The Miracle Worker (1962) © PlayFilm Productions When exploring archetypal figures, I find it useful to start with word origins, which offer a sense of the source of the image. For example, to teach  someone is etymologically to “show” them (from the prehistoric Indo-European root * deik : “show”).  Of course, showing someone how to do something is very different from just telling them. It’s all too common to assume teaching is merely an intellectual exercise. But   what does a teacher do when there are no words?   This is the conundrum facing Annie Sullivan (Anne Bancroft) in The Miracle Worker , the 1962 film that presents the real-life story of Miss Sullivan’s introduction to her one and only student, blind and deaf Helen Keller (played by a young Patty Duke).    The plot is familiar to many in the United States, where the screenplay has long been standard fare in junior high school literature classes:   Set in the 1880s, 19-month-old Helen Keller falls ill, losing her sight and hearing. As the child ages, unable to communicate beyond displays of raw emotion, her family contemplates committing her to an asylum for the mentally defective, so that she would at least be cared for throughout her life. Nevertheless, Helen’s mother, Kate, persuades her skeptical husband to write the Perkins Institute for the Blind, in the hope of finding an instructor who could reach their child.    Enter Annie Sullivan, a brusque, barely-sighted twenty-year-old graduate of Perkins with no prior experience. Sullivan, recognizing Helen’s potential, has her hands full battling the Keller’s low expectations for their daughter and Helen’s own resistance, expressed in dramatic tantrums, at being forced outside her comfort zone. Annie’s persistent efforts to teach the essence of communication to a child with no concept of language appear futile, until Helen experiences a dramatic breakthrough in one of the most iconic scenes in American cinema. Characteristics of the craft A good teacher is there to watch the young person and recognize what the possibilities are. (Joseph Campbell , The Power of Myth , 176) Annie Sullivan intuitively employs methods common to all master teachers. She observes Helen closely, paying attention to her moods, her actions, and how she engages her surroundings. When she sees that Helen is clever and acts with purpose, Annie works to convince the concerned parents that their pity and low expectations actually encourage and enable Helen’s self-defeating behavior. Annie Sullivan’s primary goal is to teach Helen language by using a manual alphabet, consisting of a unique hand sign for each letter, to spell words into the girl’s hand. When she gives Helen a slice of cake, she spells out C-A-K-E. Helen has no difficulty imitating these signs, but it’s just a game to her, absent meaning.  This initially seems a pointless exercise to the Kellers (“spelling to a fence post”). Asked why she does so, Annie points out that’s how children learn to speak: Any baby. Gibberish, grown-up gibberish, babytalk gibberish, do they understand one word of it to start? Somehow they begin to. If they hear it. I’m letting Helen hear it. ( The Miracle Worker : Act II)   I think of this as “show and spell.” With everything they do together––eating meals, stringing beads, climbing trees, hunting eggs––Annie spells out the names of objects for Helen.    Though Helen just doesn’t get it, the Kellers are nevertheless satisfied that she soon seems better behaved. Annie points out that there is a wide gulf between training Helen like training a dog, and teaching her how to communicate and understand. Impressive as Miss Sullivan’s persistence is, that breakthrough remains elusive. what does a teacher do when there are no words?  Archetypal elements  Screenwriter William Gibson employs a range of symbols that emphasize Annie’s key role in Helen’s life––starting with the image of a key (pun intended). When they first meet, Annie lets Helen unlock her suitcase. Minutes later, Helen throws a tantrum because she wants to play with the doll Annie gave her while Annie is trying to teach her to spell D-O-L-L. Dashing out of the bedroom in a rage, Helen slams the door and turns the key  in the lock. When no one can find where she has hidden the key, Annie must climb out the window and down a ladder. The next morning over breakfast, Helen wanders the table, sticking her hands in everybody else’s food; she throws a fit when Annie does not allow her to do the same. As tensions rise, Annie banishes everyone but Helen from the dining room, locks the door, and places that key in her pocket. Helen becomes frantic when she realizes she’s locked in with her tormentor; an epic, hours-long battle of wills ensues, at the end of which Helen has learned to eat her own food and fold her own napkin. Keys continue to surface, in tandem with Annie’s struggle to unlock Helen’s mind. At one point, Annie tells Kate that she had at least taught Helen how to spell “key” and “water” that morning, even if the child does not understand what they mean  . . . which connects the symbol of a key to an even more primordial Image.    Water and well  We first meet Helen playing by the well pump in the Kellers’ front yard. This pump helps orient her when feeling her way around the yard, and offers security: immediately after Helen locks Annie in the bedroom, she retreats to the well. Wells are a recurring theme in mythology, from the healing waters of the fairy well of Tubber Tintye in Celtic mythology, to a whole series of Biblical patriarchs who find their brides at a well (Rebekah, who marries Abraham’s son, Isaac; Rachel, the wife of Isaac’s son, Jacob; and Zipporah, who encounters Moses at the well of Midian).    Joseph Campbell expands on this theme, observing that the tale of Joseph, cast by his brothers into a dry well and sold into Egypt, symbolizes the passage of the children of Israel through water into bondage, who then, centuries later, emerge, again through water, with the parting of the Red Sea: Water always represents the realm below the field of manifestation, the place of the new energy, the new dynamism. It refers to the field of the unconscious, going down into that realm and coming back out of it. ( Thou Art That , 55) We learn from Kate that one of Helen’s first words was water––“wah wah”––but that awareness had dropped into the depths of the unconscious when her daughter lost hearing and sight. Hard to miss the resonance on an archetypal level when, after locking her teacher in the bedroom, Helen intentionally drops the key into the well. Breaking through Annie’s focus is on unlocking the potential that has been lost down that metaphorical well, a seemingly futile task. When Helen regresses and throws a major tantrum that includes tossing contents of a water pitcher into Annie’s face, Annie hauls her outside to the well to refill the vessel. While Helen holds the pitcher, Annie works the pump with one hand and, with the other, spells W-A-T-E-R into Helen’s free hand. Helen abruptly freezes, connecting what all those other times Annie spelled W-A-T-E-R have in common with this emotionally charged moment, and . . . epiphany! The pitcher shatters as Helen thrusts both hands under the pump and struggles to say “wah wah” as she spells W-A-T-E-R with her fingers. When Annie affirms Helen’s sudden satori, the child’s excitement is irrepressible. She pounds on the ground, caresses the pump, raps on the step, and touches a tree as Annie spells out their names. Calling out “She knows!” to Helen’s parents, Annie spells M-O-T-H-E-R and P-A-P-A as they sweep Helen into their embrace.    Then, pausing, Helen gently pulls away, turns toward Annie, and points, asking a silent question. Annie responds with T-E-A-C-H-E-R. Overcome with emotion at this breakthrough, Annie sits down at the well as Helen turns back to her parents. She pats her mother’s apron pocket until Kate pulls out the key her daughter knows she keeps there. Kate, who has been learning fingerspelling from Annie, is momentarily puzzled, until Helen spells out T-E-A-C-H-E-R. Once more approaching Annie at the well, Helen offers her teacher the key. At last, Annie has unlocked the door that kept Helen imprisoned in her own mind.  Beyond the events depicted in the film, the rest, as they say, is history. Helen continued her education, with Annie at her side, eventually graduating from Harvard University’s Radcliffe College to become the first deaf and blind person to earn a degree. One of the most famous Americans of her time, Helen Keller authored fourteen books, advocated for people with disabilities, fought for women’s suffrage and worker’s rights, supported the NAACP, and, in 1920, co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union––accomplishments that would have been out of reach without Annie Sullivan.   Though not every moment in the classroom today is quite so fraught with drama, teachers who closely observe their students, “show” rather than just “tell,” focus their pupils’ attention on unlocking the potential hidden in their own depths, and, most of all, persevere, are miracle workers in their own right.    For another take on the Teacher archetype, please read this two-minute selection from my Joseph Campbell Foundation colleague Bradley Olson on The Teacher as Midwife .   MythBlast authored by: Stephen Gerringer has been a Working Associate at the Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF) since 2004. His post-college career trajectory interrupted when a major health crisis prompted a deep inward turn, Stephen “dropped out” and spent most of the next decade on the road, thumbing his away across the country on his own hero quest. Stephen did eventually “drop back in,” accepting a position teaching English and Literature in junior high school. Stephen is the author of Myth and Modern Living: A Practical Campbell Compendium , as well as editor of Myth and Meaning: Conversations on Mythology and Life , a volume compiled from little-known print and audio interviews with Joseph Campbell. This MythBlast was inspired by Myth & Meaning and the archetype of The Teacher. Latest Podcast In this bonus episode, The Psychological Implications of Mythology (Part 2 ), we continue Joseph Campbell’s exploration of depth psychology—moving from Freud and Adler into the profound insights of Carl Jung. Campbell examines how myth reflects the inner structure of the psyche, tracing the journey from childhood dependency to the mature process Jung called individuation. Along the way, he explores puberty rites, the tension between eros and power, and the ways mythic symbols reveal our lifelong quest for wholeness and integration. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "That’s all you need––an Ariadne thread . . . That’s not always easy to find. But it’s nice to have someone who can give you a clue. That’s the teacher’s job, to help you find your Ariadne thread." -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers , 185      Nature and the Human Mind See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

