From The Power of Myth 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. “On Being Human,” Mythos I, Episode 3 I have often wondered about the best way to celebrate and honor the legacy of Joseph Campbell as a great scholar and teacher of myth. What is the best way to keep his corpus alive for our contemporary world? The approach one may take can range from fanaticism to outright rejection, following the motto “I honor whom I attack.” Perhaps there is a razor’s edge of critical appropriation that would help us cut through the opposition of both sides. We often talk about honoring this legacy or that person, but what does “honoring” even mean nowadays? Does it mean a worshipful conservation of what has been accomplished in the past? Does it mean the restoration and preservation of a bygone past? The antiquarian approach To the conservative approach to Campbell, nothing more is to be desired. It is perfectly happy conserving and preserving Campbell’s legacy such as it is, maintaining it as much as possible in the same state in which he left it. This conservative approach, using Nietzsche’s classification, we may call the antiquarian approach to Campbell’s work as a recepticle of the world of myth and history. Opening up this world of epic historicity, what is at stake in Campbell’s work is our fundamental relationship to the whole of human history. As mediated through Campbell’s monumental work, such as Masks of God , the epic history of humankind spreads before our eyes. From its primeval origins shrouded in the veils of prehistory, reaching back to our evolutionary origins, Campbell’s boon is an initiation into the archetypal imagination of epic mytho-history. In the way we pick up Campbell’s work, we express our philosophy of history; it demonstrates the way in which we understand the value and use of history for life. Going back to Nietzsche’s famous essay, sometimes dubbed “On the Uses and Abuses of History for Life”, in the second part of his Untimely Meditations, he brings up the point of the existential relevance of the pursuit of historical knowledge: “We need history, certainly, but we need it for reasons different from those for which the idler in the garden of knowledge needs it, even though he may look nobly down on our rough and charmless needs and requirements” ( Untimely Meditations , 59). Nietzsche points to the existential needs and requirements which Campbell too came to demand from the living study of myth and history. The monumental approach After meeting the conservative or antiquarian approach to Campbell, a second option casts a more liberal line over the historic corpus, one which seeks to go beyond the necessary tasks of conservation and restoration. This second option attempts to bring the past back to life as if it were an ever-present reality. In a more liberal way, this second approach seeks, in Nietzsche’s words, “that the summit of such a long-ago moment shall be for me still living, bright and great—that is the fundamental idea of the faith in humanity which finds expression in the demand for a monumental history” (68). The monumental approach to Campbell’s legacy would also work to maintain this faith in humanity through the reanimation of Campbell’s voice in mythological studies, building on the conservation efforts carried out by antiquarianism. Revitalizing Campbell’s work for contemporary audiences, monumentalism will freely adapt Campbell’s voice to better suit modern cultural sensibilities, even if it means trimming the tricky political edges of his work. To make an author feel “relevant” to the times, the work must be rearticulated and remade to conform to the “new” timely forms of conventional wisdom. Both liberal and conservative approaches, for all their apparent differences, stand on one and the same ideological platform. In both cases an attempt is made to preserve a certain status quo, to constitute a mythic ism, in the understanding of Campbell’s work. Both liberal and conservative approaches fail to create any new vision of Mythological Studies. Both sides suffer from a certain infertility or barrenness of imagination, blind to the truly transcendent possibility which might sprout out of the decomposing corpus of Joseph Campbell. Where the antiquarian is doing her best to prevent decomposition with all the tools of the trade, the monumental approach tries to reanimate this corpse while being in denial that decomposition is taking place at all. Both sides demonstrate a form of stagnation, an incapacity to produce a new order of understanding of myth and history as a complete whole. This creative impotence is symptomatic of a certain ideological fixation which is shared by both sides. Promoting ultimate contentment with the status quo, the antiquarian and monumental approaches pose no threat to the “spirituality” that sustains the established order of things. The critical path of creative mythology Beyond these first two approaches, Nietzsche proposes a third option, which is bound to trigger the traps of both conservatism and liberalism alike. Failing to catch their usual fare, however, the ostensive opposition between liberal and conservative collapses into the ideological mire of their secret identity. Preserving the kernel of truth which belongs to each side, this third option invites the possibility of death and renewal combined. This “middle path,” working right through conventional oppositions, opens a transcendent possibility for Mythological Studies in the 21st century. Nietzsche called this third approach simply critical , “and this, too, in the service of life” (pg. 75). In this final dialectical approach, the devotion of the antiquarian and the zeal of the monumental are combined. This form of thinking exposes ideology to the sacrificial fires of truth in preparation for a new harvest of the mind. Campbell’s established corpus must be exposed to these flames of critical reflection, where he is offered as a sacrifice to the Gods. Upon this sacred altar of critical thinking, we must learn to surrender our precious belief systems; we must be willing to burn ideology to the ground. Let the flames of critical historical reflection perform their purifying function. As Nietzsche observes: For since we are the outcome of earlier generations, we are also the outcome of their aberrations, passions, and errors, and indeed of their crimes; it is not possible wholly to free oneself from this chain. If we condemn these aberrations and regard ourselves as free of them, this does not alter the fact that we originate in them. (76) We can never regard ourselves as being totally free from the crimes of the past. For we cannot ever break the mythic chain of our existential historicity. As the stage of an event of truth, the critical approach opens the way forward into the new terrains of creative mythology. A legacy that will not expose itself to criticism will not amount to much more than conventional piety. In the hands of the liberal and conservative lines, rather than living myth, we can recognize a belief system or ideology which is in full support of “business as usual” and “the powers that be”. In his own way, Campbell follows Nietzsche’s critical approach, for he believed in using mythology, above all, as an instrument of personal liberation. He promoted the break from infantile dependence on all belief systems or mythic ideologies—including his own—as well as social prestige, wealth and power, or any other form of ego fixation. As we can read in Hero’s Journey : One of the functions of the rituals again is to kill that infantile ego. Then you have a death-rebirth motif. So the individual falls into the ground of his own being and comes out an adult, a responsible adult, who’s undergone certain transformations. (156-157) Nowadays, intellectual and emotional independence is a rare and precious achievement. Swimming against the floods of state propaganda, culture wars and relentless social media, this independent state of mind may seem like a miracle. In everyday life, however, we can find that it is rooted in a spiritual struggle of liberation from the status quo—a struggle which can only be waged in the service of truth—the cutting edge of critical thinking. As a consummate expression of freedom, an independent mind points to the most radical form of individuation, a process that can only take place within the commonwealth of an intellectual or spiritual community across the centuries . In the critical crucible of myth and history, the substance of true mythology ( vera narratio ) is mortified and dismembered, cooked and boiled down to its own most essence, where it becomes one with Campbell’s ultimate dream of a “New Science of Myth.” This critical phoenix of Mythological Studies can today be reborn as the study of epic mytho-history out of the antiquarian ashes of Campbell’s monumental achievements. MythBlast authored by: Norland Téllez is an award-winning writer and animation director who currently teaches Animation and Character Design courses at Otis College of Art and Design, Cal State Fullerton. He is also conducting a Life Drawing Lab at USC School of Cinematic Arts. He earned his Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute in 2009 with a dissertation on the Popol-Wuh of the K’iche’ Maya, which he is currently translating and illustrating in its archetypal dimensions as the Wisdom of the Peoples. You can learn more at norlandtellez.com . This MythBlast was inspired by  The Power of Myth  Episode 6, and The Hero's Journey Latest Podcast In this episode, we are joined by Mollie Adler —a podcaster, writer, and existential thinker whose work deeply explores the complexities of human experience. As the creator of the podcast Back from the Borderline, Mollie challenges us to move beyond surface-level conversations and engage with our innermost selves. Influenced by mythology and the transformative work of Joseph Campbell, her approach is rooted in emotional alchemy—embracing the belief that from the ashes of suffering, something new can arise. Mollie often discusses mental health issues, encouraging her listeners to view mental health symptoms as messengers rather than flaws, guiding us toward alignment with the deepest yearnings of our souls. Drawing from her personal journey, she diverges from mainstream psychiatry’s tendency to "pathologize", offering instead a path of personal transformation and healing that acknowledges trauma, shame, and the challenges of modern life. Through her work, Mollie creates a space for vulnerable conversations, exploring the darkest parts of the human condition in pursuit of self-compassion and renewal. In this episode, she and JCF’s John Bucher discuss her life, her journey into mythology and soul-centered work, and how she has been influenced by Joseph Campbell. Mollie also opens up about her personal struggles with mental health and the topic of suicide. Listener discretion is advised, as sensitive themes are addressed. Find out more about Mollie here: http://www.backfromtheborderline.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "One of the functions of the rituals again is to kill that infantile ego. Then you have a death-rebirth motif. So the individual falls into the ground of his own being and comes out an adult, a responsible adult, who’s undergone certain transformations." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero's Journey , 156-157 The Hidden Dimension (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Still from 1998's The Truman Show, directed by Peter Weir. © Paramount Pictures This month’s MythBlast topics include: “death and renewal,” “the Hero’s Journey” and “horizons.” Whew. Now there’s a tricky little puzzle for a winter’s game of connect-the-dots.  