The earliest drop spindles, used for turning plant and animal fiber into thread, were very labor intensive in their use. Spinning and weaving were an everyday part of life, commonly associated with women. This tilt towards the feminine appears in our myths about spinners and weavers, and goddesses across cultures were given this task. It was not confined to the poor; women at every level of society were tasked with the creation of cloth. Consider the character of Penelope in The Odyssey. She sits at her loom, day after day for years, weaving a shroud for her father-in-law. Night after night she unravels her work, so that she must never be forced to choose a suitor to take Odysseus’ place at her side as king of Ithaca.

We see Fate as a thread, and in both Greek and Norse mythology the Fates are the women who spin, measure, and cut the length of a life. Consider the Greek goddess Athena as well; she was goddess of three disparate ideas. Why are wisdom, battle strategy, and weaving considered to be part of the same archetypal goddess energy?

During the month of November on my platform we will be examining the art and psychology of weaving as it appears in mythology, in an attempt to further understand the power and potential of the Archetype of the Weaver. This archetypal energy is at the heart of my work with and understanding of archetypes, and we’ll be exploring what mythology has to teach us about how Fate and the Universe are woven. We will ply our loom with archetypal energies that touch upon weaving throughout the month, exploring how different cultures around the world incorporated this time-intensive, constant task into the stories that they told to understand the universe and themselves. We will even look at the places where the mythology of weaving and theoretical physics are beginning to meet, as the math starts to catch up to what the myths have been telling us all along.

Later in the month we will explore spider myths from around the world, spending time with Grandmother Spider, Anansi, Arachne, and others. We will consider why several of our spiders are trickster gods, and why that might be.

Our guiding question for the month is as follows:

“What part of your life feels already spun, and what feels unwoven?”

Let us sit at the center of our web, like Arachne at her loom, and begin to pluck at the threads that we need to change the tapestry of our fate. We have more control over the outcome of our own mythic lives than we know. The myths show us the way. Are you ready to pull the first thread?

With access to Medea’s inside knowledge and spells, Jason is able to escape Colchis with the Golden Fleece, which he has been told is the task needs to complete in order to become king of Corinth. As the Argo and its crew flees Aeëtes’ kingdom, they are pursued with every ounce of the strength of the king and the kingdom, because Aeëtes knows (via a prophecy) that his kingdom will fall if the fleece is removed. The only thing that can stop him is the death and dismemberment of his son and heir. When Medea and Jason kill him and drop him over the side, the vicious and tyrannical King Aeëtes stops to pick up his son for a proper burial. Despite his many flaws, in this moment Aeëtes shows more respect for cultures and norms than Jason and Medea do, and this is part of the problem with this shadow of the Sacred Marriage.

Once they arrive in Corinth and Jason presents the Golden Fleece to the king, he is told that he has only completed the first task to become king (in reality, they never expected him to come back alive from his quest.)

Jason and Medea settle into married life and have children. They do not love each other, and they consistently look for ways to use each other, because that is the only way they can function in their relationship. Jason remains hyper-focused on becoming king, and eventually decides to leave Medea and their children in order to marry the princess Glauce, so he may become king that way.

This is a terrible blow for Medea, and the playwright Euripides tells the story of her revenge on Jason in the most dramatic way possible. It is through Euripides’ telling that we get the notion that Medea commits filicide in order to get back at Jason; in other versions of the myth their story ends very differently. There are a few details to know, that may color your opinion of Medea as the greatest villain in Greek Mythology.

Medea’s situation in Corinth without Jason’s protection was dire. She had two strikes against her: she was a woman, and she was a foreigner. Both of these facts made it impossible for her to earn a living in any way other than prostitution, and Jason was well aware of this when he chose to leave her.

There is another element at play here, one that often doesn’t get mentioned when we talk about Medea. She was a great sorceress: priestess of Hekate (goddess of witchcraft,) skilled at pharmaka (spells and potions.) In the usage of the time, pharmaka was a word that meant much more than how we use modern words like “pharmacy.” It meant “agent of change,” and it was understood that this could mean change for the good or change for the bad. She was certainly capable of both, and both appear in her myths from this period of her life. In an earlier story, she proves her ability to bring the dead back to life. Therefore we can draw the conclusion that, while she may have murdered her children as Euripides describes, she also had the ability to bring them back once Jason was sufficiently chastened.

This marriage may have been the most toxic one in Greek mythology, and that’s a list that includes the marriage between Zeus and Hera. Jason promised to marry Medea if she helped him escape Colchis, and unlike Theseus in the next generation he was true to his word. I can imagine that he began to regret that promise around the time that Medea was murdering and dismembering her own brother in order to ensure their escape. Or, because myths are changeable, perhaps it was Jason that butchered this young man, and they sunk into that evil together. No matter which version of the story makes sense to you, it’s clear that Medea had a force of will and willingness to commit evil acts that may have… concerned Jason a bit. It was clear, no matter which version of their myth you prefer, that they could never trust each other.

Despite everything that goes wrong between these two cunning people, in some ways they were made for each other. Once the filicide has happened, the marriage is over, and the unexpected subversion of Medea’s story is that she is not judged for her crimes against her children. She is the granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and she is able to escape Corinth in his chariot. Her story continues in Athens, where she marries the king and moves up the social ladder considerably.

Medea is a complex character; a woman who doesn’t behave in any of the ways she was expected to throughout her life. This is one of the reasons she remains so fascinating that we’re still here talking about her thousands of years later. She has a lot to teach us, both in positive and negative ways. Myths are often cautionary tales as well as examples of great successes. What do you take from her story? Are there ways that you would like to emulate her in your life? I need to hold her archetype in certain moments; she reminds me to be fearless and convinced in every moment of my own greatness. However, my two sons will be relieved to know that my admiration ends there.

Villainess

Child Murderer

Disgruntled Ex Wife

Sorceress

All of these moments show up in Medea’s story, and all are true in the way that myths are true. They show us insights into parts of the experience of humans, and more specifically the experience of women. When we do a deeper examination of the path Medea takes through her life and through her myth, and think more deeply on the choices she makes, there is a tremendous amount of insight to be gained from it. In order to do this properly, we must start at the beginning of her story, in Colchis, on the Black Sea, at the edges of the known world.