School of Rock (2003) © Paramount Pictures Education is the art of enticing the soul to emerge from its cocoon, from its coil of potentiality and its cave of hiding. Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities … but is rather a making visible what is hidden as a seed. Thomas Moore, The Education of the Heart “Who makes Achilles a new set of armor?” “What Olympian gods and goddesses side with the Trojans?” “Who is Hector’s son?” The questions flew rapidly, one after another, in my seventh-grade English classroom as semester exam preparation progressed. The answers were exactly the type of information that the students would be expected to know for their upcoming test. Except, rather than I quizzing them, the students were quizzing me! I presented them with a challenge: pepper me with any questions they wanted regarding the plot of The Iliad ; any question I got wrong meant the entire class got an extra credit point on the upcoming exam. Of course, their questions progressed from easy to hard, and yes, I answered incorrectly a few times (on purpose? I’ll never tell!). But for a solid chunk of time in the classroom, the power structure was inverted, and twenty “teachers” quizzed the “student” at the front…all while themselves investigating, hearing, and internalizing all the bits of information they needed to review, as well as thoroughly enjoying every moment. This is one of my proudest moments as a trickster-teacher, an archetype blend that comes to me quite naturally. Many of my lessons contained what I label a “spinach-in-the-ice-cream” approach: some element of sweetness on the surface that belied the nutritional goodness of the information being imparted. In 2003, when I decided to switch from a career in information technology to middle school teaching, I watched (and loved) School of Rock . Although its influence on me was completely unconscious, I later realized that Dewey Finn (Jack Black) embodies the spirit of this combination, and I would like to explore how this mixture works as well in the film as it did in my own experience. From slacker to shapeshifter, from pretense to passion Perennially lazy Dewey Finn, kicked out of his band and desperate for rent money, intercepts a call meant for his roommate, Ned Schneebly, offering a long-term substitute teaching job at a prestigious private school. This is when Dewey’s trickster forms a plan: to pretend to be Ned and gain the needed income. Generally unambitious about doing “real work,” he appears at the school as “Mr. S.” and initially intends just to be a glorified babysitter for the fifth graders. When he hears his students in band class, however, his plan evolves—he will teach them to become his  group for an upcoming (and lucrative) battle of the bands. Here begins Dewey’s journey into the teacher archetype, and its hallmarks are abundant. He quickly grasps the various musical and non-musical talents of all his class members and guides them into the roles that fit each perfectly. Knowing that the students have never done anything like this before, he infuses his teaching with a confidence-boosting belief in their ability to grow into their roles. He fosters a collaborative sense of unified purpose, creating a sort of “collective heroes’ journey” for the class, a concept that my Joseph Campbell Foundation colleague John Bucher has explored .  Breaking the rules, watering the hidden seed Of course, the trickster continues to be at play through Dewey. He has shapeshifted into a middle school teacher and convinces both the students and the uptight principal (Joan Cusack) that he is indeed “legitimate.” Moreover, his actions—testing and subverting a rigid system—very much aligns with trickster behavior: “If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules” is one of his mantras. This matches one of Joseph Campbell’s articulations  of the trickster function: “[the trickster] represents the power of the dynamic of the total psyche to overthrow programs.” Besides overthrowing the curriculum, Dewey contravenes the school’s practice of a rigid and joyless approach to education. Maximizing creativity and individuality, Dewey’s ethos of rock-as-rebellion provides relief from the school’s stuffy culture, all while still providing education of a different sort and skills beyond a normative curriculum. Dewey’s trickster brings balance to the program, and therefore the totality of the psyche. “If you wanna rock, you gotta break the rules” One of the most poignant examples of Dewey’s teacher archetype in action comes with the arc of a student named Zack (Joey Gaydos, Jr.). The film introduces Zack as a shy guitarist, fearful of the rock genre because of his overbearing father’s insistence that he only play classical music. Dewey’s mentorship and encouragement help lift Zack’s vision of who he is deep within: not just an excellent rock guitarist but also a songwriter. In Zack’s case, as with all the students, Dewey follows what Campbell offers as the best teaching practice: “A good teacher is there to watch the young person and recognize what the possibilities are—then to give advice, not commands” ( The Power of Myth , 176). In short: Dewey Finn embodies the teacher archetype through inspiration, not domination .  (For the opposite scenario, please read Lejla Panjeta’s MythBlast  on Harry Potter ’s Dolores Umbridge). Redemption through rebellion Although I won’t give any spoilers, of course you might guess that the trickster has a reckoning, as his intrusion into the deservedly-protected space of children is disturbing on one level (this brilliant trailer  portraying the film as horror highlights its potentially dark underside). Suffice it to say that the overwhelmingly positive lessons that Dewey imparts are not for naught. His trickery ultimately serves a beneficial purpose, and he himself experiences an awakening to his own teacher archetype, hidden within, buried underneath his persona of slacker rock star. In fact, all the parties involved—Dewey, the students, their parents, and the school—receive an education along the lines of what Thomas Moore indicated in my opening quote: an emerging of hidden potential. And in the spirit of Moore’s use of the word enticing  to make this happen, the trickster is just the right archetype to facilitate that blossoming. So, who knows? Perhaps my trickster-teacher enticed students to uncover and nurture in themselves what was once only a seed. MythBlast authored by: Scott Neumeister, PhD  is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, mythic pathfinder and Editor of the MythBlast series 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 Myth & Meaning and the archetype of The Teacher. Latest Podcast In this episode, we explore how Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey finds fresh relevance in the lives of today’s high school seniors. Our guest, Robbie Blasser , has developed a powerful way to bring Campbell’s work directly into the classroom—helping students navigate the challenges of growth, change, and becoming. Robbie is an English and Religious Studies teacher at Bishop O'Dowd High School in Oakland, California. Holding Master’s degrees in both Social Philosophy and Teaching, along with a B.A. in Theater Arts, he brings an interdisciplinary approach to education. A lifelong lover of storytelling, Robbie first discovered Campbell’s ideas through Star Wars, and that early spark grew into a deep exploration of myth, mind, and pedagogy. In his classroom, Robbie encourages students to “see the whole board”—to recognize connections between literature, neuroscience, philosophy, and myth. This unique perspective led him to consider how the Hero’s Journey aligns with modern brain science, and how students can use this mythic framework not only to interpret stories but also to rewire their own behavioral patterns during times of transformation. In this conversation with JCF’s Michael Lambert, himself a veteran high school educator, they explore what it means to help students face the unknown, reshape their habits, and find courage at life’s thresholds. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Different teachers may suggest exercises, but they may not be the ones to work for you. All a teacher can do is suggest. He is like a lighthouse that says, “There are rocks over here, steer clear. There is a channel, however, out there.” -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers , 185      Sacred Place See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix   (2007) © Warner Brothers Pictures High school. Wednesday. All the students wear pink sweaters, shirts, trousers, and skirts. Come any other day to our school, and you'll see the depressing black color on hormonal, buzzing teenagers who didn't get much sleep the previous night. But come Wednesday, we all wear pink with big smiles on our faces. Our chemistry professor is dressed entirely in pink and purple: clothing, shoes, stockings, bags, glasses, pencils, notebooks, nails, hairpins…teaching how to fix poison while smiling. Those not in pink or purple are immediately called to the front, and no matter what knowledge they show, it results in a catastrophic fail. I survived Wednesdays in high school, not realizing that I’d encounter similar authoritarian figures at university, in offices, and later at parents’ meetings. This breed of teacher is ever-present and everlasting.  Joseph Campbell, master of the perpetuating ideas and patterns in myths, reminds us that every hero must meet a mentor on their journey. The mentor teaches, guides, and bestows gifts. Some great examples from movies are Gandalf ( The Lord of the Rings ), Dumbledore ( Harry Potter ), Obi-Wan Kenobi ( Star Wars ), Mr. Miyagi ( Karate Kid ), John Keating ( Dead Poets Society ), Sean Maguire ( Good Will Hunting ), or Katherine Wilson ( Mona Lisa Smile ). Hollywood loves a good professor — the one who ignores the rules, throws away tradition, tosses curriculum into the recycle bin, and unlocks the great potential of their students. A saying: “I cannot teach anyone anything; I can only make them think,” commonly attributed to Socrates, is a building block on which American culture is created. But where there is the Wise Old Man or Woman, there is also their shadow, a Dark Mentor figure similar to the Villain Threshold Guardian. With Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix  (2007), we have a common denominator for this archetype: Dolores Umbridge. The shadow of the mentor Dolores Jane Umbridge, played brilliantly by Imelda Staunton in her nauseatingly sweet pink sweaters and her horrifying smile, may well be the most despised character in the Harry Potter series. Beneath her twisted archetype of the Mentor lies something far more unsettling and unfortunately familiar. She is the dark elixir of every institutional trauma, every bureaucratic abuse of power, and every teacher who ever said, “Because I said so.” She is not just a bad educator. Her Mentor archetype has run wild; that sacred guide of young minds has morphed into a petty despot, armed with quills, rules, and a terrifying love of order and blind obedience.   If Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) is the mentor leading young Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) toward self-knowledge, then Umbridge is the anti-mentor. She offers no knowledge, only obedience. Her lessons are devoid of curiosity. She instructs students not to think, but to obey. She is an indoctrinator of obedience; she is a propagandist with pink laced trimmings. Her inflated ego is attached to a persona, the false self-crafted image to impress the world. Umbridge hides her tyranny under kitten plates and pink pencils. Her unconscious seethes with sadistic impulses, projected onto students under the noble guise of discipline. Umbridge's teaching style eliminates dialogue and suppresses creativity and curiosity. She is the classic repressor, evil in a pink cardigan. Knowledge is dangerous in her world, particularly the kind that encourages independent thought. There’s an Orwellian flavor to her methods. If Big Brother had a favorite niece, it would be Dolores. Umbridge is a symbol of the administrative mind: obedient, unimaginative, and utterly devoid of empathy. Aldous Huxley warned us in Brave New World  that the future will come with smiles and sedatives. Umbridge delivers — she smiles as she carves rules onto children's hands and tortures them with forbidden veritaserum. The true terror is that she believes she is helping. The real monsters wear pink Dolores Umbridge fits the criteria for what some psychologists call the “Dark Triad”: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. She sees herself as the savior of Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic. She manipulates her way to power using flattery and fear. She is mundanely evil —n ot like Voldemort, who is of the realm of fantasy. She’s the vice-principal who calls our parents because our socks were the wrong shade of gray or pink. She embodies Hannah Arendt’s “ banality of evil ,” not a grand villain, but a petty bureaucrat with too much power and too little soul. She doesn’t fear chaos. She fears thought. Neil deGrasse Tyson describes education as the lighting of a fuse, igniting curiosity in the vast unknown. Instead, Dolores Umbridge would blow the fuse and punish you for possessing the match. Tyson might argue that children are born scientists who ask why, and Umbridge’s classroom is where that instinct dies. She is filling the vessel and not rekindling the flame. Chomsky’s concept  of “manufacturing consent” and “selection of obedience” applies to her classroom. She is the ultimate manifestation of what Vogler calls the “mentor who seeks to control the hero,” a teacher who blocks growth while pretending to nurture it. Her classroom is not a place of transformation but stagnation; it's Northrop Frye’s  winter cycle —a psychopathic grid with frozen rules and passive-aggressive floral patterns. There’s a certain irony that Harry Potter’s  most terrifying villain isn’t Voldemort, who literally has no nose, but Umbridge, who wears pink brooches and speaks in a sugary lilt. Why? Because we must have met her. Not in the Forbidden Forest, but in staff meetings, government offices, and schools. We’ve seen that tight-lipped smile after being told: “That is the policy.” Umbridge is what happens when authority forgets its purpose. A true teacher, as Socrates, Tyson, and Campbell remind us, does not impose ideas but guides and liberates minds. Umbridge binds them. The Teacher archetype should embody vision, empathy, challenge, and transformation. At its worst, it becomes a rigid apparatus of the dictatorship, stifling the very spirit it was meant to uplift. Dolores Umbridge reminds us that the Teacher is not automatically a force for good. It is a role that carries enormous potential for both illumination and oppression. Campbell would say that every hero must slay a dragon. In Harry Potter , that dragon wears pink and writes detentions.  The Teacher archetype should embody vision, empathy, challenge, and transformation. At its worst, it becomes a rigid apparatus of the dictatorship, stifling the very spirit it was meant to uplift. If your professor loves the rules more than the reason or creativity; the order more than the ideas and thinking; the sound of her/his voice more than your questions — you may not be in a classroom. You may be in prison…with Dolores, the guardian of the status quo. The real professors challenge the status quo. Keating inspires with verse, Watson with art history, Sean with grief-handling, and Mr. Miyagi with self-control. They are professors seeking not facts, but awakening to passion and possibility. They remind us that the true Teacher doesn’t give answers, but rather asks the questions, and occasionally, they do it while standing on a desk. Umbridge would have a nervous breakdown in Keating's carpe diem  classroom. Dolores represents what happens when the sacred trust of the teacher is twisted into surveillance, punishment, and power play. She is the gatekeeper of mediocrity and the jailer of imagination, with a smile. Dolores Umbridge is the shadow of pedagogy, and she exists and persists in every education system all around the world. Like a monster myth brought to life.  MythBlast authored by: Dr. Lejla Panjeta  is a Professor of Film Studies and Visual Communication. She was a professor and guest lecturer in many international and Bosnian universities. She also directed and produced in theatre, worked in film production, and authored documentary films. She curated university exhibitions and film projects. She won awards for her artistic and academic works. She is the author and editor of books on film studies, art, and communication. Her recent publication was the bilingual illustrated encyclopedic guide – Filmbook, made for everyone from 8 to 108 years old. Her research interests are in the fields of aesthetics, propaganda, communication, visual arts, cultural and film studies, and mythology. https://independent.academia.edu/LejlaPanjeta This MythBlast was inspired by Myth & Meaning and the archetype of The Teacher. Latest Podcast In this episode of Pathways called “ Early Europe and the Celtic Tradition ,” we travel back to Joseph Campbell’s 1970 lecture at Sarah Lawrence College, where he traces the mythic roots of Europe - from Paleolithic cave art and goddess-centered societies to the rise of Celtic and Arthurian legend. He explores how the meeting of matriarchal and patriarchal traditions shaped the spiritual imagination of the West. Campbell reveals how the ancient reverence for the Goddess evolved alongside the emergence of the heroic ideal, weaving together mythic threads that still inform our stories of love, power, and transformation today. Host Bradley Olson offers an introduction and commentary at the end of the lecture. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "You know, the virtue manager is the real curse of the modern world, I think––the one who's got righteousness on his side and knows that everyone else is to be corrected." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 111 The Dynamic of Life See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

The Karate Kid (2010) © Sony Pictures At fifteen, I was consumed by anxiety over my upcoming CBSE  board examinations, life choices, an undecided career. I had retreated into a kind of hibernation, isolating myself from the world to study relentlessly, driven by the belief that this would define my future career and professional path. One day, sensing my tension, my father decided to spend time with me to help me unwind and also to rekindle my confidence in mathematics. Taking the lead, he guided me through the subject, turning a moment of pressure into one of reassurance and motivation. We sat down with popcorn and milkshakes to watch something unexpected. All these years, I had only watched 60s and 70s Hindi cinema with my father. For the first time, we watched an English film together, The Karate Kid  (2010). It opened a new portal of understanding how to recognize the guiding light and the hand that draws you closer to your potential through sometimes brutal confrontations to work through our prudent folly that marks the journey as a seeker and learner. It wasn’t just about the examination butterflies anymore — it sparked a fascination of uncovering the “something missing” in my challenges of psychological knowing. Lesson one: Say what you need to say with a heart wide open… At twelve, Dre (Jaden Smith) experiences a devastating loss and has to move from Detroit to China with his mother following his father’s demise. He struggles to fit in at his new school, grappling with the new surroundings and trying to understand what home truly means. Along with these drastic changes, he faces the additional challenge of being bullied by a skilled martial arts student and his peers at school. This hardship becomes an opportunity in disguise, as Mr. Han (Jackie Chan)—a maintenance worker and kung fu master—steps in as his mentor, teaching him discipline, inner strength, and the true meaning of triumph, respect, and the way of life.  In The Hero with a Thousand Faces , Joseph Campbell talks of the role of the archetypal preceptor, which is to welcome the seeker into a new adventure. It is to help him to realize his call and to encourage him to take the leap, tied with the trust and guidance of truth and wisdom of the teacher (50). Mr. Han rescues Dre from the bullies, and from that moment onward begins the adventure of bringing balance, flow, and transformation to Dre’s psychic energy—his Chi—through the discipline of Kung Fu. Sometimes, certain events in life and the people involved are not for the purpose they appear to serve; instead, they operate beyond the visible reach of the conscious ego. Watching the movie at home with my father was not merely a moment of relaxation; it also prompted reflection and decisions on pivotal life choices, such as pursuing psychology in the 11th and 12th grades and beyond—a discipline to which I have devoted myself deeply and committed my higher academic inquiry to as well. Lesson two: No weakness, No pain, No mercy… Mr. Han, a true Kung Fu master, sees, beyond the limited purpose of Dre wanting to fight the bullies, a potential to take him all the way to what Kung Fu truly signifies: to open him to a higher purpose. His precepts begin with “You think with your eyes, so you are easy to fool,”  unlike the bully’s teacher, who believes that mastery means defeating an opponent in all circumstances—showing strength without weakness, pain, or mercy. Mr. Han teaches a different approach: the correct attitude, respect, and the true strength of the art. In this, he mirrors Lord Krishna’s guidance of Arjuna in the Mahabharata : mentoring in strategy, teaching how to fulfill dharma (duty), and serving as his charioteer in war. He embodies the   Archetypal Teacher ,  leading the student to his own higher inner ground of perseverance, clarity, and awakening, helping him fully receive himself. This aspect mirrors the mentoring  Wise Old Man  of the myths and tales assisting the hero in trials and the travels of inner adventures of psyche. He appears with tricks and wise teachings, as Campbell describes, symbolized in the form of a magical shining sword that will kill the dragon-terror —inner impatience and struggles—to heal, conquer and endure through the enchanted adventurous night for the awakening day. The teacher’s aim is not to give the tools right away for the student to reach the treasures of the journey; it is rather to help the learner to empty the mind of an unsettling ego, allowing strength to develop by gaining the courage to face good and bad challenges during this adventure of self-understanding. Weakness, pain, and mercy all need to be experienced, and Mr. Han facilitates it for Dre.  