Get some hot chocolate, and let’s see if we can fit these together. Death and renewal  Sometimes during the calendar year, metaphors put on their boots and stomp into consciousness. Here in the northern hemisphere we’re enjoying the darkest time of year, just before Sol returns to light up and renew the manger of our hopes. When it comes to Death and Renewal, the Winter Solstice is easily one of those times. Horizons Trickier. Whenever I get into a pickle trying to figure something out, I start by digging into the etymology of whatever it is, and “horizon” has a weirdly contrary genealogy. The word derives from the Greek word horos, stones used to mark boundaries. So, technically, the horizon marks a border. A lot of borders, some with barbed wire, lie between us and the New-Year-of-our-lives. The most imposing ones seem continually out of reach, however, rolling away from us like the rainbow’s end, out there at the edge of our comprehension. But while we’re used to thinking of horizons as something forever in the distance, they’re still borders, and we still stumble into them–a barrier we thought we’d never even approach can turn out to be, surprisingly right there in front of us. Borders can be psychological or temporal or geographical–they can even be gastronomical, if you consider “getting through dinner with some of your relatives” a line you have to cross every year. The hero’s journey Arguably, after getting past the initial threshold guardians, every initiation on the Path is a kind of death and renewal, a doorway that once marked a limit, the horizon of what we knew or believed. In real life a lot of these initiatory stepping stones can seem impossibly distant or impossible to cross: will I ever find a job I love? Will I ever find my people? Will I ever get out of school? Stuff like that. Personally, I was afraid for a while that I’d never fall in love, it was always out there in the receding distance … and then . I got run over by Blitzen. Oops, wrong metaphor. Anyway, you know what I mean. When I think about horizons, I think about The Truman Show,  the movie with Jim Carrey where he plays a guy raised entirely inside a huge artificial world as the subject of a highly-rated “real life” television show. He doesn’t know he’s spent his life inside a huge set until, one day, he overcomes his fears, sails across what he’d taken to be the ocean, and bumps into the horizon. Thump. It was a surprise. After that discovery Truman had to leave the world he knew and venture out to meet … well, the rest of the world. Imagine the collisions of expectation and reality. In a sense, we’re all in the same boat.  Campbell had some thoughts about the loss of horizons in the current era, and the loss of any mythological compass to help us navigate. He wrote: There were formerly horizons within which people lived and thought and mythologized. There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. ... That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind—to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn.” ( Myths to Live By , 254) He has a point.  It’s a constant theme for Campbell: our mythology puts us into relationship with the universe, but when the universe (and thus, our understanding of the universe) changes, our myths need to change as well. When the sources of our traditional mythological discourse have been washed away by science–when God and the angels have been chased out of heaven–our understanding of ourselves seems lost in a boundless universe, one without a North Star. Our relation to that universe, as well as the meaning attached to that relation, seems to recede into an infinite distance. I don’t know what the solution is and Campbell is right: no one alive today has the answer to this question. But we’re all seeing the collisions and we can prepare for them. every initiation on the Path is a kind of death and renewal, a doorway that once marked a limit, the horizon of what we knew or believed. Crossing horizons Thinking about horizons as boundary stones puts some of this into perspective. A boundary is not a thing in itself, although we often think of it that way: as a fence or barbed wire or a line in the sand. But that’s just what it looks like, not what it is. A boundary is really a zone where two territories meet, a line of mediation between ourselves and an often frightening Otherness. Historically a border is where our  territory meets their  territory. Now, if the relations are good, all border crossings are an occasion for happy and congenial trade and interaction. If relations are unfriendly, or yet to be established, the boundary can pose a threat or an occasion for conflict–which is why we say that boundaries “mark” territory. “Mark” is derived from Mars, the Roman god of war and the god who, naturally, oversaw boundaries between territories. There’s some useful mythology: the god of war oversaw boundaries and borders. This much is still true today, geographically but also psychologically, philosophically, and metaphorically.  One thing we can know about a future without horizons is that we’ll bump into new ones, both out there on The Final Frontier but also inwardly, in the conflict between the self you think you are and the Self revealed to you over time as a result of your pilgrimage through life. No Horizons? Nope.   New Horizons. 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 Power of Myth  Episode 6, and The Hero's Journey Latest Podcast In this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Phil Cousineau —a modern mythologist, storyteller, and inspirational speaker whose life and work are deeply rooted in the world of myth and the wisdom of Joseph Campbell. Cousineau’s journey through mythology is woven into every aspect of his career, from his prolific writing and filmmaking to his role as a teacher and speaker. His fascination with mythology began at an early age and has led him around the globe, exploring the intersections of culture, art, and the human spirit. Over his decades-long career, Cousineau has become an influential voice in translating ancient myths into relevant insights for the modern world, emphasizing what he calls “the omnipresent influence of myth in modern life.” In this episode, he and JCF’s John Bucher delve into Cousineau’s wide-ranging work as an author, filmmaker, and consultant, and explore his relationship with Joseph Campbell. So get comfortable and enjoy this conversation with John Bucher and Phil Cousineau. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Out of perfection, nothing can be made. Every process involves breaking something up. The earth must be broken to bring forth life. If the seed does not die, there is no plant. Bread results from the death of wheat." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living , 19 Kundalini Yoga: Yoking to the Source of Consciousness (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Unsplash The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, then comes the new life and all that is needed. Joseph Campbell, Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion The Joseph Campbell Foundation is publishing this MythBlast the day after the winter solstice of 2024 (for Northern Hemisphere residents). When it happens, no matter one’s hemisphere, this monumental event in the sky manifests as the sun appears to stop its retreat down the dawn and dusk horizons—the term solstice coming from sol, sun, and sistere, to stop. It also marks the longest night of the year, and although the winter has officially only begun and more cold times lie ahead, the turning of the sun to higher angles signals that days will soon increase in length, darkness will retreat, and warmth will return. While those in equatorial regions miss this aspect of the changing length of days and temperatures, most of us have the yearly, lived experience of sunlight lessening, weather cooling, and vegetation withering and dying before the opposite occurs. This sky event and longest night have always reminded me (in the as-above-so-below way) of a phenomenon termed “the dark night of the soul.” This phrase, coined by the Spanish poet and mystic St. John of the Cross , has come to equally signify a distressing, troublesome life season and a subsequently transformative spiritual episode. In view of the MythBlast themes this month, a dark night can be a death of sorts, especially since loss and endings of all kinds quite often accompany it. The renewal theme is not guaranteed, however, as simple recovery from this period might not evoke any newness, only grief and despair (all of these themes have been skillfully addressed by my fellow MythBlast writers this month). The transformative quality of the soul’s dark night must be evoked through intentional contemplation and meaning making. Viral impairment: mono(litihic) weakness Of the times in my life that I can unequivocally label as a dark night of the soul, one was my experience of mononucleosis. While the onset of my infection with the Epstein-Barr virus felt like other viral illnesses (producing fever, body aches, fatigue), as time progressed the weakening of my muscles overtook all other symptoms. I gradually found walking short distances tiring, and soon even the standing rest that I was forced to take more frequently didn’t renew my energy. When speaking, I started randomly failing to produce sound—I would simply go silent mid-sentence. Prying open sealed jars or bags, never before a problem, became difficult and then impossible. I needed to remain in bed almost for the duration of my waking hours, with only trips to the bathroom and kitchen possible. At my lowest point, I actually would roll off my bed as I could only to crawl to my destination; walking had become that difficult. I hadn’t realized how much my life and ideology leading up to this point had been founded on the assumption of bodily autonomy, physical power, and (directly influenced by Emerson’s essay as a teen) self-reliance. No prior illness or injury had placed me for so long into the category of disabled. I could not have even imagined myself in such a category. Yet there I was, with no say in the matter and no path out of it. In Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way through Life’s Ordeals, Thomas Moore conveys this feeling of helplessness and the encounter with something so beyond one’s normal way of facing the world. During the dark night there is no choice but to surrender control, give in to unknowing, and stop and listen to whatever signals of wisdom might come along. It’s a time of enforced retreat and perhaps unwilling withdrawal … a profound initiation into a realm that nothing in the culture, so preoccupied with external concerns and material success, prepares you for. Many of Moore’s words echo the events of the fall-into-winter progress of the sun and seasons: “surrender,” “stop” (as in sun-stop/solstice), “enforced retreat,” “a profound initiation.” And in my case, the physical component reflected a sort of autumn and then winter of my body, which evoked the darkness within my soul. This was a soulstice—an enforced standing still of my physical and spiritual aspects. This was a soul stice—an enforced standing still of my physical and spiritual aspects. Gifts of the night: making meaning in the dark Campbell regularly addressed the need for darkness as a precedent to light/enlightenment. Aside from the epigraph of this essay, one of his most-quoted affirmations concerning this concept is: “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life … The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you were looking for” ( Reflections on the Art of Living, 24). Somehow, these night-evoking places—the abyss, the cave—are both tomb and womb, both a death and a renewal, as is the renowned Belly of the Whale in the hero’s journey. In the case of my bout of mononucleosis, what treasures of life were there in it for me? What was I looking for, even if unconsciously? Cliché though it may be, we only get to know the full experience of life through contrasts, and my foray into the abyss of disability galvanized my appreciation for all the abilities I’d enjoyed and taken for granted all my life. To move, to walk without tiring—these were not givens, they were gifts. Even more deeply, I found myself, as I began to recover some strength, at the grocery store for the first time in a long while and moving quite slowly. Suddenly, I noticed the others there who were moving slowly, people who before I might have simply blown past or even gotten annoyed at for their sluggishness. I unexpectedly realized that I had been “erasing” or, worse, disparaging fellow humans who were outside of my energy/strength paradigm. The treasure of life I had found was the feeling of connection with and compassion for more people because my experience had allowed me to live in their world. So as to approach the dark nights of the outer or inner world more mindfully, we can ask ourselves: what aspects of life-as-it-is has this loss or deprivation made me appreciate more? What new segment of humanity is now my “tribe” because of it? What qualities has this “initiation,” as Moore calls it, evoked in me, unbidden though the experience was? Only through careful contemplation can any experience of the dark acquire the power of the death and renewal that Campbell envisions. MythBlast authored by: Scott Neumeister  is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, mythic pathfinder and Editor of the MythBlast series from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his Ph.D. 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 Power of Myth  Episode 6, and The Hero's Journey Latest Podcast This bonus episode, titled The Birth of the Savior , was recorded in 1962 at WNET, a PBS member station in Newark, New Jersey, serving the New York City area. In this lecture, Joseph Campbell examines the mythology of the "savior" across cultures, with a particular focus on the image of the Christ child. