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Events come at us now like trucks on a freeway. What do they mean? How do they connect? Lorecast examines the symbols, images, and metaphors behind events of our time to help us navigate them with understanding, grace, and hope: not the passive "hope" of waiting for change, but the active hope of making our reenchanted way through a world in need of inspiration and vision. The Lorecast is available in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, TuneIn + Alexa, Podcast Index, Podcast ...
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Welcome to Myth Matters, a thought-provoking exploration of the role myth plays in contemporary life 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.
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A mythological lens can reveal layers of meaning that usually remain obscured or hidden. In the Mythic podcast, host Boston Blake explores archetypal themes in ancient legends and modern media, myth and folklore superheroes sci-fi pop culture history current events your personal issues Nothing is off-limits! The Mythic perspective may forever change the way you think about your favorite stories--and yourself. Caution: Listening to this podcast may contribute to increased synchronicity.
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We've all seen them: organizations not only led by narcissists or other incompetent "leaders," but determined to stop any attempt at leading with wisdom, care, and intelligence. How do we know we are in such an organization? If so, what can we do about it? Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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't guiding us toward a bright future. What are the alternatives? How about an ingenious, improvising jack-of-all…
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"Because it's familiar." This explanation for why we stay in burdensome or painful situations is no explanation at all. Why do we fight deep change? What does the figure of the Phoenix have to say to us about how to go about radical transfiguration? Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 determine how many of us see ourselves and how we live: the sinner, the king of the animal kingdom, and the world de…
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What does it mean to return to the village? Boston Blake chats with Michael DiPietro and Marcey Donnelly, coauthors of 'The Inside Guide: Breaking Through to Intuitive Wisdom and Inspired Living.' They delve into key themes such as intuitive wisdom, the hero's journey, integrating peak experiences into daily life, and understanding the role of desi…
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Are we possessed by the gods? Even when we don't believe in them? How would we know? Why would it matter, and what could we do about it? Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 very difficult. Something new will come into the world. Some type of transformation will take place. We're deeply …
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The debate of determinism vs. free will has played wearily out down the centuries through religion, philosophy, and science. In the end, though, it's only by making the assumption that our choices count that we move forward in life, heal from adversity, and make a difference to our time. Chalquist.com…
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For a planetary mythology, a cycle of engaging and inspiring stories grown from the ground up, how might we hold such stories so they retain their vitality and viability? How might we set aside literalism, judgmentalism, and absolute belief? Part 2 of 2. Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 doubts and fears of inadequacy are common. Many of us hesitate to make any claims to creativity and feel it is lacki…
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According to Thomas Berry and many voices before his, we are between big stories that make sense of who we are and our place in the world. Perhaps what we need rather than one big story is a cycle of stories that show a way forward and give us realistic hope. What might such a cycle include? How might it help us reinterpret the lore and traditional…
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Ever wonder why committees, task forces, regulations, procedures, and endless meetings never seem to bring lasting change? The missing ingredient is informal relationships. Hear some examples of how they bring about new results. Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 current cultural conversation is a good starting point for reflection on some commonly held images of creativity…
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Vibrations. Energies. Vortexes. Quantum yoga, consciousness, everything. How might we move beyond this sciency-sounding but vague language and come up with some that adequately expresses the subtlety of our direct experience? Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 concerns of the soul and the seriously sacred? I rarely look to poetry for a laugh and I wonder why, when there…
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What would you make of an online space that is partly hopeful social media network, hub of creative community, source of uplifting news, and field for growing dreams? Enchantvale is based on the philosophy and practice of enchantivism: telling tales to move us out of exclusivity and division into hopeful new possibilities. Visit the landing page. C…
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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 go? These questions weave through many myths and stories. What answers do we find and how can we live with the …
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Many of us are familiar with Jung's 8 psychological types (including the introvert and extravert orientations) and the Myers-Briggs. But where does imagination go? It can't belong mainly to the intuitive types. We all have it. But some of us focus it on the here and now ("heredreamers") and some focus on possibilities and patterns ("theredreamers")…
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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 for its length- 100,000 verses-- and for its beauty. Astonishing for the complexity of the social and spiritual …
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According to the conflict theory of fiction, as enforced by literary agents, publishers, and Hollywood, your story must feature a Hero or Heroine who runs into or is filled with conflict. In Hollywood, this usually means images of someone tough and earnest holding a gun or sword. Do good stories really require this, or, at least for psychological a…
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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 reflection on the necessity of a well-developed imagination to meet life challenges in a creative and satisfyin…
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Why is it that so many of us are open to the most flagrantly deceitful, impossible, and downright ludicrous conspiracy theories, especially those full of paranoia and hatred? The answer might surprise you. What can we do to diminish the risk of this kind of collective regression to irrationality? Chalquist.com…
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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 usefulness of this inheritance and the possibilities we entertain. In the last episode, I turned to the Hero's …
