Myth Matters
Society & Culture
About
Welcome to Myth Matters, a thought-provoking exploration of myth in contemporary life and the intersection of myth, creativity, and consciousness. Host Catherine Svehla PhD. shares her knowledge of mythology and depth psychology to find insight and explore possibilities. Member of the Joseph Campbell Foundation MythMaker℠ Podcast Network. Learn more at www.mythicmojo.com and keep the mystery in your life alive.
Episodes
- Ovid's Metamorphoses: Love and Transformation
Send Catherine a text Message “All things change; nothing perishes.”-- Ovid Ovid was a Roman poet who wrote his master work, The Metamorphoses or "Transformations," in 8 C.E.. He weaves more than 250 Greek myths together in one long poem t…
- The Wild Braid: Stanley Kunitz for National Poetry month
Send Catherine a text Message “The universe is a continuous web. Touch it at any point and the whole web quivers.” ― Stanley Kunitz I always dedicate the April episodes of Myth Matters to poetry as a way to celebrate National Poetry month…
- Change perspective and change the story: thought experiment with "Briar Rose"
Send Catherine a text Message "But people must be taught lessons. Without them, none of them will ever learn. People are dreams and awkwardness and gawk. They prick their fingers Bleed and snore and drool. Politeness is as quiet as a grave…
- Disruption, creative edges, and the fairy tale "Tatterhood"
Send Catherine a text Message The Norwegian fairy tale of "Tatterhood" begins as many stories do, with a kingdom that lacks something essential. Each of us lives in a fairy tale kingdom or two, in an orderly system of protocols and social…
- 2MM8 The King and the Corpse
Send Catherine a text Message "We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. "-- Jack Gilbert from "Tear it Down" This episode revolves around a Hindu story, "The King and the Corpse," about a king who spends a long night with a tal…
- Joy, courage, and the Tigress Jataka
Send Catherine a text Message "Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. The warrior's approach is to say 'yes' to life: 'yea' to it all."-- Joseph Campbell How…
- The Goose Girl and what matters most
Send Catherine a text Message The end of a year and our seasonal holidays invite evaluation, reflection on what the future holds, and longing for some type of renewal. A fresh start. A clean slate. Restoration. A new green world. The Grimm…
- Inner Emptiness: The Japanese story "The Golden Axe"
Send Catherine a text Message “He who runs after two hares will catch neither.” Japanese proverb Feelings of emptiness, lack, greed, dishonesty--- are any of us immune from this experience? The number of stories that revolve around this pr…
- Gifts from the Otherworld: The Adventure of Bran
Send Catherine a text Message The existence and importance of other worlds populated by other beings, non-human beings, is consistent across mythological traditions. Today, the dominant culture has a difficult time accepting these stories…
- Song of the Bricoleur: Rags Rosenberg
Send Catherine a text Message "We are all taking everything that we've learned from the past, and we're reformulating what we want to do with that and how we want to live. And so, one of the ideas that's embedded in that, for me, is that w…
- Not Knowing the Way: Rich Peter the Peddler and leaving home
Send Catherine a text Message "Leaving home" is an interesting metaphor for the call to significant change. This episode is a reflection on intention, uncertainty, and how myths can help us listen to the soul and find clarity around the ri…
- Leaving Home: Adventures of a trickster tailor
Send Catherine a text Message In this episode, we take a look at the fairy tale "The Valiant Tailor" or the "The Brave Tailor," collected by the Brothers Grimm. Honestly, I almost dismissed this story as a bit too silly and I didn't like t…
- In the dark woods: what myths say about leaving home
Send Catherine a text Message “You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”-- Joseph Campbell In this episode we explore the mythic theme of leaving home as a central part of answering the call…
- Transformation and awakening: Dumuzi's Dream
Send Catherine a text Message This is the last episode in a 4-part series on the Sumerian myth of Inanna: Dumuzi’s Dream and The Return . After Inanna ascends from the underworld, she chooses her lover-king Dumuzi as her replacement in the…
- Greater Mysteries: Transformation, music, and the myth of Inanna with singer-composer Kelli Scarr
Send Catherine a text Message Special episode with guest singer-composer Kelli Scarr! Scarr released her new album Greater Mysteries, a musical journey through the spiraling cycle of transformation, last month. The Sumerian myth of Inanna…
- Inanna's descent to the Underworld, part 3 of 4
Send Catherine a text Message She goes down As we go down We follow her underground Hail to Inanna Who died To become born. — Chant from the writer Starhawk and the Reclaiming Collective This is episode #3 in a four-part series on the Sume…
