Heroes and Mystics 2024

    In class yesterday, we discussed the role of the artist as one who communicates an inner experience of beauty. However, as I considered this idea further, I'm not sure this is always the case. There are numerous artists who seek to reflect the beauty of the world, but there are artists who also create art to reflect their grief or pain. There are artists who create art to reveals evils in the world or to create political change. For example, the artist Banksy is known for creating art in order to advocate for the lives of Syrian children. Thus, not all art is a reflection of beauty. Some art might be, but other artists might express different emotions or experiences. 

     In my honors seminar last semester, Myth Matters, with Dr. Thompson, we read the book Weight  by Jeanette Winterson. During our discussions on internal and external journeys along with the hero's journey, I keep thinking back to this book and realizing it embodies our discussion topics well. This book presents a new take on the myth of Atlas and Heracles. It focuses on the original story of the external and hero's journey of Atlas and Heracles, but it also focused on the internal emotions, journeys, and transformations that occur in the two individuals. Winterson bases and compares some of her topics to her own life and journey, and she argues that the internal journeys are similar. The main lesson that I believe the story taught is that humans can decide their destinies and decide whether to allow their burdens to ail them. These lessons are taught through the internal journeys and growth of the two main characters, mainly through Atlas.     In the bo...

  What is it like to be a twin? Are you identical? These are two questions that I have gotten my whole life, along with a plethora of others. I will start off by saying that I have a twin brother, so to answer the second question no we can not be identical. You would not believe how many people hear me say I have a twin brother and still ask me if we are identical. I can confidently say we are definitely not identical and I would argue we do not look alike now that we have gotten older. When I look at pictures from when we were little we looked a lot alike, but as we have grown up we differ in appearances. My brother is taller than me, has super thick dark brown hair, and is much thinner. While we have these differences there are still some similarities and those are we both have hazel eyes, we have almost the same size foot, and we share many of the same hobbies.  What is it like to be a twin? I would honestly say that it is the best thing ever and I would not change it for...

     I have experienced internal growth and several internal transformations during my life. One such internal journey involved figuring out my identity, which I still have not completely figured out. I started this internal journey in 8th grade. I went through several different phases of this process. At first, I believed I was pansexual. I identified this way for many years. However, I finally learned that I was actually a lesbian. I thought this was the final period of this identity crisis. However, I started debating this again. I still believe I am a lesbian. However, I sometimes use the word queer instead as I am not a hundred percent certain of this identity. While dealing with the sexuality identity, I also have questioned my gender identity. This identity is a little less figured out today. I have been trying to figure it out since 8th grade, and I still do not know what I am. I use they/she pronouns because I know I am not completely a girl, but I am also not a ...

       Some people know what they want to be from the time they are born. They have this so-called “calling” and they have one goal in mind. When I think back to my childhood I can remember what I wanted to become, but as I grew up none of them stuck. What did I want to be when I grew up? When I was in kindergarten the answer was always a doctor. I wanted to help people and make sure that they were no longer sick. Then when I was in the third grade my mom went back to work as a librarian so my dreams shifted to wanting to become a teacher. All the women in my family were teachers of some sorts and I thought I may want to follow in their footsteps. I eventually went to middle school and worked with children who were deaf and changed my mind again to wanting to become an audiologist.       Once I got to high school I quickly learned to hate the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. Adults always ask this question and I disliked it bec...

       In this blog I wanted to discuss the hardest journey yet of my life. It started at the end of my freshman year at college. The last month of school I started to feel sick constantly. It started off not being surprising because I have been diagnosed with migraines and abdominal migraines for a few years. These diagnoses have made it so that I feel sick constantly, but with medicine they became manageable. When I started to feel ill at the end of the semester it would always start with me getting a migraine and then my stomach just feeling blah constantly. I asked myself repetitively “What is wrong with me?” and “Why am I feeling like this?”. I chalked it up to the fact that studying for finals was starting and I was not getting enough sleep. I figured that because I was not getting enough sleep it was making all my other symptoms much worse.      Something about me that my close friends and family know is that I am terrified of being physically s...

