CERTIFICATE PROGRAM in APPLIED MYTHOLOGY!

The Price and Reward of Sacrifice
[Image: "The Corn King"
© 2007 Charles Vess and used with permission]

"The important thing is this:
to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are
for what we could become. "

— Charles du Bois

Mythic Journeys Returns in 2009!
Watch YouTube excerpts
from Mythic Journeys '06!

• Tension: Exile, Evil, Sacrifice, Meaning, Gnosis
  
  "Creation is very frequently associated with its shadow side, with its addictive side; the idea is that creation is in tension with something destructive or something that appears to be the opposite of the simple notion of creation. Think aloud about how this tension between the constructive and destructive side of creation plays out in the things that we know and the things that we're interested in."
  — A Mythic Journeys '04 Conversation with Betty Sue Flowers, Richard Smoley, Robert Walter and Bradd Shore [read on]
  
  

• The Art of Pilgrimage
  
  "With the roads to the exhalted places we all want to visit more crowded than ever, we look more and more, but see less and less. But we don't need more gimmicks and gadgets; all we need do is re-imagine the way we travel. If we truly want to know the secret of soulful travel, we need to believe that there is something waiting to be discovered in virtually every journey."
  — by Phil Cousineau [read on]
  
  

• How Big Love Can Be, from
  The World is a Waiting Lover
  
  "If we court the Beloved regularly, we will come to fall in love with what we are doing, how we are doing it, and for who we do it, and this pervasive sense of love taps out the rhythm of how we proceed. Every step takes us closer and closer to the arms of the Beloved, and every step is a venture onto hallowed ground."
  — by Trebbe Johnson [read on]
  
  

• Cinderella:
  Ashes, Blood, and the Slipper of Glass
  
  "In English-speaking lands, there are few indeed who would not recognize this classic tale. We've all grown up with the wicked step-mother, the cheerless hearth and the slipper of glass; these images have become an indelible part of childhood for us all. Yet the Cinderella we know today is subtly altered from the "Ash Girl" tales handed down for at least a thousand years."
  — by Terri Windling [read on]

• One View of Mt. Fuji
  
  "I found a volume called Fugaku Sanju Rokkei (Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji). How that beautiful jewel could ever have wound up amongst such rubbish, I'll never know.... The artist, Katsushika Hokusai, spent his life from 1760 to 1849 capturing the mountain from every angle, in all seasons, and with such delicate beauty and power.... I've treasured it ever since."
  — by Brenda Sutton [read on]
  
  

• The Marvel Universe
  Transposed into the Seventeenth Century
  by Neil Gaiman
  
  
  "This is more or less the elevated language of myth, and it is no wonder commentators speak of Gaiman as crafting "a modern myth"; "Gaiman's stories serve as a mythology for the present world, combining cosmological explanations, instructive ethical teachings, and a profound feeling of wonder; they represent our dreams (in more ways than one) and our fears"
  — by William Doty [read on]

• Mysticism: The Craft of Love
  
  "Keeping in mind the parallel between the artist's and mystic's way, I pose the following question: What constitutes the essential element of the true mystic and artist that is so conducive to divine inspiration of a high order?"
  — Wilhelm Oosthuizen [read on]

• "Linking the Mysteries"
  Excerpt from
  The Inspired Heart:
  An Artist's Journey of Transformation
  
  "Can we serve as intermediaries between individual human suffering and God when those around us get lost in life? I did not know the answer to this. I did, however, feel a strange sense of responsibility and commitment to that possibility."
  — by Jerry Wennstrom [read on]

• Simple Lessons
  
  "The "hard" moments make the "soft" ones more savory, the way a glass of cool water tastes better after a long hike on a very hot day. They have more value — more meaning."
  — Oralya Garza Ueberroth [read on]