- Inanna and Dumuzi: The eros of the cosmos (part 2 of 4)
Send Catherine a text Message “The Church says: the body is a sin. Science says: the body is a machine. Advertising says: The body is a business. The Body says: I am a fiesta.” ― Eduardo Galeano, from Walking Words In this episode I tell t…
- The Sumerian myth of Inanna: In the first days 1 of 4
Send Catherine a text Message In the first days, in the very first days, everything needed was brought into being and the goddess Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, took her place in the center of the Sumerian pantheon. This myth was recor…
- Joy and Poetry for National Poetry month
Send Catherine a text Message "We need joy as we need air." Maya Angelou Joy. Joy is my motivation, my desire and object in sharing some poetry with you in this episode. Joy---gladness, pleasure, delight, and rejoicing. Joy, a very preciou…
- Finist the Bright Falcon: Baba Yaga, soul quests, and shamanic journeys
Send Catherine a text Message The final episode in a three-part exploration of the mysterious Baba Yaga, a scary crone in Russian and Slavic fairy tales. Who or what is she? The fairy tale "Finist the Bright Falcon" opens up some interesti…
- Initiation and Meeting the Baba Yaga
Send Catherine a text Message The Baba Yaga is a complex and scary crone in East Slavic and Russian fairy tales. She's a face of the earth goddesses and the fierce wildness of nature. Are some of us meeting the Baba Yaga right now? There's…
- Fierce wildness and the Baba Yaga
Send Catherine a text Message Welcome to episode one of the new (7th) season of Myth Matters! A new year and a time of change. Is this, as some say, the time of the wise, elder woman, the time of the crone? The Baba Yaga is one face of thi…
- Flying Together: The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud Din Attar
Send Catherine a text Message “These lofty words are an antidote for anyone sickened by extremism’s poison.” Farid ud Din Attar, translation by Sholeh Wolpé T he Conference of the Birds is an epic poem from the 12th century written by Sufi…
- Catastrophe: What myths show us about the way of the world
Send Catherine a text Message Endings, loss, and uncertainty. Fears of a catastrophic future. Many of us are living with this right now or wondering how to. How to act. How to participate. Perspective and guidance can be gleaned from myths…
- Effort, Uncertainty, and Cerridwen's potion
Send Catherine a text Message "It is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception and compassion and hope." –Ursula K. LeGuin This episode revolves around the Welsh myth of Cerridwen and the Birth of Taliesin. I've worked with t…
- Allegiance to the Inner Life: The. Nixie in the Millpond part 2 of 2
Send Catherine a text Message “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”― Joseph Campbell We began an exploration of some important questions in the last episode. Questions about ou…
- Allegiance to the Inner Life: The Nixie in the Mill Pond part 1 of 2
Send Catherine a text Message To what do we owe greater allegiance, our outer life in the material world of human conventions, or our inner life and the requirements of soul? I explore this question through the lens of a fairy tale called…
- The Bricoleur
Send Catherine a text Message How we imagine our lives is how we live our lives, and mythologies provide the images and ideas in this process. But images of the human in the dominant myths-- as sinner, dominator, or world destroyer-- aren'…
- Shifting Images of Human Being with Dr. Craig Chalquist
Send Catherine a text Message How we imagine ourselves is how we'll be. And where do we receive these images of the human? They're in our myths. In this episode, I take a look at three images in the myths of the dominant culture that deter…
- Making creative choices in art and life: 3 fairy tale variations
Send Catherine a text Message Sifting through options to make a decision is something that each of us has to do at some point. When our choice is part of a creative process in work or life, in the arts or our psychic terrain, it can be ver…
- Creativity: An Inner Alchemy of feathers and toads
Send Catherine a text Message “We would do well… to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted in the human psyche.” --- C.G. Jung (1922) Collected Works 15 We often say that every person is inherently creative and yet doubt…
- Myth and Images of Creativity (Beginning with the new Apple ad)
Send Catherine a text Message Apple's ad for the new iPad has evoked some very strong reactions, reactions that illuminate old links between image, metaphor, myth, and our collective notions about creativity and the creative process. The c…
- National Poetry Month: Humor and the unexpected turn
Send Catherine a text Message "Well, that's the trick: the sudden unexpectedness inside the over-known." --- Heather McHugh What type of mood does the word "poetry" evoke for you? Do you associate poetry with the profound and weighty? The…
