Myth Matters

This episode revolves around a Czech fairy tale that you've probably never heard of but I suspect you'll recognize some of the motifs. The story raises some interesting questions about the nature of abundance and what's necessary to the life of our "kingdom," the kingdom of our inner world and the outer society. Fairy tales speak to us about common life experiences and psychological processes. They also convey cultural values, and the needs and concerns of particular times and particular plac...

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, that then when we no longer know which way to go, we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings." ---- Wendell Berry The situation that Berry describes is a creative edge, the place where the known meets the unknown, where what is and has been realized and understood fades into the possibilities of what is yet to be. Two questions arise f...

“Energy, creation, movement and harmony, development, all happen under the aegis of love, in the domain of eros. Desire is the cause of all movement, and movement is the character of all being. The universe is a process, and its method is change.” — Germaine Greer The ideas expressed by Greer in this quote reflect the ancient Greek perception of a cosmic dynamic of love and attraction, imagined as the god Eros. The notion of Eros is thousands of years old and yet still central, compell...

"Some sisters said such things could never be, while others were convinced that anything was in the power of true deities---" -The Metamorphoses, Book 4, by Ovid translated by Allen Mandelbaum Ovid wove Greek myths of transformation to create his masterwork, The Metamorphoses. This poem describes a world of shapeshifting, ambiguity, and forms in flux. Of endless transformations instigated by passion: passionate feelings, fantasies, pleas, prayers, and convictions. This episode contains a coup...

“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 to tell a story of transformation, and explore the complexities of love as an agent of change. Ovid's voice has been influential over the centuries. The Metamorphoses was an important touchstone for Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other artists and thinkers whose works are foundati...