• The White Whale's Talisman
  
  "In the twistings and turnings of plot and subplot, the writer finds in the chosen talisman an island in the ocean of mind to be used as a resting spot to restore focus through meditation. The talisman may be a quote or an aphorism under a title, or a prelude, preface, or dedication in the beginning of the process, or a picture of some far away place, idyllic retreat, or catastrophic tragedy."
  — by Sally Drumm [read on]

• Trading the Center of the World:
  Dante's Inferno
  and the Underworld Journey
  of September 11th
  
  "Dante and depth psychology are quite a stunning combination. Together they can open the experience and the consequences of September 11th in unique ways. Only something as powerful as Dante's visionary language and symbolic intensity can come close to the felt destruction and psychological implosion of that day, revealing an emotional kinship between medieval and modern soul."
  — Thomas Fortson [read on]

• "Sacrifice and Scapegoating
  in America
  
  "As Rafael Lopez-Pedraza writes, 'Dionysus always appears in a distorted form... it is part of his nature.' This god often appears in the modern world as the scapegoat, that part of ourselves that we sacrifice in order to maintain a consistent story of who we are. In America, this means innocence; and innocence requires a population of those we can label as guilty."
  — by Barry Spector [read on]

• Bringing Death Back Home
  
  "We humans tend to be afraid of things that we do not know, and therefore do not understand. The truth is that our culture teaches that death is something to be ignored, denied, feared, and avoided as much as possible. We try to insulate ourselves from the reality that death is a natural part of the cycle of life."
  — Marilyn Strong [read on]

• The May Queen
  
  We're serializing an entire novel over the course of several months. Enjoy here the first installment.
  
  On Molly's sixth Christmas, her "Auntie May" gives her the fairy tale of Thumbelina, and whispers, "Listen up, Molly, because this is the story of your life!" Nestled in a simple tale about a thumb-sized child given to a mother who can't conceive is the story of Molly's roots, and the complicated relationship between her mother, her glamorous Auntie May, and her father. Molly doesn't understand the significance of the fairy tale, but when she grows up, a crisis in the family turns Molly's world inside out. Her life, she discovers, is the fairy tale, and the fairy tale is her life.
  — by Michelle Tocher [read on]

• Hostel: Part II
  Review
  
  "Horror, as always, grinds things down to their essential essence. It breaks down all reason, logic, all notions of progress, all hubris, and brings it into the primal, the immediate. Within the fascination with torture films, underground snuff clips, YouTube decapitations, and so forth, there remains the naïve sentimentality for the real. Is this not merely the expression of the dissociated, disembodied, developed world for grounded reality and a relief from the pressures inherent in a culture of titanic excess?"
  — Mitch Finn [read on]

• Heat and "Dog Days"
  
  "Many people believe that the origin of the term "dog days" is from the days in ancient Greece — and in ancient Egypt — when the bright star Sirius (actually two companion stars — Sirius A and the almost invisible to us Sirius B) in the constellation Canis Major (the Big Dog) appeared to rise at dawn in the hottest part of summer."
  — by Mary Davis [read on]

FICTION & POETRY

• "The Quiet Man"
  — Maurice Walsh [read on]
  
  
• The St. Francis Poetry
  "Bernard of Quintavalle to His Lady Poverty"
  — David Brendan Hopes
  [read on]
  
  
• The St. Francis Poetry
  "Leo, Brother Little Lamb of God, to Lady Chastity"
  — David Brendan Hopes
  [read on]
  
  
• The St. Francis Poetry
  "Clara Scifi Consults the Flowering Crab Concerning Her Lord Obedience"
  — David Brendan Hopes
  [read on]
  
  

• "Sacrifice"
  — Cecelia Woloch [read on]
  
  
• "The Corn King"
  — Sondra Sparks [read on]
  
  
• "Liminal Light"
  — Dennis Patrick Slattery [read on]
  
  
• Thoughts and Poems
  on Ritual
  —"Welcome Small Wet Person"
  by Katharine Hartwig Dahl
  —"Why We Pray" by Franklin Abbott from Mary Davis [read on]

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.