- Fate, free will, and 3 Swords
Send Catherine a text Message Fate and free will, and the longing for purpose and prospect of destiny that hangs somewhere in-between. How do these forces shape our lives? Do we play assigned roles in a cosmic plan or make it all up as we…
- The Bhagavad-Gita and yoga of awareness with Gabriella Nagy
Send Catherine a text Message “A yogi sees Me in all things and all things within Me.” Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita The Bhagavad-Gita is an important Hindu teaching story embedded in the Mahabharata, an astonishing epic poem. Astonishing f…
- Fee-fi-fo-fum: Outwitting the Ogres in Life
Send Catherine a text Message Last Monday, February 26th was Tell a Fairy Tale Day. I began preparation for this episode with the intention of telling you a fairy tale, perhaps one that was connected to the holiday. This process opened up…
- The Problem of the Return and the End of the Hero's Adventure
Send Catherine a text Message We have an ever- increasing wealth of myths and stories, fueled by new discoveries and ongoing mythmaking. There are also dominant myths and stories, and dominant ideas about myths and stories, that limit the…
- Answering the Call of 2024
Send Catherine a text Message It's only January and 2024 already feels like a year of consequence. Crazy weather and climate change, war, elections, ideological, religious, and cultural conflicts, and Pluto's move into Aquarius, heralding…
- Endings and Beginnings: Odin's Quest for Wisdom
Send Catherine a text Message The solstice will soon be upon us, followed by the arrival of a new year. A time of endings and beginnings. Reckoning. This passage through winter darkness here the in northern hemisphere leads me to Norse myt…
- Living your heart's desire: The Tale of the Doomed Prince
Send Catherine a text Message "I am destined to die either by a crocodile, a serpent, or a dog; it is the will of the gods. Then let me go forth and follow my heart's desire while I live.". 2023 is drawing to a close. "The Tale of the Doom…
- Beowulf and why we need Monsters
Send Catherine a text Message The existence of monsters, alongside gods and goddesses, is a distinguishing feature of myths, fairy tales, and legends. Defeating a monster is often the test of the hero, the act that makes that individual a…
- Mythic Sensibility: The Enchanted Cave of Cesh Corran
Send Catherine a text Message The season around Halloween and Samhain is a liminal time when shadows grow and lengthen in the world and psyche. The old Celtic stories of poet warriors and fairies feel especially potent to me right now, so…
- "Those Who Live Beneath Us": Sedna the Inuit Woman of the Sea
Send Catherine a text Message Sedna is the goddess mother of the sea, marine animals, and the underworld in the myths of the Inuit people, an indigenous Arctic culture. This episode is an exploration of variations on her origin story, and…
- The Story of Tuan Mac Cairill and the Salmon of Knowledge
Send Catherine a text Message "I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread.." ---from "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by W.B. Yeats The Salmon of Knowledge is…
- Mythical Bonds: Dogs, Kinship, and the Irish tale of Fionn and the Birth of Bran
Send Catherine a text Message “Dogs are our link to paradise.” -- Milan Kundera Sometimes a "little" detail in my day triggers thoughts about my mythic orientation and brings stories to mind. This episode began with a short news story abou…
- Churning the Cosmic sea: Joseph Campbell, meaning, and the rapture of being alive
Send Catherine a text Message "I don’t think the meaning of life is what we’re seeking. I think it’s an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have residences within our own innermost bein…
- Myth, science, and the creation story: Mr. g by Alan Lightman
Send Catherine a text Message "Rationality and logic can be spiritual." -- Alan Lightman, Mr. g The antagonism between Western science and myth/religion has shaped human history and continues to obstruct the quest for a holistic understand…
- Gates of Babylon: The Enduring Legacy of Ancient Creation Myths
Send Catherine a text Message The Babylonian Enuma Elish , also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation , is one of the oldest surviving creation myths. The story narrates the epic battle between the god Marduk and the primordial goddess Ti…
- Creation Myths: In the beginning
Send Catherine a text Message How did all of this-- what we call reality, the universe, the earth, life, begin? What do you think? This question is a primary motivation for our ongoing myth-making. Despite all the tools and technologies, t…
- Myths of the Father
Send Catherine a text Message The proper way to be a father or mother, questions about who can father or mother, and what these parental roles mean are contentious topics, ripe for creative reflection and renewal. Myths about fathers and f…