Heroes and Mystics 2025

     Are leaders and heroes one-in-the-same? I think we can all agree that not all leaders are heroes. In history and in modern society, we see leaders who are corrupt or who run a dictatorship. These can’t possibly be examples of heroes, right? But are all heroes leaders? The definition of leadership is highly contested, however a general definition usually explains that a leader pushes a group toward a common goal. Leaders and heroes are both role models. They both take risks, inspire other people, take responsibility, and show integrity. Heroes and leaders are similar in many, many ways. But are they different enough to be totally separate entities?      I think a main difference between heroes and leaders is the timeline in which they operate. As we have learned from many mythological stories, heroes are often idealized for a single act of bravery and courage. However, leaders often look ahead of the present and work toward a long-term goal which ca...

      " The idea, since forever, has been that story is a conveyance, a vehicle, to use in order to think, to move forward through life. At the end of a life that has meaning, the point is not that one is perfected, but that one will still carry a view of self and the world that is divine—and not just some kind of lazy drift. The point is to have enough stories that guide —that will allow life's closing act to end with one's heart still bright, despite the gales that have passed through it —so that it can be said that one has lived with spiritual audacity." - Campbell 27, Introduction to the 2004 Edition.     This quote probably isn't in your edition of A Hero with A Thousand Faces . It's something exclusive to the 2004 Edition, one I just so happen to have the PDF of. But why mention it? Well, I'd like to tell you a story. This story has touched the hearts of many people, including mine, and I'd like to do the same for all of you. Now, allow me to set...

 Why prose?      Using prose, long or short-form writing allows for a clear laying down of ideas that may be confusing in poems. It allows readers to get lost in the narrative more than the imaginary. Especially since prose is usually easier to read, so readers connect to the characters, settings, and plot. The prose is often more literal, allowing for more truth to come through, whether the story is real or fictional. It connects more with fact than fiction but its use in both makes the fictional feel more real. Why poetry?     Poetry is associated with imagery and metaphorical language, though that's not always true. But this purple language creates a beauty that often obscures literal meanings. Some prefer the ability to interpret texts in their own unique ways. Authors often enjoy this flexibility, as well, since every read is extremely unique to the person's psyche as the reader bases it off of their contexts. 

     As a huge basketball and NBA fan, I get very emotionally invested in the team I root for, the Orlando Magic, and every game I watch them play. While a professional sport like NBA basketball might not seem exactly mythical in theory, any dedicated fan of watching sports would tell you that stories unfold in every game, and inspiring heroes are made in the hearts of the viewer every single night.       One player who is certainly a hero to me is Orlando's star power forward, Paolo Banchero. To provide some context, the Magic are one of the least successful franchises in the league's entire history, being one of only ten teams who have yet to win it all in the playoffs. In fact, until recently, they've never been more than mediocre since I was a toddler. However, with the arrival of Paolo Banchero, the team is seeing a very bright future ahead. Paolo is still very young, having just turned 22, and is only just getting started on his Heroes Journey. ...

     Upon reading just the title of the poem, “In Baghdad, Dreaming of Cairo; In Cairo, Dreaming of Baghdad” written by Rumi, I sensed a theme of wanting what you do not have. This theme would play slightly into the poem but in a more philosophical sense. The theme would start to change to more realizing and appreciating what you have in the present times. To be able to appreciate what you have, we all also have to go through such a great journey just as this wealthy man did to realize his “treasure”. In the case of the man, he had a dream where his “treasure” was in Cairo and he made the journey from Baghdad to Cairo to find it. It is also worthy to mention the fact that it was a dream that told the man where his treasure was. It is not mentioned directly in the poem but dreams are often related to the unconscious waking up and our deepest truths and desires coming forth in symbols. Dreams I also find are similar to paradies of stories we heard or seen but with ourselves...

      While reading pages 49-251 of Hero with a Thousand Faces I was very intrigued with how structured a hero's journey is. Many of our hero's whether they be mystical or nonfictional most of the follow the same path of which consists of the call to adventure, the trials and transformations and the return. Not only does this structure help make for a good story but it is a relatively simplistic way to designate heroes from non-heroes. The one individual that kept popping up in my mind was Thor (The God of Thunder) and his very "heroic" journey throughout his life.  The first of these structures again is the call to adventure: In the case of Thor his call to adventure was more a forced departure which still has the same characteristics of the call to adventure. He is placed into the unknown with no help and no way of getting back to his home which is a highlight of the fact that he needs to fix his character before returning to Asgard. He left a familiar world a...

