Myth, Story, and Symbol in Film

The Robin Jaqua Archetypal Library will be offering a 10-week series of film and discussion during Winter term. The series will explore the archetypal dimension of myth, story, and symbol using Joseph Campbell's lecture series "The Power of Myth" as a framework. The series is open to the public. We meet on Fridays at 1:30 pm in the library. For more information and to join in a discussion, you can find the library on Facebook.

Week One, January 13:

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, Episode 1: The Hero's Adventure.

In week one we viewed the first episode of the Power of Myth series and discussed the Hero archetype and the Hero's Journey.
Interesting questions were raised which can only be answered on the most personal level: "Am I living out my true call, or have I been diverted by familial or societal pressures? Where do we find the strength to cope with life's difficult challenges? Has the current structure of our society and culture made it difficult to live out all these necessary developmental stages in quest of our full humanity? If we are currently in our elder years, what is it we have brought back from our journey that we now need to share with others?

Week Two, January 20

The 13th Warrior

Using The Thirteenth Warrior (an imaginative re-telling of the Beowulf story) as a film structured by the hero's journey, we discussed the three phases of this archetypal journey: The Departure, The Initiation, and The Return. Each phase has several sub-sections. The Departure is the hero's call to a task, or an involuntary abduction to assist in a task. Setting out from his, own country to unknown lands, he must win the goodwill and help of his warrior companions and develop an understanding of their ways, which are usually very different from his own. In this particular case, Ahmed must prove the value of his horse, a small Arab, against the larger horses of the Viking warriors. He must endure the teasing, ribbing, and humiliation they inflict on him without becoming reactive. He must watch and listen carefully as he begins to understand their ways of thinking. The task he faces with them is that of killing a monster (or monsters) so terrible they cannot be named but who are referred to as "the flesheaters." This monster is poised to attack a village in the far northlands of the Vikings, after wiping out similar villages all along the coast line. In preparing for the attack, Ahmed, a muslim poet and scholar, slowly learns the way of the warrior. Now he enters the Initiation phase: preparing for a great battle in which the thirteen warriors will be greatly outnumbered, participating in the battle, entering the altered state of a "berserker" and killing everything in his path. When he emerges from this altered state, he is a fully initiated warrior and is given mead (a potent drink made from honey) and a woman companion. After further assistance to the Vikings in their battle against the "Wendell" and the mother of the "Wendells" he returns to his own country to write the tales of his great journey, made "in order that Ibn Hassan Ahmed might become a man and a servant of God."

After the viewing of the movie, a lively discussion ensued in which the various developmental stages of every human life were talked about as being reflected in the structuring myth of The Hero's Journey. Every human being must leave the country of "dates and palms" (childhood) and embark on the dangerous process of becoming an adult. Every person leaves for a country "not his/her own" whether it is college, motherhood, the army, a job on a fishing boat or some other call. Each choice involves trials and difficult choices. However it is these choices that strength, character, and integrity are built. One first serves the ego by achieving personal goals and accomplishments. Then, one must learn to serve "the general good" of one's family and society, and then one must learn to submit to the guidance of the Self, a wisdom which lies deep within the soul of every human being. At that point, in the Jungian view, the hero (each of us) achieves full humanity and becomes "a servant of God" (to borrow Ahmed's words.)

Week three, January 28:

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, Episode 2: The Message of the Myth.

On January 27, the Jaqua Jungian Library held a showing of "The Message of the Myth", the second of Joseph Campbell's conversations with Bill Moyers from the popular PBS series, The Power of Myth, followed by a lively discussion around some of the points made by Campbell and Moyers. What are we actually seeking for in life? Campbell claims that we are not searching for the meaning of life so much as for the rapturous experience of being alive. What is the main problem we are attempting to solve as we make our way through life? Jung believed it was the problem of one's individuation, a journey in which the soul attempts to reconcile all the great warring opposites of good and evil, war and peace, abundance and scarcity, the physical and the spiritual, and so on. A theme that Campbell returned to often in the conversation was the role that time itself plays in our life journey--that, in fact, we live in a world of illusion in which everything seems to be divided into opposites but that in the transcendent realm where there is no time, "all is one." Campbell asked: "Is Nature fallen in your myth?" and went on to discuss the Biblical condemnation of Nature as opposed to the Hindu idea that Nature is actually a manifestation of the Divine. What do we mean when we talk about Eternity? Campbell states: "Eternity is right now! If you don't get it here, you won't get it. Life is loss, loss, loss and we cannot escape it...but all is as it should be and we must participate in the Game. It's a wonderful Game, and it hurts!"

One of Campbell's primary points in this second lecture was that myth must be read as "poetry" (for its connotation) rather than as prose or narrative (its denotation.) Myth is like a software program and it takes our lifetime to learn how to read it and grasp its meaning. It will take us to a knowledge of the transcendent if the myth we are living in and using to shape our views is appropriate to the time we are living in. One of the great problems we now face in our culture is that the conditions of life have changed so much since 1900 and so quickly, that no adequate mythology exists that can form a link between men and the Divine. During the Piscean Age, Jung said that the "living water" (the operative mythology) was held by the great collective institutions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in the West, and by Hinduism and Buddhism in the East. Now, in the Aquarian Age, as those institutions begin to fade under our rapidly evolving conditions of life, the "living water" will be carried by individuated souls in the Aquarian Age (the Age of the Water Carriers.) This problem provoked much discussion: "Where do we now find our directions for how to live?"

Week four, February 3:

The Fisher King

On February 3, the Jungian Library will show a film, "The Fisher King" as an example of how we must now find our directions for the journey as we go. The archetypes are still at work, exerting pressure on our souls and creating difficult problems to resolve. This film is a contemporary rendering of the Grail Myth and reveals much about the nature of modern man's traumatized and shattered soul life. Viewers are invited to stay for a discussion following the film.

Library for Jungian Studies & Archetypal Symbolism

808 Pearl St.
Eugene, OR 97401

Tel: 541.484.4458

Email: cgjunglibrary@gmail.com

Hours:
Wednesdays 12pm-3pm

Robin Jaqua Archetypal Library

HEDCO Building (17th & Alder) 2nd Floor
University of Oregon

Hours:
Fridays 12pm-5pm