Lesson three: Xiao Dre, attitude…. In alchemy, Carl Jung explained that any transformation felt, experienced, discovered, and understood in visible, physical, outward forms—in substances, objects, or matter—was a mirror of the inner world in flux. These outward forms become known ways of knocking on the door of the mystery of living consciousness, oftentimes mediated through gurus or guides. Between the disciple and the object undergoing transformation, a sacred dialogue takes shape (Jung, Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Volume 9/1 , 133). This shift is beautifully reflected in the meaningful yet frustrating exercise of Dre’s putting the jacket on and taking it off, called Xiao Dre (Little Dre) by Mr. Han, as one of the first steps in learning Kung Fu. Finding the exercise annoying and pointless, Dre one day hides his jacket before entering training, thinking Mr. Han would finally give him some other task so he could truly learn something. Sadly, Mr. Han insists he continues the same task. Overcome with anger, Dre shouts that Han doesn’t know Kung Fu and is wasting his time. But when Mr. Han suddenly demonstrates tactics and strategies of Kung Fu using the simple moves of wearing and removing the jacket, Dre is awestruck. In that moment, he understands the need for the right attitude of a student. A seeker must approach the path with reverence, focus, and openness. The right teacher awakens this attitude and gently brings forth surrender to the learning process. Lesson four: Dre - “I’m Thirty, Mr. Han”; Mr. Han - “The water is on top of the mountain…” “How teach again, however, what has been taught correctly and incorrectly learned a thousand thousand times, throughout the millennia of mankind's prudent folly? That is the hero's ultimate difficult task” (Campbell, Hero , 202). One ultimate goal of the hero’s journey is to become a teacher or guide for one’s own people, imparting the knowledge of the perils faced and the treasures gained along the way. That, indeed, is the greatest treasure of all. When Dre is training in Kung Fu for an open Kung Fu competition initially to face his bullies but ultimately to gain lifelong lessons, Mr. Han takes him to the Dragon Well. It is a long, tedious, and strenuous climb up the mountain, at the top of which Dre could drink water. There, Han shows him Kung Fu masters demonstrating the use of chi (energy) in ways that seem nothing short of miraculous. This is all meant to awaken Dre to the true purpose of the discipline and the profound magic of the art. The lesson manifests fully in the final stage of the competition, when Dre’s opponent deliberately breaks the rules to injure him and prevent his victory. Despite being injured, Dre still wants to continue. When Han asks why he is so determined, Dre says it is because he doesn’t want to live in fear; he wants to free himself from it. This, he realizes, is a learning of a lifetime: the true spirit of the art, as passed down by the masters. This is the heroic treasure, the teachings received through inner wisdom.  Lesson five: I am the jacket… Ending with Dre’s journey, I begin ours with an exercise of embodying the jacket.  Visualizing with the jacket on, the teachings and symbolic psychic sources that serve in our journey, helping us dialogue with our inner guide/ guru  to channel our insights, potentials and decisions. With the jacket off, let go of or recognize your resistances, struggles or unwanted aspects.  Teachers, Keep on teachin' Preachers, Keep on preachin', World, keep on turnin', 'Cause it won't be too long. Oh, no Lovers, Keep on lovin' While believers Keep on believin'. Sleepers, Just stop sleepin' 'Cause it won't be too long. Oh, no! Stevie Wonder, “Higher Ground” Innervisions (1973) 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 Myth & Meaning and the archetype of The Teacher. Latest Podcast In this episode of The Podcast with a Thousand Faces, we’re joined by Dr. Stephen Larsen , psychologist, mythologist, author, and longtime student and friend of Joseph Campbell. Together with his wife Robin, Stephen co-authored Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind, the definitive biography of Campbell. As close personal friends of Campbell for over two decades, the Larsens were uniquely positioned to offer an intimate, multidimensional portrait of the man behind the myths. Their book, written with exclusive access to Campbell’s journals, papers, and inner circle, brings both the public and private facets of his life vividly to light. Stephen served on the founding board of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and co-founded the Center for Symbolic Studies, where he has spent decades exploring the intersection of myth, psychology, and human transformation. Trained by Edward Whitmont, Stanislav Grof, and Campbell himself, Stephen has also been a pioneering figure in the field of neurofeedback and consciousness research. In this conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Stephen reflects on his relationship with Campbell, the writing of A Fire in the Mind, and why mythology still matters—perhaps more than ever—in a world aching for meaning. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "When these mythological images (which are in our tradition glued into historical events that never occurred) are presented again by the Oriental teacher as referring to the psyche, one finds there the connection with something that was built in when you were young—namely the symbol—and the flow of communication between conscious and unconscious domains is reestablished. " -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning: Conversations on Mythology and Life , 102 Follow Your Bliss See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

“The Magician in Film” is our topic this month, and between Harry Potter , The Lord of the Rings , and Marvel’s Dr. Strange , we’ve seen a lot of them on screen over the last few years. This set me to wondering how these versions stack up against what the “Magician” means, myth-wise and not just movie-wise. Symbolically speaking, the Magician, or Magus, (typically in the guise of an ancient Wise One) initiates a transformational, alchemical process in the world or, more to our purposes here, in the psyche of someone on their pilgrimage to a more “heroic” or authentic life. They do this by articulating the Word, the Logos,  that manifests those alchemical processes in the world, or in the consciousness of everyday life — and sometimes even in the form of “the word made flesh.” That summarizes it pretty well. We’re not just talking about Abracadabra  here although, in a terrifying way, Voldemort’s using the Cruciatus Curse on Harry (by “crucifying” him…too obvious?) certainly causes an alchemical transformation. There are happier versions, of course. My first thought for this month was to return to the figure of Willy Wonka, especially Gene Wilder's, who transforms the bitterness of life into chocolate gold. You can probably sort out a dozen or so on your own, but as I got to thinking about magicians I've known in the movies, my mind kept going back to my  first movie magician: Merlin in the cartoon version of The Sword In The Stone . Today, it’s a small world (mythology) after all That particularly cute version of Merlin-as-Magus got me thinking about “Disneyized’ versions of magicians, legends, myths, and symbols in general; this, in turn, got me wondering what happens when we myth-understand these figures, when a metaphor like Merlin gets co-opted as mere entertainment, as a commodity: an attractively flickering puppet show that reduces us from participants in our lives to an audience of consumers.  Consider the difference between the mythologically meaningful “Magician” we’re talking about from showbiz “magicians,” the Penn and Tellers of the world who perform amazing sleight of hand tricks and delightful illusions that provide an audience with the happy satisfaction of being safely fooled or surprised.  “Safely” is the key word here: it means enjoying the spell they cast without having to undergo the kind of life altering ordeals (and anxieties!) found in initiations of the sort required for an alchemical transformation of the psyche. It’s way easier, and more fun, to watch somebody else go through all that. Looking through the prism of showbiz magic versus mythologically meaningful magic provides some interesting details in the otherwise blinding electric Edison sideshow of “The Movies.” Like this: what happens when mythology is turned into an industry? What happens when myths, or mythic figures, are turned into commodities?  Merlin is a good example of what I mean. Here’s an AI generated version of “Merlin,” one I asked for in order to duck Disney’s copyright.  Cute, right? what happens when mythology is turned into an industry? Rumplestiltskin: now brought to you by the Bawndo Corporation And maybe this is a perfect example: the Disney version of Merlin is owned by The Disney Corporation. It’s a product designed for the purpose of entertainment-derived   profit. At the end of the day, the purpose of movies, whatever the artistic merit, is to make money and the story lines – more often than not these days derived from traditional mythological themes (I’m looking at you, Star Wars ) – are designed as entertainments to separate us from our wallets and, only incidentally, as initiations into a more authentic life. Movies spin straw, or whatever else is at hand, into gold — but not the metaphorical gold myths are supposed to provide. Nope. Literal gold. Lucre.  And so, and this is a bummer I confess, the function of magicians in film is not always to transform our souls, but to bolster studio profit margins. What we’re seeing (as the Frankfurt School did in the last century) is that our most important mythologies have been co-opted, swamped, overwritten, infected, and redefined by the money-making-impulse, a paradigmatic disorder that has redefined all values as economic ones.  Campbell expressed this clearly at the end of The Hero With A Thousand Faces   when he says,  [T]he democratic ideal of the self-determining individual, the invention of the power-driven machine, and the development of the scientific method of research have so transformed human life that the long-inherited, timeless universe of symbols has collapsed … The social unit is not a carrier of religious content, but an economic-political organization. Its ideals are not those of the hieratic pantomime, making visible on earth the forms of heaven, but of the secular state, in hard and unremitting competition for material supremacy and resources. (333-334) Alchemy: it ain’t what it used to be This is exactly what Nietzsche had in mind with his phrase, transvaluation of all values. In his case, this meant noticing the initial symptoms of the process by which our civilization’s mythological immune system was blasted into nothing by the advent of science. Bounded in a nutshell, that means replacing meaningful narrative with cold-blooded explanations. Once that bit of humanity was erased, he thought, we’d been left open and empty, ready for whatever set of stem cells or borrowed bone marrow might first take root to reprogram our relationship to the world. And arguably that’s what happened. The timing was perfect: the Gilded Age in which greed was removed from the list of capital sins, and capital itself became the measure of all things. And so the Media itself, not unlike Medea, is now the Magus speaking the word of our aeon: that Word is the Golden Calf, and the word has been made flesh. Yikes! Sorry about that, but thanks for musing along! MythBlast authored by: Mark C.E. Peterson, Ph.D .  is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Washington County and past president of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC.org). Philosopher, gadfly, poet, cook, writing along the watermargins of nature, myth, and culture. A practitioner of taijiquan and kundalini yoga for over 40 years, Dr. Peterson is also a happy member of the Ukulele World Congress. This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Magician. Latest Podcast In this episode of The Podcast with a Thousand Faces, we’re joined by Dr. Stephen Larsen , psychologist, mythologist, author, and longtime student and friend of Joseph Campbell. Together with his wife Robin, Stephen co-authored Joseph Campbell: A Fire in the Mind, the definitive biography of Campbell. As close personal friends of Campbell for over two decades, the Larsens were uniquely positioned to offer an intimate, multidimensional portrait of the man behind the myths. Their book, written with exclusive access to Campbell’s journals, papers, and inner circle, brings both the public and private facets of his life vividly to light. Stephen served on the founding board of the Joseph Campbell Foundation and co-founded the Center for Symbolic Studies, where he has spent decades exploring the intersection of myth, psychology, and human transformation. Trained by Edward Whitmont, Stanislav Grof, and Campbell himself, Stephen has also been a pioneering figure in the field of neurofeedback and consciousness research. In this conversation with JCF’s John Bucher, Stephen reflects on his relationship with Campbell, the writing of A Fire in the Mind, and why mythology still matters—perhaps more than ever—in a world aching for meaning. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "If what you are following, however, is your own true adventure, if it is something appropriate to your deep spiritual need or readiness, then magical guides will appear to help you." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living , 78 Myth and Ritual - Q&A See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Still from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) Years ago I was lucky enough to get to know that anthropologist and Native American faith keeper, Dr. Bill Hawk. I’d had a run of bad luck and was complaining to Bill about it. He perked up and said “sounds like Coyote.” I knew that Coyote was a central trickster figure in Native American mythology. “Well, damn it, Bill,” I asked. “What do I do about it?” He smiled and said, “Don’t feed him.” Pretty classic stuff. Strangely enough, that took care of my bad luck–but what if the Trickster is feeding you ? And what if they’re feeding you something delicious? Like chocolate. You might have noticed an abundance of Trickster figures out there lately, from traditional versions like Loki to the anti-hero’s own anti-hero, Deadpool. These figures perform an important mythological function: they embody the disruptions that fracture “the normal course of events.” Their stories put us into relation with the occasional cataclysmic events which, for good or ill, break us loose from well-established, but often fossilized, socially sanctioned norms. Now, socially sanctioned norms do provide the useful service of keeping the world running, but they can also shackle us to a version of the world that no longer exists: a world that changed while we were “busy making other plans.” Considering the increasing chaos in our current social/cultural/political situation–as traditional moral and political structures erode and we find our society experiencing a kind of extinction burst in reaction to these inevitable changes–we shouldn’t be surprised to find these Tricksters appearing in our popular media culture, in the stories we tell about ourselves. I already mentioned a couple of obvious examples. However, while I was sorting through my Rolodex (do they still make those?) of likely Tricksters, I kept hearing the voice of Gene Wilder, the original Willy Wonka in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory , in his sarcastic monotone, warning the kids: “Stop. Don’t. Come back.” Trick or treat Wonka is not an immediately obvious Trickster, but consider: he’s a mysterious figure who hands out Golden Tickets , inviting some lucky guests inside his Mysterious Factory to win the most desirable of all treasures:  the best chocolate in the world! Now that’s a call to adventure if there ever was and includes, appropriately, both promise and threat that a great treasure can be yours if you survive the ordeals to come .  Like any Trickster figure, Wonka is characterized by mischief, misdirection, and apparent cruelty, and, in the context of the hero’s adventure, Tricksters seem to embody the entire process of Initiation. They provide tests and temptations that typically involve exacerbating, or feeding (ahem), and exposing weakness in your character: weaknesses like gluttony, greed, pride, or vanity, say. But a Trickster isn’t your typical Initiator. As a rule, when you’re neck deep in an initiatory process, you know you’re being tested. In normal life, for instance, you might sigh, “Great, another freaking growth experience”…but at least you know you’re going through it. When the Trickster is at work, you don’t always know you were being tested until it’s too late. Willy Wonka, for instance, never just walks up to Charlie Bucket and says: “Charlie, you must learn the ways of the Force.” The initiations are, well…tricky. When the Trickster is at work, you don’t always know you were being tested until it’s too late. Charlie survives all this, but each of the other Golden Ticket holders suffers a poetically and spectacularly appropriate failure as Wonka feeds, and then reveals, their character flaws. Roald Dahl, the original author, signals these flaws in the names of the kids he cooked up for this mythstery  play. They are deliberately and consciously symbolic. Here’s a quick recap of the failed adventures, in order of excision: Augustus Gloop is the kid who can't stop stuffing his face. He’s the first one to go when he falls into and is carried away by the chocolate river. It might be useful to notice how much the language itself tells us: he’s carried away by his favorite weakness. Violet Beauregarde has the perfect nose-in-the-air name for a snotty, compulsively competitive and obnoxious world-record gum-chewer. She meets her end by snatching and chewing up an experimental blueberry gum which turns her into a giant blueberry. Veruca Salt is the quintessential spoiled brat who only “found” a Golden Ticket because her father bought a gazillion candy bars and lucked into the right one. She wants everything she sees–and is accustomed to getting everything she wants. Different productions use different approaches to her failure, but all work out about the same: in the book and the 2015 adaptation, she meets her end in Wonka’s Nut Testing room where specially trained squirrels sort good nuts from bad nuts. She demands her father buy her one of the squirrels, and when Wonka refuses to sell, she tries to grab one herself. The squirrels determine she’s a “Bad Nut” and throw her down a garbage chute. (And here, a moment of etymological musing: her name, like the others, is hilariously appropriate since ‘verruca’ is Latin for ‘wart’ and ‘salt’... well, at the end of the day, she wasn’t worth her salt. Even the squirrels figured that out.) And finally there’s “little” Mike Teavee, who embodies the kind of vidiocy  we might associate with the entitled distractedness found in today’s doom-scrolling, phone-addicted children (and adults). His fate, literally stepping into the media he’s obsessed with and being shrunk to fit inside a TV screen, is also poetically associated with his name. In each case, their failure follows directly from their own unreflective compulsions and desires and one of the classic techniques you find in the Trickster’s bag of tricks involves simply giving people what they want–at which point they discover they’ve wanted the wrong things. In this case, one rich with metaphor, they all wanted the candy more than the factory. Something to think about. Trick and  treat All of which leaves wonderful little Charlie Bucket. He’s the only good kid in the bunch and displayed the virtues needed to pass the Trickster’s tests: humility and kindness. Like the other children, however, Charlie too is surprised by the initiation he’s undergone–amazed to be found worthy to inherit the true prize of the Golden Ticket, surviving the sticky, candy coated–and Tricky–initiations of a life’s adventure. Thanks for musing along! MythBlast authored by: Mark C.E. Peterson, Ph.D .  is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Washington County and past president of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC.org). Philosopher, gadfly, poet, cook, writing along the watermargins of nature, myth, and culture. A practitioner of taijiquan and kundalini yoga for over 40 years, Dr. Peterson is also a happy member of the Ukulele World Congress. This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Trickster . Latest Podcast Enuma Okoro , is a Nigerian-American author, essayist, curator and lecturer. She is a weekend columnist for The Financial Times where she writes the column, “The Art of Life,” about art, culture and how we live. And is the curator of the 2024 group exhibition, “The Flesh of the Earth,” at Hauser & Wirth gallery in Chelsea, New York. Her broader research and writing interests reflect how the intersection of the arts and critical theory, philosophy and contemplative spirituality, and ecology and non-traditional knowledge systems can speak to the human condition and interrogate how we live with ourselves and others. Her fiction and poetry are published in anthologies, and her nonfiction essays and articles have been featured in The New York Times, The Financial Times, Aeon, Vogue, The Erotic Review, The Cut, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Bazaar, NYU Washington Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and more. Her Substack, "A Little Heart to Heart" is a labyrinth towards interiority, exploring the fine line between the sacred and the ordinary in our daily lives. Find it at Enuma.substack.com and learn more about Enuma at www.enumaokoro.com . In this conversation, we explore Enuma’s journey, the ways myth, art, and storytelling shape us, and how we can use them as tools to reimagine both our personal and collective realities. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "An initiation is a shock. Birth is a shock. Rebirth is a shock. All that is transformative must be experienced as if for the first time." -- Joseph Campbell An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms , 39 Adventure into Depths - Q&A Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Sinners (2025) Warner Brothers Pictures The Magician is often portrayed as a single person who can tap into the unconscious, but what if magic is the power that comes from a people? Can magic be innate, ancestral and cultural?  In An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms , Campbell says: The term “collective unconscious,” or general unconscious, is used in recognition of the fact that there is a common humanity built into our nervous system out of which our imagination works . (122) What better way to examine our collective humanity than an action-packed vampire horror film? If you haven't watched Ryan Coogler's 2025 film Sinners ,  be warned, there are spoilers ahead .  The horror film set a box office record earlier this year, and in my opinion, is a close to perfect film. However, as I left the theatre, I remember feeling woozy and strange. Something in me had activated. Something in me had changed.  Something in me had remembered.  The alchemy of the blues Set in Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1932, the film tells the story of the SmokeStack twins, Smoke and Stack, played by Michael B. Jordan, and their return home after a stint working with gangs in Chicago. Picking up their cousin, Sammie (Miles Caton), along the way, the twins decide to open a juke joint, a place for the black community to drink, dance, and lay down their worries in the post-Reconstruction South.  Music has always been an integral part of African American culture, serving as a way to alchemize pain, express joy, and hold on to our culture. Music as alchemy. Music as magic. As they're driving to the juke, elder musician Delta Slim is recounting the tragic lynching of his friend to Stack and Sammie. He starts to moan in lament. The sound of grief emanates from his body, but then, his moans turn to hums, and he starts beating out a rhythm on the dashboard with his hand, and you realize he's turning his grief into the blues.  We witness alchemy in real time. I was overwhelmed by the realization that those who came before me had to find ways to create magic within themselves to cope with the pain of a world that was built by them, but not for them.  