cell phone’s Spotify playlist. In 1955, Frank Sinatra released In the Wee Small Hours. If you’re not familiar with this landmark album in the history of music generally, and the Great American Songbook in particular, please take fifty minutes or so right now and give it a listen. Widely recognized as the first true concept album, Sinatra recorded it in the middle of his long, public, agonizing separation and divorce from Ava Gardner. In fact, Sinatra even called it “the Ava album.” His brilliant arranger, Nelson Riddle, remarked, “Ava Gardner taught Frank how to sing a torch song." It’s an extraordinary album: musically precise, lyrically intelligent, and so very...Sinatra. “The Voice” was never shy about publicly psychoanalyzing himself—he once called himself “an 18 karat manic depressive,” and with this album he documented his katabasis, his own descent into love’s underworld. Here, he serves as a kind of Virgil, guiding us through the distinct, painful levels of the sweetbitter, and I want to focus on a few of the tracks that best embody the album’s initiatory qualities. “In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning” “When your lonely heart has learned its lesson…” The title track, the first song on the album, sets the stage. We’re informed that this is a voyage of learning, as all initiation is, of course. But what exactly is the lesson our heart learns? The song frames this early morning wakefulness not solely as a space for lament or self-pity, but as a classroom of the soul. I recall James Hillman saying that what awakens us at 3:00 AM are those considerations demanding, needing, our attention. Nelson Riddle’s arrangement for this song is understated: a lonely, muted horn to establish the ritual container. The initiate has crossed the threshold and is descending, trapped in the void after the collapse but before any mature understanding can take place. It is not a matter of the ego “deciding” to go on a journey; it is the conscious mind being dragged down because its psychological attitude has reached an absolute limit. This is exactly how Sinatra sings "What Is This Thing Called Love?” This track captures the ego frantically trying to intellectualize its way out of the underworld. “What Is This Thing Called Love?” At this point in the descent, answers are needed because the question itself—What is this thing?—is an admission that the old ego-structure has no referent for this type of psychic experience. So the descent begins with confusion and interrogation. Interestingly enough, Cole Porter originally wrote "What Is This Thing Called Love?" in his typically urbane, insouciant pacing and style—the sort of song perfect for crowds and cocktails, for dancing amid peals of laughter in a night club or even a speakeasy. Sinatra and Riddle stripped all that away, slowing the tempo to something like a funereal dirge. When Sinatra asks what is this?, he isn't posing a philosophical or existential question. He is standing in the wreckage of his marriage to the woman of his dreams, demanding answers from a force that has left him completely undone—and of course it was always bound to; Hesiod called Eros “limb breaker”—both destroyer and creator who gives humans to know both flights of ecstasy and the steep, nauseating descents of despair. Naturally, in the midst of this catastrophe, the sophisticated easy-come, easy-go persona has all but disappeared, leaving only the disturbing realization: the ego is no longer in control. It is not a matter of the ego “deciding” to go on a journey; it is the conscious mind being dragged down because its psychological attitude has reached an absolute limit. “Ill Wind” You're only misleading The sunshine I'm needing Ain't that a shame It's so hard to keep up With troubles that creep up From out of nowhere When love's to blame So, ill wind, blow away Let me rest today You're blowin' me no good No good From questioning, from demanding answers, we witness the singer enveloped by a type of learned helplessness, a paralysis of the spirit. The lyrics are plaintive, or perhaps an attempt to bargain with the overwhelming forces of fate. And Riddle’s arrangement for this song is brilliant: woodwinds and strings mimic windstorms as though they’re whistling through a lonely apartment at 3:00 AM. The track transcends personal grief to capture the human condition, reminding us listeners that some forces in the human psyche are too massive to fight—they can only be endured. "This Love of Mine" Sinatra co-wrote the lyrics to "This Love of Mine" in 1941 when he was the featured vocalist for the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. When he re-recorded it for this album in 1955, the song landed differently because of how he managed his breath. As a young singer, Sinatra had closely watched Dorsey’s trombone technique, noticing how he could play long, unbroken phrases seemingly without taking a breath. By parting the very corner of his lips slightly while maintaining his embouchure on the trombone’s mouthpiece, Dorsey could inhale without interrupting the musical flow. Sinatra realized that if he could replicate Dorsey’s seamless instrumental phrasing, he could use his voice the same way Dorsey used his trombone to carry the listener through an uninterrupted musical phrase or thought. On the 1941 recording, he sings the song as a conventional, mid-tempo big band ballad. On In the Wee Small Hours, he slows the tempo down, using that Dorsey-inspired breath control to stretch the lyrics into long, continuous phrases, while Riddle’s strings soften to match the velvety quality of Sinatra’s vocals. By the end of the track the struggle against the early morning wakefulness has ended in something like acceptance, or maybe just the determination to endure. By the end of the album, the wound has closed, forming something like a psychic scar—a permanent part of Sinatra's style. Life goes on; he doesn’t know who he will be, but he knows he will never be the same: I cry my heart out, it's bound to break Since nothing matters, let it break I ask the sun and the moon, the stars that shine What's to become of it, this love of mine? What will become of it, of course, is transformation. But these psychic transformations are hard to accomplish—and harder to endure. The psychic scar is no less real for being immaterial. While Eros inevitably proved to be adept as a “limb breaker,” we should remember that Hesiod also identified Eros as a foundational pillar of the primordial void out of which all of creation eventually issues. Eros is no small thing, and it begins to dawn on us why Sappho depicted Eros as a paradox. Eros isn’t only about limb breaking. When we’re wounded by love, the self comes into clearer focus; the scar reminds us of our own finitude—not just existentially, but in terms of limits and edges, too. A scar is a symbol of healing, not of failure. A scar—physical or psychic—is no longer an open wound, no longer a site of pain and fear. It is a monument to living, ontic evidence that you’re alive and still in the game. That’s the point of the initiation. It’s your lonely heart learning its sweetbitter lessons in the wee small hours of the morning. Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson is a writer, depth psychologist in private practice, teacher, speaker, and Director of Publications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His work explores the status of myth after belief—what it means to take myth seriously in a world where its metaphysical claims no longer hold in any straightforward way. He is the author of The Mythopoetic Impulse and a Skeleton Key Study Guide for Pathways to Bliss. His current writing pushes against the dominant tendency to treat myth as a repository of timeless meanings or archetypes, arguing instead that myth functions as a form that brings the mind into contact with its own limits—where coherence breaks down and the desire for explanation remains. Before his work in psychology and mythology, Olson worked as a police officer in North Dakota and Arizona. There, he encountered the world less as a smooth narrative than as rupture—moments of consequence without clear origin, human situations that resist explanation or moral symmetry. That experience continues to inform his understanding of myth—not as a system that resolves the world into meaning, but as a form that emerges in proximity to what cannot be made coherent. In both his clinical practice and his writing, Olson is interested in how people live with those limits—how meaning persists, not as resolution, but as a problem that cannot finally be solved. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this episode of The Podcast With a Thousand Faces, Joanna Gardner speaks with author, herbalist, naturalist, land steward, and boxing coach Vanessa Chakour. Vanessa’s work invites us into a deeper relationship with our inner and outer wilds. Through her books Awakening Artemis and Earthly Bodies, she weaves memoir, myth, plant medicine, animal kinship, and ecological healing into a powerful call to remember ourselves as part of the living Earth. In this conversation, Joanna and Vanessa explore rewilding as a return to our true nature, the healing power of boxing, the mythic force of Artemis and the fierce feminine, Joseph Campbell’s influence on Vanessa’s life and work, and the stories we must question, compost, and rewrite if we are to live in deeper kinship with the more-than-human world. Together, they ask what it means to come home to the body, to the land, and to the wild intelligence that has been waiting beneath the surface all along. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Love is not only a life experience, but also a mystical experience. In courtly love, the pain of love, the impossibility of fulfillment, was considered the essence of life." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion, 37 The Goddess and The Madonna See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

To Pimp a Butterfly album cover. Photographed by Denis Rouvre. Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly delivers a distinct resolution to initiation. The album embodies Joseph Campbell's reading of Jung's individuation, told as a modern myth built on the oldest structure we know: the rite of passage. Separation, the liminal crossing, the return. The album fords that liminal space, track by track, until the caterpillar who begins the journey recognizes the butterfly it was carrying all along. Yet Lamar’s initiation carries a danger the ancient rites lacked. The boon can be stolen and sold. The very metamorphosis the album celebrates is also what the listening society threatens to exploit. To pimp a butterfly is to sell the transformed thing, a warning folded into the title before the first track even plays. One foot in the water, one foot on land Campbell leans on Arnold van Gennep's Rites of Passage (1909) in constructing his Hero's Journey. Van Gennep's stages are separation, transition/liminality, and incorporation. The stage of transition/liminality corresponds to Campbell's initiation—Campbell borrowing the concept from ritual studies and seeing myth through a ritualistic lens. Van Gennep’s use of "liminal" reveals his insight that initiation is a treading between two worlds. It is the moment of stepping into the waters with one foot on land. This liminal space must be forded to achieve individuation. Jung's individuation is the lifelong integration of unconscious contents, building toward a realization of the Self, the archetype of wholeness (distinct from the ego). Ultimately, this reorients the personality around the Self rather than the ego. In Symbols of Transformation (1912, revised 1952), Jung presents the night sea journey, an early prototype of initiatory descent and return—a liminal experience at the center point of individuation. For Jung, the story reveals the interior process. In Lamar, Jung would find apt story material. Campbell expands that liminal moment, offering several distinct activities within the middle stage: the Road of Trials, the Meeting with the Goddess, Atonement with the Father, Apotheosis, and the Ultimate Boon. Lamar's entire album rests comfortably within these movements. Campbell mythologizes individuation, while Lamar tells the tale of a modern myth built on that mythologizing. Campbell mythologizes individuation, while Lamar tells the tale of a modern myth built on that mythologizing. Experience it all in one sitting Lamar crafts To Pimp a Butterfly as a singular experience. Download the album, shut off the lights, press play, and listen to the entire sequence in one sitting. You'll notice some scaffolding immediately: a spoken poem is dripped across the album in fragments, lines tucked onto the end of tracks, fully completed in the conclusion "Mortal Man." The text serves as an example of individuation: the coherence of meaning is withheld, then parsed out, assembled, and finally resolved—a lyrical layering of initiation (as Campbell and Jung would see it). Lamar's craftsmanship extends beyond that. Track-by-track, we can map the process of initiation, the liminal movement that bridges the soul with goddess, father, shadow, and ego. We begin with "Wesley's Theory": fame arrives and is revealed as the threshold guardian (offering a glimpse of the Uncle Sam trickster character, a role that Lamar would later cast Samuel L. Jackson to play during the Super Bowl). An interlude, "For Free?", sets the journeyer in opposition to the snare