Medea was born into magic, god-power, and mythology. She was the granddaughter of Helios, the niece of Circe (another powerful sorceress) and was a priestess of Hekate, the goddess of witchcraft. She was completely under the control of her powerful and cruel father Aeëtes, and she chafed under this control because she was so similar to him. She wanted to make her own choices about her life, and her talents as a sorceress and gift for potion-making did not give her the power to escape her father’s kingdom. That is to say, they didn’t, until Jason appeared.

Medea’s father was the guardian of the Golden Fleece, and a prophecy had told Aeëtes that the loss of the fleece would lead to the loss of his power, so it was protected with many layers of spells and traps. When the Argo appeared on the horizon, it was the beginning of Medea’s path through the archetype of the Helper Maiden, which allowed her to help Jason enough to convince him to take her with him and marry her once she had done so. This was the one moment in their relationship that they were working together toward the same goal, because they were able to use each other to accomplish what they each wanted in that moment.

Medea saw a path toward escape from Colchis and her father’s thumb, and I’m certain that her strategic machinations began the moment she saw the sails of the Argo approaching. While the myth suggests she fell in love with Jason, it seems more in character to me that she saw him as a means to an end, much as he saw her. This marriage does not strike me as a loving one, and in fact I would go a step further and suggest that it shows us a perfect example of the shadow side of the heiros gamos, the sacred marriage that is the perfect union of masculine and feminine archetypes. This will be the subject of Saturday’s essay, but for the moment let’s stay in Colchis, as Jason and Medea plot their escape with the Golden Fleece.

When Jason and Medea met, while I don’t see much evidence in the myth that it was a great love affair for the ages, I think they recognized in each other a kindred spirit, if you will. Both were ambitious and hungry for power, each in their own way. Neither could achieve their goals without the abilities of the other. It quickly becomes clear to Jason and his crew that it will be impossible to reach the Golden Fleece without Medea’s help. She knows the traps and spells that protect it, and she is eager to betray her father for the opportunity to escape with Jason to Corinth. She will have more power and freedom as the queen of Corinth (which Jason certainly assured her she would be) than she ever could in her father’s palace, or married to one of his henchmen.

Medea’s character would strike no one as particularly helpful or giving, although she must reluctantly assume the archetype of the Helper Maiden to Jason’s Hero in order to give him what he needs to make his escape with the fleece. She gives him the spells and guidance required to steal the fleece and get it onto the Argo. While I’ve seen no evidence for it in the myth, it would not surprise me if Jason attempted to leave without Medea. She would have suspected that as well, and would have ensured that there was no way for him to leave her behind in Colchis.

Once they’ve made it on board the Argo, they take Medea’s brother (and her father’s heir) with them as a hostage. Aeëtes makes chase, and the only way they’re able to escape is to murder her brother and toss his body parts over the side, forcing Aeëtes to stop and pick up the pieces for a proper burial.

Medea and Jason are willing to subvert and violate any law or custom in order to get what they want, and Medea’s passage through the archetype of the Helper Maiden does not last for long. It can’t, because it isn’t her true nature. It should come as a surprise to no one that she makes the choices that she does later in her story, because despite the presence of archetypes of this type in our lives as well, we will stay true to who we are and how we came to be that way, unless we actively work to change our story.

In our next installment, we will look at the second act of Medea’s mythos. The marriage bond falls apart quickly, and we’ll look at the spectacular way that it blows up once they arrive in Corinth. Stay tuned!

Those of us who live in Vermont know that this season must be appreciated to its fullest, because we know what comes after. We know that, despite the crowds of “leaf peepers” who fill the restaurants and block the streets, there is no better place and better time on this planet than a Vermont October. Vermonters need the glory of this brief and spectacular time, because we’re the ones who stay once the leaves have fallen, and what’s known as “Stick Season” has begun. You might have heard the song “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan, and if you have you know that, as Noah sings it, stick season is more than just a lack of leaves on all the trees, but is also an excellent metaphor for what comes to us when a part of our life ends, and before the next thing begins.

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We have a cottage on our property, empty between guest visits, and I was now making just enough more money that I thought I could pay an assistant to come and help me, someone who would love mythology and Vermont as much as I do. I didn’t know if anyone would care, or if trying to find employee number two for Mythic Stories on social media was a good idea or a terrible one.

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I hated myself for it, of course. So many of us do.

“Why can’t I just start the paper earlier in the semester, instead of stressing myself out so much?”

“Why does everyone else seem to have an easier time of this? I think I must be uniquely flawed.”

These narratives that run in our head speak so deeply to our earliest conditioning, to the mythic systems of our family and the culture in which we were raised.

It was only later in my life that I started to learn another way, but the process remains… imperfect. There is no silver bullet, no magic pill that will change us overnight into the people that we want to be, that we wish we were. All we can do is commit to the discomfort of pursuing change and growth, and in taking comfort in the fact that things are better than they were before, because of this approach.

In my case, a great deal changed for me once I met my husband, and he started to show me a better way. He never told me to behave differently myself, but he always seemed to get done what he needed to get done, and he’s shown me by example that I don’t always have to make things so hard for myself.

This way that we are different became crystal clear to me as soon as I thought of our different ways of approaching getting things done so clearly looked like the fable from Aesop called “The Tortoise and the Hare.” You know the story. It’s well-known that tortoises are slow, and hares are fast, and on the face of things it seems ridiculous that a tortoise and a hare might race, but the tortoise wins, because the hare stops to take a nap before the race is over.

This fable is teaching a lot of things, but it was clear to me that my husband is a tortoise, and I’m a hare. When I decide to do something, I over-commit and go too hard, then I need a “nap” afterward. Start a new workout program on New Year’s Day? It’s the hare way to work out much too hard for the current level of fitness, and give up on day two or three. The hare will always procrastinate on that paper.

It’s the tortoise who understands the principle of compound interest. A little bit of slow growth every day is an incredibly powerful force. The person who is able to be tortoise-like in their habits will always get better results than a hare-like person like me.

In the past few years, I’ve been becoming more like a tortoise in my habits, and I’ve seen incredible growth from that. Everything in my life is getting better, and the more broadly I apply it in my life the better things get.

This is why I launched the Live Mythic Challenge on TikTok yesterday. I’ve invited anyone who wants to join me to give it a try. Let’s try out the power of compound interest in our habits, and see how much better we can be by the end of the month of October.