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Only birth can conquer death—the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be—if we are to experience long survival—a continuous 'recurrence of birth' ('palingenesia') to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces , 11 - 12 The Circle (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Sandro Botticelli, The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486). Tempera on canvas. 172.5 cm × 278.9 cm (67.9 in × 109.6 in). Uffizi, Florence While thousands of books with millions of words have detailed the alluring topic of the Goddess, I personally am far more interested in the embodied and emotional aspects of Her “beingness” versus reading primarily intellectual pursuits. The leading question for me is, “How can the individualities, powers, and wisdom meanings of the various Goddesses actually live within us in a deeply visceral way?” Not in the sense of some kind of channeling, but as a faculty of self within us. How can we incorporate the Goddess in body, mind, and soul so that Her expression is walking and living within us, instead of solely existing as a concept of the mind? It appears to me in our present time–certainly in modern Westernized cultures–that while we may worship the body as per the Olympic Games or in other sports, or in sex (even through pornography), that we’re not really “in” our bodies at all. Or certainly not in a deeply integrated way. So where are we if we’re not in our bodies? It seems that we mostly float in the demands and addictions of the digital world while being tethered to screen culture. Metaphorically speaking, most of us through work demands or personal choices have replaced the heartwarming hearth of Hestia with the coolly attenuated and impersonal Wi-Fi signal. These online cultures and worlds promise, and do deliver much (in their own ways), but leave many of us feeling disconnected from the Goddess and Her realms, and somehow disassociated from the deeper impulses of life too. Living within the electronic airwaves The Goddess is (amongst other things) a representation of authentic embodiment, and for us humans, this is suggestive of our capacity to represent a quality or idea so thoroughly that it becomes internalized in our souls too. Yet in our 24/7 digital world it can be extremely challenging to fully value such a physical and spiritual incarnation. When online we’re mostly exposed to self-improvement courses promoting a Goddess mindset (pandering to the narcissistic self) or Her likeness gets enlisted to sell more makeup, skincare, haircare, and fragrances. By releasing the Goddess from Her entombment within the desolate realms of intellectualized or superficial abstractions, She becomes actualized in our deeper selves, instead of only floating around the human mind or acting as a lip gloss brand ambassador. Multiple research studies point to an epidemic of loneliness that’s currently sweeping across the world. Alongside experiencing this loneliness epidemic, many adolescent girls and women feel trapped in commercialized online spaces that are constantly selling them idealized, filtered, “in vogue” images of the feminine. These spaces exert pressure to adopt a persona, disposition, and guise that places heavy emphasis on outward appearances, yet all the while a more authentic and deeper self lies dormant, desperate to emerge and bloom in genuine and meaningful connection. The Goddess Universe is alive Joseph Campbell writes in Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine , “In the older view the Goddess Universe was alive, Herself organically the Earth, the horizon, and the heavens. Now She is dead, and the universe is not an organism, but a building, with gods at rest in it in luxury: not as personifications of the energies in their manners of operation, but as luxury tenants, requiring service” (xxiii). The latter sentence encapsulates the modern view that the Goddess Universe is dead and that nature has suffered disenchantment. But I’m asserting that the Goddess Universe is fully alive and is merely awaiting our conscious recognition. Screen thin Goddess content Social media is full of content selling Goddess vibes, “glow up” guides, affirmations, and so on. But this content cannot suffice for the Goddess actually being incorporated within us. The teenage girls and women that I mention above usually don’t fully appreciate, let alone embody, a genuine Goddess archetype. She hovers as a purely mental projection or lingers as a seductive, fantasy image. For example, clickbait headlines read, “Want to look divine? How to dress like a Goddess!” rather than tangibly detailing how to embody Her ethos and principles. But when a true transmission of the grace of the Goddess occurs in us, She not only ennobles our personal selves, She also inspires and encourages us to higher levels of service, which is to assist the planet and others around us for their flourishing too. In this way She becomes an empowering presence for all. Awakening an archetype through physical incorporation While in this MythBlast I’m arguing for the soul interiorization of the divinities, unfortunately mostly in the Western media landscape these deities are commercially and neatly packaged as attractive but dimensionless commodities to meet shallow spiritual trends. We could say Marilyn Monroe, or rather her manicured persona, was deliberately “Godessified” by the mass media for commercial consumption ... an artifact Goddess! And while many people have an intimate knowledge of the lives of screen celebrities like Monroe, fewer have familiarized themselves with the characteristics and deeds of some of the thousands of divine Goddesses available to them from mythological antiquity. And while we can study the female deities, their myths and archetypal energies, or create altars for the purpose of worshiping specific Goddesses, sadly, the study of Her qualities and “ways of being” often remains no more than a trivial mental activity. I’m proposing here that we cultivate a deeper resonance when incorporating the divine feminine into our bodies, hearts, and minds. For it’s only when we encapsulate the Goddess in our thoughts, feelings, actions, choices, and behavioral patterns that we may become an expression and extension of Her mission. Only then do we become a temple in which She may dwell. When Her life force truly pulses through us, we’re not just mimicking Her persona, we’re actually bearing Her identity affirmation to the world. I’m proposing here that we cultivate a deeper resonance when incorporating the divine feminine into our bodies, hearts, and minds. So why does any of this matter? And why would we even want to bear an internalized expression of the Goddess? Well, from a skin deep perspective, we might–by Gen Z slang standards–“slay” or “pop off, queen” on social media, but it’s not just a matter of Goddess imitation through adopting a gimmicky persona or beauty and dress code. From a more rounded perspective, by having the presence of the Goddess within us, it allows Her identity to be felt and experienced in the world. Our lives become invigorated when each of us exudes the principles of the deities in our own unique ways. We could also consider what Goethe implied with these words from Faust, “The eternal feminine draws us on.” Goethe here is not referring to any particular Goddess, nor even to Gaia Herself. Rather, he is referring to the feminine spirit. What’s more this spirit of ceaseless, self-generating energy, creativity, love, nurturance, power, and grace exists within us all. And as Campbell ardently states in Goddesses, “People often think of the Goddess as a fertility deity only. Not at all–She’s the muse. ... She’s the inspirer of the spirit” (36). MythBlast authored by: Kristina Dryža  is an ex-futurist, author, TEDx speaker, archetypal consultant, one of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Editorial Advisory Group, and a steward for The Fifth Direction. Based between Australia and Lithuania, her work focuses less on the future and more on the unknown. Presence. Not prediction. What’s sacred? Not only what’s next. Kristina is passionate about helping people to perceive mythically and sense archetypally to better understand our shared humanity, yet honor the diverse ways we all live and make meaning. To learn more about Kristina, you can view her TEDx talk: Archetypes and Mythology. Why They Matter Even More So Today  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4PYNroZBY&t=525s This MythBlast was inspired by  The Power of Myth  Episode 5, and Goddesses Latest Podcast In this episode, we are joined by Mollie Adler —a podcaster, writer, and existential thinker whose work deeply explores the complexities of human experience. As the creator of the podcast Back from the Borderline, Mollie challenges us to move beyond surface-level conversations and engage with our innermost selves. Influenced by mythology and the transformative work of Joseph Campbell, her approach is rooted in emotional alchemy—embracing the belief that from the ashes of suffering, something new can arise. Mollie often discusses mental health issues, encouraging her listeners to view mental health symptoms as messengers rather than flaws, guiding us toward alignment with the deepest yearnings of our souls. Drawing from her personal journey, she diverges from mainstream psychiatry’s tendency to "pathologize", offering instead a path of personal transformation and healing that acknowledges trauma, shame, and the challenges of modern life. Through her work, Mollie creates a space for vulnerable conversations, exploring the darkest parts of the human condition in pursuit of self-compassion and renewal. In this episode, she and JCF’s John Bucher discuss her life, her journey into mythology and soul-centered work, and how she has been influenced by Joseph Campbell. Mollie also opens up about her personal struggles with mental health and the topic of suicide. Listener discretion is advised, as sensitive themes are addressed. Find out more about Mollie here: http://www.backfromtheborderline.com/ Listen Here This Week's Highlights "People often think of the Goddess as a fertility deity only. Not at all––she's the muse. She's the inspirer of poetry. She's the inspirer of the spirit. So she has three function: one, to give us life; two, to be the one who receives us in death; and three, to inspire our spiritual, poetic realization." -- Joseph Campbell Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine , 36 Emerging Mythology (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Gustav Klimt's Death and Life (1910-1915) The theme for the MythBlast Series this month is “Death and Renewal,” but we should not take for granted that these two are a happily wedded pair, that one follows the other axiomatically, nor should we think that renewal necessarily means rebirth. It might be more useful, more practical, to think of renewal as renovation, revival, or restoration—much what one would do with an old house fallen into disrepair. Renewal is derived from the Latin word renovare (to restore, to flourish once more), and we can likewise remodel our thinking, restore our reinvigorated metaphors to their proper soulful place at the heart of life, and revive our sometimes flagging energy and rediscover enthusiasm for life. Often things—including the metaphors of myth—are beautiful, not because they’re true, but because they are not. W.H. Auden’s poem “ September 1, 1939 ” contains the oft-quoted, cherished-by-many line”: “We must love one another or die.” Auden was not at all happy with this line, primarily because it simply isn’t true and moreover, as Auden later reflected, not one word of poetry—regardless of its beauty or consolation—could have prevented the Second World War, or any other cataclysm for that matter. What’s more, love doesn’t ameliorate nor, even for a moment, forstall death. To believe otherwise is a comforting illusion of the kind without which, Nietzsche would say, we might die of the truth. Great Deceptions Great poetry is often a great deception, and often the greatest poetry considers the coldest truths deceptively, as if mythopoesis had a mind of its own with an intention to comfort or steel the reader just enough to be able to finally face what is inescapably, dreadfully, perhaps even humiliatingly true. Auden later changed the famous line to “We must love one another and die.” More true, I suppose, but less poetically powerful, so he got rid of it entirely. Much later, friends convinced him to reinsert the line in a late book of selected poems. Ultimately, restoring the line proved irresistible because—if I have learned any single thing having been a student of unadulterated human nature throughout the course of my life—we are utterly besotted with the beautiful lie. Facing the unalterable facts of life is difficult, especially facts like death, which seem to offer no consolation of understanding, no comprehension of what death is or what, exactly, happens to us when we die. In their inevitability, however, in their stubborn resistance