 I just wanted to share some thoughts/lessons I learned on one of my own journeys. In the summer of 2022, I journeyed on a 10 day backpacking trip in the backcountry of the Sangre De Cristos mountains in Colorado. I had never done something like this before, but it completely changed my life.  Here are some things I can share about the experience: 1. We are all capable of SO much more than we realize. I never thought I could physically hike that much with that level of elevation. One day we summited a 14,000 ft peak. I thought I was going to die. My body was in so much pain. That being said, it was so rewarding, and not just because of the view. When you overcome physical and mental challenged like that, you learn we are capable. You never know until you test your limits! 2. You can live with so much less than you realize. Being in the backcountry for 10 days, we had to carry everything we needed on our backs: food, clothes, tents etc. Everything unnecessary falls away. You do...

 In class last week we discussed the reality of nature. This discussion, based on our readings from "Somewhere I Have Never Traveled", completely changed my perspective on the word and concept of "nature". In every day speech, we use the word nature to refer to the space outside of buildings, typically places that have not been altered by human beings. There is a conceptual distance between the lives we lead inside, and nature. We think of nature as being distanced from us.  However, that is not the case. Nature surrounds us constantly. Our houses, schools, and roads are all built on nature. We exist in buildings with temperature control and electricity where nature once was. Journeys through nature are healing because we are designed for nature.  Scientific evidence supports the healing properties of walking barefoot over grass, for example. We spend so much time staring into computer, restricting our peripheral vision. It is as if the screen becomes our world. Yet...

      According to Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces , the hero's journey includes a stage that he nicknames the magic flight. This stage occurs near the beginning of the hero's return, where the boon has been acquired and the hero is going home. However, Campbell says that this stage occurs when the boon has "been attained against the opposition of its guardian, or if the hero's wish to return to the world has been resented by the gods or demons" (Campbell). When the hero is supported, this stage does not occur. However, this stage can be pinpointed in many myths and stories, including Jason and the argonauts fleeing with the golden fleece. Upon thinking about it, I realized many books that I have read include this flight stage of the journey. For example, Harry Potter includes scenes with Harry fleeing Voldemort, especially in the last book when Harry is trying to get away from his aunt and uncle's house. The Maze Runner  includes a magic ...

    One of my favorite series is the Percy Jackson series. This series is what got me into mythology in elementary school and is the reason why I am a classical studies major now. Being a modern Greek mythology story, the series is filled with many different hero's journeys and transformations. Each book has a hero's journey as well as the overarching series, all within the main character Percy Jackson. Percy has to handle many physical quests as well as handling his own placement and identity in the world. Rick Riordan, the author, then proceeded to publish sequel series including the Heroes of Olympus and the Trials of Apollo. The Heroes of Olympus series focuses on more characters and their own hero's journeys. However, I think the Trails of Apollo series focuses the most on the hero's journey, at least in the way we are discussing it in this class.     In the Trials of Apollo, the Greek god Apollo is turned into a 16-year old mortal by Zeus as punishment. Apollo ...

     Is death just another stage of the hero's departure? Is death the end or just another beginning to a new journey? These questions were sparked as I read Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces. Near the end of the book, there was a chapter titled "Departure of the Hero" which discussed a hero's death at the end of their life. I noticed that the chapter title is the same as the earlier section discussing the hero's departure as the first stage of their journey before the trials and transformation. This fact made me consider that life and death may just be two different journeys that occur at different parts of life.      Campbell discusses the many myths involving the end of the hero's life and subsequent death, mentioning the different beliefs of what occurs post death. He states that there are many theories, but that death is always a moment of departure for the hero. They are departing this world for what lies beyond. He also states that "...