My first commitment on the 1^st day of the challenge was to show up live on TikTok at 9am ET every morning, to share how things went the day before, to answer questions, and to bring encouragement.

Today is the second day of the challenge, and my commitment for today involves a little bit of frog-eating. Have you heard of this concept yet? To “eat the frog” is the idea that every morning you should identify the one thing that you need to do that day that you’re dreading the most, and do that first. For me, that has been writing this essay for my Substack. I’ve been behind on posting to my account for several weeks. It started with a long trip to France, and once I was back I started procrastinating the task, because it always feels like climbing a mountain of inertia to start writing again after a period of fallowness.

So, here I am, eating the frog, writing this article in the early evening of the second day. My commitment for the month of the challenge is to write something for Substack three times per week, in the hope that it’ll be habitual again by the end of the month and I can sustain that pace.

It is my great hope that you will join me in the challenge, if you have areas in your life that you’d like to improve upon. The daily commitment must be small and achievable over the remaining 30 days of the month, and if you’re interested in joining us you’ll find me live on TikTok every morning at 9. I hope to see you there.

We all have something. The work of another human whose ideas changed the way we looked at the world, perhaps even set our lives on a completely new path.

When I think of these works for myself, there are almost too many to think of. When I discovered Joseph Campbell’s work in 2000, it did, without question, create an entirely new path ahead of me. Campbell’s books and videos led me to the work of thinkers such as Carl Jung, Friedrich Nietzsche*, and so many others, and I continue my evolution as a thinker through their ideas to this day.

As I write this, I’m on a flight from my home in New England to Denver, Colorado. For the next week I’ll be in a training with the Jungian psychotherapist and cantadora Doctor Clarissa Pinkola Estés Reyes, author of the seminal text of feminine spirituality “Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype.” This book holds deep ancestral wisdom, and played a key role in shaping my work as a mythologist, at the time when I barely knew what that was, or what it could be.

In a beautiful accident, I can even recall when and where I bought the book, and that moment held a great deal of sacred power for me. After I had discovered Campbell’s work and the power of Jungian and archetypal psychology, I learned that Campbell had spent time every March teaching at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. I had been making my way through Campell’s list with a great deal of hunger, and when I read “A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living,” I knew I had to experience Esalen for myself. My many visits to Esalen in my early thirties were hugely transformational for me, as I went through what I now know to be a profound and meaningful journey through the underworld. I visited Esalen for the first time in November of 2001, and came again the following year as a “work scholar,” both helping clean the rooms after guests left and taking a workshop myself, on the topic of Transformation.

During that month in the fall of 2002, I bought my copy of “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” and I know that because the receipt is still in it to this day.

Those were heady times for me. I had found my soul’s work, and I had met a couple of people who were making their living as so-called “mythologists.” All I had to do was figure out how to do it for myself.

Doctor Estés book, in a perfect storm of synchronicity and bibliomancy, came to me at the perfect time in my life. It helped me shake off some of the old myths that I had been living in for far too long, stories about the way that I should behave as a woman and what I needed to be.

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Elizabeth Gilbert is a complex figure in American letters. She moved and inspired millions of people in “Eat, Pray, Love” to look at their lives more deeply, to take risks, and to be willing to be vulnerable. She made a fortune, appeared on Oprah multiple times, and managed to become the holding archetype for a very specific type of self-centered, privileged white woman. She is both loved and hated in our culture. The way she has been received in culture sometimes makes me nervous, as a fellow fifty-something white woman.

I don’t know if you’ve read any of her books, but the reason I’m writing about her here is less about her work specifically, and more about one specific quote from “Eat, Pray, Love” and the effect it had on me.

When I first encountered a review of “Eat, Pray, Love” in Salon in 2003, I thought it sounded like the kind of story I would enjoy, and enjoy it I did. It’s beautifully written, and has one of the best memoir structures I’ve ever seen. Had it not become a worldwide phenomenon, I would have forgotten it pretty quickly. There was one line, however, that really stuck out for me, mostly because it highlighted something that I considered a serious weakness in myself. It was from the first section of the book, when she’s in Italy:

“My one mighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody.

I can make friends with the dead. I once made friends with a war criminal in Serbia, and he invited me to go on a mountain holiday with his family. Not that I’m proud to list Serbian mass murderers amongst my nearest and dearest (I had to befriend him for a story, and also so he wouldn’t punch me), but I’m just saying—I can do it. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock.

This is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet.

”

When I read this, I became instantly awestruck. I’d always considered myself a person who had a hard time making friends, and I didn’t have many. I wondered what it felt like, to know that you can make friends anywhere you go. I suspect that this aspect of Liz’ personality is part of what made the book so fun to read; she was warm, funny, and it really did feel like you were sitting on her couch with a glass of wine, listening to her tell stories about her travels.

Somewhere around the time the film came out, I reread the memoir, and this section struck me again, but in a slightly different way this time. Instead of bemoaning my bad luck in not having the kind of talent for friend-making that she has, I shifted my thinking. By then, I had done my graduate work in mythology and was starting to get jobs. I knew that sometimes we live in stories that don’t serve us, and that if I could change the “myth” that I had been living things would be different for me. I set out to get better at making friends. It wasn’t easy at first; I had to get over a lifetime of assuming that people wouldn’t like me at first, until I had time to win them over. I started approaching everyone I met with curiosity and an openness to know them, and I did start making friends more easily. As it turns out, if you speak to everyone you meet as if you’re meeting the best version of them, and you try to show up for the conversation as the best version of yourself, people will generally like you, and friendships will start to grow.

I do sometimes wonder if Liz Gilbert would give this same answer if asked today. She has received a fair amount of criticism about both her work and her personality since “Eat, Pray, Love” blew up. When “All the Way to the River” was released, I read that someone asked her at a reading about the criticism she receives, and her answer was “I don’t listen to life advice from people who hate me.” It made me think of this section of “Eat, Pray, Love,” and made me wonder what 50-something Liz would tell the person she was on the day that she wrote that about criticism and friend-making.

I called Elizabeth Gilbert my ancestor in the title of this piece as a way to reflect on how I view what makes an ancestor. Those few lines from her memoir did actually change my life, and inspire me to be less afraid to let others see me. Strengthening this muscle, and moving out of that old myth that I had been living under was something that I’m so grateful I was able to do.