the guardian provides. The identities in liminality Then we encounter the royalty-spinning track of "King Kunta." Let's pause here because this serves as the anchor of the album and is Lamar's declaration of his entry into the conversation America continues to have with itself. Kunta is an allusion to the role of the protagonist Kunta Kinte in Alex Haley's Roots, a role played by LeVar Burton. Adding "King" to "Kunta" becomes the initiatory moment evidenced in identity—Lamar embraces the reality of the horrific past of slavery’s violence and simultaneously embraces the internal reality of being "royalty"—value rooted in self-identity rather than external labels. The song emerges as the cry of individuation in process. Lamar also calls to us the guardian's devouring teeth just as he achieves success: "Everybody wanna cut the legs off him" (which is also an allusion to Kunta Kinte's foot being chopped off as punishment for an escape attempt). U and I "These Walls" offer liminal confinement, reminding us that the walls caging him are both prison, body, and self, all at once. Then we stagger into "u" and find a heart-wrenching revelation of Lamar at his absolute bottom: drunk, self-loathing, suicidal, and clawing to escape the depression suffocating him in a hotel room. This is the moment of the reaper—death as mirror and shadow in the cave. Immediately after, "Alright" ascends to resurrection,answering "u." This is the turn to the rite that the entire album illustrates. Every track from here onward explores the liminal journey. Avoiding my turning this into an annotated list of the remaining several tracks, the two which bear examination as we close are "i" and "Mortal Man." "i" is the boon the hero receives made public—an anthem of self-love in a completely live, interrupted form and reframed communally. Lamar socializes the boon rather than hoarding it for himself. "Mortal Man" closes out the album with a moment of atonement with the figure of death personified in the dead father, presenting a reconstructed conversation with legendary Tupac Shakur. Exploiting the caterpillar The overall parable is obvious in the album’s title: the caterpillar is "a prisoner to the streets that conceived it." The cocoon is the institutions of America, transforming the butterfly that struggles to recognize its own potential (while carrying that fully as the caterpillar). The title reminds us that exploitation of beauty is simultaneously the exploitation of the transformed thing. Lamar warns us that the transformation and the boon can be stolen and sold—the very metamorphosis the album celebrates is also what the society listening (and in this case the audience consuming the album) threatens to exploit. This separates Lamar's initiation from the ancient ones. The old rites returned the initiate to a community that needed him. Lamar returns to a society that wants to consume him. He completes the passage. He socializes the boon on "i" and makes his atonement with Tupac on "Mortal Man." Then he hands the transformed self to an audience that may only want to pimp it. The butterfly earns its wings, yet the cocoon remains, still standing, still institutional, still hungry. That is the modern myth Lamar tells: individuation is possible, the rite still works, and the boon, once won, is for sale. The album knows this—and firmly says so in its title. MythBlast authored by: Jason D. Batt, Ph.D., is a technological philosopher, mythologist, futurist, artist, and writer specializing in mythologies of space exploration. He co-founded Deep Space Predictive Research Group, Project Lodestar, and the International Society of Mythology. He has authored three novels, edited four fiction anthologies, and his short fiction and scholarly work have appeared in numerous publications. Jason currently serves as Senior Editor for the forthcoming Journal of Mythological Studies, Co-Managing Editor of the Beyond Earth Institute Space Policy Review, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Space Philosophy. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast In this episode of Pathways with Joseph Campbell, we listen to a lecture Campbell gave at the Blaisdell Institute in Claremont, California, sometime in the mid-1970s. Speaking on what he calls “The Occidental Tradition,” Campbell explores the distinctly Western emphasis on the individual, the development of critical consciousness, and the courage required to follow one’s own path. Campbell contrasts the role of the teacher with that of the guru, noting that Western education, at its best, is not about obedience or imitation, but about awakening judgment, responsibility, and the capacity to think for oneself. From Greece and Rome to the Grail legends of medieval Europe, Campbell traces a mythic lineage centered on the individual adventure: the call to enter the forest at the place where it is darkest, where there is no path, because any existing path belongs to someone else. Along the way, Campbell reflects on education, ego, morality, Christianity’s encounter with Europe, and the danger of seeking wisdom without first living a life. This lecture invites us to consider what it means to become fully human, not by escaping the world, but by entering more deeply into the unique adventure that is ours alone. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss." -- Joseph Campbell Pathways to Bliss, 133 Parzival: A Tale with Many Tellings See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Still from Anand (1971) Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee Where does the power lie, and how is it extracted to take the plunge into the dark, the dangerous temptation of the unknown—for…love? Revisiting the psyche’s Road of Trials for the soul and… Let’s revisit something we all might know: the myth of Psyche and Cupid. Psyche undertook the quest, laden with challenging tasks set by Venus, the mother of Cupid, for love. Venus laid out the trials carefully, one after another, each task a challenge, each challenge a step in the journey. Psyche traversed the Road of Trials in longing and desire for Cupid, as the breath of life—the yearning of the soul seeking a completeness, a transformation and to experience the numinosity of that eternal desire. Throughout the journey, supernatural aids appeared, helping Psyche onward, not merely to find Cupid but to discover herself. Inner guides also assist all of us in achieving our goals—to the calling for oneself. To find love is to know oneself, and that is a heroic exercise in itself, filled with trials and challenges. Re-reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces after a long time rekindled the questions I have been holding from my PhD days alongside the story of Psyche and Cupid: What kind of an initiation into living is love when death is a known, waiting threshold? If life is a mystery and death is that one meaningful piece framing the puzzle, then why love, why desire, and why long? Or is the search itself the initiation into the soul—beginning with the self, through love? Love and death as Initiation—Anand Taking this forward, I want to explore love—but love as the experience of finding fullness in life itself, even as it nears its end. What an iconic film and music this entire exercise of revisiting Hero brings me back to: one of the classics of Indian cinema—Anand (1971). This story defies the usual frameworks of celebration, romance, heartland tales, or larger-than-life narratives. Instead, it follows a man who is terminally ill, yet who remains fully willing to live each moment in this battle against death and time—facing trials to cross the threshold to love life and in turn devote to the self. The most difficult stages of the adventure now begin, when the depths of the underworld with their remarkable manifestations open before him. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 91 Anand truly lived out the philosophy Zindagi badi honi chahiye, lambi nahi (“Life should be meaningful, not long”). The songs from the film embody this fulfillment—to take what life offers, face its tests, and simply move. They speak of the legacy of living and of how beautiful the challenges are contained within that very act of living. The melodies “Zindagi Kaisi Hai Paheli” by Manna Dey and “Kahin Door Jab Din Dhal Jaye” by Mukesh bring it forward. With the soft, floating momentum of Dey’s “Zindagi Kaisi Hai Paheli” (with lyrics and English translation here), we are initiated into life itself. Each breath adds so much; a moment to urge us forward. So too does the song—with its reflective rhythm, lyrical emphasis and gently swaying pace, as if it's teaching us to take in every moment and savor the joy of being one with this journey. “Zindagi Kaisi Hai Paheli”: Apotheosis through self-love The song from the movie opens with the sustained rhythmic, lyrical tone for the word “Zindagiiiiii...”—an elongated vocal phrase that feels like a tune invoking awareness. It frames existence as an unfolding passage, a living conversation between the self and life itself. When the soulful melody enters, its balanced pulse leaves room for the lyrics to settle deeply, powerfully conveyed as the truths of life. Especially in the phrase “kabhi ye hasaaye, kabhi yeh rulaaye” (“sometimes it makes you laugh, sometimes it makes you cry”), where joy and sorrow are inseparable companions on the path. The flowing orchestral interludes echo the rhythm of experience: each day revealing new horizons while also carrying its own sunsets, both essential to transformation. In the spirit of Joseph Campbell’s Initiation phase, the song points to the treasure found in embracing uncertainty, enduring tests and trials, and moving through ascents and symbolic descents of living. That transformation is not about reaching elsewhere, but about fully inhabiting every part of oneself. The singer’s expressive shaping of “Zindagi,” “hasaaye,” and “rulaaye,” along with the lingering instrumental spaces between the lyrics, gives listeners time to absorb each passing moment, as though those moments themselves are the treasures of being. Moving towards its musical storytelling, the music, lyrics, and imagery seem to breathe life itself. The song becomes a symbol of an imperishable urge toward an unannounced initiation, for those who are willing when it arrives, while also welcoming the suddenness of its how and why. Life, presence, and awareness in Anand’s experience of death ensue from his pursuit of an elevated state of being. His gentle movement and the symbolic act of leaving behind the old self (seen in the release of balloons in the image from the sequence) represent the end of the ego-self and the embrace of freedom through mindful living. Still from Anand (1971) Directed by Hrishikesh Mukherjee The soft, slow, and introspective musical storytelling in “Zindagi Kaisi Hai Paheli” carries a quiet but profound power, empowering one to live out uncertainty, cherished. The Inner Alignment Apotheosis quest. The ordeal is a deepening of the problem of the first threshold and the question is still in balance: Can the ego put itself to death? The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 100 In Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism (33), heroic goals, initiation, and the journey foster the inward grounding for peace—Anand (meaning peace or solace) that illuminates life, making it whole. Like the gentle sway in the melody, Anand’s vibrance in his walk on the beach in the cinematographic presentation of the song- manifests the joy of simply living. Here, fighting the dragons or crossing difficult challenges is the deepest experience of death and rebirth in consciousness in living as well as knowing of death. The song becomes a symbol of an imperishable urge toward an unannounced initiation, for those who are willing when it arrives, while also welcoming the suddenness of its how and why. Oh wait, what a journey: love, grow and be What a beautiful revisiting this has been: from Psyche to Cupid, from longing to love, and then into a deeper search and curiosity for the self. This felt like a passage of transformation for me, an inward turning toward the richness of what existence offers in its fullness, its continuum, its spectrum of joys, sorrows, mysteries, and truths. Through this musically initiated journey, I see a quiet sense of guidance, inviting a sustained perspective toward both the realistic enigmas of life, even if it is death—embracing the contemplation in its wholeness. Such a passage is a blessing, a wonder to know oneself and life in itself. “Zindagi kaisi hai paheli, haye re…” (“What a beautiful mystery life is…”) “Kabhi yeh Hasaaye kabhi yeh rulaaye…” (“It is filled with joys and sorrows…”) MythBlast authored by: Priyanka Gupta is a recent PhD graduate in Psychology with a specialization in Jungian psychology and mythology from the University of Delhi, India (2023). Her doctoral thesis explored the hero archetype, delving into the Campbellian structure of the hero's journey through the distinctive prism of Hindu mythology and Native American mythology. As a researcher, she's captivated by the interplay of the meaning of symbols, life, and religions, drawing inspiration and contemplating on the perspectives laid out by Joseph Campbell and prominent Jungian thinkers. Beyond academia and research, she's a writing enthusiast and a passionate painter. Her diverse interests converge in a desire to share new perspectives and ideas, propelling me towards a future in teaching and knowledge. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast What happens when mythology meets astrophysics, and the stars become storytellers? In this episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, JCF’s Joanna Gardner sits down with Dr. Moiya McTier - an astrophysicist, folklorist, author, and science communicator whose work bridges the worlds of science, story, mythology, and creativity. Since breaking barriers at both Harvard University and Columbia University, Dr. McTier has given hundreds of talks around the world, helped design museum exhibits, consulted on projects with Disney, and become a compelling voice helping people reconnect wonder, metaphor, and meaning with the cosmos. She is also the host of the astronomy podcast Pale Blue Pod and the author of the upcoming book Mothers of Invention. Together they explore Joseph Campbell’s influence on her work, the mythic resonance of the Artemis II mission, the role of metaphor in both science and myth, and what creativity can teach us about being alive in an increasingly technological world. Thoughtful, expansive, and full of wonder, this conversation invites us to reconnect with curiosity, imagination, and the shared human experience beneath the stars. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "One of the best known and most charming examples of the “difficult tasks” motif is that of Psyche’s quest for her lost lover, Cupid. . . . When Psyche had accomplished all of the difficult tasks, Jupiter himself gave to her a draft of the elixir of immortality; so that she is now and forever united with Cupid, her beloved, in the paradise of perfected form." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces 81, 100 The Goddess Embodied See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

"The Lament of Orpheus" by Franz Caucig, Public domain Holding a hymnal, standing in a pew, and singing with a congregation is often where I find myself in times of deep loss, uncertainty, or desolation. Not necessarily to change anything or feel comforted by those standing with me, but to sing collectively, to feel the music flow through me, to reach for something greater than myself for solace. Initiation arrives in many forms, quite often entailing suffering. Life brings us to our knees at times. Moments that mark a before and an after. In these junctures, when the ringing in my ears fades, I hear Enya’s ethereal voice shrouding me with "How Can I Keep from Singing?” An older hymn sometimes entitled “My Life Flows On in Endless Song,” Enya’s version captures the feeling of singing it in a congregation. Her haunting rendering stirs something deeply within, like a choir reverberating in a cathedral. The first line, “my life goes on in endless song, above earth’s lamentations,” envelops me into the flow of a lifeforce which somehow weaves my suffering into part of something eternal, and then “I hear the real, though far-off hymn, that hails a new creation,” reminding me that change is woven into the fabric of human life. The hymn continues, “through all the tumult and the strife, I hear its music ringing, it sounds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?” The otherworldly music seems to connect me to a mysterious, universal song. I let go and allow it to move through and then beyond me, as I feel compelled to sing along. Weaving mystery into song In Greek mythology, where there is song, there is Orpheus. His father, Apollo, gave him the gift of music, and Orpheus uses his abilities to weave the mysteries into living poetry. His song calms the wild beasts. The trees still, and the rocks lean in to hear. Even the deities of the underworld are compelled to grant him entrance upon hearing his music. The Orpheus myth reveals music’s deep communion with soul, an animism recognized by all who experience the Orphic song. As if Orpheus is playing the sheet music of the universe, the mysteries emanate from his lyre, leaving us in rapt aesthetic arrest. Music holds the power to blur boundaries. The rapture of Orpheus’s music is forged through his connection to Dionysus, the Greek god of the irrational vivifying principle of life. Dionysus’s myth embodies life’s chaotic and uncontrolled aspects. Passionate destruction in service to life. When logic fails, Dionysus walks us to the brink of the fathomless abyss and beckons us to gaze into its depths. Orpheus sang the mysteries of Dionysus, and thus his myth grants access to the terror and wonder of the abyss. Orpheus connects Apollo’s form giving power with Dionysus’s destructive dissolution. Holding the tension of these two mythic figures allows his music to tap into the life-giving power of the divine without destroying us with its force. The depth found in the abyss enchants Orpheus’s music, and through the gift of his lyre, we are allowed to join the chorus. Tragically, Dionysus’s maenads dismembered Orpheus, but his myth doesn’t end there. His decapitated head sings even as it floats down the river to the shores of Lesbos. The song continues after death. Orpheus cannot keep himself from singing. The myth speaks to time’s giving and taking, and to the inevitable transformation of the world. In Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Sonnets to Orpheus, “Part I, Sonnet 5,” he writes of Orpheus: Raise no monument. But let the roses blossom every summer for his sake. For this is Orpheus. His metamorphosis into this one and that one. We need not worry about all those other names. Once and for all, if there is singing, there is Orpheus. The Orphic song sings of life's ephemerality, even as it reverberates with the mysteries of eternity. A mythic image that embodies destruction while still singing of the creative energies that vivify. An affirmation showing that the not-knowing, the mystery itself, is most holy. Saying yes to life Joseph Campbell addressed the way modern society can sometimes sterilize itself from the mysteries in life (The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, 356). The need to have all the answers suffocates our ability to sit with the questions. Both the myth of Orpheus and Enya’s hymn embrace not-knowing. They offer no answers, and yet, we still join the chorus amid the terror and wonder of it all. For Campbell, the hero’s journey sought to unite the two kingdoms of life and death. “The idea in the hero adventure is to walk bodily through the door into the world where the dualistic rules don’t apply” (On the Hero’s Journey, 13). Myth connects us to these mysteries, and we choose how we meet them. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche welcomed life in all its contradictions: Saying yes to life, even in its most inimical, hardest problems, the will to life delighting even in the offering up of its highest types to its own inexhaustibility — … but beyond terror and pity, to be oneself identified with the everlasting joy of becoming—that joy which includes in itself the joy in destruction as well…(qtd. in Campbell, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, 356) So too, Orpheus sings in his own impermanence; Enya’s lyrics promise an endless song that endures beyond death. Both say “yes” to life even in its suffering. As does playing music on the sinking Titanic, singing at a candlelight vigil, or bagpipes haunting the mists of a funeral procession. Sometimes all we can do is sing. Or perhaps music is one of our greatest powers. The hope we feel in harmony is not only hope for ourselves, but also for the world’s collective song. We are singing the myth onward. Singing the myth onward Someone once told me that when all the doors before you close, praise God in the hallway. Maybe singing while standing in darkness is an act of faith. No answers, no questions, just being. Allowing the music to carry us beyond our current circumstances. Or singing may be an act of our very existence. A deep understanding that suffering is part of the game of life, and music carries it all. Our heartbeat joins the rhythm of the universe in song, and we cannot help but lean into its sublime mystery. Even as death greets us in the mirror each day, how can we keep from singing? MythBlast authored by: Stephanie Zajchowski, PhD is a mythologist and writer based in Texas. She serves as the Director of Operations for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and is a contributing author of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide. Stephanie is also a co-founder of the Fates and Graces, hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers. Her work focuses on the intersection of mythology, religion, and women’s studies. For more information, visit stephaniezajchowski.com This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast Welcome to Season 6 of Pathways with Joseph Campbell. Whether you’ve been listening from the very beginning or are just discovering the podcast, we’re glad you’re here. This new season continues our journey into the archived lectures and enduring insights of Joseph Campbell, exploring the ways myth continues to shape the human experience across time, culture, psychology, and spiritual life. In this illuminating 1982 lecture recorded at the San Francisco Zen Center, Campbell explores the deep relationship between mythology, psychology, and the human body itself. Moving fluidly between anthropology, biology, religion, and depth psychology, he argues that myth is not simply an intellectual system or collection of stories, but something rooted in the living energies of the body and psyche. From the mother archetype and tribal ritual to the instincts underlying culture, aggression, spirituality, and transcendence, Campbell traces how myth emerges from the most elemental dimensions of human experience. Along the way, Campbell challenges the modern world’s obsession with politics, economics, and surface level distraction, suggesting that contemporary culture has largely lost touch with mythology’s deeper initiatory function. With characteristic wit, insight, and philosophical range, he reflects on metaphor, religion, the symbolic imagination, and the mysterious forces that shape both the body and the soul. This rare archival lecture offers a fascinating glimpse into Campbell’s later thinking and serves as a reminder that mythology is not merely about ancient stories. It is about understanding the living myth unfolding within ourselves. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "[Hermes] stole Apollo’s cattle, and to appease the god gave him the lyre, which Apollo passed to his own son Orpheus. And, as the whole world knows, the sound of that lyre in Orpheus’s hands stilled the animals of the wilderness, moved trees and rocks, and even charmed the lord of the netherworld when the lover descended alive to the abyss to recover Eurydice, his lost bride." -- Joseph Campbell The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology, 194 Life is Always on the Edge of Death See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Photo by Loren Javier It’s no small miracle that the VHS copy of Disney’s Fantasia (1940) survived all of the times I rewound it to the Night on Bald Mountain sequence when I was three to four years old. The imagery of the grand demon Chernabog summoning skeletal wraiths from their graves and initiating a frenzied Walpurgisnacht upon an near-volcanic Bald Mountain utterly entranced my childhood psyche. Like many modern children, Fantasia was my first conscious encounter with classical music and what made it so hypnotically strange was its use of Modest Mussorgsky’s tone poem as the melodic dialogue for one of the film's vignettes (Mussorgsky himself called it “a musical picture” in 1867). In the absence of dialogue to advance a narrative, Fantasia insisted upon the power of music to help render raw mythic imagery. These interplays of color, light, and shadow became the primal cave paintings on the Lascaux walls of my developing cerebrum. Fire on the mythic mountain As a composition, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain is richly mythic, inspired in part by Goethe’s Faust but also drawing on the Slavic demon figure Chernabog and variations on the witches’ sabbath rite (Goethe’s Faust, of course, also is an encyclopedia of Germanic folklore and mythology, too). The composer claimed that he wrote it entirely in a fever on the evening of June 23rd, 1867, the very night of its setting during a witches’ sabbath on St. John’s Eve. For pre-Disney listeners, Night on Bald Mountain evoked interior images, whereas for me, it’s impossible to separate those thunderous chords and crashing swells of harmony from the grandeur of Chernabog and the fiery dancers puppeteered along Bald Mountain’s ridges rendered in Disney animation. When Joseph Campbell was asked about his personal journey to some of the great Paleolithic cave sites in the French Pyrenees in The Hero’s Journey, he spoke vividly of these spaces: They are sheerly cold, dangerous, and dark. I remember when we were in the caves of Pêche-Merle, France, the concierge who was showing us through shut out the electric light, and you’ve never been in a darker place in your life. You didn’t know what direction you were facing in. Your whole consciousness was wiped out. (The Hero’s Journey, 103) The painted creatures on the cave walls were meant to instantiate, in Campbell’s view, a form of animal magic to the adolescents undergoing rites of initiation within those caverns. The wraiths in Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain were a parallel form of cave painting to my young mind: creatures of the beyond whose writhing, gesticulating choreography initiated me into the seductive power of reality’s nocturnal dimensions—courtesy of Mussorgsky’s mythic music. Mussorgsky wrote to fellow composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (who “edited” many of these works posthumously) that “its tone is hot and chaotic,” which is how I imagine those Paleolithic cave rites must have been, too. This notion of a consciousness-wipe-out that Campbell describes is precisely what I gravitated toward in the summoning symphony of Night on Bald Mountain. The shadow rites & the inner light Fantasia’s multimedia unfurling of a modern mythology through symphonic animation profoundly exemplifies what Campbell meant when he related how “mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words, in short, to what we call transcendence (Hero' s Journey, 74).” Achieving this Charon-like voyage across the arts, Fantasia’s Night on Bald Mountain initiated me into mythology itself. Why this sequence of Fantasia was my favorite, and why the villains in other Disney films tended to attract me more than the heroes and heroines, has long vexed me. I’ve never been violent or intentionally cruel, so why have the “baddies” allured me so much? The great insight from Jungian depth psychology’s extensive spelunking into the “shadow” realm of the unconscious is to wrestle, like Jacob, with the dark angels of our psyche and to recognize them not as forces of evil but as temple guardians of our innermost light. The mythic rites of initiation—whether of the young witches in Mussorgsky’s musical imagination, the young boys in shamanic ceremonies in the prehistoric Pêche-Merle caves, or my childhood encounter with the sound of Chernabog’s mythic image in Fantasia—are an education in light via the contours of shadow. There can be terrors in knowing, it is true, yet it is equally valid that much fear coagulates simply from standing outside the ring of initiation, afraid of what lies beyond. Listening to the shadows of our own soul, we may find that Chernabog is merely a monumental projection of that ultimate demon within us all whose true name is Ego. The dance of one’s night upon the Bald Mountain of their interiority initiates us for that ultimate acoustic ascent to the mythic peaks of our being, from which bliss radiates like a blue moon. The dance of one’s night upon the Bald Mountain of their interiority initiates us for that ultimate acoustic ascent to the mythic peaks of our being MythBlast authored by: Teddy Hamstra, Ph.D., is an author and educator based in Austin, Texas. Teaching English Literature as well as Mythology classes at an alternative K-12 school by day, Teddy also teaches courses on Mary Magdalene, the Eranos Conferences, and assorted mystic topics by night with organizations like Morbid Anatomy, Jung Archademy, and more. Teddy holds a Ph.D. in English Literature & Visual Studies from the University of Southern California, where his dissertation was entitled "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell & the Power of Mysticism." He is the Joseph Campbell Foundation's Digital Intellectual Property Coordinator, and author of numerous prior MythBlasts. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast What happens when mythology meets astrophysics, and the stars become storytellers? In this episode of The Podcast With A Thousand Faces, JCF’s Joanna Gardner sits down with Dr. Moiya McTier - an astrophysicist, folklorist, author, and science communicator whose work bridges the worlds of science, story, mythology, and creativity. Since breaking barriers at both Harvard University and Columbia University, Dr. McTier has given hundreds of talks around the world, helped design museum exhibits, consulted on projects with Disney, and become a compelling voice helping people reconnect wonder, metaphor, and meaning with the cosmos. She is also the host of the astronomy podcast Pale Blue Pod and the author of the upcoming book Mothers of Invention. Together they explore Joseph Campbell’s influence on her work, the mythic resonance of the Artemis II mission, the role of metaphor in both science and myth, and what creativity can teach us about being alive in an increasingly technological world. Thoughtful, expansive, and full of wonder, this conversation invites us to reconnect with curiosity, imagination, and the shared human experience beneath the stars. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The idea of a temple as distinguished from a chapel or shrine––namely, of an enclosed area in which all the forms beheld are of vision––was conceived and first realized in the great painted caves of southwestern France and northern Spain. . . . As in Chartres Cathedral the mystery of the universe is revealed through the imagery of an anthropomorphic pantheon, so here, in these temple caves, the same mystery is made known through animal forms that are at once in movement and at rest." -- Joseph Campbell Historical Atlas of World Mythology Volume I: The Way of the Animal Powers Part 1: "Mythologies of the Primitive Hunters and Gatherers," 60 The Heavenly Moment See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

© Disney+ My mother liked to read history; I like to read myth. She listened to classic Johnny Cash; I prefer the American IV album. She loved college basketball; I love Stranger Things. But we did find one media experience we agreed upon: she and I watched the movie version of Hamilton together approximately eighty-seven times. How did Hamilton work this miracle? The show activated our imaginations, embodied Joseph Campbell’s functions of mythology, and enabled us to connect with each other through the power of a modern myth. A mythical, musical imagination Sometimes myth appears in prose, as in the works of Herodotus in ancient Greece, and sometimes in poetry, as in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. But when you really need to channel myth’s archetypal forces, nothing matches the power of poetry set to music, as in Hesiod’s Theogony and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Hamilton makes that same mythic gesture,retelling the exploits of historical heroes through the magic of contemporary music. Stories transform when filtered through song. Music literally sets a story’s tone. The music rises and falls with emotion, speeds up and slows down with the action, soars outward or delves inward. Music also makes words more memorable through mnemonic rhyme and melody. Music lifts characters’ voices out of the realm of the mundane spoken language and into something else—something otherworldly, something sacred. In short, music