  A question that we posed in class last week was something along the lines of “do the Greek gods act in the erratic ways they do because they do not have the fear of death inherent in humans?” I loved this discussion because it related back to a book series I read when I was quite a bit younger that still has an impact on me today. Funnily enough, it is a fictionalized series about the god Apollo. I’m sure quite a few people who take this class know of the Percy Jackson series, and these books are one of the sequel series’ to those original books. These books discuss what it means to be mortal versus a god and what it means when one of those especially erratic and egotistical gods becomes a mortal who now has to reconcile with death. I loved these books when I was younger, not only because they were entertaining, but also because I think they discussed an incredibly profound philosophical concept in ways digestible to young children. While these books obviously never give an answe...

  We have begun discussing the concept of the “second self” in class, as well as the “looking-glass self,” and I think both of those topics are incredibly important to me as someone who had to do much self-reflection in order to come into my identity as a transgender man. In a way, I have yet to combine my two selves into one whole self, as I have yet to fully come out as trans back in my hometown. Because of this, I live essentially a double life, living as my “original” yet false self at home and living as my “second” and true self at college. I thought it was interesting how, in a way, my second self, my alter ego, has become my “true” self, whatever that true self may be. I think this also gets into the long-discussed question in class of whether or not a “truth” is a “fact.” Is my identity a “fact” about myself if it is not true in all situations? This is not a question that causes me any strife but just an interesting one I have begun thinking about as we talk more about iden...

  Throughout the first few class discussions we have had, we discussed how myths are ways for people to understand truths about the world through a different lens. This topic reminded me heavily of how people in medieval times theorized about and understood how the world works. In my history class about the Black Death, we have discussed at length how medieval people, specifically physicians and academic scholars, came to the conclusion that God had the power to control the movement of the planets and that the movement of the planets in relation to Earth caused things such as earthquakes, disease, and weather phenomena. I thought this connected well with our discussion of myth, as medieval people also assigned sort of personalities to the planets, usually associated with the Greco-Roman gods they were named after. I also thought it connected to our discussions because, although we would now consider these interpretations of the world to be “wrong,” at the time, it was a sound argum...

One class, we talked about the theories of how humans domesticated wolves and that the curious wolves would come close to the humans and the humans would feed them. Well, I had an example of my own. I have a tattoo on my arm because of this. So, my grandfather, Papa Phil, used to live alone, so he would often have leftovers from dinner. Every night at exactly 7:00 pm, he would grab one of those big security guard flashlights, grab the leftovers, and walk out on his balcony and make these clicking noises with his mouth to call wild foxes. Then he would throw food down to them, and aim the flashlight where the food landed so the foxes could easily find where their dinner went. He did this for years (of course I helped) and eventually the foxes just started to wait outside for him. Oftentimes, he would walk outside and four or five of them would just be sitting there patiently waiting for dinnertime. He did it for so long that it was obvious when the next generation of foxes came in, then...

Previously, while we were talking about Somewhere I Have Never Traveled, we mentioned the Garden of Versailles and how it was a good example of humans imposing order on nature in a way to change nature and domesticate it, like then Enkidu was "tamed" by the prostitute. That got me thinking about this really cool garden that I learned about a few years ago and have been fascinated with ever since- The Poison Garden. There are over 100 toxic plants there and they have restrictions in which visitors absolutely cannot touch, sniff, or eat any of the plants there because they could cause a lot of issues. Some can even cause death. It is in the UK in Northumberland, and I was thinking how this is also an example of humans changing nature's course to create something orderly. It is not like all of these plants just so happened to grow next to each other, someone put them there! But it is a little ironic too- the garden is orderly like Gilgamesh in that he was the orderly king an...

