Freedom and Incarceration
[Image: "Her Prison is Her Freedom"
© 2007 Charles Urbach and used with permission]

"The key to mystical language and religious metaphor
is not theology or cosmology but anatomy.
All the religious and cosmological language of mysticism is metaphorical,
and the metaphors are symbols for anatomical features
of the higher functional structures of the human individual."

— The Enlightenment of the Whole Body, Adi Da Samraj

Watch YouTube excerpts
from Mythic Journeys '06!

• What the Hell is
  'Applied Mythology'?
  
  "'Applied Mythology' is meant to make us smarter and more aware of how our natural responses are being manipulated, but much more importantly, the program is intended to help us become more creative as we develop into, in Jean Houston's words, 'social artists'. We are the authors of our own lives, and the authors of our culture."
  — by Honora Foah [read on]
  
  

• Prometheus
  
  "When I think of Prometheus, I think of Beethoven, who wrote Promethean music — heavy, dark, brooding. Male artists portray Prometheus' virile strength, his crucifying agony, his unending endurance. He's a creature of muscles and torment; a heavy, messianic figure. Nothing to do with me. I do know that myths live us, whether we recognize them or not. "
  — by Kathleen Jenks [read on]
  
  

• Why Should
  We Remember?
  The Terezin Ghetto
  
  "Remembering is becoming more and more a denied human action. But the action itself is more than that defined by the clinical term denial. It is the attempt to step out of history, to isolate oneself from a context and from understanding one's being as part of a larger legacy than one's plans for tomorrow. Worse, it is to deny suffering, being 'uncomfortable,' in order to keep intact the illusion that if one denies it, somehow suffering really does not exist."
  — by Dennis Patrick Slattery
  [read on]
  
  

• Rapunzel, Rapunzel
  Let Down Your Hair
  
  "Rapunzel's story has become part of our folk tradition because its themes are universal and timeless. We've all hungered for things with too high a price; we've all felt imprisoned by another's demands; we've all been carried away by love, only to end up blinded and broken; we all hope for grace at the end of our suffering, and a happy ending."
  — by Terri Windling [read on]

• Walt Disney Builds
  the Cosmos Electric
  
  "Mickey Mouse was conceived by Disney during one of the darkest periods of his life, when his school of animators had defected to a rival power and his character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit had been taken away from him through legal chicaneries. The mouse figure that surfaced out of his imagination was a response to this period of despair, for it was the mouse that saved his career and put him back on the path toward success as an animator."
  — by John David Ebert [read on]
  
  

• Orihime, Kengyuu,
  and Tanabata:
  Adapting Chinese Lore to
  Native Beliefs and Purposes
  
  "Perhaps one of the best examples of adaptation of infused star lore is the story of Orihime and Kengyuu. This legend was probably imported from China in the Heian Era (794-1185), and its associated Tanabata Festival has developed through the centuries. The story involves the stars of Vega and Altair and their apparent proximity to the Milky Way."
  — by Steve Renshaw
  & Saori Ihara [read on]

• A New Step
  Toward a Green Planet:
  Environmental Problems
  and Hopes
  
  "I have not listed all the ills of the current approach to, and use of, our planetary environment: surely most people recognize the incipient disaster, often referred to as The Sixth Extinction, even if they do not know where to turn to try to keep it from happening. There cannot be many citizens who do not recognize that change, radical change, and soon, represents the only (if any is possible) solution."
  — William Doty [read on]

• Virtual Reality
  
  "Like any energizing new experience, this evolving edge of excitement can and will hook its share of addictive personalities. In my book, the concern that people are becoming addicted to virtual reality, and that it is becoming an excuse to avoid reality, is not of major concern. We bring to our engagements who we are — good and bad."
  — by Jerry Wennstrom [read on]

• Peter, Son of Jonah
  
  "What's in a name? Maybe more than we think. Remember that the story of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection three days later was often compared to the story of Jonah who endured three days in the belly of the whale, a symbolic death. While his father and the Jonah of biblical epic were two entirely different men, we will see that there is a metaphorical similiarity between Peter and Jonah."
  — Jay D'Ambrosio [read on]

