Editor's Note: After a year and a half of editing this MythBlast series for the Joseph Campbell Foundation, the time has come to hand the editorial pen to the next set of writers and imaginers....

Happy Independence Day! For Americans, this day falls on July 4th every year, celebrating a terrifying and exhilarating moment when thirteen colonies ratified their declaration to come together as a new nation. I think it...

For years I have been intrigued with what I perceive as a particularly Celtic sensibility, an ability to dance on the knife's edge between insight and nonsense, tragedy and comedy, sacred and profane. Not to...

As the Joseph Campbell Foundation explores ideas about how people use myth this month, I am reminded of one of the deep purposes of story: building community. As humans have done for thousands of years,...

In the month of April, the Joseph Campbell Foundation is celebrating the impending release of several new editions of two Campbell classics, The Mythic Dimension and Primitive Mythology, both coming soon as eBooks and audio...

"Skating away --- skating away --- skating away on the thin ice of the new day."       - Ian Anderson, "Skating Away (On the Thin Ice of a New Day)" War Child ....

A few days ago, I came across this sentence from Joseph Campbell in his essay "Symbol Without Meaning" in The Flight of the Wild Gander. "The highest concern of all the mythologies, ceremonials, ethical systems, and...

After the stock market crash in the late 1920's and struggling to find a job, Joseph Campbell decided to seek adventure in travel. He found himself on the coast of Northern California. Bob Walter, Joseph Campbell Foundation President writes in...

In the birth of a new year and in the darkness, and for a lot of us in North America right now, serious cold of winter, I am struck by how people have for thousands...

Animal exuberance, this mystery of play, is very close to (if not identical with) the basic impulse of genius in the arts. The power of great art to purge us—to release us, for a moment,...

If you peel back the frivolous mask of a holiday that inspires $8.4 billion in candy; decorations; and costumes sales for little kids, grownups looking for a moment of escapist fantasy, and long-suffering pets; you’ll find a...

Like many Americans, I spent the day yesterday dancing between celebrating Labor Day and, well, laboring. I was editing an interview I did a couple of weeks ago with dance icon Twyla Tharp for a...

We tell stories about who we are, to understand what makes us different - what makes us alike - what connects us what our families might be and look like - and who our families...

“Tell me your myth that the whole world may turn to myth.” -- Nikos Kazantzakis   The Talking Heads were right. We can’t truly know where we are going without reflecting upon where we have been....

‘In the beginning, there was the Word.’ While this is obviously a prominent phrase in the Judeo-Christian psyche, it is not an idea unique to one culture. In origin stories from around the world, a divine...

When I first was drawn to myth, it was through play. My sisters and I, nerdily passionate children of academics, spent a lot of time playing “Greek Gods and Goddesses” in a father-made fort in...

It is high summer in the Catskill mountains of New York where I live: green, lush, blooming, sparking with life. It’s an enchanted time. Every morning I walk my dogs in our meadows and life...

What is myth... and why should anybody care? What do you think? I ask this because that one of the most marvelous ways to play with mythology is to assess our own answers to this question.  And...

A few nights ago, spring returned. In the Catskill Mountains of New York state, where I live, it’s a distinct moment, at dusk on the night when the spring peepers erupt into song. If you’ve...

A week ago, I found myself at that hard moment of freeing my eighteen-year-old cat from a body that was failing her. From the moment of her choosing me at a California animal rescue, our...