During one of our class periods, we mentioned some classic Disney stories to bring into our discussion on the Hero's Journey, and it got me thinking- what about the villains? Do they go through a "heroic" journey of their own?  Then I started thinking back to some of my favorite shows and movies as a kid and I thought of "Once Upon a Time" which was a super long show (that I love to this day), and ultimately to my favorite villain- Maleficent. But I did not like the OUAT version of her, I prefer the Angelina Jolie adaptation. So then I thought about if it was possible to apply the "Hero's Journey" to a "villain." Obviously, in the Angelina Jolie version, Maleficent is meant to be the protagonist because there is always more than one side to a story, so it is interesting how the villain can go through a journey of their own as well. Now, I do not think there is an easy way to apply the hero's journey to Maleficent before she curses Aur...

 Page 3 Paragraph 2 Of " The Hero with a Thousand Faces "  "Myth is the opening through which inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation."  Chapter 1 Departure notes      There are important basic facts to understand before diving into myths. First is the aspects of the world. The Cosmos is the order of the universe, outside of the Cosmos is chaos/ no order. Then there are the four stages of the mythological journey. The first stage is the call to adventure, the second is the refusal of the call, the third is the presence of supernatural aid, and the crossing of the threshold. Then there is the clarification that myth is not an explanation but an analogy to help us better understand ancient events that occurred. 

      During this discussion, we were talking about two abstract ideas that can be made concrete through stories and myth: Birth and Death. While one can assume we know when we die or are in the process of dying, no one truly remember when we were birthed or even if we were birthed for ourselves. We rely on other people's accounts, and science to tell us our truth of our own beginning of life. We also mentioned how cosmos is ordered reality, and how our reality changes as we get older. For example, what we were afraid of as a child is usually very different compared to what we are afraid of now. Adults' reality is muddled by science, experience, and myth, while children's reality is mainly myth and stories. I remember being a kid, watching a scary movie and believing that it was 100% true. This made me believe that children must be in a different reality than adults. One where myth is unquestionably fact until disproven and were magic is...

 When I was reading myth became fact, I was under the impression that myths could never be fact because it is not true. But Lewis depicts that facts are not just true, but it also involves reality. Our reality is that the loosely we think, the more we are cut off, and the deeper we enter reality, the less we can think. Humans are complex creatures unable to multitask with experiencing and thinking. We cannot assess our experience till after its done, and when we are immersed in an experience we cannot think. This is why Lewis explains myths as reality; it allows us to think and experience at the same time. This allows us to feel, think, and learn about a story, concept, problem, and/or solution all at the same time. making the story, our reality; our truth even. For truth is what we learn, not just what we know.

    What does myth mean in every day life? I saw other blogs asking this question and it made me pause. When we were younger, myths were very prevalent in life. From the fairy tales and nursery rhymes we were read as children, to ancient myths we grew up with, many beliefs were formed around these stories. Some may say that myth has faded from our lives. However, this is not the case, especially for myself.     As a Classical Studies major with a focus on Ancient Greece, my life revolves around mythology. I developed this interest in elementary school when I read the Percy Jackson series. I then taught myself the Greek alphabet, read as many Greek mythology tales as I could find, and took a mythology class when I got to high school. It has been my main interest for over ten years. For a while, I did not know it was something I could major in. However, once I discovered it, I have not changed my mind since. I wake up thinking about myth. I fall asleep thinking about m...

     As I have been reading Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I have slowly seen the pieces of the Hero's Journey, both written in myth and symbolic, come together. One section of this hero's journey is Apotheosis, which occurs during the second stage, initiation. This stage caused me to form several questions, as I did not completely understand it. "What is apotheosis?" I asked myself.      Defined, Apotheosis usually means to elevate to the status of a god, or, in simpler terms, deification. However, in the book, this was a very long and confusing chapter. The process seemed to be described in many different ways through all of the mythical examples given, mainly through the unification of male and female forms that had been separated.  Eventually, I began to understand it, at least in how I think it is supposed to be meant.       On the last page of this section, it says that in this stage, the initiate has the un...

