“Myths tell the stories of the wisdom of life.” Joseph Campbell
A fascinating website, Mythology and Folklore, just published my post ‘Creating a Living Mythology’. This site, http://paper.li/stephentimothy/1309316455, is filled with recent stories about the influences of heros, gods & goddesses, art & temples in our modern world, written my many people across the globe. Myths teach us about our journey, the journey that everyone travels over a lifetime. We do vision quests, we meet up with the dark side, we grieve, suffer loss, find love, and hopefully, we make our way through the wilderness to discover something new, as well as ourselves. It often involves completely leaving your ‘old self’ behind, living through challenges, to discover the ‘new land’, the secret, the treasure waiting to be found.
There are still wonderful novels around to guide us through the unknown path like “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell, or the “Dark Tower” series by Steven King. The Theater, Broadway, musical concerts, live shows really put us into the action happening on stage. But often these days, we are driven by the thousands around the world to the most fantastic movies ever made. “Star Wars”, Indiana Jones, “Interstellar”, “The Hobbit”, “Terminator”, “Contact”, the first “Matrix”, “Inception”, “Blade Runner”, and even the “Time Travelers Wife”, just to name a few, brilliantly tell the Hero’s journey. Let’s not forget TV’s “Game of Thrones” and ‘Lost’. These draw us in, allow us to view the challenges, the sacrifices, the knowledge, secret signs, ancient language, and treasures discovered at the end. We’re exhilarated, feel energized, excited in ways we don’t always experience in day to day life. They are symbols and metaphors for our lives.
This is the kind of art I love. The art of the Dreamtime. The art with deeper meanings, that give us some new feeling each time we look at it. All the arts are gathering places to connect us with like minded people. We find out ‘tribe’ in the audience, at the Comic-Con, at Blade Runner parties, BronyCon, where costumes, rituals, lines from the movie, and universal concepts join us together. If ever there was a reason to promote all the arts in our schools, this is surely a big one.
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