Have I been thinking of my ancestors only as people who endured instead of alchemists who transformed pain into magic? The power of a people The priest, saying Mass with his back to the congregation, is performing a miracle at his altar, much like that of the alchemist, bringing God himself into presence in the bread and wine, out of the nowhere into the here: and it matters not, to either God, the priest, the bread, or the wine, whether any congregation is present or not. The miracle takes place, and that is what the Mass, the opus, the act, is all about. (366) Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology The juke is open, and Sammie steps up to his altar, the stage, and plays a song that becomes the centerpiece of the entire film. "I Lied to You" is the opus  Campbell speaks of. Sammie isn’t singing the blues; he is conjuring, channeling the ancestors of the past and the generations of the future through music. The audience sees Bootsy Collins-esque performers from the 1970s, ancient Zaoulie dancers from Côte d'Ivoire, and Peking opera dancers from China dancing with the crowd of the juke. Sammie's miracle  culminates with the music reaching such a crescendo that it "burns the house down" and attracts the attention of our vampire antagonists, led by Remmick (Jack O'Connell). Remmick, a vampire from Pre-Colonial Ireland, is drawn to the music because, in a way, it reminds him of his own. It reminds him of the culture he had before colonialism tried to rip it from him. Understanding the power of that connection to music, Remmick becomes laser-focused on turning Sammie into a vampire. In my opinion, Remmick doesn’t want Sammie; he desires his connection to his people, his culture, to the "collective unconscious" Campbell speaks of. Remmick was severed from his connection, twice — through colonialism and becoming a vampire. He understands, even with all his abilities as a centuries-old vampire, that he wants the magic of the collective; he wanted connection and community.  It's no coincidence that when he eventually turns most of the people from the juke into vampires, they begin a traditional Irish dance.  Knowing Even with all the vampires, musicians, and preachers in Sinners , perhaps no one embodies the Magician more than Annie (Wunmi Mosaku). A former lover of Smoke, Annie is a practitioner of Hoodoo. When Smoke returns to town, he is dismissive of her spiritual practice. If Hoodoo worked, he asks, why didn't it save their child? Annie simply says, "I don't know" with grief but acceptance.  All the magic in the world can't change what has already happened. When the vampires approach the juke, Annie is the first one to suspect that they are not who they seem. She knows, but she throws bones, a form of divination, as a way of confirming. She throws once, and a look of knowing comes over her face; she throws again. The die is cast. When Annie is bitten, she makes Smoke kill her to "free her soul" rather than be trapped in the body of the undead.  Inherently, Annie understands that the Magician's gift is to transform, but that there's power in not allowing oneself to be transformed. Her magic is hers, she came in with it, and she’s leaving with it. It comes from her, it will stay with her. Even in the afterlife. Conjure "Blues wasn't forced on us like that religion. Nah, son, we brought that with us from home. It's magic what we do. It's sacred... and big." Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) In Hoodoo, the word conjure  is used more than magic .  To conjure is to summon, to bring forth — and with that definition, it means the magic already exists.  Sinners  reminds us that magic isn't something made up; it's something to conjure and bring forth. Magic is all who came before and will come after us. Magic is trusting that inner knowing. Magic is our people, our culture, and our shared collective humanity. It's just asking us to remember them, to honor them and invite them in. magic isn't something made up; it's something to conjure and bring forth. MythBlast authored by: Torri Yates-Orr is an Emmy-nominated public historian passionate about making history and mythology engaging, accessible, and informative. From exploring her genealogy to receiving a degree in Africana Studies from the University of Tennessee, the history was always her first love. Combining her skill set in production with her love of the past, she started creating history and mythology lessons for social media . Her "On This Day in History" series has over two million views. She's the content curator for the MythBlast newsletter for The JCF and co-host of the Skeleton Keys podcast . This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Magician. Latest Podcast In this bonus episode, Joseph Campbell speaks about the psychological implications of mythology. Recorded at the Cooper Union Forum in 1963, this lecture is part one of a two-part series. Campbell explores how myth functions as a system of “energy-releasing signs,” drawing on examples from animal instinct, human development, and psychological theory. He connects myth to the imprinting of archetypal images on the psyche, and discusses how Freud and Jung interpreted these imprints in terms of wish, prohibition, neurosis, and symbolic transformation. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The term “collective unconscious,” or general unconscious, is used in recognition of the fact that there is a common humanity built into our nervous system out of which our imagination works." -- Joseph Campbell An Open Life: Joseph Campbell in Conversation with Michael Toms , 122 The Center Of The World See More Videos Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

The deeper my relationship with Joseph Campbell, the more I see him everywhere—and not just what I come across for the  Campbell in Culture  posts I help curate. The references we hear about, the overt mentions, are just the surface. By now his ideas are so built into the education of artists, storytellers, entrepreneurs and academics, seekers and healers, they’ve become part of our culture’s fabric—his words are literally on Superman’s cape and Wonder Woman’s sword . But as much as Campbell and the Hero’s Journey can be seen in the stories we share, for many of us, it’s on our own journeys that he appears as a mentor with supernatural aid.  With this brief opportunity to celebrate his birthday on March 26, I’d like to honor him with names, numbers and representations before sharing a personal journey in which he’s currently guiding my perceptions of meaning. NAMES:  Barack Obama ,  Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) ,  Ed Catmull (President of Pixar) ,  Brian Chesky (Air BnB CEO) ,  Ray Dahlio ,  George Lucas ,  Stephen Spielberg ,  Kanye ,  Colbert ,  Oprah ,  Jeff Bridges ,  Russel Brand ,  Woody Harrelson ,  Dan Harmon ,  David Fincher ,  Ron Howard ,  John Boorman ,  Francis Coppola ,  George Miller ,  Zach Snyder ,  Chris Vogler, Christopher Nolan ,  Jim Morrison ,  Bob Weir ,  Bob Dylan ,  Wynton Marsalis ,  Keanu Reeves ,  Molly Ringwald ,  Joe Rogan ,  Paulo Cuehlo ,  Daniel Wallace ,  Dan Brown ,  Robert Bly ,  Viola Davis ,  Sally Fields ,  Susan Surandon,   Drew Carey ,  Tony Hawk,   Bill Moyers,   Hugh Jackman, Sylvester Stallone … These are but a fraction of the world leaders, business tycoons and creative titans who have publicly discussed their appreciation of Campbell or the utilization of his ideas. NAMESAKES:  There are two academic chairs in his name (at  Sarah Lawrence  and the  USC film school ), a  Joseph Campbell Library at Pacifica Graduate Institute ,  Joseph Campbell Writers’ Room at Studio School , and five scholarships ( undergraduate  and  graduate ) named for Campbell and his wife. NUMBERS:  According to OpenSyllabusExplorer,  The Hero with a Thousand Faces is one of the 500 most assigned texts throughout English-speaking schools. Seventy years since its publication, tens of thousands of new readers still pick up  The Hero with a Thousand Faces  for the first time every year. Thirty-one years after its debut,  The Power of Myth remains one of the most popular series in the history of public television, and in 2018, it spent time as the most viewed documentary series on Netflix. On March 26th, Campbell would be one hundred and fifteen years old. REPRESENTATIONS:   The cup runeth over with direct references and appearances. His name comes up in a  La La Land  conversation about LA culture. In  Snowden , he’s referenced as the title character's intellectual inspiration. George Lucas associated Campbell with the elder Dr. Jones while he inspired Spielberg’s vision of Indiana. Dan Brown describes him as an inspiration for his symbologist hero Robert Langdon. And in addition to appearing on Superman’s suit and Wonder Woman’s sword, his words recur throughout  13 Hours . And for every time he appears  in  the work of a storyteller, he’s cited by hundreds more—from George Lucas to Dan Harmon. And for every storyteller who cites him or his thoughts, he’s inspired a thousand others. By now anyone who watches movies, listens to music or plays video games has loved stories he’s touched. We are immersed in a cultural imagination informed by his ideas. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:  As proud as I am to see Campbell inspire the art of my young students, it’s equally rewarding when they describe how their personal journeys have been supported. There’s no counting how many times and ways I’ve experienced this myself, and I’m experiencing it right now. As I write, Leela, my part-wolf-part-Rhodesian-sweetheart, is in the doggie hospital. She ate the excrement of a drug user as we walked past a construction site; and in the morning, vets found meth, MDMA and opiates in her system. Her fever was 105. Dogs don’t metabolize these drugs. She was out of her mind if not out of her body. Worried about Leela, I could only hope that beneath her near-death fever was some kind of shamanic journey—that the excrement in the story was there to symbolize, as in Egypt, the starting point of transmutation, that her  abduction  was a response to some deeper call—a smell—towards new growth. Tonight I got to see her. And on the way out the door, I saw the moon—the huge moon. Because she’s part wolf, I couldn’t help but inquire on its fullness. Not only did I find it to be full, but to my astonishment, I learned it was the spring equinox. As some of you may know, this was the first full moon on a Spring Equinox in nineteen years and the first supermoon equinox since 1905. It’s known as a “worm” or “sap” moon. As wolves are associated with the full moon, the spring equinox is associated with new life—with resurrection. Campbell associates all of the above with the crossing of the return threshold and delivery of elixir. As he points out, the return threshold is often a physical barrier—like the surface of the earth—that must be crossed. I teach this. It’s on my mind all the time. So when I read that the “worm” moon relates to the defrosting of earth, the softening of its threshold and its crossing by worms, on one level I recognized its resonance with Leela’s re-awakening, and on another I was stunned by this exquisite demonstration of Campbell’s return threshold.  When I read about the “sap” moon, this experience repeated. It’s a sap moon because sap pours through its bark when it waxes to full. Resurrection, delivery of the elixir, and the return threshold are indivisible from one another, and I couldn’t have been happier to encounter their cluster. I can’t know if her journey was entangled with the psychles of nature, but I know my relationship with Campbell’s work brought hope and meaning to a devastating experience. Leela is OK. Tomorrow she will open new eyes with the first spring morning. Happy Birthday, Joseph Campbell. Thank you for inspiring our art and aiding our journeys. Seventy years of  The Hero with a Thousand Faces , and we see it all around us. What we don’t see, what we hear only as echoes, are the inner journeys to which it brings aid, guidance and mentorship.