to inquiry, those unalterable facts can reconcile us however surprisingly, probably always uneasily, to their inscrutable reality. Auden’s wrestling with seven words in one of his most famous poems reflects how much he, like all of us, would like to avoid certain inescapable mortal realities, regardless of their inevitability. Nevertheless, through a clever bit of metaphorical or artistic jujitsu, the beautiful lie, Picasso says, “...makes us realize the truth. At least the truth that is given us to understand,” and by deploying it, Auden gives us the possibility of entering into a profound truth in such a way that all our resistances to it fall away. If we live long enough with the idea that we must love one another or die, we will inexorably be led to the conclusion that we cannot avoid death; not even love can nullify its cold, all-consuming, mortal embrace. The cracks in the foundation of the beautiful lie quickly become apparent: people often love deeply, fully, sometimes with abandon, yet still have to face death—their own, or worse, that of their beloved. Death’s reality, its pervasively singular presence, cannot be denied. The bliss of love may obscure the inconvenient truths of mortality, but sadly it will not alter them; nor will a beautiful metaphor repeal the force of natural law. Immortal Longing “Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me ” (My emphasis). In Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra (5.2.280-81), Cleopatra utters these lines just a few moments before she places a poisonous snake to her breast, releasing its venom into her body, and dying. Most of us, I suspect, would be in agreement with the semblance of her sentiment; when thoughts of death occupy our minds, most of us long for immortality, too. One may understandably understand her as literally longing for immortality; she’s expressing a self-conscious wish not to die. One may also read something else in her statement and conclude that she’s telling us that it’s longing itself that is immortal. Longing is much more than mere desire. Desires can be fulfilled, sometimes even achieved, but longing is never completely satisfied. Even when we’ve achieved long-cherished goals, when we’ve acquired what we’ve only dared dream of, what remains is a nagging sense of incompleteness or emptiness as though we expected to feel something more, find some sort of all-encompassing satisfaction, to finally feel complete. Longing is fundamental to our all-too-human constitution: we long for that which cannot be humanly attained, for that which cannot be humanly grasped. We long for something that reaches beyond our human existence—some transformative force that impels us beyond human limitations. Ultimately, I think that we long for a fundamentally aesthetic experience, the experience of beauty and transcendence to which mortal flesh can hold to but for a moment. In order to have the illuminating experience, however, we must follow the beautiful lie to its ultimate conclusion. Beauty is the product of an alchemy of impermanence: our own on the one hand and on the other, the rarity, the strangeness, the fragility of the beautiful. The aesthetic impulses within ourselves bind, for a transcendent moment, to the same qualities in the regarded beauty and for a split-second, we are transported outside of ourselves. We experience a longed-for moment of awakening that simultaneously obliges us to understand that the beautiful is also ephemeral, and the longing we must perpetually live with returns to us with the formidable realization that deep beauty is a regenerative fugitive from conscious intention or will, even from death. Ultimately, I think that we long for a fundamentally aesthetic experience, the experience of beauty and transcendence to which mortal flesh can hold to but for a moment. Its transience in no way diminishes the renewing, revitalizing impact of beauty—in fact it defines it. The 14th century Zen poet Yoshida Kenko in his wonderfully charming book called Essays in Idleness wrote: “If we lived forever, never to vanish like the dews of Adashino, never to fade like the crematory smoke on Toribeyama, men would hardly feel the beauty of things.” So if it is, in fact, our longing that is immortal, it is still possible to experience the eternal, to realize immortality in a significant, life-changing, evanescent moment of aesthetic rapture. From such a transcendent experience, mere seconds in terms of ordinary time, we “...see a world in a grain of sand And heaven in a wildflower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour...” (William Blake, Songs of Innocence ). Death Opens to Life Mortality and death are the primary organizing principle of human life. Material possessions, success, fame, and embodied power are all subordinate to the knowledge that we will one day die. In Myths to Live By , Joseph Campbell writes, “This recognition of mortality and the requirement to transcend it is the first great impulse to mythology” (17). Apparently the long contemplation of eternal nothingness, or worse, eternal suffering, tends to focus the mind on discovering ways to deny such an eventuality. But more specifically, and from my perspective a more salutary thought, is that the recognition of mortality is the first great mythopoetic impulse, whose aim it is to find beauty, poetry, and narrative epistemologies that make the project of living a human life under the shadow of death not just bearable, but irresistibly appealing just as it is, on its—life’s—own terms. (As an aside, Professor Campbell touches on this idea in his lecture called “Man and His Gods,” which is featured on the most recent Pathways With Joseph Campbell podcast episode https://pathways-with-joseph-campbell.simplecast.com ). It is death itself that makes life beautiful, and perhaps surprisingly, it is death that makes life bearable. Living consciously with the fact of death renews our spirit, our compassion, our feeling for life. In that affirming feeling for life there is peace, a sense of order, propriety, and a heroically steadfast tenderness towards life itself. Finding beauty in the living and dying of life remains, after all, the first duty of the living. Thanks for reading, MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson, Ph.D.  is an author, speaker, and a psychotherapist. He serves as the Publications Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the host of JCF's flagship podcast, Pathways With Joseph Campbell . Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. OIson is also a depth psychologist in private practice in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived since 1995. Dr. Olson has graduate degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Olson offers mythic life coaching at What's Mything in Your Life ( bradleyolsonphd.com ) This MythBlast was inspired by  The Power of Myth  Episode 6, and The Hero's Journey Latest Podcast In this episode, we’re pleased to welcome Phil Cousineau —a modern mythologist, storyteller, and inspirational speaker whose life and work are deeply rooted in the world of myth and the wisdom of Joseph Campbell. Cousineau’s journey through mythology is woven into every aspect of his career, from his prolific writing and filmmaking to his role as a teacher and speaker. His fascination with mythology began at an early age and has led him around the globe, exploring the intersections of culture, art, and the human spirit. Over his decades-long career, Cousineau has become an influential voice in translating ancient myths into relevant insights for the modern world, emphasizing what he calls “the omnipresent influence of myth in modern life.” In this episode, he and JCF’s John Bucher delve into Cousineau’s wide-ranging work as an author, filmmaker, and consultant, and explore his relationship with Joseph Campbell. So get comfortable and enjoy this conversation with John Bucher and Phil Cousineau. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Hearing the song that is beyond that of your own individual life cycle is the thing that opens you to wisdom. You can hear it in your life, interpreting it, reading it, not in terms of the calamities or boons of your individual existence, but as a message of what life is." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 16 Kundalini Yoga: Flying Elephants that Support the World (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

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

Still from Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1966) Happy New Year, and thank you to all who continue to read and support JCF’s MythBlast Series. May the new year bring you all love, joy, and peace. The theme for the MythBlast series during the first month of 2025 is “The Fool at the Movies.” This is a rich vein to mine, indeed, given the cinematic contributions of great geniuses like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx, Madeline Kahn, Gilda Radner, and Robin Williams, to name just a few. All of them, for the most part, absurdly, chaotically, hilariously foolish. But I want to focus on an often overlooked variant of the archetype, the tragic fool. The Film Chimes at Midnight is a 1966 film written, directed by and starring Orson Welles. It's a masterpiece of a film made of loosely adapted scenes from William Shakespeare's plays, Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor that focus on the relationship between the young Prince Hal (Keith Baxter) and his roguish companion Sir John Falstaff (Welles). It is, by the way, Welles’ favorite of all his films: “It's my favorite picture, yes. If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I would offer up” (Estrin and Welles Orson Welles Interviews ), and more than a few critics have insisted that it is the best Shakespearean film ever made. For what it's worth, so do I. Welles had great affection for Falstaff, he may well have identified strongly with the clever, creative, “huge hill of flesh.” Certainly, they both were similarly immense (Prince Hal says Falstaff “sweats to death and lards the lean earth as he walks along”), both challenged conventional norms, loved wit, revelry, and drink; they were raconteurs of the first order (as an example, do yourself a favor and watch Orson Welles’ Sketchbook , which aired on television in the mid-1950s), and they were both painfully ejected from orbit around a world that was everything to them. Near the end of his life, Welles himself may have become something of a tragic fool, suffering a painful, humiliating fall from cinematic royalty that included drunkenly shilling Paul Masson wine in television commercials. I think that Falstaff is, perhaps, Shakespeare’s most vividly human, most fully realized and embodied figure of all the characters he imagined, and probably for that very reason, one of his most beloved. So much beloved that tradition has it that Shakespeare couldn’t bear to see Falstaff die on stage, and after seeing Henry IV Part I , Queen Elizabeth I asked Shakespeare to write The Merry Wives of Windsor , requesting that Falstaff be shown in love. I think that Falstaff is, perhaps, Shakespeare’s most vividly human, most fully realized and embodied figure of all the characters he imagined, and probably for that very reason, one of his most beloved. Falstaff Was My Tutor If I might be allowed a short digression, in the early Twenty Teens I wrote a blog called Falstaff Was My Tutor. It proved to be modestly popular; in fact at one point I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in creative nonfiction, and some of you who followed me then may remember it. I began the blog thinking that I would share sad, funny, strange, poignant stories from the time when I, a rather callow young man, was a police officer. The blog was inspired by a friend and frequent patrol partner who, as I reflected upon his premature death, I understood to be a Fallstaffian influence: a man of vast appetites, sometimes questionable ethics, a riotously funny, self-deceptive man who often told the hard truth about the world, while struggling with the fact of seeming ill-suited for it. Having left that career, that world, behind, I foolishly identified with Prince Hal, who as king finally decided to take upon himself all the responsibilities of his station and renounce his former way of life: I know thee not, old man: fall to thy prayers; How ill white hairs become a fool, and jester! I have long dream'd of such a man, So surfeit-swell'd, so old, and so profane; But being awake, I do despise my dream [...] Presume not, that I am the thing I was [...] I have turn'd away my former self; So will I those that kept me company. When thou dost hear I am as I have been, Approach me; and thou shalt be as thou wast, The tutor and the feeder of my riots : Till then, I banish thee, on pain of death (emphasis is mine). I say foolishly because now, in my late middle age, I see that I have always been Falstaff. Not