Living myths…are not to be judged as true or false,
but as effective or ineffective, maturative or pathogenic.
—Joseph Campbell, Flight of the Wild Gander

Myths are living symbols. They serve each of us individually and collectively as guides to aid us in harmonizing our interior world with the surrounding landscape we inhabit. They serve us on a personal level as ordering and organizing principles whose aim is to offer our lives a sense of coherence, not perfection. Joseph Campbell believes that myths reveal the movement of psyche, indeed “of the whole nature of man and his destiny” (Flight,35).

This workshop will include a blending of many of the major insights Campbell discovered through a life-long quest for myths’ origins, structures and benefits for living a full and authentic life. In addition to two formal presentations on Campbell’s insights about myths’ values, as well as pages from several of his books for us to meditate on, we will engage in a series of riting meditations from my book, Riting Myth, Mythic Writing: Plotting Your Personal Story, to allow participants to deepen their understanding of the myth that guides them, consciously and unconsciously, toward a fulfilled life. We will also discover, through a series of rituals, what connections myth and ritual share. We may, in the process, discover what essentials of our personal myth have exhausted their shelf life and what elements might be cultivated further.

Copies of writing meditations featured in Riting Myth, Mythic Writing: Plotting Your Personal Story will be provided, as will pages from Campbell’s books.