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Joseph Campbell and One’s Personal Mythos
May 14, 2005 @ 10:00 am - 3:00 pm PDT
“Metaphor is the language of myth.” (Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor)
Morning Session
From September 1954 to August 1955, the well-known mythologist Joseph Campbell made a year long pilgrimage to India, then on to southeast Asia and Japan. In that journey he slowly realized what his life’s work was to be. Looking together at passages from the two journals he kept (Baksheesh and Brahman, and Sake and Satori), we will note his method, the content and the rising realization in Campbell of his own personal mythology as recorded in these books.
Afternoon Session
Like Campbell, each of us has within a personal myth that seeks its most appropriate path in the world. We will individually, and then together, explore the contours of our own myth through 3-4 writing exercises designed to uncover the metaphors that comprise our personal mythology. Coming after our morning conversation, these exercises will allow us to remember and choose an event or two in our own lives that we could acknowledge as having a powerful influence on who we have been and are continuing to become.
Related Lecture: Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life
Dennis Patrick Slattery, Ph.D is core faculty, Mythological Studies and Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute where he teaches courses in mythology, classical literature and depth psychology. He is the author of 8 books, including: The Idiot: Dostoevsky’s Fantastic Prince (1984); The Wounded Body: Remembering the Markings of Flesh (2000); Grace in the Desert: Awakening to the Gifts of Monastic Life (2004); Casting the Shadows: Selected Poems (2002); Just Below the Water Line: Selected Poems (2004).With Lionel Corbett he has co-edited Depth Psychology: Meditations in the Field (2001) and Psychology at the Threshold (2002).