so much in the sense of his riotous behaviors or too much sherris-sack, food, or licentiousness, but rather in the sense of his tragic foolishness: his vulnerability, his loneliness, and his self-delusional overcompensation. How could Shakespeare not be speaking to me? Just look at my photo accompanying this post. “How ill white hairs become a fool and a jester.” But unlike Hal, I no longer despise my dream, and I attempt to incorporate it into the broader fabric of my life. That’s the thing with archetypes; we’re constituted by so many, and each one contains its own opposite which, at some time or another demands to be reckoned with. Shakespeare’s Falstaff reflects this quality, and Welles’ film depends upon this nuance. The Fool as Truth Teller Falstaff, like other Shakespearian fools, was a truth-teller. He revealed the sordid realities underlying high flown ideals like honor, duty, and patriotism. He even tells the unflinching truth about himself. When the Lord Chief Justice, a grave, important advisor to the king, scolds Falstaff, saying, “Well, the truth is, Sir John, you live in great infamy…Your means are very slender, and your waste is great.” Falstaff replies, “I would it were otherwise. I would my means were greater and my waist slender.” He knows, painfully, that he is not what he once aspired to be, and instead he finds his untapped potential in the youthful Prince Hal, who will soon be the shining sun of the realm. Traditionally, the king is the central source of life, power, and authority within the kingdom, just as the sun is the center of the solar system, providing light and warmth to all who come into his orbit, and Falstaff loves the young prince whose bright light warms his old heart. Earlier in the film his companions ask him to put his ear to the ground and listen for the approach of travelers of whom they might relieve their material goods and Falstaff—knowing that once he’s prostrate on the ground will have great difficulty rising—replies, “Have you any levers to lift me up again, being down?” But Falstaff's question seems to foreshadow a time when he will be so far down that no lever large enough could ever be found to lift him up again and he will die, killed by regret and a broken heart. And sure enough that old heart, that great ironic, comic heart, that poor, foolish heart, is broken when Henry V banishes Falstaff from his presence, a fate he can’t quite accept. In the film we’re told that Falstaff is dead, that “the King has killed his heart.” His companions can’t accept that Falstaff is dead, and because Shakespeare and Welles have given such zeal to Falstaff, such an immense, vivid vitality that theatergoers, like the aforementioned Queen Elizabeth I and those of us watching the film, have a hard time accepting it, too. Mistress Quickly insists that surely he’s not in hell, but instead, “He’s in Arthur’s bosom, if ever a man went to Arthur’s bosom.” A curious thing to say, and a number of scholars argue that being an uneducated, uncouth woman, Mistress Quickly intended to say “Abraham’s bosom” rather than Arthur’s. But I think she’s got it exactly right. Falstaff went to Arthur’s bosom, and like the once and future king, he will return when we most need him. This is the essence of a tragic fool; they live life to the fullest while knowing they will surely die—perhaps sooner rather than later since they tempt fate so often—and they diminish the influence and authority of death by laughing at it, taunting it, domesticating it, and most of all, humanizing it. The rest of us may not realize their value until they’re dead, but like Orson Welles, we love them all the more after death. The archetypal fool provides a lever large enough to lift us all out of our powerlessness, ennui, and existential dread, encouraging the rest of us to make a game of life, discovering joy, enthusiasm, and wonder in the midst of its terrifying mystery. Thanks for reading. MythBlast authored by: Bradley Olson, Ph.D.  is an author, speaker, and a psychotherapist. He serves as the Publications Director for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and the host of JCF's flagship podcast, Pathways With Joseph Campbell . Dr. Olson holds a Ph.D. in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute. Dr. OIson is also a depth psychologist in private practice in Flagstaff, Arizona, where he has lived since 1995. Dr. Olson has graduate degrees in psychology from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Olson offers mythic life coaching at What's Mything in Your Life ( bradleyolsonphd.com ) This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Fool . Latest Podcast Today, we’re excited to bring you a conversation with Dr. Robert Maldonado , a pioneering voice in the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and mythology. With advanced degrees in Clinical and Counseling Psychology, Dr. Rob has dedicated his career to helping others overcome limitations and embrace spiritual transformation. As the President, Co-Founder, and Educational Director of CreativeMind, he offers a unique program that blends cutting-edge science with deep spiritual insight—bridging worlds that are often seen as separate. Dr. Rob’s work is deeply influenced by the teachings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, two legendary thinkers who explored the mysteries of the human psyche and the power of myth. Through his practice and teachings, he invites us to uncover the transformative potential of both science and spirituality in our lives. In this episode, JCF’s Scott Neumeister sits down with Dr. Rob to explore his journey, his approach to the human mind, and the ways in which mythology has shaped his work. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Wisdom and foolishness are practically the same. Both are indifferent to the opinions of the world." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion , 215 The Individual Adventure - Q&A (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Copyright: Starwars.com I hope that you had a chance to read John Bucher’s introduction  to the theme of the MythBlast series in 2025. As John observes, the cinema is one of the last remaining places that transports us from the realm of the mundane into the numinous, making it very worthwhile to examine it through the lens of Joseph Campbell’s work. Exploring a different archetype every month, our writers will illuminate how each one presents itself on-screen with delicious variations while yet maintaining common characteristics that aggregate under the archetype’s umbrella. I am thrilled to be both the editor of the series and a contributor this month for The Fool. A very human droid I have chosen for the focus of my article a much-beloved character from the Star Wars  Universe: C-3PO, often just called Threepio. Although technically a(n an)droid, Threepio is quite human in many respects. In fact, he and his droid sidekick, R2-D2 (Artoo), carry the bulk of the first quarter of the original 1977 movie, Episode IV: A New Hope . While we quickly grasp that Artoo and Threepio provide comic relief with their banter, by examining Threepio as The Fool we can gain a deeper appreciation for both how he functions and how he resonates with viewers. The Fool often exhibits qualities that keen audiences grasp quickly: a childlike innocence and naivete, blithe disregard for societal rules and norms, simplistic and limited worldviews, and a form of courage and carefreeness that comes from being unaware of conventions and situations. Certainly Threepio fits most of these. His wide-open eyes, combined with his mouth permanently agape, give him a constant look of wonder. His limited movement and lack of fighting capabilities make him seem as non-threatening and defenseless as a child. Threepio often can tend to pontificate, give too much detail on a subject, or not pick up on the social clues that his input or presence is not valued. From the film’s opening, he establishes a pattern of disinterest in the grand struggles of the rebels against the Empire—he worries far more about self-preservation than greater causes. Joseph Campbell famously spoke to Bill Moyers about Star Wars  in the interviews that comprise The Power of Myth . Campbell at one point focuses on Darth Vader’s mask which, when removed, shows a man “who has not developed his humanity. He’s a robot” (178). In some ways, the robot Threepio is more human than Vader, in that aspects of his humanity seem developed. However, Threepio’s mask, unlike Vader’s, is fear —the expression that his face carries can be both wonder and horror. Indeed, the one very non-Fool aspect that differentiates Threepio from most Fools, is an over developed survival mechanism—his utterances such as “We’re doomed” and “This is madness” constantly portray dread at his situation. While the Tarot Fool inattentively walks over the cliffside, Threepio is hypervigilant for cliffs of all kinds: a neurotic Fool. While the Tarot Fool inattentively walks over the cliffside, Threepio is hypervigilant for cliffs of all kinds: a neurotic Fool. Holding our shared fears As much as we think of heroic protagonists as fearless, closer to the truth is that they either manage or repress their anxieties in the name of taking action. British film critic Rob Ager (on his YouTube channel Collative Learning) speaks of one of Threepio’s functions in the films: he is the one character allowed to express out loud “the negative emotional baggage that the heroes of the story have to drag about” ( “Star Wars: the hidden complexities of C3PO (character analysis) Part One,”  00:58:50 – 00:58:56). Moreover, Threepio does so with the assistance of computer-driven precision about the odds of survival or failure.  In a sense, Threepio’s worry is pure . While we, the audience, tend to lean into the belief that heroes will succeed and everything will turn out alright because “that’s how heroic stories go,” Threepio’s assessments of situations are both coldly rational and  bypass our own management and repression of fears about the heroes’ future victories. He functions in the films, not simply as a robot who can serve the heroes’ logistical needs in achieving their goals (something which the audience could not ), but as the deep soul’s expressions about the anxiety of survival (something the audience is sensing, whether conscious of that fact or not). One other aspect of Threepio’s embodiment of the Fool relates to the comic aspect I mentioned before. In his truth-telling and breaking of social protocols, he never conveys heaviness, anger, or hostility. This lightness of delivery makes it easy to ignore his hypervigilance and even find humor in it. While Threepio “poo-poos” the heroes’ plans as “madness,” not once is he banished from the fellowship. Campbell spoke metaphorically about this tolerance in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living : "As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don’t bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you" (20). By allowing the flighty Threepio to do his worry-wart thing, both the other characters and the audience can laugh at and give spiritual distance to the defeatism that would cripple their enterprise. “Yes-And” courage My fellow MythBlast authors and JCF colleagues Joanna Gardner  and Stephanie Zajchowski  are huge proponents of the Yes-And model of holding ideas, taken from the world of improv theater. This approach allows for a tension of opposites to hold in the space of ideas and feelings. While Threepio can be seen as a “But” character in his nature, another overall purpose of his unfiltered Fool neurosis is to allow both his fellow characters and us audience members to be “Yes-And.” Yes, your concerns are valid, AND we are moving forward. And if the heroes (and we as their “confederates” in the cinema) can hold the paradox of fear and faith—with some humor to help things along—then that amplifies the heroic experience of the story. Who knew the Fool could make us laugh and  feel more courageous? MythBlast authored by: Scott Neumeister  is a literary scholar, author, TEDx speaker, mythic pathfinder and Editor of the MythBlast series from Tampa, Florida, where he earned his Ph.D. 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 Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Fool . Latest Podcast This lecture, recorded at the Esalen Institute in 1981, features Joseph Campbell delving into Jung’s concepts of the Anima and Animus, the shadow in psychology, and the role of myth in helping us navigate unexpected life challenges. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "As you proceed through life, following your own path, birds will shit on you. Don’t bother to brush it off. Getting a comedic view of your situation gives you spiritual distance. Having a sense of humor saves you." -- Joseph Campbell A Joseph Campbell Companion , 20 Parzival - Medieval Troubadour Traditions of Love (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