Tiburon Mariposa Lily (© 2005, Julia Kudler. Used with permission.) “We speak of the symbolism and metaphor of myth – but why? Why do myths have to use symbols to communicate? Can’t they just be clear about what they mean?” This frustration was voiced three months ago during a presentation before an audience of university freshmen on the Hero’s Journey – a big question! The best response I could come up with in the moment was to point students to the following passage, from Joseph Campbell’s introduction to The Flight of the Wild Gander: What is the ‘meaning’ of a tree? Of a flower? Of a butterfly? Of the birth of a child? Or of the universe? What is the ‘meaning’ of a rushing stream? Such wonders simply are. They are antecedent to meaning, though ‘meanings’ may be read into them. . . So, likewise, are the images of myth, which open like flowers to the conscious mind’s amazement and may then be searched to the root for ‘meaning,’ as well as arranged to serve practical ends. (Flight, xii) Meaning is a function of the western mind; we tend to favor definition over experience. We crave a verbal context, and so are driven to frame everything with words, which is difficult when what we are discussing is beyond words. Dream, legend, myth, literature, the arts—all communicate on a deep, powerful, pre-verbal level. For example, as infants we experienced joy, terror, desire, fear, pleasure, anger, frustration, and a whole range of complex longings and emotions before we ever uttered our first word. An appropriate symbol can touch us there, in the places words don’t reach, with densely packed personal and collective associations conveying a broad range of meanings, at once complementary and contradictory. Carl Jung opens Symbols of Transformation  (the volume that precipitated his break with Freud in 1912) with an essay entitled "Two Kinds of Thinking." Here Jung contrasts linear, directed thinking (concentration, thinking in words, what we generally think of as "thinking") with associational thinking (the world of daydreams and woolgathering where we mentally spend most of our time, even when focused on a specific task). Jung suggests associational thinking is phylogenetically older than directed thinking. It's our default setting — that nexus of tangentially related images drifting through our mind, morphing one into another at lightning speed. Dozens of images and associated thoughts and memories flit through our head at any given moment, each grasped complete, rather than dissected through words. All symbols are also essentially images, with a multitude of associations, personal and collective, compressed into each one; symbols are thus versatile and multidimensional, intersecting with experience to create an immediate sense of reality. Images work on us both directly and indirectly. For example, if I read in Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer how the air outside Aunt Polly's house is heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, I can smell the honeysuckle and, for one brief moment, am transported back to the lazy days of childhood when life unfolded oh, so leisurely, and I had time to relish the sweet scent of spring — essentially adding an experiential layer in harmony with that of the characters in the story. Symbols transcend words. Someone you care for hands you a fresh-cut red rose, drops of dew clinging to the petals, redolent fragrance floating in the air — doesn't matter if one of you speaks German and the other Spanish, you get it. Taken literally, it's simply foliage, but as a symbol, the rose touches your soul. A thousand-word essay on love can't compete with the volumes contained in this single, simple gesture. Words are limited: they’re ideal for conveying directions, but have difficulty transmitting a feeling tone, unless the words are used to create an image (as in poetry and literature) or evoke a symbol. At the same time, while symbols are wonderful for conveying what transcends words, we have developed linear thinking for functional reasons: if I have to undergo quadruple bypass surgery, I sincerely hope my cardiologist isn't using Rumi as a guide to the heart. Though we often think of signs and symbols as interchangeable, Campbell does distinguish between the two in “ The Symbol Without Meaning ” (which can be found in The Flight of the Wild Gander ), one of his most intense essays, dense with concepts and insights that tickle the brain. The abbreviated version would be that for Campbell, following Jung, a sign refers to something contained within the field of waking consciousness, this mundane world we inhabit wherein Aristotle's axiom " A is not not-A " predominates. Symbols, on the other hand, use something that exists in this phenomenal " a is not not-a " universe to refer past the material world to what transcends consensus reality – which brings us back around to those “images of myth, which open like flowers to the conscious mind’s amazement.” And so our wild gander minds take flight . . .

There is no doubt that Joseph Campbell’s words sing – and not just his prose, but the titles he chooses as well: The Hero with a Thousand Faces , The Masks of God, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, all have a poetic quality that convey each work’s theme with uncanny precision. Campbell has observed that the title of The Hero with a Thousand Faces came to him  “about two pages before the end of the book”; one has to wonder if his masterpiece would be the consistent bestseller it remains today if he had kept the original title, “How to Read a Myth.” (“An Interview with the Master of Mythology,” The Bloomsbury Review, April/May 1984) But what of The Flight of the Wild Gander, a collection of essays first published in 1969 that explore the natural, biological, cultural, historical, and psychological underpinnings of mythology? Why that image, which appears in but a single chapter? Multiple figurines of flying geese have been found from the Mal’ta culture, centered west of Lake Baikal in Siberia, some 22,000 years ago––a motif that subsequently appears in the mythologies of myriad cultures.  Wild geese are migratory birds with no fixed home, flying thousands of miles to follow the sun. In ancient Egypt the goose – associated with Amun, the Sun and Creator God – lays the World Egg. In early China geese were viewed as mediators between heaven and earth, a theme echoed in the Celtic world, where they were considered messengers of the Gods. Geese also serve as a favorite mount of mythic beings. In Greek mythology Aphrodite is known to ride a goose; some have traced the cycle of Mother Goose nursery rhymes back to Aphrodite in her Mother Goddess aspect. Shamans in the Altai Mountains ascended in trance to the heavens on the back of a goose. In India Lord Brahmā, the mythic embodiment of the creative principle, rides a wild gander.  And so did Joseph Campbell, who in the late sixties and early seventies drove a little red VW he called “The Gander.”  The significance of the gander as a mythic image is best stated by Joseph Campbell’s friend and mentor, Heinrich Zimmer, in Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization (a posthumous work edited by Campbell). Zimmer observes that a wandering monk in India is often referred to as Haṃsa (“gander” or “swan”) or Paramahaṃsa (“supreme gander”):  “The wild gander (haṃsa) strikingly exhibits in its mode of life the twofold nature of all beings. It swims on the surface of the water, but is not bound to it. Withdrawing from the watery realm, it wings into the pure and stainless air, where it is as much at home as in the world below. . . . On the one hand earth-bound, limited in life-strength, in virtues, and in consciousness, but on the other hand a manifestation of the divine essence, which is unlimited, immortal, virtually omniscient and all- powerful, we, like the wild goose, are citizens of the two spheres. We are mortal individuals bearing within ourselves an immortal, supra-individual nucleus. . . . The macrocosmic gander, the Divine Self in the body of the universe, manifests itself through a song.” (Zimmer, 48)   This is a song we all sing. If you focus on your breath, you’ll hear the sound “ham,” just barely audible, every time you inhale—and the syllable “sa” sounds with every exhale. “Ham-sa, ham-sa,” sings our breath all day, all night, all one’s life, making known the inner presence of this wild gander to all with the ears to hear.  But the song, like the image of the wild gander, is twofold. Not only does our breath sing “Haṃsa, haṃsa” but also “sa-‘haṃ, sa-‘haṃ.”  “Sa means ‘this’ and ‘haṃ means ‘I’; the lesson is, ‘This am I.’ I, the human individual of limited consciousness, steeped in delusion, spellbound by Maya, actually and fundamentally am This, or He, namely the Atman or Self, the Highest Being of unlimited consciousness and existence. I am not to be identified with the perishable individual, who accepts as utterly real and fatal the processes and happenings of the psyche and the body. ‘I am He who is free and divine.’ That is the lesson sung to every man by every movement of inhalation and exhalation, asserting the divine nature of Him in whom breath abides.” (Zimmer, 49-50) Mythic symbols, for Campbell, are more than just words on a page. Embodied in pictures, figurines, a car’s nickname, a book’s title, or even one’s own breath, they serve as touchstones that pitch the mind past the material world, to that which transcends.

Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean-Léon Gérôme, circa 1890. A love of wonder: according to Aristotle, this is what brought the lover of wisdom (Greek, philosophos ) and the lover of myth (Greek, philomuthos ) together. For Socrates, love was that most ancient of gods, Eros. For lovers and students of myth, mythologies of love are legion. Perhaps no one played with these notions more than the first-century bc Roman poet Ovid who wrote, among many other works, an infamous handbook on seduction ( Ars Amatoria ) and his celebrated mythological poem The Metamorphoses , cascading with the protean nature of love between diverse pairs: human to human, human to nonhuman, and nonhuman to nonhuman. Our own love of myth stares back at us on a daily basis through our countless devices. Consider Amazon’s Echo tapping our dormant Narcissus. The myth of Pygmalion and his love for his statue is indicative of our tendency to fall in love with our creations—under the auspice of Venus, no less. Over time though, myths evolve, shift, and undergo countless variations to keep things interesting. Eighteenth-century writers decided to name Pygmalion’s statue Galatea. But is she that same Galatea that the Cyclops Polyphemus set his heart and eye on? In some versions, he succeeded, in others (the more common) he lost to the shepherd Acis. In his 1935 short story, “ Pygmalion’s Spectacles ,” Stanley G. Weinbaum gave one of our earliest literary imaginings of what would become today’s virtual and mixed-reality technology. Indeed, we’re still trying to catch up with Weinbaum’s tech. As the title suggests, Weinbaum clearly had the Pygmalion myth in mind. In the story our protagonist, Dan Berk becomes the guinea pig of the gnome-like, elfin Professor Ludwig. Equipped with Ludwig’s magical spectacles, Dan experiences first-hand the operations of these multisensory goggles which are able to hack the senses and induce dreamlike visions via a “liquid positive” fully immersive storyworld. He finds himself in Paracosma (Greek, .a land-beyond-the-world ). There, he meets and falls in love with Galatea who perceives him as a visitor from the other side, the shadowy world. Their love grows, but the pair is faced with a curious predicament: How can substance love shadow? Few residents of Paracosma had dared to transgress this seemingly immutable law. Galatea’s mother, however, did at her own peril. No more spoilers. I leave the rest of this remarkable story to you. Suffice it to say, Weinbaum’s story has had tremendous influence on a tech industry set on realizing the dream of virtual reality, inspiring the very name of VR companies . The passion of Pygmalion has continued to influence modern mythic inflections across our science fiction. Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) re-visions the myth in a most exquisite fashion as an amorous parable about the emergence of love between humans and AIs (or OSs as they are affectionately called), and the emotional entanglements, havoc, and wounds that could occur—on the human user’s end. Likewise, in Blade Runner (1982) and its 2017 sequel Blade Runner: 2049 , we are privy to a posthuman condition in which humans fall in love with synthetic replicants and, in the case of 2049 , replicants seek some form of love with AI holograms—literal personalized projections conjured by a manipulative corporation. But we are creatures wired for love, even when it leads us to new dimensions of holographic matrimony . Maybe the love between substance and shadow is not so vacant. Indeed, love has many shades. In a 1967 talk delivered at Cooper Union titled “The Mythology of Love,” Joseph Campbell recalls the birth (or recognition) of a form of love championed by the eleventh-century troubadours: Amor . As a tertium quid between eros (passion) and agapē (charity), amor arose from the noble, gentle heart. There, Campbell discerned The beloved to [the troubadours] was a woman, not the manifestation of some divine principle; and specifically, that woman. The love of her. And the fact that the union can never be absolutely realized on this earth. Love’s joy is in its savor of eternity; love’s pain, the passage of time... ( Myths to Live By , p. 159) Reality and myth continue their love affair afforded by advancing technologies and our playfully ecstatic selves. In her book Other Peoples’ Myths (1995/1988), mythologist Wendy Doniger argues, “To the extent that myth arises out of reality and has an effect on reality, there can be no particular starting point or end point; it is a cycle. Myth and reality are caught up in a complex folie à deux ” (p. 156).  When we love other peoples’ myths (and myths about others) we needn’t abandon our own nor settle in the roundhouse of myths or the cave of echoes and archetypes. Love and let live, for we live in Ovidian times.

The Judgment of Paris (ca. 1690) by Lodovico David (1648-after 1709) - Ringling Museum of Art purchase 1998 - Oil on canvas One of Joseph Campbell’s key innovations was mapping his model of a heroic story-cycle onto so-called “rites of passage” as they were so eloquently dubbed by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957). Centuries earlier, however, the Neoplatonist and early myth-theorist Sallustius (c. 4th century CE) suggested a similar germinal notion—a kind of proto-myth-ritual theory. In his treatise, Concerning the Gods and the Universe (In Greek,   Peri theon kai kosmou ), Sallustius outlined five kinds of myths: theological, physical, psychical, material and “blended” or “mixed myths” (Gk. mûthon...miktoi ),. Each type was suited to a different purpose—for instance, “mixed myths” suited mystery rites ( teleteia ) and drew on elements of the other four kinds of myths. Such myths, according to Sallustius, included the Judgement of Paris and the myth of Cybele and Attis. Like most myths of this nature, they were often tied to a specific rite within a specific cultural context. Not all myths function this way, of course, but those pertaining to initiation often guide the aspirant towards an accord with some greater social and cosmic order—even pointing to a divine birthright. A key element was the inclusion of a Paris or an Attis, a familiar figure for whom the initiate could identify with during ritual or ruminations. For Sallustius, “every rite seeks to give us union with the universe and with the gods” (Arthur Darby Nock, Sallvstivs Concerning the Gods and the Universe , 1926). The Greek term used here meaning “union” is synaphe , an evocative term cognate with English “synapse.” Mixed myths fundamentally work like synapses both internally and hermeneutically. Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces is arguably a “synaptic” work insofar that he sought to connect  humanity’s distinct traditions of storied wisdom into a single comprehensible corpus; but it was also a “synoptic” task in that he sought to invite readers to view the similarity of others’ myths as intimately as their own inherited traditions. Campbell’s Good News: humanity’s fund of world mythology belongs to a shared account. Thus, the Monomyth, or Hero’s Journey, is fundamentally a synthetic composite, a “mixed myth,” that the author assembled for resonance across the widest international readership, initiating them into the notion that “each is both” ( Hero , p. 145)— What emerges aesthetically is a mosaic that is both a mirror and window confronting the reader while pointing towards a wider vista of human potentiality sketched across time and accessible in the here-and-now. Many anthropologists, folklorists, and other humanistic scholars outside (and inside) of mythological studies have often criticized Campbell for his mythographic and comparative analysis. In part, this is indeed the case if one has experienced myth-telling traditions first-hand. For as poet and linguist Robert Bringhurst once noted: ...for those who tell and listen to the myths, such metamythical typologies are rarely of importance. ‘Mythicity,’ like humanity or poetry or artistry or social and political equality, is embodied in quite real and local acts or it does not exist at all. ( Everywhere Being is Dancing , 2009, p. 69) A mythology, Bringhurst argues elsewhere ( Dancing, 63-64), belongs to a specific cultural and literary milieu that, which operates much like an ecosystem and nervous system.  But for an ecumenist like Campbell, Myth is the revelation of a plenum of silence within and around every atom of existence. Myth is a directing of the mind and heart, by means of profoundly informed figurations, to that ultimate mystery which fills and surrounds all existences. Even in the most comical and apparently frivolous of its moments, mythology is directing the mind to this unmanifest which is just beyond the eyes. (Hero, p. 228) Would Campbell—or Bringhurst for that matter—be open to include seemingly “frivolous” interactive media and video games with their virtual ecologies? These ephemeral environments seem well suited, at the very least, for presenting a playful modality of myths. Indeed games, like myths and rituals, bring us all together in unsuspecting ways supplying roles, characters, and avatars to embody, or at least empathize with. When players feel fully engaged, immersed, and connected to the avatar and the environment, they are surely entering a realm of experience that is deepened and enriched by the language of myth and ritual. All of these stories (oral, literary, or digital)  begin, however, with the mindful curation of myths, especially the “mixed” kind, as Sallustius observed, that can open pathways to greater mysteries. In my next essay in this series, I will  further consider recent video games and their engagement with aspects of ritual, myth, and their respective cultural domains, and I hope that you will take that journey with me.