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It has become a canard of the psychospiritual circuit: Meaning, value, purpose, etc. reside within you, not in the outer world. All you need is inside you. But is that really true? Let's explore this. Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 a long underworld journey of transformation in our communities, social contracts, technology, idea of service, …
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Can fiction serve as a path of meaning, wisdom, and even spirituality? Especially for those of us uninterested in the dogmatic divisiveness of traditional religion? This podcast questions the "truth OR reality" distinction while giving examples of authors (the majority according to one study) whose characters advise us on what to write. They are im…
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Cultural mythologist Dr. Jody Bower offers her wisdom and keen insight into the evolution of the Heroine's Journey and how it is distinct from that of the hero. Dr. Bower is the author of two books: Jane Eyre's Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine's Story and The Princess Powers Up: Watching the Sleeping Beauties Become Warrior Goddesses I…
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The dead: family, friends, lovers, ancestors. Are they really gone? What if we can't come to terms with them before they depart the earth? We still can. In this podcast I give examples of how to continue the conversation with those who have passed on until we feel more at peace with them. Chalquist.com…
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A strange thing about being kind of on the edge of things psychologically - in the group of us that question and wonder, for example - is how much everyday technological absurdity everybody else accepts as normal. This episode is a sequel in some ways to Episode 23, "Against Friendly Tech." Chalquist.com…
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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 mythology and my fascination with the god Odin. Odin is a god who lives with the prophecy that his world will end …
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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 Doomed Prince," a fairy tale found in ancient Egyptian papyri from 1550 BCE or so, is an interesting companion to y…
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According to Pew, Gallup, and other polls, record numbers of people are bowing out of religion altogether. This podcast considers these questions: Do we need religion, nor not? If so, can collecting evocative fiction serve to help us reinvent a path to the experience of the sacred? How else might it guide us? My newly released novel Soulmap contain…
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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 hero. And yet, life is full of challenges and dangers. There are plenty of opportunities for various forms of h…
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The crack in the Liberty Bell parallels a split in the polarized American soul, a split showing up in other nations as well. In the US, the split is so extreme that democracy itself is in danger, threatened by the rise of Christian nationalism. What is the nature of the split, what did the Founders say about religious freedom, and how might we begi…
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Over the past year and a half, I've practiced how to write fiction and learned to reach out to agents who work with publishers. I've also learned that work which deviates in any way from the rigid heroic formula tends to go nowhere commercially. What are the alternatives for someone writing from the soul and yet desiring to work within the profit-d…
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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 I'm dipping back into the collection Irish Fairy Tales by James Stephens for this story offering. "The Enchante…
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As a followup to the previous episode, how might approaches to healing and wholeness create impossible standards? Does aiming for them as ends in themselves really serve us, especially when we feel broken and fragmented? What might be a more vital goal? Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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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 some of the questions and possibilities Sedna raises in this time of climate change and fundamentalism. Support…
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Like any profession, psychotherapy is based in certain truths about who human beings are and what aids and ails us. And like any profession, psychotherapy includes "truths" that aren't always true. We will consider some limitations of the therapy paradigm and suggest a few alternatives. Chalquist.com…
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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 a mythical creature in Irish folklore associated with poetry and knowledge of deep truths. Any person who ate a…
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In our families, invisible but powerful sets of emotional debts, loyalties, and obligations move down through the generations to impact, and sometimes limit, our freedom of action, especially in relationships. This episode looks at examples of these ledgers and legacies and discusses how to explore and transform the stories that power them. (My tha…
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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 about a dog. Which led me to a Jicarilla Apache creation myth and an Irish legend about Fionn MacCool. These storie…
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Why do people fall into authoritarian extremism? What keystone stories do they tell themselves about this, and how might these stories be changed such that isolation and grievance give way to belonging? Chalquist.comCraig Chalquist, PhD
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When you face an obstacle or dilemma and the usual methods for grappling with it won't work, then perhaps it's time to change the game. This episode gives several examples of how to do just that. More examples appear in my e-book When All Else Fails, Change the Game: 20 Strategies for Inventive Real-Life Problem-Solving. Chalquist.com…
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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 being in reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." -- Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth The m…
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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 understanding of existence. In Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell outlines the conflict and offers solutions to the modern…
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There are many leadership models and practices available, yet how many really good leaders do you know? In a time of chaos and polarization, an important ingredient is missing from our leadership approaches. The missing ingredient has to do with the power of inspiration. This podcast mentions some ideas to be developed more fully in "Restorying Lea…
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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 Tiamat, which resulted in the creation of mankind and the establishment of an enduring order in heaven and on earth…
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