In 1972, a ridiculous comedy called What’s Up, Doc?   burst into theaters like a pack of drunken puppies, leaving audiences across the country weak and wheezing from the film’s hilarity. I didn’t see What’s Up, Doc?  until the 1980s, after video rentals became a thing, but the movie’s raucously impetuous brand of humor was precisely calibrated to my adolescent sensibilities. I remember gasping for breath during the madcap shenanigans and feeling that my laughter could never catch up to the snowballing dialogue and action. That delightful sensation of helplessness, I now realize, was a gift of the Fool archetype. When the movie begins, four unrelated travelers are converging on San Francisco, each carrying an identical yet uniquely precious overnight case. One case holds secret government files, one bursts with gems, and one contains lumpen stones belonging to a musicologist named Howard Bannister. Absentminded and distracted but oh-so-handsome, Howard has arrived in town with his tyrannical fiancée, Eunice, to compete for grant money to research how prehistoric peoples played music on rocks. Into this powder keg for mayhem and misunderstanding bursts the radiant but impoverished Judy Maxwell, owner of the fourth overnight case.  Judy promptly sets her romantic sights on Howard, turning the story’s genre from a simple case of mistaken luggage into a true screwball comedy, or a romantic comedy that makes fun of romance. Spies, thieves, millionaires, musicologists—as our zany characters compete to get their hands on files or jewelry or grant money, Judy competes only to get her hands on Howard. With a complete willingness to leap headlong into adventure and perfect indifference to social norms, she offers an illustration of the archetypal Fool. Not just any fool At first glance, the Fool and the Trickster might seem like two names for the same archetype, and they do have many similarities. Judy herself has no shortage of Trickster traits: her hungers for food and for Howard drive her actions, she lives on the road, and her linguistic acrobatics leave anyone who blunders into her orbit dazed and reeling. But there’s also an important distinction between the Trickster and the Fool: where the Trickster’s emphasis is on tricking others, or fooling them, the Fool primarily does foolish things. The Fool acts foolishly. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck, the Fool card shows a figure about to take what appears to be an extremely foolish step into thin air with no possible means of support. This image captures Judy’s defining characteristic: where others fear to tread, Judy leaps. She leaps into traffic, into Howard’s personal space, into disguises of many kinds. At every opportunity—and for the Fool every moment is an opportunity—Judy runs full steam ahead, never pausing or tapping the brakes. An idling car is for speeding off, a hunk like Howard is to be wooed, a banquet invitation she finds is a clarion call to impersonate the person who was invited, namely the hapless, humorless Eunice. For a Fool like Judy to take foolish leaps, she cannot care about rules or regulations. She can be daring, audacious, funny, and charming, but cannot be well-behaved. She must possess immunity to anything resembling “nice girl” conditioning. At one point, wig quivering and voice quavering, an indignant Eunice shouts to Judy, “Don’t you know the meaning of propriety?” “Propriety?” Judy replies jauntily as she disappears down an escalator. “Noun. Conformity to established standards of behavior or manners. Suitability, rightness or justice. See ‘etiquette.’”  Judy knows enough about propriety to avoid it. Instead, she claims the freedom to be herself. Joseph Campbell calls this “the will and courage to credit one’s own senses and to honor one’s own decisions, to name one’s own virtues” ( Creative Mythology  30), which he sees as the wellspring of creativity. Judy certainly credits her own senses, honors her own decisions, and acts from her own virtues and her own desires. In fact, her willingness to cause trouble enables her to align her actions precisely with her desires. As a result, she can respond creatively to the many challenges she and Howard face. Judy flings propriety aside and lives authentically—fully awake, fully alive, fully herself. So Judy is a Fool, but three additional traits make her a particular kind of Fool. First, she is invulnerable; neither her feelings nor her person can be hurt. With a spring in her step, she survives every disaster. Second, she glows with conspicuous beauty. In the movie’s sea of horrific hairdos, Judy’s hair shimmers like silk, as does her singing voice. Finally, she knows everything about everything, from geology to music to literature. In other words, she’s omniscient. Invulnerability, sublime beauty, and omniscience all combine to indicate the presence of a deity who is a woman and therefore a goddess—what Campbell might call the “Goddess of Life,” or creative energy (671). Judy is a sacred ray of creative freedom and courage who illuminates how imprisoned everyone else is in custom and conformity.  The gifts of chaos For everyone in What’s Up, Doc? who isn’t Judy, disaster blooms in the wake of her footsteps. Hotel rooms burst into flame. Brawls break out. Giant plate glass windows smash to smithereens. But Judy’s chaos, being that of a Holy Fool, reveals the chaotic nature of the divine, which doesn’t necessarily mean the “good” or the “proper.” Divine powers such as the Fool’s can burst in unannounced and turn everything upside down. Judy operates at maximum Fool wattage to make the point that Fool energy can shake things up. Sometimes when that happens, what was brittle breaks, and what was resilient grows stronger. Where most of the characters in this movie see each other only in terms of the contents of their overnight cases, Judy sees what actually matters: she sees Howard. She sees a person and loves what she sees. Neither his literal nor his metaphorical baggage concerns her. What concerns her is coaxing him out of his overly heady approach to music, fixated on the far-distant past, in favor of playing real, embodied music in a very present now. Divine powers such as the Fool’s can burst in unannounced and turn everything upside down. Judy’s ability to leap joyfully at every opportunity is only possible because she inhabits the present moment so completely. This drags others into the present with her, if only to cope with the havoc she creates. She turns each moment into the wackiest possible version of itself, regardless of norms or consequences. And in so doing, she wins the day. She gets her guy. The Fool Goddess’s relentlessly foolish and divine spontaneity leads to love. The helplessness I felt watching What’s Up, Doc?  in the 80s is much like the helplessness Howard experiences in Judy’s force field. But helplessness can be a prelude to some sort of surrender. Maybe to laughter and silliness, maybe to music and beauty. Maybe to the divine. Maybe Judy’s invitation is to surrender to a little daring, zest, humor, and audacity, dancing adroitly around convention and leaping into the occasional adventure. MythBlast authored by: Joanna Gardner, PhD , is a writer, mythologist, and magical realist focusing on creativity, goddesses, and wonder tales. 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 serves as director of marketing and communications for the Joseph Campbell Foundation and as adjunct professor in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s Mythological Studies program. She also co-founded and co-leads the Fates and Graces , hosting webinars and workshops for mythic readers and writers. For Joanna's updates and additional publications, you are most cordially invited to visit her website at joannagardner.com . This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Fool . Latest Podcast Today, we’re excited to bring you a conversation with Dr. Robert Maldonado, a pioneering voice in the intersection of psychology, spirituality, and mythology. With advanced degrees in Clinical and Counseling Psychology, Dr. Rob has dedicated his career to helping others overcome limitations and embrace spiritual transformation. As the President, Co-Founder, and Educational Director of CreativeMind, he offers a unique program that blends cutting-edge science with deep spiritual insight—bridging worlds that are often seen as separate. Dr. Rob’s work is deeply influenced by the teachings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, two legendary thinkers who explored the mysteries of the human psyche and the power of myth. Through his practice and teachings, he invites us to uncover the transformative potential of both science and spirituality in our lives. In this episode, JCF’s Scott Neumeister sits down with Dr. Rob to explore his journey, his approach to the human mind, and the ways in which mythology has shaped his work. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Not only in the sciences but in every department of life the will and courage to credit one’s own senses and to honor one’s own decisions, to name one’s own virtues and to claim one’s own vision of truth, have been the generative forces of the new age, the enzymes of the fermentation of the wine of this great modern harvest — which is a wine, however, that can be safely drunk only by those with a courage of their own." -- Joseph Campbell The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology , 30 Slaying The Dragon (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Still from Disney's Agatha All Along “The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, And lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven For both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I, the great Aphrodite. Aeschylus, The Danaïdes Fragments (translator unknown) Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, beauty, and desire, presides over the union of earth and sky, according to Aeschylus. She is the procreative force animating these primordial beings. No wonder love is considered divine. This powerful and sometimes destructive energy pulsates throughout the universe. The Lover archetype seeks connectedness at its deepest and most profound. It seduces us towards that which makes us feel most alive, daring us to see more within ourselves, giving us the courage to defy boundaries we could not see beyond, and thus expanding us into the possibilities of who we might become. At its fullest, the Lover archetype allows us to feel utterly alive and at one with the very fabric of being. Epic cinematic love stories like Titanic, The Notebook , or A Star is Born capture glimpses of the force of the Lover archetype, showing how lovers change each other’s lives. Their desire for one another moves them toward different aspects of themselves, expanding the possibilities they had before and, at times, challenging class, society, and circumstance in its attempts to contain this sacred force. Even amidst the tragic aspects of these movies, we can witness how powerful love can be for those who are captured by its thrall. But can the story of a Marvel villain contain aspects of the Lover archetype? While it is an unlikely place to find love, I believe it is here as well. *The following content contains spoilers. The love-death Marvel’s series Agatha All Along further develops the villainous character Agatha Harkness. In the lineage of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and its expansion of the Scarlet Witch character, viewers are introduced to the formidable witch, Agatha, in Wanda Vision when she portrays a friendly neighbor while harboring her true intentions of attaining the Scarlet Witch's astonishing power. Agatha’s lover, Rio, is the personification of Death. To fall in love with Death seems like a problematic relationship from the start. Yet, for Agatha, love and death intertwine. At a young age, her coven, led by her mother, attempts to kill her. At this moment Agatha realizes she absorbs the powers of those who attack her; she drains their life force. With a trail of bodies in her wake, at some point, Agatha falls in love with Death herself. Fear and desire are driving emotions that often defy reason. Thus, it seems natural to intertwine the two in a love affair; as with Aphrodite’s entanglement with Ares, the Greek god of war. Joseph Campbell tells how love and death are closely related in mythology. From early Bronze Age fertility rituals to the “interior kingdom of the soul” of Hellenistic mystery cults, fertilization occurs “through death … a submission of the solar principle of rational self-reliant consciousness to the song, the sleep-song, of the interior abyss where the two [lovers] become one” ( Creative Mythology, 195). Love, death, and rebirth are at the core of these ancient fertility cycles. As with the ecosystem of a forest, the trees that die nourish the new growth of