jelly helm: joseph campbell, story & other maps of the human adventure

Joseph Campbell, Story & Other Maps of the Human Adventure

Jelly HelmCuriosity ClubMay 13, 2014

meamateuryouour story

“Our Story”

Remind me again – together we trace our strange journey, findeach other, come on laughing.Some time we’ll cross where lifeends. We’ll both look back as far as forever, that first day.I’ll touch you – a new world then.Stars will move in a different way.We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.

Remind me again.

- Wm. Stafford

Story is a map

A map is a guide or toolthat helps us navigate & understandan unknown or partially known landscape or territory

From Latin Mappa Mundi “sheet of the world”

What landscape/territory does story map?

The human adventure

“ From the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to put our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.”

Karen Armstrong, A Short History of Myth

Story

mundaneegocentric

revealingdeeper pattern

SanskritVEDA

knowledge

Greek/LatinHISTORIA

finding outnarrativehistory

Middle EnglishHISTORY STORY

GreekHISTORlearned, wise man

shares root

WITLatinVIDEREsee

Joseph Campbell summarized themes common to hero stories across time & culture

young hero

stuck

called to a great adventure

“no.”

refusal of the call

thrown into a strange world

friends

facing worst fears

pow

there’s no place like home

Each of us is called to an adventure

Stay alert for the call – watch for clues

Follow your bliss

Don’t be afraid

First, you have to say yes

Bring your blessing back to the world

A quest bigger than you

You have whatit takes

You’re not alone - You’ll have help

***

another map by Ken Wilber and others

A labyrinth is another map/tool - a walking meditation for connecting with our path, coming to our center and returning

“Accidentally on Purpose”

The Universe is but the Thing of things, The things but balls all going round in rings. Some mighty huge, some mighty tiny, All of them radiant and mighty shiny.

They mean to tell us all was rolling blind Till accidentally it hit on mind In an albino monkey in the jungle, And even then it had to grope and bungle,

Till Darwin came to earth upon a year To show the evolution how to steer. They mean to tell us, though, the Omnibus Had no real purpose until it got to us.

Never believe it. At the very worst It must have had the purpose from the first To produce purpose as the fitter bred: We were just purpose coming to a head.

Whose purpose was it, His or Hers or Its? Let’s leave that to the scientific wits. Grant me intention, purpose and design - That’s near enough for me to the devine.

And yet with all this help of head and brain, How happily instinctive we remain. Our best guide upward farther to the light: Passionate preference such as love at sight.

– Robert Frost

Thanks Tobias & Will & the Curiosity Club, Hand Eye Supply, Alex, Mark, Brian, Thom & Mookie. Chris & MuMu for photos.

jelly.helm at gmail.com

More:iTunes: Joseph Campbell & Bill Moyers, The Power of MythHero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph CampbellInner Reaches of Outer Space by Joseph CampbellHe by Robert A. JohnsonA Theory of Everything by Ken WilberSearch for a labyrinth in your townWalking a Sacred Path by Lauren Artress

“What I think is a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons.

Each time there is the same problem: “Do I dare?”

And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco.

There is always the possibility of a fiasco.

But there is also the possibility of bliss.”

Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss