Pacifica Graduate Institute

Messages from the Past
The Writings of Joseph Campbell
Saturday, April 17, 11:00am–12:30pm

Richard Buchen
Joseph Campbell's lifetime of prolific writings has inspired artists, teachers, poets, musicians, filmmakers, scholars, healers, and leaders. One hundred years after his birth, they continue to stir the imagination of young and old alike.

Pacifica Graduate Institute is honored to have the personal libraries and archives of Joseph Campbell on its campus. The Joseph Campbell Collection consists of nearly 3,000 volumes in the fields of literature, the arts, philosophy, religion, and mythology. Many are rare and most are inscribed with marginalia. The collection also contains letters, photographs, memorabilia, audiotapes, videotapes, and manuscripts. Other manuscripts, such as his fiction, were never published and give us clues to his thoughts and ideas that were not known to the public. In this talk, Richard Buchen, will share many unique and little known treasures he tends as Pacifica's Special Collections Librarian—some of which shed light on how Joseph Campbell researched, organized, and wrote the books that made him famous.

The Olympic Odyssey
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mythic Sports
Friday, April 16, 8:00pm–9:30pm

Phil Cousineau
In the 1920s, Joseph Campbell was one of the fastest half-milers in the world while running for Columbia University. He toured the country with Jackson Scholz, who went on to race at the 1924 Paris Olympics. Scholz is portrayed in the acclaimed movie, Chariots of Fire, as the American racing the Scot and the English runners. Campbell would have joined them—but lost his very last race by a hair's breadth at the Olympic trials in Honolulu. He was so devastated by this he rarely spoke about his own athletic career again. But he did frequently use sporting metaphors and talked and wrote about the gods-as-athletes.

In his most recent book, The Olympic Odyssey: Rekindling the True Spirit of the Great Games, Phil Cousineau explores this aspect of Joseph Campbell's life. Through anecdotal tales, film, and slides, this presentation will trace the "mythic motivation" which James Hillman and others have shown is at the root of our fan-a-tical devotion to sports.

Journeying Through Myth as a Means of Growth for Person and Society
Sunday, April 18, 11:00am–12:30pm

Jean Houston
In her experience of working in many societies throughout the world with a mythical figure or a historical person who has through time and legend been rendered mythic, Jean Houston enables people to see the experience of their own lives reflected in and ennobled by the story of a great life. Such work leads people into the discovery of their own larger story, for when actively pursued, myth leads us from the personal-particular concerns and frustrations of our everyday lives to the broader perspective of the personal-universal.

Working with myth, we assume the passion and the pathos of Isis as she seeks to recover the remains of her husband Osiris. We explore new ways of peacemaking with Gandhi. With the Persian mystic and teacher Rumi, we search for the beloved of the soul. After becoming Isis and Odysseus and White Buffalo Woman and Emily Dickinson, we return to our own life deepened and enhanced, filled with a sense of the fractal resonance of the mythic life within our own. Having assumed the ancient stories and their persona, having walked in the shoes of folk who lived at their edges, we inherit a cache of experience that illumines and fortifies our own.

The Fire is in the Mind
Who is the True Disciple?
Saturday, April 17, 8:30am–10:15am

David Miller
Joseph Campbell is noted for giving the advice to follow one's own bliss. However, there is a possible awkwardness in living out this recommendation—namely, that one might end up following Campbell's bliss and not one's own, and that by following one's bliss a person might make it difficult for another to follow his or her bliss. In this talk, Dr. Miller will examine this two-edged dilemma in relation to the rich intellectual heritage of Campbell's critique of mythology, the fire of his mythic mind.

Bebrooding a Few Ideas
Joseph Campbell's Journaling into Destiny
Saturday, April 17, 4:15pm–5:45pm

Dennis Patrick Slattery
At age 50, Joseph Campbell found his bliss as he walked the streets of Bombay "bebrooding a few ideas," as he coins the word. He called his life's work Comparative Mythology. His travels coalesced for him the existence of a common substratum to all myths, a bedrock monomyth that emanates out in different local inflections of a similar story.

Journaling and journeying are two aspects of a single process. They both push one into the strange and familiar territories of an interior travel and outward to recall the external lineaments of a personal adventure. Joseph Campbell's two massive journals, which he wrote during his year-long travels to India and Japan in 1954-55, offer us close to 800 pages of how his pilgrimage pointed him conclusively to his life's work. Baksheesh and Brahman comprise his Asian journals in India, while Sake and Satori record his impressions of Japan and southeast Asia.

In the journals we glimpse Campbell's way of computing his expressions—very exact, detailed, funny, frustrating, irreverent, and always full of vitality. They reveal how the man and the myth met on the road, acknowledged one another and agreed to become life long partners. Perhaps he reveals to all of us how journaling and journeying are two of the most beneficial corridors one can travel to discover one's own destiny.

Nancy Cater, Ramona Rubio, and Richard Stromer
The Mythological Studies Program at Pacifica trains doctoral students to conduct interdisciplinary research on topics pertaining to the myths of particular cultural traditions and religions, depth psychology, literature, art, and the mythic aspects of contemporary culture. It encourages both traditional research on classic texts and innovative studies that include a mythopoetic component.
This session will feature the work of three graduates who exemplify the program's unique approach to understanding the abiding power of myth in a postmodern world. Utilizing the work of Campbell and Jung, one study explores the idea of personal mythology as an approach for engaging in the search for a more personal relationship with the sacred. Using the life and work of the modern American poet, Sylvia Plath, the second study re-envisions the Greek myth of Electra from a Jungian perspective to show how it elucidates the psychology of modern women. The third exemplary dissertation examines the phenomenon of ritual tattooing in contemporary Western culture to reveal its archetypal imprint and initiatory significance.

James Brady, Maren Hansen, and Gerald McDermott
Joseph Campbell taught us that myth reflects psychology, religion, art, literature, and cultural studies. This interdisciplinary approach, as well as the way myth simultaneously speaks to the inner and outer life, makes it a rich educational medium. Yet, a survey of America's current educational landscape suggests that myth has at best only a marginal place. In this session, three local innovators describe their ways of greening this educational wasteland. Jim Brady leads middle school students on mythic week-long bicycling trips throughout the Americas, intermingling the challenges of daily bicycling with campfire tales of the Hero's Journey. Maren Hansen is developing "Myth as Mentor", a curriculum for teaching myth to adolescents with the express purpose of stimulating psychological development. Gerald McDermott evokes the magic of world myths for children through his gloriously illustrated storybooks, as well as being a featured speaker to educators.

The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work
A Special Screening of the Film
Saturday, April 17, 8:00pm–10:00pm

An intimate portrait of Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey follows Campbell's own quest, or pathless journey of questioning, discovery, and ultimately of a delight and joy in a life to which he said "yes." Joseph Campbell spent most of his long life understanding how myths speak to us in our own life, and by what myths we are living today. In understanding the importance of myth as a vital source that shapes our lives, Campbell inspired many to find that source within themselves. In the film, George Lucas speaks of the influence Campbell had on his life, ideas, and movies.