I don’t know if I would like Ms. Gilbert if I met her; it’s possible that decades of being in the public eye have hardened her. I believe she would like me, and that is the true power of her work in those few lines, crystallized into one powerful life lesson. I now know myself to be someone who could make friends with a Serbian war lord, and that would have been unimaginable to 2003 me. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.

Mythology shows us a wide spectrum of responses to loss and disappointment. Let’s consider the story of Orpheus for a moment. He is considered the greatest musician to have ever lived, able to charm wild animals, birds, even stones. To fully understand what that means, think of your favorite rock star or performance. Mine is Queen at Live Aid, in 1985. If you want to understand the power of Orpheus’ talent, watch Freddie Mercury in this video (particularly the audience call and response) and then imagine that times a thousand.

Despite being the most talented musician in history, the core emotion of Orpheus’ mythos is disappointment. The kind of disappointment that crushes souls and ruins lives. Orpheus has many adventures that appear throughout Greek mythology, but the story he is the most famous for is about his wife Eurydice. On her wedding day, she was being chased by a satyr, and while running she stepped on an asp’s nest and was bitten. She is taken to Hades’ realm before their life can even begin.

Orpheus’ talent is so great that he is able to descend to the underworld and persuade Hades and Persephone that he should be allowed to rescue his wife. He moved them so deeply with the power of his song that they granted him this dispensation. He was to walk out of the underworld, and Eurydice would follow. If he could make it the entire way without turning around to look at her, Eurydice would be given her life back.

You know what must happen.

Once Orpheus steps out of the underworld at last, he turns to look, but Eurydice is not quite out herself, and she is pulled back down.

This was… disappointing for Orpheus. He never touched another woman for the rest of his life, and this made some of them so angry that they tore him limb from limb. His head kept singing, floating down the river.

What does this brief rendition of Orpheus’ myth teach us about our own disappointment? We all have plans for our lives, dreams, preferred outcomes.

This is a story about talent, and love, and on how we can’t resist looking back. There have been so many times in my life that disappointment has had me looking back, second guessing my choices. If only I’d made a different choice at the crucial point that I didn’t know was crucial at the time. If only I’d listened to that person, or trusted my own intuition.

Disappointment is so deeply human.

I find myself on the other side lately, as I go through the process of sorting through dozens of incredible people, in an attempt to find the right assistant for my company. Because of the way I’ve done it, putting the offer out on social media, I received interest from thousands of people. As we’ve moved through the process over these past few months, I’ve gotten to know women and men who love the idea of what I’m doing and the life that I’m offering on my farm. They’ve all been just… so cool. Unfortunately, there’s only one job, and I’m now having to disappoint so many of my cool new friends. This is a moment when being as empathetic as I am is a real hardship, because I can understand so deeply and thoroughly how they feel when I tell them they’re no longer being considered. It’s devastating, to feel that disappointment over and over again, every time.

For many years, when I worked with Orpheus’ myth, I found myself wanting to tell him to pull himself together, to remember how blessed he still was, even without Eurydice. I’ve grown more compassionate for his pain, as I get older myself. No amount of blessings can erase the pain that life confronts us with.

I sometimes think that, in the end, it might have been an enormous relief for Orpheus that he met those maenads when he did. When his body was ripped apart, the pain of it finally matched his heart. All that remained was his voice.

The question we must ask is this-what path remains when the one we were hoping would materialize was lost? Disappointment can sometimes show us important messages from our unconscious minds. For each of my applicants who weren’t chosen, they now know that working with myth professionally in some capacity is something that interests them. One of the key dreams that I have for my platform is to raise the boats for each of them, and create the demand for more mythic voices like mine in our culture. It’s my greatest hope that the disappointment they’re feeling right now is temporary, and that we, together, can grow something new that will use all our voices, ringing out as Orpheus’ did. This is how change happens. May our disappointment turn to transformation in the end.

Children are so often taught to dim their light, to be quiet, and biddable. We internalize that message, and it becomes a part of our core story, our creation myths.

“Don’t wake Daddy.”

“Momma has a headache; go play in your room.”

Dim your light, in order to preserve the peace and comfort of those around you. Forget your power, or pretend that it was never there. We will tell you who you are, and if you ever forget, we will remind you, as many times as it takes.

We acquiesce, to keep the peace. We remind ourselves that children are savages, that they must be tamed. We believe the stories that we are told, and they become part of our identity.

When is it time for a new myth?

We hide ourselves away, because we fear what it really means to be seen. This is how the shadow self grows; we push everything we find the ugliest about ourselves down as far as possible. It doesn’t go away, but we can put off dealing with it for a little longer.

Sublimating ourselves and our truth is a tragedy, but there is danger in the opposite extreme as well. There are those who tell themselves this myth:

“I know how ugly I am, and I know everyone will hate me no matter what I do. So, I may as well treat everyone I meet with that version of myself. If I let myself wallow in the darkest parts of my own shadow self, at least the revulsion that I know is the only possible reaction to me will be obvious and earned.”

Has this path ever tempted you? How did it feel? I know how it felt for me, on the rare occasion that I’ve fallen into that trap. It makes everything worse, and we feel not only trapped by the story, but also alone, because we’ve intentionally driven away everyone who ever loved us.

This is where the heroic archetype becomes one that we must call upon, and weave into our identity. Courage is not the absence of fear, after all, but the willingness to do the right thing despite it.

The myths that I’ve studied for so many years often feature a hero or heroine at their core. When you’ve read enough of these stories, you start to notice patterns. Heroes are often flawed and terrible people. They react in anger, make decisions that hurt everyone around them. They fail, try again, fail again. Over and over.

They teach us how to do it.

Our options are not as limited as they might seem. Some of us become addicted to the pursuit of perfection, and we castigate ourselves every time we fail to live up to an arbitrary standard of being human that no one on Earth is capable of achieving. Or, we swing the pendulum too far the other way, and revel in our own darkness like a pig in muck, driving everyone else away. Wherever you fall on this spectrum, I guarantee that you have someone in your life that you recognize here. Frozen into a rictus of attempted perfection, or determined to prove their own inner critic right by behaving as badly as anyone might expect.