the forest floor. Love and death regenerate life, together creating something enlivening and new for the community and the soul. But for Agatha, her affair with Death is consumptive, feeding an endless need for power. “Follow me, my friend”[1] Agatha All Along depicts the journey of a coven of witches on the Witches’ Road, a path of trials that promises to deliver what one wants most, if the traveler has the fortitude to make it to the end. The road itself pulsates with the Lover archetype, luring adventurers with their deepest desire, even at the risk of death. The love of their life beckons them onward. Billy, a teenager yearning for belonging, instigates the journey, asking Agatha for help finding the Witches’ Road. Though she is ever deceiving, Agatha seems to have a maternal pull towards Billy, or at the very least a soft spot for his plight. Agatha seeks power from the Witches’ Road, as she always has, but we catch glimpses through each of the trials of a deeper desire. In the final trial, when she is forced to face the thing she wants most of all, she opens her locket revealing a lock of hair. Agatha is driven by the love for her son. “Darkest hour, wake thy power”[1] Death comes for Agatha’s son as she writhes in the throes of labor pains, and she begs Death, “Please, let him live, please, my love” (“Maiden Mother Crone” 3:53). With empathy in her eyes, Death states, “I can offer only time” (“Maiden Mother Crone” 5:00), a “special treatment” that no one in history has received but Agatha (“Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End” 5:47), a testament of Death’s feelings for her. After delivery, Agatha tells her son: “I spoke no spell. I made no incantation. You, I made from scratch” (“Maiden Mother Crone” 5:04). No magical powers were employed in this creation, just the procreative magic that belongs to all beings on earth. A lover’s union that gave birth to life not death. The love Agatha expresses for her son is pure, singular for this coven-less witch whose mother attempted to kill her. And she protects her child with vicious resolve. But time runs out, as it does, and when Death comes once again for her son, Agatha’s heartbreak leaves her untethered. It amplifies her lust for power as she attempts to fill the void of grief. Love animates the universe Throughout the hundreds of years of her life, Agatha is only known for her cruelty. She takes lives, steals powers, and is said to have sacrificed her son for forbidden knowledge. When Death asks, “Why do you let them believe those things about you?” her response is, “Because the truth is too awful” (“Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End” 6:28). It is better to evoke fear than show the vulnerability of someone who has loved deeply and lost. Yet love pulls Agatha onward, even in its perceived absence. As the character Vision states in an earlier episode, “What is grief, if not love persevering?” (“Previously On” 24:48). The prize Agatha truly yearns for at the end of the Witches’ Road is a return to the life-giving love she shared with her son. Though hidden deep within Agatha’s treacherous actions, this connection remains within her, calling to her heart. As cultural historian Charlene Spretnak explains, “Everywhere, Aphrodite drew forth the hidden promise of life” as “she alone understands the love that begets life” ( Lost Goddesses of Early Greece, 71-2). The Lover archetype calls us to that which gives life. The Lover archetype calls us to that which gives life. At the end of the Witches’ Road, Agatha returns to the heartbreak of her loss, but now within her locket, beside the lock of her son’s hair, she finds a seed. To complete the final trial, Agatha plants the magical seed within the earthen floor, waters it with her tears, and witnesses it grow. “Out of death, life” (“Follow Me My Friend / To Glory at the End” 24:59), she proclaims, acknowledging the generative cycle of fertility, both in nature as well as symbolically. For death is the regeneration of life—destruction evokes creation. Something seems to shift in Agatha through this experience. The Lover archetype stirs within her. When Death comes once again to now take Billy’s life, she is reminded of her son and sacrifices herself for Billy’s life with a passionate kiss of Death. Giving the ultimate commitment to Death in the end, Agatha exchanges her life for the life of another. As her body returns to the earth, a multitude of vegetation emerges from where she lies–a testament to the life-giving nature of her sacrifice. Agatha All Along i s not a love story per se. It is a superheroine fantasy with aspects of horror, comedy, and adventure. But, love is here too . The Lover archetype beckons these characters forward even as she is distorted, misunderstood, or hidden. Love is ever-present, even in unlikely places–a testament to the idea that it surrounds us, pulsating throughout the universe, if we have the courage to listen to her call. [1] “Ballad of the Witches’ Road.” Disney Fandom Wiki. https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Ballad_of_the_Witches%27_Road 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 Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Lover . Latest Podcast This episode of Pathways, the final episode of Season 4, features a lecture recorded in 1985 in Southwest Germany. In it, Joseph Campbell explores the significance of mythological images and reflects on some of the major themes that shaped his life and work. He also shares personal stories about how and why he became so passionate about mythology. Dr. Bradley Olson introduces the episode and provides insightful commentary on some of its important themes at the conclusion. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The conquest of the fear of death is the recovery of life's joy. One can experience an unconditional affirmation of life only when one has accepted death, not as contrary to life, but as an aspect of life. Life in its becoming is always shedding death, and on the point of death. The conquest of fear yields the courage of life." -- Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers , 188 All the Gods are Within Us (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

George Nolfi's The Adjustment Bureau © Universal Pictures My favorite films are all about strangers, friends, and near-miss lovers meeting and the story of their entwining destinies: Sliding Doors , A bout Time , One Day , Cloud Atlas , The Fountain , Groundhog Day , and The Adjustment Bureau . Need I go on? They’ve deeply shaped my perception of the world I want to live in. But why? Because in these films we’re in the realm of The Moirai (The Fates). They’re the ones with the hands on the steering wheel of our lives. But what does it take for us to wrestle back control? And is that even possible? The theme for this month’s MythBlasts is The Lover archetype at the movies, so I want to explore how the lovers in The Adjustment Bureau   transform their fate and rewrite their destiny. [For the purposes of this article, I’ll be defining fate  as something imposed on us–a predetermined set of circumstances, while destiny  is a path that we actively shape through our conscious choices and actions.] *The following content contains spoilers. The Adjustment Bureau The movie (released in 2011) is loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “Adjustment Team.” Google’s synopsis reads: “Just as he is on the brink of winning a Senate seat, politician David Norris (Matt Damon) meets a ballerina named Elise Sellas (Emily Blunt). Though David is instantly smitten, mysterious men conspire to keep him away from the beautiful dancer. David learns that he is facing the powerful agents of Fate itself, and glimpsing the future laid out for him, must either accept a predetermined path that does not include Elise or else defy Fate to be with her.” The Adjustment Bureau (representing a Higher Power) has a “plan” for every individual, suggesting a predetermined course of events. Every human has a case officer and David’s agent, Harry (Anthony Mackie), has been with him since birth assisting him to reach his potential. According to the plan created for him by “The Chairman,” David is to be President of The United States, but the Bureau staff are worried that if he falls in love with Elise, he’ll lose all his political ambition. She was only needed to enter his life at a particular moment to inspire him, and then they were never meant to meet again. Three years later though, Harry misses a crucial “adjustment” for David, which leads him to unexpectedly see Elise again.  In the film, the powers of the agents (“angels”) of The Chairman (“God”) are vast but limited. Their job is to subtly adjust, nudge, and encourage the direction the Bureau has determined for each human within the grander scheme of life. But now that David has “by chance” crossed paths with Elise again, he refuses to let her go. This has alerted Thompson (Terence Stamp), a high-ranking agent who oversees the fate adjustments of lower-ranking agents like Harry.  Amor fati : loving your fate Portraying the ever-present tension between fate and destiny, the film asks us to consider if it’s even possible to outrun our fate with our free will. Joseph Campbell writes in A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living :  At a certain moment in [Nietzsche’s] life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment–not discouragement–you will find the strength is there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. (38) The heart wants what it wants David certainly brings love to his challenge of choosing Elise, so that the spontaneity of his own nature flows as he literally petitions God to intervene on his behalf. He sides with love over any career aspirations. And we all know that choosing love always drastically alters one’s life plans, whether it’s the love we have for another person, or the love we hold for a country, artistic skill, or ideal. To again emphasize what Campbell expresses, choosing love allows strength to be found in moments that look like a complete and utter wreck. And that love brought to a disaster will immeasurably improve our character, stature, and life. David asks Thompson, “If I’m not supposed to be with [Elise], then why do I feel like this?” The agent responds, “It doesn’t matter how you feel, what matters is in black and white.” So is it that we’re too controlled by our feelings, and that’s why we need a higher force to step in and adjust our lives? The interplay between logic and emotion is central here–only by being denied Elise does David realize, on a much deeper level, that she is his true destiny. The heart wants what it wants, and isn’t love often deemed an illogical choice?  The heart wants what it wants, and isn’t love often deemed an illogical choice?  The power of invisible forces Let’s for a moment turn the focus onto ourselves. How often has our future been adjusted without our awareness? Are we in touch with our angel who is always invisibly guiding us? Do we have a sense of The Chairman’s plan for our life? And if so, have we willingly aligned with it? Or have we accessed the inner freedom required to co-create a different plan? We most often invoke destiny when we refuse to be fated by our fears, recognizing that obstacles don’t control fate; they’re merely its agent. While external factors (like the Bureau’s plans) do indeed influence choices, individuals ultimately possess the agency to break free from these constraints. Philosophically, this reflects compatibilism–the belief that fate and free will are not opposing forces, but interwoven. We might be shaped by genetics, environmental and societal structures (and the like), but within these bounds we still make choices. The role of choice is pivotal in defining who we are because it allows us to affirm or defy the influences acting on us, showcasing our agency. And like David declares, “All I have are the choices I make, and I choose her, come what may.”                            The right to free will  David and Elise change their plans by refusing to conform to what was laid out for them by The Chairman. They display and embody courage, persistence, and an unwavering belief in their love, even when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. To defy a predetermined plan requires recognizing your more noble desires, acting on them with utmost resolve, and being willing to face obstacles and risks for what matters most to you. And fighting for the right to free will is one of the most profound battles of all.                                                                     