Myth Matters

Send Catherine a text Message How did all of this-- what we call reality, the universe, the earth, life, begin? What do you think? This question is a primary motivation for our ongoing myth-making. Despite all the tools and technologies, the origins of the cosmos, life, and human beings are still a mystery. In offering us an explanation of our creation, these myths offer a perspective on human nat...

Send Catherine a text Message The proper way to be a father or mother, questions about who can father or mother, and what these parental roles mean are contentious topics, ripe for creative reflection and renewal. Myths about fathers and fatherhood contain images and meanings that shape society and family life. They're a key part of this cultural conversation. The fathers in myths and fairy t...

Send Catherine a text Message Our appreciation of mythology as a symbolic language is central to the contemporary relationship to myth. As people bound to a psychological view of the inner life, myth as metaphor is the key to understanding the old stories. And yet, myth is more than metaphor. T he elements in a story, the specific animals, plants, and features of the land that are named in a given...

Send Catherine a text Message On the surface,  "The Wild Swans" is a fairy tale about cursed brothers who are saved by their sister.  This is a common motif.  Closer examination led me to consider the creative power of words and of silence, and how we use and are used, by both. I hope you enjoy the story.  Support the show Email Catherine at catherine@mythicmojo.com Post a positive revie...

Send Catherine a text Message In The World's Wife, Carol Ann Duffy offers myth poems that are also myths for today in the form of a poem.   These poems converse with old myths and stories AND they are stories in themselves.  They display a deep appreciation for the poignancy of these tales, and a wicked, dark humor.  I love them.  As the title suggests, Duffy tells her myths from the perspect...

Send Catherine a text Message April is National Poetry month! Myth and poetry have a long, shared history. In fact, our oldest known myths are poems.  Have you ever wondered why this might be? I suspect the intuitive rightness of myth as poetry springs from the ancient understanding of the sacred power of the word. In this episode, we explore the creative power of speech with the aid of a handful...

Send Catherine a text Message The Greek goddess Athena was a warrior, the patron of cities and mentor of heroes, clear-eyed, practical, and strategic. What was her great power?  She was the goddess of Reason. Yes, the ancient Greek patriarchy, a model of misogyny, imagined "reason" as female. This being myth, there's plenty to unpack and contradicts abound. This episode is your invi...

Send Catherine a text Message Myth has an interesting and complex relationship to history.  Myth is part of the historical record of our species, and part of the history of a given people. And myth shapes history. Myth gives rise to the beliefs and point of view that create our world, determine the present, and influence the future. This blending of myth and history can lead to important revelatio...

Send Catherine a text Message The freedom to love and individuality. The difference between spiritual love and carnal love. Love for the self and love for a beloved. The fear and fascination elicited by those who don't fit conventional categories and definitions. Hans Christian Andersen was probably not thinking about these ideas when he wrote his fairy tale "The Little Mermaid," at...

Send Catherine a text Message A new year is a time of beginnings and possibility. A fresh and hopeful creativity infuses our aspirations. This is a good time to make conscious choices about the sources we turn to and the images we hold, as we form our goals, predictions, and hopes for the coming year. According to the ancient Chinese zodiac, each year in a 60-year cycle has a particular character,...

Send Catherine a text Message Yes, Christmas is grossly commercial, a taint that touches other year-closing holidays as well. And yet this time, and these traditions, have deep mythological roots that connect us to important gifts of the spirit.  The mythic figure of Santa Claus reveals the tangled history of our year end aspirations and need for community. I hope this snapshot of some of his orig...

Send Catherine a text Message Whatever your ancestry, wherever your people had deep roots, winter was the time for storytelling. To gather together inside, stay warm, relax, and learn together.  Winter stories in particular, are stories about the mysteries that bind our earthly world to the other worlds. Stories about the bridges between the visible and the invisible. Stories of the uncanny.  They...

Send Catherine a text Message “In this universe we are given two gifts: the ability to love and the ability to ask questions.”  -- Mary Oliver The Arthurian legend of the knight Perceval and his quest for the grail was written by the French Romantic poet Chrétien de Troyes, who reworked Celtic legends and British history.  The story includes King Arthur, his knights, and a number of unlucky damsel...

Send Catherine a text Message In this Norwegian fairy tale, the queen makes a mistake. That's not the whole story.   There's also a dragon.  And an opportunity to reflect on our fallibility, the tendency to blame, our story inheritance, and the empathy we might develop through imaginative engagement with what angers and disturbs us. I hope you enjoyed the story. Support the show Email Ca...

Send Catherine a text Message I recently overhead an exchange between a little boy and his mom. The subject was witches and magic. Which got me thinking.  Magic involves perception, changes in the way we see and the manner in which things appear. Magic, like myth, is now a matter of "belief" when it could be practice.   This episode revolves around a Russian fairy tale called "Vasil...

Send Catherine a text Message “Loving is an authentic psychological task, the most demanding there is, just because it activates in us new ways of knowing ourselves.’" --- Aldo Carotenuto The myth of Eros and Psyche can be read as a myth of initiation orchestrated by the goddess Aphrodite, a personification (or archetype) of love, sexuality, and beauty as enlivening powers that bring us into...

Send Catherine a text Message “I have always thought of a myth as something that never was but is always happening.”-- Jean Houston, The Possible Human Eros and Psyche, or Cupid and Psyche to the Romans, a marvelous old myth about love, soul, and what's required to unite the two. Apuleius included this story in The Golden Ass (also called The Metamorphoses ) from the late 2nd century AD, draw...

Send Catherine a text Message “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.” — Maya Angelou What can we do when we are motivated by love? I recently had the great good fortune to see the Broadway production of "Hadestown." This inspires me to revisit the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, to explore of t...

Send Catherine a text Message The hero is a central figure in our myths and stories. The hero can often provide inspiration or comfort. These stories can help us find our courage or feel a bit more powerful.  The image of the hero is also a burden. Hero narratives in the dominate culture have combined with modern myths of the individual and individualism to paint a picture of the solo actor, the p...

Send Catherine a text Message “Always you will find that within you the shadow and the light go together… It is up to you to know how to utilize the one to realize the other.” -Sri Aurobindo Each of us is called to change, mature, and take responsibility for our conscious evolution. A central task in psychological development is recognition and integration of the shadow. And this is where the conc...

Send Catherine a text Message "Noting these tokens and examples some have said that a share of divine intelligence is in bees, and a draught of (a)ether: since there is a god in everything..." -- Virgil, The "Georgics," 29 BCE Stories from contemporary indigenous cultures convey an ecological consciousness of balance and symbiosis that is foreign to the way many people live tod...

Send Catherine a text Message “We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.” ― Ray Bradbury The impossibilities of our existence are more than a matter of statistics and probabilities. Our stories remind us of the tensions that we are called to live, our impossible longings, and the contradictions that are part of being human. They also tell us that wonder is essential to approaching life wi...

Send Catherine a text Message "He is now struck with wonder by what's wonderful in him..." ---- Ovid's Myth of Narcissus, translated by Allen Mandelbaum In the most popular version of the myth of Narcissus, a beautiful young man rejects many adoring suitors and falls in love with his own reflection in a still pool of water.  This myth inspired the psychologists Havelock and Fre...

Send Catherine a text Message Our notion of "self" is one of the deep and enduring mysteries of human existence. The concept of self is both obvious and unfathomable, the meanings elusive and diverse. It can range from the concrete "me" to the illusory-- the self as a shifting fabrication of preferences, experiences, and perceptions.  To speak mythologically of the "self&q...

Send Catherine a text Message Birds have a unique place in our cultural imagination. Observing their habits, our ancestors learned about home building, foraging, and partnership. Their presence inspired our earliest art forms and culture.  Today birds still teach us about sorrow and death, love and joy, and the beautiful power found in song, in singing. We're also learning new lessons from bi...