     When reading Chapter 3 of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, my mind immediately considered how often the hero’s journey ends with them returning home. The reading itself mentioned stories of Gautama and Moses who both returned to where they started after encountering some higher power. In both of their stories, their encounter left them with new found wisdom that they then passed on once they returned from their journey. The first story that I connected to this was the Rumi poem that we discussed in class. In that story, the protagonist undergoes a journey to Cairo. However, he realizes that the thing he was searching for already existed in his home at Baghdad. Campbell mentions in this chapter that perhaps the adventure of the hero is about rediscovery instead of discovery. In the case of the Rumi poem, the protagonist realizes that the satisfaction he was seeking had always been where he started. Although the story ends with him making this realization, its ending do...

   While reading   The Hero With a Thousand Faces,  I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the hero's journey and the 1962 Bob Dylan song 'A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall'. The song is loosely based on the poem 'Lord Randall', with a call-and response format in the verse, and tells a poetic and metaphorical story of the state of the world during the 1960s, with a message that is simultaneously apocalyptical and hopeful. To get a better idea, you should probably listen to the song before reading this if you want to really get it. The song centers around an unnamed hero, whom the n arrator refers to as 'my blue-eyed son' or 'my darling young one'. This is the hero who will go on a metaphorical journey throughout the course of the song. The first verse goes: Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one? I've stumbled on the side of 12 misty mountains I've walked and I crawled on six cro...

  It is in our human nature to seek knowledge, to see truth. The studies of chemistry, physics, biology, or psychology would not be so widely accepted if humankind did not have an inherent thirst for understanding. This is why we are taught that the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian myths were explanations of a world we could not understand. As psychologists such as Sigmund Freud would claim, the lack of understanding the world around us can create a dissonance between ourselves and the world we live in.      After reading “Myth Became Fact” by C.S. Lewis, I have become fascinated with the idea that myths are not fantasies to explain the way the world works, instead myths facilitate the purest form of truth: reality. Myths have outlived the past and they will outlive the present. Even thousands of years later, we are telling the same stories, the same myths. As C.S Lewis wrote: “The myth [...] has outlived the thoughts of all its defenders and all its adversaries. It ...

      I'd never thought that, after the second day of class, I would find myself disagreeing with the ideas posited. This all began when we were posed with the question of what the following sentence meant:  "It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening though which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into the human cultural manifestation."     And the very first thing I thought was, "Myths are explanations for how the world, as we know it, works." Yet, the first thing we are told is that they aren't explanations, but rather truth. In fact, they are some of the first examples of truth that gave birth to their own realities, as reality is based on truth. But this got me thinking; Can truth be without explanation?     Imagine for a moment that you are a 30-something first time parent. Your toddler, let's call her Megan, is sitting in her car seat for a long drive when she asks, "How does a car move?" (now, let's a...

 I just had a few thoughts on what "wilderness of the soul" meant. In class we discussed that it meant uncharted territory within yourself and I thought of Freud's Iceberg analogy where most of the hidden unconscious is the part of the iceberg that remains underwater. There had always been a debate between psychology and religion in regards to what exactly a soul is. Some would say that the soul is the consciousness of the human brain, while others argue it is something spiritual linking us to God. But in response to the wilderness aspect, I do wonder how much of ourselves do we not actually know? I have always thought of myself as someone who knows exactly who I am, but since this class discussion I'm not so sure. Don't get me wrong- I am not upset about this, but I am certainly more curious. It's almost exciting to think about what else I could learn about myself, but also slightly nerve-wracking. What if I learn something new that I don't l...

 Page 4 Michael Taussig would suggest Juan's understanding of the meaning of a place emerges out of the process of an imitation of all the “differences” that we discern there. We mimic (in language and action) the full range of sounds, movements, and other sensory perceptions that come to us from the more than human world.” It’s hard to put a place that strikes us as sublime into mere words; we can try to describe it as a feeling and try to put language to that feeling, but sometimes the feeling of the beauty of nature or the power of a sacred space is too big to try to translate or make sense of. Would every place and experience be subjective, and would the discourse be the same? Would the mountain top make me feel the same as another? Or does my personal experience with the natural world and divine keep it intimate/ unique, or would my experience be relatable enough? The author uses the messiness, ambiguity, and mystery of people's deeply personal experience of ...

 Welcome to the Heroes and Mystics blog for 2025. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry (Just as I have done with this post). . Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The studen...