The Queen of the May
[Image: "Blodeuwedd — Owl Woman"
© 2007 Jan Delyth and used with permission]

Listen to May Queen
by Three Weird Sisters (96K)

"This mythical imagination appears as a revolt against the basic perversity of matter, against creation's profound indifference toward us. It is a way to force nature to recognize our necessity, for the only justification for our long and painful history is that we are not in any sense a useless suffering nor the last link of an itinerary destined for destruction; we mortals are what makes nature immortal. If matter is perverse, if nature is indifferent, and as indifferent to itself as it is to our human destiny, it is because they are unaware of what makes them act within the vast unfurling of time."

— Claude Mettra (prominent French radio journalist), "Epilogue: The Contemporary Need for Myths—A Testimonial," in Bonnefoy, ed., Mythologies 1991, v. 2.1231.

Watch NEWYouTube excerpts
from Mythic Journeys '06!
(Two more added 4/30/07!)

• Atlanta in the Spring
  is an Orgy...
  
  "...a fertility dance of outsized proportion that usually makes the national news: "Highest Pollen Count Ever Recorded!" We run our hands over the piano an hour after dusting and our palms turn chartreuse. It's a sex blizzard. The city is shamelessly aflame with daffodils and dogwood, azalea and tulip magnolia, tulips and red bud Judas tree, star of Bethlehem, cherry, apple, pear, almost all at once. The streets are white with petals, you can hardly breathe."
  — by Honora Foah [more]
  
  

• Mythic Imagination Update
  
  "It is very hard to believe that it has been almost a year since the last Mythic Journeys. It's even harder to believe that it is now time to begin planning in earnest for Mythic Journeys '08. As the remarkable team of Mythic Journeys volunteer leaders begins to assemble to begin the long road to June 2008, it falls at a very appropriate time on the Jewish calendar."
  — by Michael Karlin [more]

• Auspicious Beginnings!
  
  "On this beautiful day in spring, I am awaiting news of the most recently estimated arrival time for my daughter Riva's identical twin boys, a birth which is imminent. She lives far away from me, and even though I visited her recently, I am still feeling great concern and hope for her. I am thinking much about beginnings (and endings)."
  — by Mary Davis [more]
  
  

• Fill the Chalice With May Wine
  
  "Beltane is a mighty transition point. The God and Goddess are the true King and Queen of the May. He offers to lay the Sword of Power at Her feet, but She takes His hands before it touches the ground and requests His strength. Together, they raise the Sword between them, kiss beneath it. She takes the Sword, the season turns, and the reign of the Goddess begins."
  by Brenda Sutton — [more]

• From One of the
  Darkest Places on the Planet,
  the Most Wonderful Art
  
  Dr. Doty reviews The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists, by editor and writer Gregory Curtis, is a fine accounting for this prehistory to pre-literate or pre-technological societies. The book is as well a useful chronicle of the learned folks who explored the caves during the last 150 years.
  — by William Doty [more]

• What is Your Intent?
  
  "Every thought and every action has an energetic effect on the world. We are surrounded by a stirring pot of collective consciousness, and it can manifest in the physical world in any way possible — negatively and positively. We can create war and destruction, and we can create harmony and beauty."
  — by Jerry Wennstrom [more]
  
  

• Marriage and the
  Four Functions of Myth
  
  Joseph Campbell came up with four functions that mythology serves: the mystical, the cosmological, the sociological and the pedagogical. Author Donny Palmgren has taken these and applied them to marriage and the wedding ceremony.
  — by Donny Palmgren [more]

• Marilyn Monroe:
  Two-headed Goddess
  of the Age of
  Electronic Reproduction
  
  "Marilyn had not just one, but rather two names: she was Marilyn Monroe the movie star, but she was also Norma Jeane Baker, the orphan child of suburban Los Angeles...two identities: one for the silver screen, and one for the real world which, together with its images and ideas, project forth the luminous, flickering puppet plays of the darkened movie cavern."
  — by John David Ebert [more]
  
  
  

• How Gilgamesh Became
  the Lord of the Dead
  Part Two:
  In Which the Babylonians Reject the Sumerian Gilgamesh and Reforge Him in the Image of a Tribal Chieftain
  
  "With the changeover from the old Sumerian to the Babylonian order of things, in the new depiction of kingship as shown on Hammurabi's Law Code stela, the great king receives the rod and the ring not from Ishtar, but from the sun god Shamash." Things are about to change in Uruk.
  — by John D. Ebert [more]

