Mythologist

Phil Cousineau lecturing on Sisyphus

Last night’s Friends of Jung Friday lecture featuring Phil Cousineau was inspiring, electrifying, and insightful. The title of the topic was “The Secret Life and Death of Sisyphus.”  As Cousineau pointed out,  Albert Camus ends his essay on Sisyphus with “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must consider Sisyphus happy.”

Or as Cousineau pointed out in his lecture, we push to the top of the mountain, achieve success for a brief moment, and then we go back to the bottom and start all over again.

Two news sessions of Re-Imagining Our Relationship with Mother Earth have been scheduled for March at Mission Trails Regional Park and in April at the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park.  Check out the Events page for details.

Old Mission Dam

On December 2, I led a workshop organized by my great friend, Jennifer Simpson, called “Re-Writing Our Relationship With Mother Nature.” One of the participants was a Certified Nature Therapist with the Association for Nature and Forest Therapy. He had great ideas for helping people engage more deeply with nature that I will be incorporating into my next workshop.

As the day was cold, we did reading and writing indoor and went outside to engage with The Bosque at Tingley Beach.  The creative and very talented Natalie Bleser took these lovely photos at the workshop.  Enjoy!

On Thursday, October 4, I participated in my first Ignite .  What is Ignite you ask?  People speaking on topics they are passionate about in a fixed format, 20 slides that advance very 15 seconds, and 5 minutes to talk. Yup that’s all you get. No notes. No words on the slide deck. Just a memorized talk to your slides that are all images. It was a rocking wild time with technical difficulties and a lot of wine. My blessing in disguise was people remembered me since I had three runs — one with two starts and technical issues. The other where the slides went as designed. This video is from the “third” run. You judge the results.

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Ignite is this global phenomenon where communities come together and share what I call “lightening” talks. In other words, each talk is 5 minutes with 20 slides.  That’s 15 seconds a slide.

As a speaker for Ignite San Diego #8, my talk is on “Why Myths Matter.” It is incredibly hard to explain the importance of myths in five minutes. For those of you who don’t know, I have a Ph.D. in mythology and wrote almost 500 pages in my dissertation.  Condensing is very hard. Oh and did I mention, I have to memorize the entire 5 minute talk.

If you want to come see me, the event takes place on Thursday, October 4 at Liberty Station in Pt. Loma — a community of San Diego. Click here for details.

Those of us not in Texas are watching with sadness and fear as torrential rains flood Texas. Stories abound on the internet of how strangers are helping strangers, former enemies are working side by side to help each other, and people are coming from around the country to help those in need.

But what is taking place from a mythic perspective?

Tlaloc from Aztec traditions is a water god and associated with the earth’s fertility. Worshiped as a giver of life, he was also feared as the bringer of thunder and hail. He ruled the 4th heaven called

Tlaloc (Codex Rios p 20R)

“Tlalocan” — the heaven for those who die from water related issues such as drowning or water-born diseases go to.  In many traditions, the god(esse)s have both good and bad qualities. In this situation,  the Aztec god of rain might be letting lose with his anger. After all, not enough rain is just as life threatening as too much rain.

In Yourba traditions, the great Orisha Ọya-Iyansan is a storm goddess who commands winds, violent storms, and lightning. She is a goddess of death and rebirth who with her destruction brings the necessary changes required to rebuild. Perhaps, we have not honored Ọya as much as we should have or perhaps, the time for change is upon us and Ọya is forcing her hand.

Ra in his solar barque

Of course there are also solar deities. The Ancient Egyptians had Ra the solar deity who represented the sun. Now the mythology

of Egypt was a living religion that changed over thousands of years. He took on different roles and merged with other deities over time. But perhaps, we need to send some prayers out to Ra to come with his boat and bring much needed sun to Texas.

As James Hillman would say, first ask who is there. The rain deities listed here are only a few of the many from cultures around the globe. Once you have identified who is there, the next step is to ask “What do you want?” from the image standing before you. If we are capable of asking such questions, perhaps our eyes will be opened to what the soul of the earth is asking of us at this time and place. Perhaps we should listen.

My Ph.D. dissertation was done as an on-line workshop for family caregivers — specifically adult woman caring for a parent. I’ve now reworked the on-line workshop to be for all caregivers, with a focus towards unpaid caregivers.

Imaginal Mythology Workshop for Caregivers

The workshop is now self-paced and will be available on August 21.  To learn more, click here.