• The Matrix:
  Seeing is Believing
  
  "In their 1999 movie, The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers seem to envision a dark version of President Lincoln's closing words to his 1863 "Gettysburg Address": "... that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Contrary to Lincoln's bright vision, in the brave new world of The Matrix the "new birth of freedom" has all but perished from the earth. Now the government is of the Matrix, by the Matrix, and for the Matrix."
  — by Gershon Reiter [read on]

• The Twin Towers
  
  "Do we really need to talk about 9-11 again? I think we do, for two reasons: first, because it is clear that conventional political, economic and even theological analyses have failed to help us understand this tragedy. Second, because nearly everything we have experienced in our public and private lives — war, environmental crises, impending financial instability, governmental intrusion into individual privacy, sudden increase and then eventual decrease in confidence in our institutions, an ongoing sense of paranoia about the future, and perhaps the end of democracy itself — has developed and remained with us since those days. We need to think about 9-11 and the Twin Towers in mythological terms."
  — Barry Spector [read on]

• An Introduction to
  Rachel Pollack's
  "Burning Beard:
  The Dreams and Visions
  of Joseph ben Jacob,
  Lord Viceroy of Egypt"
  from Interfictions:
  An Anthology of
  Interstitial Writing
  
  "Rachel describes "Burning Beard" as "midrash punk." It is a Biblical story told in a distinctly un-Biblical voice. It is biography and philosophy and theology. It is interstitial fiction.... Interstitial art is art that does not hew closely to any one set of recognizable genre conventions. It falls into the cracks between genres inventing itself as it unfolds, playing with your expectations, teaching you how to look at it or listen to it or read it while you experience it."
  — by Delia Sherman [read on]

SHORT STORIES

• "Burning Beard:
  The Dreams and Visions of Joseph ben Jacob,
  Lord Viceroy of Egypt"
  — Rachel Pollack [read on]
  
  
• "The Yellow Wallpaper"
  — Charlotte Perkins Gilman
  [read on]
  
  
• "Cookie and Me
  and a Cup of Chickory"
  — Stu Jenks [read on]
  
  
• "Vipunen"
  — K. A. Laity [read on]
  
  

POETRY

• Prometheus
  — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe [read on]
  
  
• Pan: Double Villanelle
  — Oscar Wilde [read on]
  
  
• A Vision
  — Oscar Wilde [read on]
  
  
• From Four Quartets
  — T.S. Eliot [read on]
  
  
• For Some Dream
  — Brian Morrison [read on]
  
  
• Falling Fruit
  — William Patrick Slattery [read on]
  
  

Do you wish that you could have gone to the Human Forum this year?
Did you go and now wish that you could share what you heard with others?
Well then, we have good news for you!
Visit Conference Recording Services
to order tapes, DVDs and CDs from a life-changing event.

Filmmaker George Quasha will soon be releasing the Part II of the Myth Is DVD.

If you attended Mythic Journeys '06, you'll remember the documentary that played continuously outside the main programming room with marvelous thinkers like Michael Vannoy Adams, Rebecca Armstrong, Coleman Barks, Phil Cousineau, Meinrad Craighead, William Doty, Kristen Eckmann, James Flannery, Honora Foah, Matthew Fox, Ellen Hemphill, James Hillman, Sam Keen, Robin & Stephen Larsen, Margot McLean, Micheal Meade, Joyce Carol Oates, Ginette Paris, Laurie Patton, Huston Smith, Ulla Suokko and Robert Walter all speaking to the importance and understanding of myth in our modern world.

Part II includes interviews with 431 more amazing minds!

For the opportunity to view and order either one or both of these powerful documentaries, visit www.quasha.com.

If you haven't seen the
film trailer for the upcoming
documentary film project
on Mythic Journeys '06
by Imaginal Cells Inc...


...you should!

The Mythic Imagination Institute creates experiences that explore
— through art, hands-on activity
and inter-disciplinary conversation —
the mystery and metaphor inherent in myth and story.