Desire & Synchronicity
[Image: "Venus in Love", 2007 © Joanne Warfield and used with permission]

Mythic Journeys Documentary Trailer on YouTube!

• A Crossroads of
  Time and Desire
  
  Love and hate, gratitude and resentment, self-confidence and embarrassment, trust and distrust, empathy and contempt, approval and disdain, pride and humiliation, truthfulness and deception, atonement and guilt. What do these things have in common? Apparently, they are all sensed (generated?) in the insula.
  — Honora Foah [more]
  
  

• Waking Up to Leah
  
  Jacob and Rachel are the first romantic love recorded in the Bible, yet, as with most romantic love, this love is a tragic love. When Jacob first encounters Rachel he kisses her and begins to weep. Why does he weep? And what of Leah's love for Jacob, Leah of the weak eyes?
  — Michael Karlin [more]

• Camelot Among the Stars:
  Arthurian Themes in
  Science Fiction
  
  The concepts of Chivalry, the Eternal Quest, the endlessly varied themes of the Matter of Britain can be traced back, ultimately, to Malory, Chretien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach and the rest, known and unknown, who first stirred the cauldron of story to produce the Arthurian mythos. In the realm of Science Fiction, these themes have undergone their most radical reworking, but have emerged for the most part unscathed, though more often in strange garb.
  — John Matthews [more]

• Carnivale on
  Shakespeare's Stage
  
  How do we get from pre-Lenten meat binges to Hamlet's sardonic "funeral baked meats"? What does a Protestant playwright's work have to do with medieval Catholic traditions? The scholarship of Jungian literary critics, sociologists interested in historical relationships between myth and culture, and the great Marxist scholar Mikhail Bakhtin, have all created a portrait of the Elizabethan theater as one of the most enduring and vital expressions of the "world upside down" aesthetic.
  — Kristen McDermott [more]
  
  

• The Mythology of Love
  from Myths to Live By
  
  In the religious lore of India there is a formulation of five degrees of love through which a worshiper is increased in the service and knowledge of God — in the realization of his own identity with that Being of all beings who in the beginning said 'I' and then realized, 'I am all this world!'"
  — Joseph Campbell [more]
  
  

• Television Apocalypse
  in Black Oil:
  On the Cosmology and Mythology of The X-Files
  
  The various monsters, beasts and goblins of The X-Files are a retrieval of an ancient cosmology, common to all the high civilizations, of a great chain of being of astral spirits.
  — John D. Ebert [more]
  
  

• A Review of
  Nectar and Ambrosia:
  An Encyclopedia of Food
  in World Mythology
  
  Tamra Andrews' book encompasses a mass of research into food products, far beyond the references to Nectar and Ambrosia. Reference to such elite foods appear in several cultures, and often implicate produce from the axis mundi or Tree of Life, a mythological figure found repeatedly in world mythologies.
  — William Doty [more]

• Pierced by a Sword:
  Reflections on the
  Sacred Heart
  
  "Devotion to the Sacred Heart dates back to 17th century France. The image shows Jesus with his hand touching his chest,his heart on display for all to see. The heart is glowing brilliantly, and on fire with passionate love. The image of the Sacred Heart is a powerful and moving picture, rich in symbolism and inviting contemplation. The problem was, I just didn't get it."
  — Louis Hlad [more]
  
  
  

• Spaces Speak,
  Are You Listening?
  An Introduction to
  Aural Architecture
  
  Aural architecture refers to the properties of a space that can be experienced by listening. An aural architect, acting as both an artist and a social engineer, is therefore someone who selects specific aural attributes of a space based on what is desirable in a particular cultural framework. With skill and knowledge, an aural architect can create a space that induces such feelings as exhilaration, contemplative tranquillity, heightened arousal, or a harmonious and mystical connection to the cosmos.
  — by Barry Blesser
  & Linda-Ruth Salter [more]
  
  
  
  
• Paying Attention
  
  For the Athenians the mythic image that expressed the irrational, the paradoxical and the mysterious was Dionysus, the god of the extremes of both ecstasy and madness. In his inebriated yet exalted state, he could bring joyous celebration as well as the great art of tragic drama. He was paradox: the only god to suffer and die, and yet to always return. For a few centuries Greek myth and ritual struggled to hold the tension, the mystery and the tragedy of life that he represented.
  —Barry Spector [more]
  
  
  
  
• Mythic Glossary:
  anima mundi

• Women Dreaming Into Art:
  Seven Artists Who Create from Dreams
  
  Patricia Ariadne, a Jungian psychotherapist, has produced a scholarly and groundbreaking book. It is the first to chronicle the contribution of pioneering Jungian artists working with ritual, performance, healing practices, sound, dance, large scale installations, and music.
  —Ann McCoy [more]

Fiction & Poetry

• A Moth to the Flame
  — Connie Zweig [more]
  
  
• The Fable of the Moth
  — Peter Beagle [more]
  
  
• Gilgamesh
  — Prologue [more]
  
  
• Gilgamesh
  — Table I [more]
  
  
• A Divine Image
  — William Blake [more]
  
  
• Love
  —Mary Davis [more]