From Dionysus to David, Kali to Kerridwen: Since the beginning, people have created stories to explain, explore, and celebrate nature and the human condition. Similar themes and tropes—the Sun God, hair as sacred, cleansing rituals—have emerged in places as far apart as Aboriginal Australia and Aztec South America. Even in today’s age, where science and the skeptical mind scoff at “fairy tales,” myths and legends have power: as urban legends, tabloid fodder, classic movies.
Why are people compelled to explain life in stories? How does storytelling build community and society? What role do they play in our education, our commerce, our day-to-day lives?
Myths become the basis of rituals: think of ceremonial feasts with sacrifice and magic, or the witchdoctor’s nightlong remedies to cure your ills. How did those myths transfer into ritual, and how did those rituals affect society as a whole?
Were Freud and Jung correct in their assessments of a collective human consciousness, where all of humanity share the same sets of symbols and interpretations? Or are symbols highly individual in nature, reflecting the personal myths and legends inherent in every person?
Will future historians look back at this time and regard Oprah, Britney, or Paris as the deities of our time? Will they consider Friday night parties, twenty-first birthdays, and the World Cup as our religious rituals? In our future, what will be scoffed as crackpot conspiracy, and what will become our Holy Word?
To master mythology, you have to learn and be immersed in your own myths—those of your culture, your heritage, your location, your lifestyle, your history. What are your archetypes? What are your themes and tropes? How do you communicate your myths to others? What are your core beliefs, and how are they affected by your personal myths?
You’ll also deconstruct rituals to create your own. What does each element represent? What is the significance of time, nature, music, location? Which elements have lain forgotten, and which have increased in significance? Does the ritual change over time?
What sort of magic occurs in your life? What do you count as magic?
In this course you will exercise your skills of imagination, creativity, investigation, critical analysis, cross-cultural understanding, research, synthesis, and curiosity. You will be challenged; you will encounter ideas that seem absolutely silly, ideas that seem atrocious, ideas that seem ahead of their time, ideas that seem visionary. You will find contradictions and synchronicities. You will deal not only with fun fantasy, but also with deep, dirty secrets.
Will you analyze myth, or will your life become myth?
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