The Burning Times and The Civilization of the Goddess: New Pagan Myths?

Posted 6 CommentsPosted in Blog post review, Goddess

I just read a post by John Halstead in his blog, The Allergic Pagan. It was entitled  “Believing in Our Myths, Without Believing in Them”. I don’t always agree with what this guy has to say, but he always makes me think, and this post was no exception. It is definitely worth reading. One thing it made me think about is that perhaps we don’t understand the ancient myths in the same way that their creators–the Egyptians, Celts, Greeks, Norse, etc.–did. The ancients didn’t have history, they had stories.* Some of these stories were so effective on a spiritual/emotional level that they were  told and retold and eventually became myths. The myths of these cultures were as true to them as what they did yesterday, but I think they understood in a way that we don’t that there are different truths. Today we look at stories as either true or untrue, fact or fiction. If something actually happened it becomes history which we lump into… Read More »

Mythology’s 12 Step Program

Posted 6 CommentsPosted in The Hero's Journey

Many cultures believe that each of us is the incarnation of a unique and beautiful dream. Our life task is to live that dream to the fullest possible extent. When we do this, our lives are filled love, joy, and creativity. These same cultures also believe that those who are not able to find their dream or for some reason choose not to live it suffer a fate worse than death. In fact, we all suffer when someone’s dream is not lived and brought into fulfillment. And so each of us is the star of our own hero’s journey, which is about finding and living our dream. In his book, The Writer’s Journey, Mythic Structure for Writers, Christopher Vogler divides the hero’s journey into twelve steps. Finding and living a dream demands that we we go through these steps in our own lives. 1. THE ORDINARY WORLD: If we are incarnations of a dream, then we come from the mind of the dreamer. Our ordinary… Read More »