As is so often true in myth, the middle path is both the most difficult and the only one worth walking. What makes it so difficult is not just the criticisms that come when we allow ourselves to be seen, but denying the temptation to swing toward either extreme. Both will come, sometimes multiple times in the same day, or even the same hour.

I struggle with this myself regularly, and I suspect you might find this a little familiar. Show up with your authentic and deeply human self, and there will always be those who don’t like it and will try to destroy it.

I spent decades of my life hiding, and silencing my own voice. It is only now that I’ve been able to pull on the heroic archetype and start to show up, for my own truth. After years of convincing myself that I could never be good enough to be listened to, I started to share the treasure that I had brought back from my journeys through the underworld.

It never stops being scary to be seen. It is very difficult to escape the sting of the casually cruel social media comment, and there are so many people who are so afraid of being seen themselves that the only pleasure they can find is in tearing down others.

We go into the underworld to defeat the dragon, and this is what the dragon looks like. If we don’t figure out the path through, we become the dragon ourselves, perched atop the hoard of our own unspoken wisdom. Too many people take their treasure to the grave. I’d rather be afraid but do the scary thing anyway than end up like that.

I will tell you this, as someone who has made it to the other side. There is no greater joy than in allowing others to see your beauty and your wisdom. It only comes on the other side of fear.

I’ve got my hand outstretched, and I want to see you. You have no idea how deeply it matters that you find the courage to do so. Take my hand, and let me help you to the other side.

One of the kindest and most essential archetypal figures in mythology is called the psychopomp. This word comes to us from the Greek psychopompos, which is “soul guide.” I find it so meaningful and beautiful that we as a human race hold this archetype within ourselves. It is such a comfort, isn’t it, that we recognize the need for an escort as we take our first steps into the world beyond?

In the Greek tradition, it was the god Hermes who held this role. A trickster god, of commerce and the crossroads, he took his duties as psychopomp as a sacred task. Other mythic systems saw the guide as a dog, or a black bird. Imagine the little Mexican hairless dog from the Pixar movie Coco. His name was Dante, and his role in that story is as the psychopomp.

Taking that first step into the unknown isn’t easy for anyone. We need an ally by our side, and each one of us has one. We don’t take that step alone. Every living human, if they dare, can imagine their own death. For many, it’s frightening, a moment in which none of us knows for certain what comes next. All we have are the tales of the humans who have come before, our mythologies, and they show us that it is a known and normal thing to not make that step on our own. For the literal death that each of us faces at the end of life, we not only have nurses and death doulas, but there are many stories of the dying recognizing their loved ones who have already passed on, returned to guide them to their next experience.

This role of psychopomp exists as an archetype outside the realm of literal, physical death, however. Humans who listen to the songs and stories of earlier humans will see the pattern of preparation that we all go through, over and over again, throughout our lives. We are taught by life, from the beginning, what it means to take that step into the underworld. We are in a constant cyclical pattern, dying to old versions of ourselves and our lives, journeying through the land of the dead mythically, and being reborn. We die to our single selves when we marry, and to our married lives when we divorce. The moment we hear that first cry from our infant child the person we were before that moment is no longer who we are, and there is a different, parallel death when our child becomes an adult. Death and rebirth, again and again.

I find myself holding the archetype of the psychopomp for more souls than I ever have before over the past few months. I’ve had a large and new influx of interest and investment in my work, as I guide hundreds of people through the seven gates of the descent of Inanna on social media. I see this responsibility as the sacred duty that it is, much as the god Hermes did, and I rely on the archetypal energy of the Psychopomp to help me show up for this process in a way that honors the holy trust that is being placed in me every day.

You may find yourself holding the archetype of the Psychopomp at moments in your life as well. If you’ve shown up for a friend as they’re packing up their place to move out of the home they shared with their now ex, then you’ve been a Psychopomp. Perhaps you drove your parent to their oncologist appointments, or consoled your teen son through his first heartbreak.

The role of this archetype in the hearts, minds, and lives of humans is sacred and ancient. It is one of the many archetypal energies that we hold in the lives of those closest to us. Remember, when this energy falls to you, that you are part of an ancient and necessary tradition. Hold it proudly.

Think for a moment about your most recent journey through the land of the dead. Myth is metaphor, so we must think about these moments metaphorically. Perhaps your best friend betrayed you; gossiped behind your back and proved themselves disloyal. Did your job end unfairly? Were you treated cruelly? There are a million and one ways that humans can fail each other, and we seem to constantly be on the hunt for new and creative ways to do so. Maybe the failure was yours; you know that by giving into that temptation to tell a juicy story you did betray someone who didn’t deserve it, and you have to reckon with the shame of that; the break in the relationship with someone that you love. The move from ally to villain is never a comfortable or clean one, after all.

In mythic circles we speak often of the belly of the whale, named after the story of Jonah from the Bible. Jonah’s story hits his nadir when he is swallowed by the whale. This happens over and over again in our stories, so often that the pattern is easily recognizable once we have the eyes to see it. In the first Star Wars movie George Lucas placed his heroes in the trash compactor of the Death Star; Luke is pulled under the scummy water of the trash, and this is his metaphoric representation of that feeling we have when we’ve failed, or we’ve been failed. Our life feels at its lowest, and it seems as if nothing will ever get better.

Things will get better.

The path toward getting better will be both dangerous and immensely satisfying, if we look to the example of the myths. These stories show us the way, over and over again, thousands of times. We can’t help ourselves, you see. We have to share what we know; it’s a human impulse that is deeper than any other.

We tell our myths, our journeys both into and out of the underworld. I’ve never known a single person who didn’t want to tell at least one other person how they made it through; it’s hard-wired into what it means to be a human.

Are you there? Are you in the belly of the whale? Or have you recently returned, bloodied but unbowed, ready to share your story?

This is the power and peril of the return. We have such a deep compulsion to share our story that it actually makes it a little easier to find our way out of the underworld if we can imagine telling the story of our triumph at the end.

I invite you to try it now, if you’re in the belly of the whale, if you’re neck deep in the trash compactor of a station the size of a planet. Tell yourself the story of how you will escape. Make it mythic. Make it harrowing and dramatic. Make it funny. Make it so compelling that it’s inescapable.