can make a story more mythical. Hamilton certainly brought myth to the way Mom and I imagined American history. Hamilton’s music imagines historical figures as mythic heroes. From Alexander Hamilton to George Washington to the Schuyler sisters, these singing characters are both simpler and grander than real people, making them more vivid in the mind’s eye and granting them near legendary status. The absence of props and scenery engages the imagination differently, compelling the audience to conjure everything that isn’t there, from ships to buildings to battlefields. By picturing historical characters and settings together, through the singing and dancing of players on a largely empty stage, Mom and I found a common wavelength of the imagination, an imaginal register we could both occupy. Music lifts characters’ voices out of the realm of the mundane spoken language and into something else—something otherworldly, something sacred. Campbell’s functions of myth in Hamilton Hamilton also reflects Joseph Campbell’s functions of myth. Psychologically, the show depicts the sweep of Alexander Hamilton’s life and his navigation of key thresholds and challenges. Sociologically, the show captures moments of profound collective change when the American colonies rejected kingship and embraced self-rule. The surrounding world (Joseph Campbell’s cosmological function of myth) is the least present in the show, but spiritually—Campbell’s metaphysical function of myth—ghosts are very real. Dressed in white, they sing from beyond the grave. Hamilton vividly senses them as his death approaches. In the show’s final seconds, Eliza gazes into the infinite distance of her own death and gasps with emotion beyond words or song. This is the moment when everything that happened up until that point, all the grime and all the glory, gives way to an open window on the divine and becomes “transparent to transcendence,” as Campbell would say. “Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words, in short, to what we call transcendence” (The Hero’s Journey, 51). It’s my favorite moment of the show, and one that Mom and I discussed many times. Hamilton gave us mythic images for conversations about life, death, and what lies beyond. The power of myth to connect Mom is gone now, but whenever I hear King George’s first song (she laughed every time) or “Dear Theodosia” (her favorite), Mom is with me again in a way that wouldn’t happen without the show’s myth and music. The myth of Hamilton provided us with experiences and ideas to share. Together, we felt the courage of Hamilton’s rebels and revolutionaries. We mourned with the human humility of the Hamilton family in crisis. We heard hope in the harmony of united vocalists and colonists. We thrilled to the daring that led soldiers into battle. Without Mom, I never would have watched the film so much. Without Hamilton, she and I wouldn’t have shared so much time. This year, 2026, marks 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, yet Hamilton remains both historical and fresh, addressing enduring themes like fathers and sons, death and time, the power of stories and who gets to tell them, immigration, diversity, and homogeneity. Songs about all these simultaneously old and new issues collapse the time between then and now, opening a new version of mythic time where these characters from history both were and were not the way they are on stage, and things are and are not like that now. These juxtapositions force the mind to distinguish past from present and to wonder how things could be different. The music and story brought Mom and me into that liminal space where we could see anew, imagine anew, and think new thoughts. It was an experience of what Joseph Campbell would call initiation, or change, and Hamilton’s mythic power to connect us, letting Mom and me experience it each in our own ways and also together. MythBlast authored by: Joanna Gardner, PhD, is a writer, mythologist, and magical realist who serves as the managing director of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. She is the author of The Practice of Enchantment: MythBlast Essays, 2020-2024 and the lead author of Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide. Joanna co-founded and co-led the Fates and Graces, hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers, and she teaches in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies program. For Joanna's updates and additional publications, you are most cordially invited to visit her website at joannagardner.com. This MythBlast was inspired by the Initiation stage of the hero's journey and The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on his Life and Work. Now Streaming on Spotify—Explore the MythBlast Playlist Latest Podcast Welcome to Season 6 of Pathways with Joseph Campbell. Whether you’ve been listening from the very beginning or are just discovering the podcast, we’re glad you’re here. This new season continues our journey into the archived lectures and enduring insights of Joseph Campbell, exploring the ways myth continues to shape the human experience across time, culture, psychology, and spiritual life. In this illuminating 1982 lecture recorded at the San Francisco Zen Center, Campbell explores the deep relationship between mythology, psychology, and the human body itself. Moving fluidly between anthropology, biology, religion, and depth psychology, he argues that myth is not simply an intellectual system or collection of stories, but something rooted in the living energies of the body and psyche. From the mother archetype and tribal ritual to the instincts underlying culture, aggression, spirituality, and transcendence, Campbell traces how myth emerges from the most elemental dimensions of human experience. Along the way, Campbell challenges the modern world’s obsession with politics, economics, and surface level distraction, suggesting that contemporary culture has largely lost touch with mythology’s deeper initiatory function. With characteristic wit, insight, and philosophical range, he reflects on metaphor, religion, the symbolic imagination, and the mysterious forces that shape both the body and the soul. This rare archival lecture offers a fascinating glimpse into Campbell’s later thinking and serves as a reminder that mythology is not merely about ancient stories. It is about understanding the living myth unfolding within ourselves. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Mythology opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words, in short, to what we call transcendence." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero’s Journey, 51 Kundalini Yoga: Heart Chakra Symbology See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter