Category: Joseph Campbell
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Was Joseph Campbell atheist?
Folks have been stumbling onto the site of late asking, “Was Joseph Campbell atheist?” No, Joseph Campbell was not an atheist. He believed in God first as a Catholic growing up, then in something like Brahman — or Sat — later in life, culminating in the “great spirit” of many native tribes. This is the sort of…
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Face the dragon. Face the mice. A sonnet in WU form.
Please welcome longtime Writer Unboxed community member Lancelot Schaubert back as our guest today! Lance is the author of the novel Bell Hammers. “… Face the dragon. Face the mice. A sonnet in WU form.
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The Zero with 1000 Faces: A Photography Series in Celebration of Joseph Campbell
The Zero with 1000 faces happened ten years ago in 2012 (sort of a subversion of the monomyth). I actually took all of these pictures down soon after, but then it got to be rather nostalgic for me and… I realized it really was for fun and really should be treated as such. And, in…
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Gilgamesh and Skinny Dipping
Episode one of our book club podcast WESTERN CANONBALL features The Epic of Gilgamesh and some scandalous skinny dipping by Enkidu. Gilgamesh features an antihero who offends gods, slays giants, and offensively steals the wives of everyone in the kingdom. This podcast is basically a group of us meeting at my house for dinner about…
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Maps of Meaning Lecture Series
HUGE thanks to Dr. Cirilla for introducing me to Dr. Jordan Peterson. I highly recommend folks take the time to sift through the Maps of Meaning lecture series by Dr. Peterson — it singly handedly redeemed the entire field of psychology and psychiatry from the baggage of my youth:
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Felling and Man Waiting to Die : The Name of the Wind Prologue
We’re reading The Name of the Wind for the 10th Anniversary Edition in preparations for Doors of Stone. Today we’re focused on the prologue’s use of Felling and a man waiting to die — if you haven’t grabbed ahold of my 13 assumptions for any Kingkiller Reread, you might want to do that. Spoilers inside, of course, but as…
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Follow Your Bliss : Results of Joseph Cambell’s Advice
Featured tool: I use this tool to discover new authors through whom I follow my bliss. Let me share it with you. Seldom do I mention this here, but I minored in ancient literature and mythology in college. In my last semester, the academic dean helped me build a one-on-one class with him that featured…
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Monomyth Definition: A Defense of The Hero’s Journey
Let me again pick up a standard that has fallen on our literary battlefield: the standard that marks the entrance of The Defender of The Common. It would seem a silly thing to need to defend common things, but in truth we have grown quite accustomed to tearing down good things simply because great things exist.…
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037: ランスロットの探求 (a heroic haiku)
in humble deference to my friends in Osaka who speak the language better Lance yawns bed of leaves nuzzling dreams: Go. (cold air waking) enters in foreign woods blooming blooms too: hot, high, hardy. takes light. gets “Go,” harvest of Goes brimming costs cuts: cold air comes, steals Goes. back again: bed of blooms waking…
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A New Kind of Hero : My Bride
In the eighth grade, I wrote a Modern Woodman speech on my hero. As far as I know, that’s still the topic for that particular school’s speech competition. I picked Carl Brashear and in retrospect, that makes little sense. I spent more time drooling over Nightcrawler than I did military personelle, and for good reason.…
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Why I, an Adult, Believe in Santa
As you prepare your Christmas lists, let me tell you a story… A long time ago in an oppressive empire far far away, there lived a Saint known to all as Nicolas. We know that Nicolas oversaw the diocese of Myra in Lycia (south-western Asia Minor) during the fourth century. Story goes that he rescued three…
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Sitting at the Feet of a Film Analyst (part 4)
Last week, The Boy Wonder and that other schmuck in the black suit talked on voiceover, visual show-don’t-tell and the power of good dialog. This week, we dig into the meat: SYMBOLISM! LS: Something we were talking about, symbolism in general, there’s a picture that was posted of Rothfuss’ Facebook page. This guy said, “I…