Now, make it real. Make it real, and share the story of your triumph with the rest of us, so that we can find our own path through the underworld. Your story won’t be identical to mine, but it’ll be close enough that it will help me find the strength and purpose to pull myself up and out of the underworld.

It is the way of humans to do this. If you are tempted to linger, be careful. At this place, there be dragons. We need you to return; we need what’s in your hoard. Don’t sit on it for too long. Brave the peril of the return, and come back to your community as the mentor that we all need.

The path forward is clear; the myths tell us what to do.

The applicability of myth is broad, but today I want to look at the ways that mythic stories and the mythic journey teach us about the creative act and the creative life. The creators among us know, at least intuitively, what that act of katabasis feels like. We, like Inanna, like Mwindo, like Orpheus, learn profound things from the going down. When we seek to create something great, we know that we must go deeply within ourselves, down into the psychological depths that the mythic journey captures in our stories.

Carl Jung tells us that “the Gods came down from Mount Olympus and settled in the solar plexus.” He describes them as diseases, needing treatment on the psychiatrist’s couch, but in my view there is a deeper and truer insight to be gleaned here. You will recognize this feeling when I describe it. The last time you read a poem that truly moved you, or viewed a painting that brought you to a place of awe, or heard a piece of music that transported you, you likely also had a sensation in the midsection of your body, at the point of the solar plexus. This is a physiological response to great art, and it is a mythic experience. We know that we are in the presence of an ancestor, a person who has been on their own mythic journey, has battled their monsters, and brought their treasure back to share with us. Their journey made manifest has moved us, and taught us, and made our own journey just a little bit easier to bear.

Great art has this feeling in our midsection, a “tell,” if you will. So, the question then becomes, for the maker, how can I create that tell in my reader, or my listener, my fan? How can I create art that will move, and inspire, and awe?

The answer is there, in the myths, and it’s been with us all along. We’re all just humans, muddling along on this planet, in a life that we never asked for or agreed to. We make choices every day, about how we move through the world, how we effect the people around us, and how and whether we recognize and use the talents that are unique to us in the history of humankind. We are the only ones with our specific constellation of books read, art seen, conversations had, insights gleaned. Only we can make the thing that we must make. Some of us manage it, and allow ourselves to be transformed by our passages through the underworld. We are transformed, and we recognize the small and gleaming seed of treasure that follows us out. We nurture it, and allow it to grow, despite our fears, which are many. If we’re lucky and wise, we get to become ancestors ourselves. We get the great privilege and responsibility of learning from the ancestors from the past, going through the depths with the allies that we need by our side, and becoming the ancestors that the next cohort of heroes needs.

There is a small seed of something in the depths of your heart that you need to share. Maybe you’ve never told anyone. Maybe you’ve tried to share and found only disinterest. It is not an act for the faint of heart; this is why we call those who manage it heroes. It takes great courage to let ourselves be seen, but we can take great comfort in the stories of those who have come before us, and have left behind the art that they themselves were afraid to share, once upon a time.

Are you ready to answer the call? Go and make something today, but remember to invite the archetype of the hero along as you traverse the depths. You will need all of your courage. If you need help, turn to your ancestors. They will always be there for you.

She continues to show me the power and potential as I move through my life and work, even now more than 25 years after I began to realize that I loved mythology enough to try to find a way to make a living at it. She is the goddess of Wisdom, after all, and strategy, and weaving, and it was in the knitting of those concepts together that made my career into what it is today.

Even at the beginning, while I was in graduate school studying mythology and depth psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I spent the typically 9 hour class days knitting. I found that keeping my hands busy with the repetitive motion of the needles and yarn I was able to absorb the complicated concepts that were being taught to me in those rooms. Athena was with me, even then. Once I got to know her mythos more deeply, I learned that Athena was both a creature of the mind, and of the father. She was birthed from the mind of her father Zeus, after he became threatened by who might be born from his marriage to his first wife Metis, the goddess of wisdom and cunning, traits that she passed on to her daughter. It was prophesied that their second child (a son) would be so powerful that he would overthrow Zeus, so Zeus swallowed Metis whole. This impulse to swallow children that posed a threat came to him from his own father, who did the same, until Zeus overthrew him and rescued his swallowed siblings.

Athena burst out of Zeus’ head at the moment of her birth, fully formed and armored. She held traits of both her parents, and it was in her archetype that the Greeks combined the power of wisdom, strategic thinking, and weaving. Why is weaving included in this list of traits? Why did the Greeks associate weaving with the first two characteristics? Strategy and wisdom always include aspects of weaving, after all. When we think wisely and strategically, we weave together different ideas in a new way, in the magic of creative thinking. If you’re wise, and a strategic thinker, you are also a weaver. There is so much wisdom inherent in that understanding, and it is moments of insight like this that keep me coming back to mythology to be my teacher again and again.

Is Athena a goddess that resonates for you? Do you feel the need for greater levels of wisdom, strategy, and weaving in your life? How might a deeper understanding of these concepts improve your life? Perhaps if you thought more strategically about your relationships you would come to a deeper understanding of what lies beneath ancient sources of conflict and joy in your family, friendships, and romantic life. Could your work life use a dose of Athenian strategic weaving? Understanding and incorporating the archetype of Athena and her characteristics into our lives can bring us a better life on multiple fronts; being good at these things can lead to more money, deeper thought, and a keener mind.

She is by my side as I move through my life and work. If you haven’t yet done so, light a candle and say a prayer to Athena as the smoke rises up to her. She just might have some ideas to weave together for you that will make your journey richer and your path smoothed. It worked for Odysseus, in the end. May it do the same for you.

This was a wonderful problem to have, but it still results in me going individually through the stories of hundreds of people. I asked my applicants to share a story of when they went into the underworld in their lives, and what they brought back from the experience. I’m so delighted that this opportunity got in front of the right people, and they trusted me enough to share some of their most challenging moments with me. I am very aware of the sacred nature of that trust, and I feel deeply committed to giving real presence and attention to each person as I evaluate their submission.

This process is, in miniature, what I do when I work with my coaching clients. I consider myself their ally, the person who stands by their side as they navigate whatever problem or underworld journey led them to want to work with me. However, the reason that my coaching is so expensive is because this is energetically very taxing for me, and I have to take steps to protect both myself and the person I’m working with.