The Adjustment Bureau is a beautiful reminder that plans can be rewritten when humans exercise their free will if  done with enough conviction. This is because free will isn’t really free if it isn’t fought for. And so the film is less about The Chairman’s plan for David and Elise, but rather the bountiful love and inner exertion with which they engage the plan. In this way, The Lover archetype awakens and transforms their struggle into a rich exploration of fate and destiny, and the very meaning of love and life itself. On that note, I’ll leave you with the final lines that Harry says to David:   Most people live life on the path we set for them, too afraid to explore any other. But once in a while people like you come along who knock down all the obstacles we put in your way. People who realize free will is a gift that you’ll never know how to use until you fight for it. I think that’s The Chairman’s real plan. That maybe one day, we won’t write the plan, you will. MythBlast authored by: Kristina Dryža  is an ex-futurist, author, TEDx speaker, archetypal consultant, one of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s Editorial Advisory Group, and a steward for The Fifth Direction. Based between Australia and Lithuania, her work focuses less on the future and more on the unknown. Presence. Not prediction. What’s sacred? Not only what’s next. Kristina is passionate about helping people to perceive mythically and sense archetypally to better understand our shared humanity, yet honor the diverse ways we all live and make meaning. To learn more about Kristina, you can view her TEDx talk: Archetypes and Mythology. Why They Matter Even More So Today   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4PYNroZBY&t=525s This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Lover . Latest Podcast Crispin Freeman is a renowned voice actor, director, and storyteller whose career has left a mark on the worlds of anime, video games, and animation. Beginning his journey as a theater actor in New York City, Freeman transitioned to voice acting in 1997 and quickly became a prominent figure in English-language dubs of Japanese anime. His performances have brought to life a wide range of complex and memorable characters, captivating audiences around the globe. In the conversation, JCF’s John Bucher joins Crispin to explore Crispin’s life and work, the history of animated storytelling in both the East and West, its connection to mythology, and the ways Joseph Campbell’s influence is woven into it all. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "Fate is a dimension that is not of your person. It’s transpersonal. You open up to something that is deeper than your own personal notion of yourself. Even though it’s you, it’s beyond what you know of yourself. It’s experience that’s coming to you." -- Joseph Campbell Myth and Meaning , 215 Kundalini Yoga: Solar & Lunar Energy Pathways (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter

Still from Univeral Pictures' Mulholland Drive David Lynch, among filmmakers in recent memory, most embodied the Trickster archetype. His works comprise a singular mythology that is daffy, hallucinatory, hopeful, and filled with dread. A mythmaker as infatuated with donuts and coffee as with depicting interdimensional demonic forces, Lynch died on January 15, 2025, from complications with emphysema. It was difficult for me not to think that the Los Angeles wildfires beginning on January 7th killed him, in some way. I have called Los Angeles home for six years, and his death feels inextricably connected to the nodes of our city’s cultural memory that were incinerated from Pacific Palisades to Altadena. Joseph Campbell, whom I’ve spent the greater part of these six years thinking and writing about, reminds us that, from Polynesia’s Maui to the Germanic Loki, the Trickster is a fire-bringer ( Primitive Mythology , 251). It is sad but maybe fitting that Los Angeles’ great Trickster filmmaker should depart us under these infernal skies. After all, the generative energy for his Twin Peaks  mythos lurks in the couplet:                “Through the darkness of future past             The magician longs to see.             One chants out between two worlds              Fire walk with me .”   The Fire-Bringer Synthesizing the Trickster archetype across cultures, Campbell considered it “a lecherous fool as well as an extremely clever and cruel deceiver; but he is also the creator of mankind and shaper of the world…” ( Flight of the Wild Gander , 128). As fire-bringer, the Trickster is an archetype of duality, separating void from light. But the Trickster’s torch does not fully extinguish darkness; the Promethean act, on some level, paradoxically intensifies the dark. David Lynch operates on this register, as some of his characters and narrative situations contain the cruelest and most unpleasant images in cinematic history. Despite this, his work, especially Mulholland Drive   (2001), lingers on the salvific magic found in beauty and “little” things and the heroic act of believing that humanity is yet capable of goodness. Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers “the influence of a vital person can vitalize the world” (183) in The Power of Myth , and I can easily imagine Lynch repeating the same sentence during one of his morning weather reports for KCRW in Los Angeles, queuing a song by The Ronettes.  The Trickster is not quite The Fool nor entirely The Devil. This tension between creation and deception lends itself to approaching Lynch’s Mulholland Drive  as a Trickster myth in cinematic form. Loosely tracing aspiring actress Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) as she chases the Hollywood Dream, the film is often read as a Matryoshka doll of dreams within dreams, crisscrossing subconscious fantasies of stardom and nightmarish erotic jealousy. Personally, I enjoy reading Mulholland Drive  as a representation of Hollywood’s collective Trickster unconscious, charting the interactions of numerous dreamers across a dark night of the Los Angeles soul.  Duality through trickery Mulholland Drive  explores duality through trickery, as many characters have doubles. Naomi Watts plays two actresses, Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn, the first iteration something of an overnight starlet while the latter is reclusive and embittered. Laura Harring is the amnesiac Rita and  successful actress Camilla Rhodes, while Ann Miller is first the flamboyant building manager Coco, then reappearing as the mother of hotshot director Adam Kesher. But in a film riddled with Tricksters, none are so striking as The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery).  Kesher (Justin Theroux) is blackmailed by stealthy financiers into casting their lead actress of choice for his upcoming picture, and he refuses. Tricksters are devious archetypes, and Kesher channels this ludic defiance by smashing a mobster’s limousine with a golf club and pouring pink paint into his unfaithful wife’s jewelry box. But when the shadowy cabal demonstrates that they can freeze his bank accounts and fire his entire film staff, Kesher’s Trickster outbursts must end. He is directed to a horse corral atop Beachwood Canyon to meet with “The Cowboy.”   Sometimes there’s a buggy… At the corral, a buzzing, flickering light bulb dangles on a wooden beam below a cow-skull. Tricksters frequently inhabit animal forms like foxes, coyotes, ravens, or rabbits as part of their shapeshifting play that doubles as a shamanic aid for crisscrossing the realms of our reality and the otherworlds of myth. Lynch’s mythic image of the cow-skull signals that we are entering a threshold zone with a not-quite-human Trickster who is mysteriously tethered to the realm of the dead. The Cowboy greets Kesher with a “Howdy” and begins speaking in the vernacular of the Western radio serials that Lynch listened to as a child. Kesher is impatient with his prairie pleasantries, instigating this exchange:   Cowboy: A man's attitude... a man's attitude goes some ways. The way his life will be. Is that somethin' you agree with? Kesher: Sure. Cowboy: Now...did you answer ‘cause you thought that's what I wanted to hear, or did you think about what I said and answer ‘cause you truly believe that to be right? Kesher: I agree with what you said, truly. Cowboy: What’d I say? Kesher: Uh...that a man's attitude determines, to a large extent, how his life will be. Cowboy: So since you agree, you must be someone who does not care about the good life.   Kesher’s meeting with The Cowboy reminds me of Campbell’s summation of the Yoruba trickster Edshu (Eshu/Èșù): “spreading strife was his greatest joy” ( The Hero with a Thousand Faces , 74). The Cowboy relishes teasing the anxious director by nestling wisdom in wily parables:   There's sometimes a buggy. How many drivers does a buggy have? So, let's just say I'm driving this buggy. And, if you fix your attitude, you can ride along with me.    Whether Lynch intended it, having this trickster Cowboy be the lone buggy “driver” to whom Kesher must entrust himself recalls Campbell’s definition of “the trickster Hermes, guide of souls to the underworld, the patron, also, of rebirth and lord of the knowledges beyond death ( Occidental Mythology , 138)” in The Odyssey  and Homeric myths. Informing Kesher of the steps he must follow to regain some autonomy on his film, The Cowboy concludes “you will see me one more time, if you do good. You will see me... two more times, if you do bad.” As trickster, The Cowboy is a Lynchian admixture of Edshu’s joyous chaos, Hermes the underworld navigator, Br’er Rabbit’s mischievous riddles and the fire-bringer who restores order to Kesher’s creative act that has become shadowed by pandemonium. Later in Mulholland Drive , The Cowboy will beckon Diane Selwyn “wake up, pretty girl” from sojourning in the underworlds of her subconscious.    Into the silencio How do we respond to the Tricksters in our own lives, those figures at the crossroads of chaos and life’s creative potential? The shamanic compact, as it were, is one of trust. We are sometimes forced to entrust ourselves to the care of mildly unnerving guides in moments of profound bewilderment. It is heroic to reckon that the fire-bringers will illuminate, perhaps even enchant, those lost highways and twin peaks that are necessary thresholds within our “soul’s high adventure.” When the Trickster chants “fire, walk with me” into our world of donuts and damned good coffee, do we trust them to drive this buggy called life along the Mulholland Drives of our psyche? Lynch’s Trickster film ends with a whisper of “silencio.” Campbell might as well have been rebuking those countless explanations of Lynch’s work when he wrote that “anyone trying to express in words the sense or feeling of this mystic communion would soon learn that words are not enough: the best is silence… ( Primitive , 128).”   It is heroic to reckon that the fire-bringers will illuminate, perhaps even enchant, those lost highways and twin peaks that are necessary thresholds within our “soul’s high adventure.”  Thank you for guiding us into the silencio , David. MythBlast authored by: Teddy Hamstra is a writer and seeker in Los Angeles. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern California, in the final stages of completing a dissertation entitled 'Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism.' Recently, Teddy has been working for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, spearheading their Research & Development efforts. As an educator and research consultant for creatives, Teddy is driven to communicate the wonder of mythological wisdom in ways that are both accessible to, and which enliven, our contemporary world. This MythBlast was inspired by Creative Mythology and the archetype of The Trickster . Latest Podcast Crispin Freeman is a renowned voice actor, director, and storyteller whose career has left a mark on the worlds of anime, video games, and animation. Beginning his journey as a theater actor in New York City, Freeman transitioned to voice acting in 1997 and quickly became a prominent figure in English-language dubs of Japanese anime. His performances have brought to life a wide range of complex and memorable characters, captivating audiences around the globe. In the conversation, JCF’s John Bucher joins Crispin to explore Crispin’s life and work, the history of animated storytelling in both the East and West, its connection to mythology, and the ways Joseph Campbell’s influence is woven into it all. Listen Here This Week's Highlights "The archetype of the hero in the belly of the whale is widely known. The principal deed of the adventurer is usually to make fire with his fire sticks in the interior of the monster, thus bringing about the whale’s death and his own release. Fire making in this manner is symbolic of the sex act. The two sticks — socket-stick and spindle — are known respectively as the female and the male; the flame is the newly generated life. The hero making fire in the whale is a variant of the sacred marriage." -- Joseph Campbell The Hero with a Thousand Faces , 212 Living in Accord With Nature (see more videos) Subscribe to the MythBlast Newsletter