Myth is something that never was, but is always happening.

Myth begins with yearning, looking towards the horizon, and ends with sweetness and celebration - the abundance is scooped from abundance and still more abundance remains

The mythologically constructed community has a sense of wellbeing about who and what they are and where they are going.

Joseph Campbell was a great populariser of myth. Mythic paradigms induce altered states of consciousness which enable people to work through challenges and come out the other side empowered and more at peace with themselves and the world. All the myths deal with a transformation of consciousness - you are thinking in THIS way and you have now to think in THAT way. Consciousness is transformed by trials. Campbell insists the true meaning of all myths has nothing to do with religion.

Myths are a means of personal transformation and community identity which can create a sense of camaraderie and kinship amongst the people of the world.

Myth is always beyond the horizon of our immediate seeing. We find ourselves deeply embedded in it, we are taken up by its drama, its sense of being called to live beyond an outmoded situation. We get past that monster at the gate and discover the new skills we need for the trials of confronting old shadows and redeeming them. We find the beloved of the soul or the spiritual partner within. We are able to delve into the deep world and bring back its riches, its treasures, into the world of space and time.

The classical myths, like the search for the Grail, or the journey of Odysseus, illuminate the transitions of our lives. These great patterns of existence help us to experience the richness and underlying unity of our own lives.

It is time to wake up.

This is it. These are the times; we are the people; we are in mythic times. We are the ones creating the new story. And the story that we create will mean whether we fall into oblivion or create really a very interesting world that can work. With men and women moving into equal partnership the story is changing, it is no longer the lonely male hero

We live in a global civilisation with a multitude of myths which are distinct. We need to honour each other in ways that we never have before. At the spiritual level there is a profound sense of unity that sustains a great variety of myths.

modern myths

'The Wizard of Oz'
'The Wind and the Door' Madeline Lengel
'A Wrinkle in Time' Madeline Lengel
'Star Wars'

'The Wizard of Oz' is the best of all. A little girl living in Kansas, just flat land, nothing but miles and miles, a grey world, and she's desperate, desperate to get out and she's filled with yearning ('Somewhere Over the Rainbow') somewhere there is a larger reality that is yearning for me as much as I'm yearning for it. She tries to tell them what's wrong, and they say, 'Oh go away Dorothy, we have to count our chickens'. It takes a tornado to pick her up and place her in another reality and she opens the door from the grey world and she's in a technicolour world. And there of course she is set on the road of spiritual pollen, the Yellow Brick Road, and she meets the disinherited mind who is the Scarecrow, the disinherited heart who is the Tin Man, the disinherited courage who is the cowardly Lion, and together they are able to rescue the universe.

'Hero With a Thousand Faces' Joseph Campbell 1949 - all hero myths set the same pattern, the same plot - all things are one, and one consequence of which is that we human beings are ultimately identical with one another and with the world.

A Mythic Life : Learning to Live Our Greater Story by Jean Houston, Mary Catherine Bateson

A Passion for the Possible : A Guide to Realizing Your Full Potential by Jean Houston

The Power of Myth (Illustrated Edition) by Joseph Campbell