It can be hard to keep an open heart to so many stories of pain. I’ve heard about the worst moments in the lives of hundreds of people at this point, and I have to be careful to protect my own health and energy as I do it. I learned something crucial about the importance of this care years ago at the beginning of my career. I had a friend who worked as a shaman. She was very effective at helping her clients, but not so great at protecting herself, and she had many serious health problems. While I can’t say for sure that the first was connected to the second, it did serve as a cautionary tale for me early on that my own energy needed to be protected. I knew I needed to be able to hold space for difficult moments, pain, and stories from the underworld, without being subsumed under them or taking the trauma into my own body.

Needing to solve this problem led to some interesting work for me, and the things I learned have become a core part of my upcoming book. Before I engage with one of my clients in a session, or as I’ve been doing lately in reading assistant applications, I do a few different rituals to protect myself.

The first ritual opens a bubble of Kairos time around me, and creates a sacred, temple-like space in my immediate vicinity, to both protect me and to allow me to be fully present with both the client or applicant, while also filling my space with sacred energy. Kairos is a word from Greek that means something like flow, but it’s so much more than that. It’s origins lie around the moment that the archer pulls back her arrow, and the intuitive wisdom that tells her when it’s time to release. It was later broadened to mean any sacred time, such as when you are in temple with your preferred deity, or even when you find the sacred at any other place or time in your life, such as when you’re with your lover or your child perhaps.

Once the sacred energy of Kairos time is layered around me in my work space (usually my office) I then began to weave together archetypal energies. I carefully consider which archetypes I need with me on that day, and I invite them to settle around me, both making me more powerful and protecting me at the same time. For the applicant review process, I’ve been inviting the archetype of the Gatekeeper, and the Seer, and the Mentor, as well as some other energies that I can’t quite name but that my intuition suggests to me. I want to be sure that my compassion holds, and my wisdom, and whatever threads need to be pulled together that will guide me toward the right person for the job.

When I use the Weaver archetype to create this archetypal energy around myself, I feel topped up with energy and ready to work. The archetypal weaving supports me, and I can do more than I would be able to if I hadn’t completed these rituals.

Eventually, though, I do tire, and my body gently tells me it’s time to stop. I release the archetypes with gratitude, and open the time and space around me back to Kronos time, which will allow me to go back to my regular life outside the boundaries of the temple I had created.

Ritual and myth are inextricably linked for a reason. Myths are stories, creatures of the mind and the breath, but ritual grounds the myths somatically, and the mind and body must work in concert with each other.

If you are reading this as an applicant or future coaching client, it is my hope that this short essay will give you a small window into how I use ritual to support my work, and to make you safe as we engage energetically with each other.

Thank you so much for being here.

It doesn’t work out that way, does it? This is not human life. We begin our lives with very little wisdom, and it is only through failure, loss, and discomfort that we can grow. Mythology knows this well. Our heroic figures go on journeys into and out of “other places,” which serve as metaphors for the psychological processes that we go through regularly throughout our lives. We gain and lose relationships, jobs, living situations, our health waxes and wanes. This pattern of loss, pain, and growth is a deeply human experience, and our myths show us, over and over again, how to navigate those journeys well. The Greeks had two words for this. The first is Katabasis, which means a going down into the underworld (also the title of an excellent novel by R.F. Kuang.) The reverse is Anabasis, which means the return, the re-ascent.

All of us have gone through this, but we are taught to hold such shame in the idea that we’ve failed, or not been perfect, or let others down. We fall prey to addiction, or poor decision making, or trusting the wrong people. Our wisdom has not yet come to us when we’re young, and we make decisions without mentors or wise elders. These things don’t exist around us in the way they did for earlier humans. We begin our “adult” lives as older teens, and we’re asked to make choices that can have catastrophic impacts on our lives and our happiness, and we do it with little to no guidance.

If you have been through the underworld a few times, and you feel shame, I’m here to tell you that you have nothing to be ashamed of. What you’ve done is heroic, and it continues to be heroic. If you need wise elders, if you don’t have a tribe around you to show you the way, let the myths take their place in your support system.

I’ve done this, in my own life. When I was young, I was so eager to learn and grow, but the only path forward that I was told was acceptable for me was to be a good little Christian wife and mother, to subsume all of my talent, power, and ability into supporting my husband and children. When I was young, and I questioned that, my entire community shunned me and tried to shame me into compliance.

If you’ve known that shunning and shaming, then you are among friends here. We know that we can do more, that we are meant for more. We seek out growth, and wisdom, and the treasure that only a death to our old selves and a rebirth into a new life can give us. If my work resonates with you, it’s because you know this instinctively. You know the power that your mistakes, your trauma, your discomfort, and your pain have given you.

Life has knocked you around, but you’re still here. It has taught you to be more than what you were before, and you can now be the wise elder that was denied to you when you were younger. What an enormous privilege that is, don’t you agree?

To be able to help someone, when no such help was available for us? To have grown through our pain, and to know that it wasn’t wasted? The most sacred act that a human can do is to turn their pain into beauty and power. The Romani people of Spain call this Duende. Our blood, sweat, and tears flow into the earth, and we pull that energy up through the soles of our feet, through the steps of flamenco, through the voice of the singer and the Spanish guitar.

Leave your shame behind in the underworld. You have been tested on the heroic path, and you have been transformed by it. You are the wise one now.

The thing that has kept me going, even when it seemed like no one cared what I had to say, and that no one ever would, is also what I consider the most important concept in my work, and it both keeps me motivated and gives me hope, every day.

What are myths after all but stories told by humans that lived on the planet before we did. They did that deeply human thing, which is to tell a story, and to do so in a way that was powerful enough to last for millennia. When we figure something out, we want to share it. If we’ve made our lives better somehow, we want to pass that bit of wisdom along. It’s a human impulse that we’ve all experienced. If you’ve ever had a friend who went vegan, or started a great new workout program, or found a plumber that was both good and reasonably priced, I guarantee that you heard about it from them. It’s such a beautiful and pure impulse. I learned something amazing, and I want your life to be amazing too, so I must tell you about it. To me, this impulse shows up in our myths.

“Guess what, we were at war for 10 years, and we were losing, until our cleverest guy figured out a new way of ending the war, by hiding soldiers inside a giant wooden horse.”