The concept of a cosmos is one that I have always found difficult to understand and fully grasp. Normally, I just chalk it up to the fact that a cosmos is something in the sky. Throughout this class I have been able to gain a greater understanding and definition of what a cosmos actually is. A cosmos is looked at in order for someone or something to find order or a line of reasoning, but cosmos does not encompass everything while some people may believe it does. There is a limit to the cosmos. This brings up the question, What is the limit to the cosmos? I have tried to answer this question by myself and I truly am not sure what the answer is. Everything in the world has a limit and a reasoning behind the limit, but what the specific limit of something as complex as the cosmos could be is still unknown.  Cosmos was defined as an ordered reality which people typically look to the sky for. The sky was the symbol of the cosmos because typically you look to the sky for order and in med...

     I loved this show in the 2010's called Grimm . It was a cop show about the protagonist, Nick, who is a Grimm. Essentially it means he can see people turn into Wesen (Pronounced Vessen) which are people with animal/bug/monster heads and the qualities as well. Throughout the show Nick is the best hero I've ever watched as he tries to protect his friends from the unbelievable truths, do his job as a policeman, as well as his job as a Grimm to kill evil wesen.     One episode in particular that I think about often is one that involves myth literally being a reality. An officer Wu was told stories as a kid about a monster that sneaks into homes of pregnant women and eats the baby with their tongue via the woman's belly button. Nick told Wu not to worry, but because Wu saw too many similarities between the story and the crime scene, he found himself coming face to face with the monster and freezing due to the shock.     Nick saved him, but Wu had to go ...

     In high school I had the choice to read a book called Things Fall Apart  by Chinua Achebe. From taking this class, I have been reminded of so many parallels to myth and the hero's journey.     In the book, the protagonist is a man named Okonkwo. He is the definition of a tough, strong man who rules his family with an iron fist in attempts to make them strong and successful like he is. Okonkwo has but one biggest fear; being weak and dishonorable like his father. He hated everything about his father due to his shameful death, including qualities like showing love, affection, and having fun.     In the story, Okonkwo's journey involves raising his kids. He has daughters, a son, and an adopted son from an enemy clan. The call was when he had to take a boy in because he originally did not want to, but when he found that the boy was making his own son act more manly (mean to women) he was overjoyed.     Eventually due to religi...

 I have started another novel, From Below  also written by Darcy Coates. I am currently on Chapter 15, so I do not have a view on the ending, but I wanted to share this and connect it to what we were talking about in class last week on the wilderness. In short, these people are divers who wish to get famous off of finding the wreckage of a ship called the Arcadia, that ended up sinking. Nobody knows what happened during the last moments of this ship, so this team, led by Cove, is very interested in being the first to discover what had happened.   While I was reading this book, I kept thinking back to our discussion on the wilderness and how it cleanses the spirit of past misfortunes. As these characters were diving in the ocean, I couldn't help but think how to ocean could be considered a wilderness as well. For many of these divers, they grew up practically in the water, so going back to it has always been a way for them to cleanse their minds and souls. I haven't g...

 I recently finished an amazing novel called Craven Manor  written by Darcy Coates. In summary, this novel is about this man named Daniel who essentially is nearly homeless and receives a random job opportunity as a gardener for this old, abandoned manor. He takes it and finds out that his employer is technically dead and that there is a major secret living on the property with them. All good things in the end though! :) Anyway, I wanted to connect this book to the Heroes' Journey. The first step of the journey would be the departure, yes? So, Daniel departed from his cousin's home and went to take the job at Craven Manor. The job opportunity itself was his calling. Of course, once he got there and found out it was haunted, he started to refuse the calling. For a little while he was not sure if he would be able to work there with a ghost as his neighbor. But eventually he stayed and therefore received supernatural aid from the little girl who's tomb is next to his gardener...

