Living Symbols and Myths

Having a background in literature, my ear has always attuned to symbols in story and how it reveals connections to our lives and the unconscious.

While we now have movies to relate our hero images too, the myth and fairytale long ago and to this day holds our psyches in contemplation of our own stories.

Joseph Campbell, renowned mythologist, spent his life studying the monomyth, or rather on the one motif that threads all myths, that of the hero’s journey. He postulated that every myth centers on a hero who must heed the call of adventure, face very obstacles while refining his power and gain tools, until he is able to meet and overcome the dragon, retrieve the gold, bounty or princess and return home to raise the consciousness of his community.

While some consider this a goal oriented masculine hero’s story, the heroine, likewise, is called to this endeavor of the human journey. The arc of the hero’s journey can be cyclical throughout life or describe one’s entire lifespan.

In my lifetime, I have found myself in the midst of living out various myths that have greatly informed my human experience. Relating to a myth, story or fairytale, gives us the sense that we are not alone in this journey. It has happened before to other people, at other times. It brings us into the relational, patterned, whole of life.

And we regain power to navigate our own existence, rather than allow the myth to live us. We live and revive the myth through our engaging with life.

What myths have had you? What myth will you have?