Sometimes they are tales of triumph, but often they’re cautionary tales. Maybe if your daughter leaves home it isn’t necessary to nearly take down the entire human race because you miss her.

Either way, it’s both profoundly human and mythic.

Myths have so much to teach us from the people who came before, from the ancestors. They went through it, this pain and craziness of a human life, and they share what they can about how to navigate it successfully.

If we learn how to read them, they can help us, because we go through it just as they did. If we do it well, we will be transformed, and all the mess and suck of our lives can mean more than just trauma and pain. They can help someone else down the road, and we can be the ancestor that they need, just as we learned from the myths ourselves.

Stories told in the past, navigated in the present, and used to shore up our communities in the future. It’s a beautiful thing, and I consider it to be a profound wisdom about the power and generosity of our oldest stories.

This past week I’ve had a front row seat to how this process can work, in real time, and it’s giving me more hope for our culture than I’ve had in months.

Things seem dire right now. Wars, cruelty, and greed are obvious in every direction, but we can still build communities in which we hold each other up, and use our stories to make each other better.

A few days ago I went onto social media and made an offering. I’ve been feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do, and I thought that maybe someone out there might find the work of mythology interesting enough to come and work for me as my assistant. The response has been overwhelming and deeply moving, and it reminds me of the best of what humanity can be. For all the years that I’ve done this I knew my work was good, because I could see the effect of it on each individual that I worked with, but I never shared it widely on social media. Reels are a difficult medium for the deeply transformative work of myth; attention spans are short, and it’s so easy to just swipe up if I make the tiniest misstep in how I share what I’m trying to say. I never thought it would work for me, but I’m starting to find my community in these spaces.

This is the power of mythology in action. It binds us together through storytelling, through humans sharing their wisdom in the best way they know how. They entertain, horrify, and amaze. They connect us to the gods, and to each other.

Now, they’re connecting me to people on my accounts who I’m so privileged to be getting to know as I seek an assistant. Every day I’m deeply moved by the willingness of my new friends to be real and vulnerable with me, and I can’t help but reciprocate, even though a few of them have been a bit unkind. It’s ok. I know I’m not for everyone. The ones who stay are the ones that matter, and they motivate me every day to get to work and figure out new and better ways to show them why myths can transform their lives, as they’ve done for mine. It feels like a sacred calling, because it is. Hopecore at its finest. I hope I never disappoint them.

However, a few months ago a situation came up in our small town where a call went out for help. An elderly couple, well known to the town but who we’d never met, had been living in their car for months. The weather was getting colder, and there was a real worry that their situation was truly dire. Did anyone have a room they could use, temporarily, while more permanent housing was found for them?

I lay in bed late that night.

“Fuck,” I thought to myself.

“We have an empty cottage. We can help. We have to help.”

I spent a lot of time that night thinking of all the ways this situation could go wrong. What if we needed it later, or they refused to leave, or…

By the time I woke up the next morning, I knew what we had to do. My husband agreed, and we reached out and offered our space, for two weeks only, until our next round of family visits would be happening.

Two weeks turned into three months.

A few days ago, they moved out. They were able to find, with the help of other members of the community, a place in an assisted living facility nearby. They are safe, for the rest of their lives.

I’m sharing this story now because it illustrates the most important thing that mythology and the heroic journey teaches us, and it’s this.

We have terrible things that happen to us throughout our human lives. No one is exempt, but luckily for us humans have gone through these things always, and we have a deeply held impulse to share our experiences, share what we know, and share what we learned from the journey. Some of this sharing comes down to us in our myths. None of us know what to do, when confronted with our trips into the underworld. Our ancestors shared stories with us about how to handle the darkest moments of our lives, so that we can come out the other side prepared to be ancestors ourselves, to share what we’ve learned. We make art, and we take care of our communities. This is what we must do, and it’s a core part of the human experience that many of us have forgotten, or never knew.

We don’t have to go through it alone. Billions of humans have come and gone on this planet before we did, and many of them shared what they learned by making things, or telling stories. Nearly every single thing that you’ve leaned on to help you make it through when times got dark was made by another human. Your favorite novel, or film, or game, or even the trail you hike when you go into nature, that was all the product of another human’s pain, labor, and ingenuity.

They went through it, and they brought something back to their community.

I shared the story at the beginning of this piece because it was such an immense privilege to be able to show up and give concrete help to a couple who needed it. This is what this human life is all about, after all, and I hope that more of us can remember the importance of showing up for each other. This is the purpose that we all need, and while nothing can erase the pain that you went through when you went into the underworld, the privilege of being able to ease the path of someone else does bring essential purpose and meaning, that we all need, so desperately.

Our cottage guests for the past few months reminded me every day how lucky I am to be able to show up for others, for our elders. It makes all of us better when we remember our sacred place in the web of the people we live among.

The world is a dark place right now. It haunts me every day. This is the only thing that I know for sure: showing up for our communities is the one true thing that will make it better. Make our art, bring something good to the world, and be there for each other. This is the best part of being human, in a time that seems determined to tell us that all we are is the worst of who we can be. We all know better. Let’s hold each other up.

Why should the stories of the ancient past still matter to us? The truth is, they do. I’ve learned through the course of my work as a mythologist that I’m far from the only person who is entranced by these old stories. It’s been astonishing to me just how common an experience it is for kids to go through a “mythology phase” just as they’re approaching puberty. For many of us, that phase never ends, but it sometimes changes to myths carefully or carelessly disguised in films, videogames, and novels. Myths speak to something true in human experience, and my work in mythology has shown me the different ways that this remains true for every generation.

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It could be even worse if you have the opportunity to see them regularly. If they work in your favorite coffee shop, you might find you’re drinking a lot more coffee than you used to. You may get the best work performance of your life because you’re lingering at the office, just because the object of your obsession now works across the hall.

This can even happen with celebrities, people that we have only seen on screens. They are often extraordinarily beautiful, and we can be caught in the net, hit by Cupid’s arrows. We can know that there is nothing real there, but the obsession remains.

This powerful tug toward a stranger or near-stranger can strike anyone, in any relationship status. It is merciless, and it can cause you to swing between ecstasy or despair depending on whether or not your feelings can or will be reciprocated.

What is going on here? How can we be trapped by an uninvited feeling like this, and what does mythology and archetypes have to do with it?

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