 Overall, I quite enjoyed reading and discussing our book for the first few weeks of class. My favorite thing that we discussed would be the departure of the hero. It always fascinates me that the protagonist in a story will often refuse their journey because they do not see themselves as worthy, or they claim "You've got the wrong guy." It's funny when you simply think about it as a book you are reading, so obviously this character is meant to go, but at the same time if someone were to tell me tomorrow that I have a four month long quest to retrieve some stolen item and give it back to it's owner before a war broke out, I too would dismiss it as "You've got the wrong number."  But if we think about these characters who dismiss this calling, I have noticed that they are all very similar. They are not the strong, in-the-spotlight heroes that everyone knows, but rather the one's who have a somewhat normal life. Perhaps some of you can, but I canno...

  We discussed in class a couple of weeks ago about self-imposed exile as it relates to veterans of war who feel they must “walk off the war” they have fought in order to heal. I thought this was a very interesting and rich discussion, and I loved how it connected to myths such as Apollo killing Python as well. In my Later Middle Ages class, we just wrapped up discussing the story of Abelard and Heloise, two people who were in a relationship that was filled with passion and was very publicly controversial, which ended in Abelard being castrated and the two of them becoming a monk and a nun for the rest of their lives. Throughout their letters to each other, it is clear that both of them feel a need for forgiveness and cleansing from their past life of sexual indulgence, and yet neither of them feels as though they have been completely forgiven by God, and even Heloise, who at this point was a very devout abbess (the head of a nunnery), felt she could not even forgive herself for he...

  After discussing the Star Trek episode “Darmok,” I began to think much more about just how impactful the influence of the hero’s journey on a person and on a culture truly is. I thought it was fascinating how truly impacted Picard was by his own journey and how he was incredibly receptive to the Tamarians and their culture, whereas the other crew members aboard the ship were angry and antagonistic towards the Tamarians. Of course, part of this is due to the constant battles that the crew aboard the USS Enterprise must fight, but this can also show how the hero’s journey is one of transformation and healing. Picard was not as antagonistic toward the Tamarians because he had gone on a journey of self-reflection and purging of his negative views. Through another lens, this episode showed us how the hero’s journey is timeless: Picard embarked on a hero’s journey and also learned about figures in Tamarian culture who embarked on the same kind of journey as him, likely thousands of yea...

      As I finished up reading A Hero with a Thousand Faces , one reoccurring notion stuck with me: The endless cycle of womb to tomb. Is our existence so easily summed up in 3 words? The universe's cycle is all about birth, death, rebirth, and so on. Not only will this happen until the end of time, but it only happens for mortal beings like us. Myth cannot be reborn, because once it is made, it is reality. Reality cannot die, until our universe dies itself, but until then, myth is an immortal force when we are not. However, it is this force that gives humanity life. In between birth and death is our test: The test of life. We can either choose to live logically, denying myth and living a reality of despair and destruction, or to live with the aid of myth along the knowledge and hope it gives us. We might come from the womb and slowly fall into a tomb in the end, but the bringer of life and creation will always be the myths make us who we are. It resides in us since ...

In class on January 23rd, we discussed how studying myth can be compared to studying a dead animal. That is, once you have broken a myth apart to understand it, you have killed it. Myth has inherent vitality. It is a living thing. We also noted that art can simply capture reality without saying anything about it. Art does not have to argue, it can exist. Art does not have to be productive. I think we should be more like art. Why does our experience of life have to be productive? We can do things we enjoy just because we enjoy them, not to have something to show for it. For example, we can play the piano because we love to, not as a skill to show off or a resume builder. Yes, it is important to have goals and aspirations, but what is life if we are miserably, blindly taking the next career step to our eventual death? Myth reminds us that life is not to be studied too intently or made into a series of stages to be conquered. Life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured. 

 In the last class, I thought learning about separation, initiation, and return was fascinating. In this life cycle, we all have a story and are becoming that hero. In a way, we are all in our liminal face right now, in the middle of a journey. But how do we know we started our return face? How do we know we acquire all the knowledge?