Myth Matters

"Everything is banal, everything is 'nothing but;' and that is the reason that people are neurotic. They are simply sick of the whole thing, sick of that banal life, and therefore they want sensation. They even want a war; they all want war..." --C. G. Jung from "The Symbolic Life," CW 18.

According to Jung, most Western individuals suffer from a pervasive soul sickness, a sickness created by the one-sided nature of Western consciousness. The single-minded pursuit of "reason" has driven the deep need for wonder, meaning, and mystery into the unconscious and given rise to a dangerous literalizing, and a world in which the lines between fact and fiction, truth and lie, are collapsing.

The one-sidedness begins with the mistaken notion that one makes a choice between two opposing options. Both impulses will direct your life as this is beyond your control, and the choice is not "between" reason and imagination, the rational and irrational, fact and fantasy. 

The choice is to become more conscious of all of it, to learn to live with nuance and ambiguity, and live the mystery in you, that is you.

This choice is available to any person of intelligence and heart, who hears the invitation in "once upon a time" and begin a conscious quest for the symbolic life.

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"Our identity is shaped not only by our differences from the Others but in the alchemy by which assimilating them informs the genesis of self. They are both the reciprocal and the constituents of our consciousness."  --Paul Shepard, "The Others, How Animals Made Us Human"

Dragons, griffins, chimeras, unicorns, talking horses, and helpful toads-- images of fantastic creatures like these typically come to mind when we think of "mythic animals" and yet animals, the first companions and teachers of early homo sapiens, have always been an essential part of human myth-making and the evolution of human consciousness and culture.

This podcast is a mini-exploration of connections between mythology, science, animals, and the fantastic, with some storytelling about the unicorn, one of my favorite "mythic animals."

"Wonder Is Not Precisely Knowing." ---Emily Dickinson

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"I’ve been terrified every moment of my life—and I never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do." --Georgia O’Keefe

How do you find the courage and commitment to be true to yourself?

A relatively small happening in your life, a minor mystery or random thought, even an irritant, can be a moment of awakening and the start of your quest. In this Native American story, a busy little mouse hears a strange roaring in his ears. This experience has no place in his world. Other mice tell him that it doesn't exist. But one day...

Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive.

"The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are." ~ Joseph Campbell

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The popular image of the hero is ripe for reflection. In this episode, I share two Buddhist teaching stories (jatakas) that offer an interesting perspective. 

The Tigress Jataka and The Prince Five Weapons Jataka illustrate different courses of action taken on the path of the bodhisattva. Are the "heroes" in these tales, heroes? What do you think?

So you should view this fleeting world—
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.

- from the Diamond Sutra, translated by Red Pine

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"We moms are often underestimated. But we're stronger than we're given credit for. So what do you say, will you stand with me?" Bev Barnum, catalyst for the Wall of Moms protest in Portland, OR USA

In 411 BCE, Aristophanes' comedy the “Lysistrata” was performed in Athens. Athens was embroiled in the Peloponnesian War, and the play was a dream of peace in which women played a significant role. 

In this podcast, I give a gloss of the plot of this play and consider some connections between the ancient Greek world of Aristophanes, and the growing presence of women in public life today. Women are taking the lead, speaking out, and showing up in greater and greater numbers. They are not uniformly welcome.

A look at the classical Greek roots of Western culture sheds some light on the cultural tensions that surround women and power and the right to speak out. 

“We have to be more reflective about what power is, what it is for, and how it is measured. To put it another way, if women are not perceived to be fully within the structures of power, surely it is power that we need to redefine rather than women?”
― Mary Beard, Women & Power: A Manifesto

 
Visit the Mythic Mojo & Myth Matters website--- http://www.mythicmojo.com --- for links to related resources that you might find helpful.

Thank you for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive....

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Cultural and personal transformation begins with conscious evaluation of value systems and the stories that express and perpetuate them. In the West, this includes the idea of the hero, and the mythic pattern of the hero's journey delineated by Joseph Campbell.

A close critique of Western heroes and heroism is long overdue in my opinion, and yet the incredible popularity of this image of the individual and the road to fulfillment signals the need for careful, nuanced reflection. In truth, I am often inspired by the courage, feeling, vision, and stamina of heroes, past and present. At the same time, I'm very frustrated by the hegemony of the heroic perspective, which excludes people and experiences and most importantly, colonizes the imagination.

Campbell didn't create the mythologies that he studied and yet, he did conceive the monomyth of the hero's' journey. I recently returned to "The Hero With a Thousand Faces" and I was struck by Campbell's use of Siddhartha's journey to enlightenment. It's a good story, one that can help you think about the nature of heroism and the change our times demand.

Buddhism and other major philosophical and religious systems appeared during a time called "The Axial Age." This isn't the first time that people have felt the need for a new story, although I don't think the longing has been expressed in these terms before. Something profound is underway. You can feel it. But I wonder how much can change, how human civilization can be retooled, if people don't learn how to read a myth, how to live the symbolic life and see through metaphor...

The nature of Siddhartha's story offers me a way to talk about that too. 

I hope that you're doing okay and find something helpful in this podcast. 

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The old forms are dissolving. I find myself thinking about allies--how to be an ally, and also, where are my allies? These questions are important in my "outer life" as a citizen, and a human being making my way through the day-to-day. 

I can find some answers in movies and books and my community... but can these take me far enough, deep enough, into the desired transformation? How can depth psychology and the soul life help me grapple with the challenge of allyship, alliances, and support today? 

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What do you do when the old ways don't work anymore? When the roles that you've played, and the activities that have engaged your time, must change? What do you do when your ideas about the world and about yourself must evolve? When you need a new story to live?

You turn to soul and your soul life, that imaginative capacity in your nature that enables you to bridge what exists and what could be. Soul---that imaginative ground-- is a portal that is always available, to take you into the liminal space where transformation occurs.

Listening to a story like we do here on this podcast, is one way to enter this soul realm. In this episode, I have a story that tells us something about soul and the liminal space, and the possibilities that can be found there. It's a Celtic story called "The Man Without a Story," and I hope it helps you find your way to the edge of the fairy glen. 

A transcript of this episode is available at www.mythicmojo.com.Thanks for listening!

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Here we are, two weeks further into this process, a process that few, if any of us, can define, a collective transformation.  Sometimes I feel a certain fatigue in all of this, and maybe you do, too. I remind myself that all I can do, really, is express - through how I live, what I do, what I say and my own being- the values that I want to see in the world. 

In that spirit, I offer you a little bit of humor and sweetness in today's story, a Czech folk tale called "Clever Manka."

"Peace begins with a smile." Mother Teresa

A transcript of this episode is available at www.mythicmojo.com.Thanks for listening!

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"If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight." William James 

The words above are the epigraph to a chapter in Annie Dillard's book "The Writing Life." In this podcast, I share a story from Dillard that helps me greet the day and take up my work despite uncertain outcomes.  I hope that it does the same for you.

I've also included two poems written by members of our Myth Matters story circle. Thank you to Dick Sumpter and Elise Kost for sharing your hearts and words! 

A transcript of this episode is available at www.mythicmojo.com.Thanks for listening!

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Email Catherine at [email protected]
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