• Back to the Future,
  Forward to the Past
  
  "...I find myself standing with my wife in front of a fully-restored 1953 Chevrolet... What terrain lies between the landscape of nostalgia; a mysterious passageway that is both as much before me as it is in my rearview mirrors. The full feel of nostalgia is both spatial and temporal as it moves to retrieve something in the future that has been lost, forgotten or discarded."
  — by Dennis Patrick Slattery [more]

• Sainte-Baume Grotto:
  Mary Magdalene
  and the Zero-Point
  
  In October 2006, the author and seven women made a pilgrimage to the grotto at Sainte-Baume, France where it is reputed that Mary Magdalene lived out the remainder of her days, naked and sustained only by the Holy Eucharist, which she received on a daily basis from angels. In some legends the saint arose in assumption to heaven, however, her bones remain in reliquary in the grotto chapel. Enjoy a two-part photo essay of the pilgrimage.
  — by Dahna Barnett [more]
  
  

• "The Sacred Marriage:
  The Marriage of the Gods"
  from The Golden Bough
  
  "At Babylon the imposing sanctuary of Bel rose like a pyramid above the city in a series of eight towers... On the highest tower, there stood a spacious temple, and in the temple a great bed, magnificently draped and cushioned, with a golden table beside it. ...no human being passed the night there, save a single woman, whom, according to the Chaldean priests, the god chose from among all the women of Babylon. They said that the deity himself came into the temple at night and slept in the great bed; and the woman, as a consort of the god, might have no intercourse with mortal man."
  by Sir James Frazier — [more]

• Reading the
  Translucent Mirror:
  A Reflection on Metaphors
  and Mythic Vision
  
  "Joseph Campbell wrote that the 'endless mutations' of the artistic remnants of mythic thinking are like the layers within a hall of mirrors where images are multiplied and refracted, one upon the other." Examine the visual dynamics concentrated around artistic endeavors which signify the physical manifestation of the metaphysical phenomena of myth.
  — by Jennifer Tronti [more]
  
  

• The Sleeping Beauty
  
  This month we offer several reinterpretations of the fairy story, Sleeping Beauty. We thought that you'd appreciate re-reading it as it was originally presented in Contes de ma Mère l'Oye ("Mother Goose Tales"). The story is chock full of cursed royalty, good and evil fairies, a heroic prince, and an unexpected visit from a cannibal ogress.
  — by Charles Perrault [more]
  
  
  
  
• A Review of
  Lawrence Schimel's
  Fairy Tales for Writers
  
  In his newest work, Schimel recounts the frustrations, recasts the villains and heroes, and restages the battles many writers face. Each chapter is a poem shuttling the writer's weft through fairy tale tapestries.
  — by Brenda Sutton [more]
  
  
• Mythic Glossary:
  Pathological Mythology

Poetry

• Fairy Tales for Writers: Sleeping Beauty
  — Lawrence Schimel [more]
  
  
• The Sleeping Beauty
  — Walter John Delamere [more]
  
  
• Queen of the May (poem)
  — Alfred, Lord Tennyson [more]
  
  
• Queen of the May (song)
  — From Songs the Whalemen Sang [more]
  
  
• Tis' the Month of Our Mother
  — A Hymn to Mary in the Month of May [more]
  
  
• The Humble-Bee
  — Ralph Waldo Emerson [more]
  
  
• The Jackfruit
  — Ho Xuan Huong [more]
  
  

Do you wish that you could have gone to the Human Forum this year?
Did you go and now wish that you could share what you heard with others?
Well then, we have good news for you!
Visit Conference Recording Services
to order tapes, DVDs and CDs from a life-changing event.

Filmmaker George Quasha will soon be releasing the Part II of the Myth Is DVD.

If you attended Mythic Journeys '06, you'll remember the documentary that played continuously outside the main programming room with marvelous thinkers like Michael Vannoy Adams, Rebecca Armstrong, Coleman Barks, Phil Cousineau, Meinrad Craighead, William Doty, Kristen Eckmann, James Flannery, Honora Foah, Matthew Fox, Ellen Hemphill, James Hillman, Sam Keen, Robin & Stephen Larsen, Margot McLean, Micheal Meade, Joyce Carol Oates, Ginette Paris, Laurie Patton, Huston Smith, Ulla Suokko and Robert Walter all speaking to the importance and understanding of myth in our modern world.

Part II includes interviews with 431 more amazing minds!

For the opportunity to view and order either one or both of these powerful documentaries, visit www.quasha.com.

If you haven't seen the
film trailer for the upcoming
documentary film project
on Mythic Journeys '06
by Imaginal Cells Inc...


...you should!

The Mythic Imagination Institute creates experiences that explore
— through art, hands-on activity
and inter-disciplinary conversation —
the mystery and metaphor inherent in myth and story.