What We Mean When We Say "Mythopoetics" (The Long Version)
Some Historical Background and Visioning from The School of Mythopoetics
The term “mythopoetic” was first coined by Professor Shepard Bliss to describe a trend, gaining momentum in the early 80’s, that made use of mythical stories and concepts from Jungian psychology to explore the relationship between big cultural narratives and how they relate to our personal lives.
Mythopoetics appeared at that time as a practice of working with stories through the medium of writing, as well as in group contexts. Several key figures emerged as foundational to the movement including Marion Woodman, Robert Bly, and Clarissa Pinkola Estes, whose books had strong themes exploring the process of maturation through various folktales and broader anthropological study. We can see the movement at this time grappling with how bereft the West is of true cultural roots.
The breakthrough works contributed by these writers like Iron John: A Book about Men, Women Who Run With the Wolves, and Dancing in The Flames practice something called exegesis. They interpret or draw meaning out of their subject, be it a folktale or a broader historical narrative. For many that's the extent of what “mythopoetics” is. It’s a way to cultivate meaning. It helps us see something we believe we know with new eyes. But this is only the beginning. Once our eyes are open, once we can see, what more becomes available to us? What more can we become?
(photo by Joshua J. Cotten)
One other historical touch point for the word itself comes from a term coined by J.R.R. Tolkien in the 1930’s: “mythopoeia.” Tolkien’s term expresses the etymological roots directly. Mytho- pertaining to story and -poeia, the root of the word poetry, meaning “to make.” As one can see, Tolkien was in the business of myth-making. His sweeping fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings still looms large in the zeitgeist of our time.
Let’s acknowledge that this term “mythopoetic” is inexact in its use during the 90’s, Tolkien’s term being truer to its etymological roots. The mythopoetic movement did not invite us to make myths. It brought poetry and myth together as a way to illuminate deeper meanings to life. It centered beauty and began to hint at what we’d lost in the West, but it perhaps fell short of teaching us to see with the eyes it had newly opened.
As a term it's perhaps appropriate that it's inexact. It asks us to dance with it, to look at it sideways as it does the same to us, to study it in the way a painter studies their subject. The beauty in its inexactness is that it invites us to wonder about it. It beckons us deeper into a wilderness that remains sovereign even in this world where the paradigm of one-to-one meanings of words, of dualistic thinking, of black-and-white materialism reigns supreme.
As we tread forward word by word, trying to catch a glimpse of something that will hopefully always be a few steps ahead of us, let's keep playful and curious. Let us not fall into the trap of trying to define something once and for all.
One way to understand mythopoetics, might be as the practice of living life mythically, or making life mythically.
Poet Diane di Prima writes in a poem called “Rant”:
There is no way you can not have a poetics no matter what you do: plumber, baker, teacher you do it in the consciousness of making or not making yr world you have a poetics: you step into the world like a suit of readymade clothes or you etch in light your firmament spills into the shape of your room the shape of the poem, of yr body, of yr loves A woman's life / a man's life is an allegory Dig it
When we invite myth into the poetics of our lives, we find ourselves caught by epic or enigmatic images that somehow make their way into our day-to-day, both in the physical and imaginal dimension. We become fascinated by our dreams and find them delivering “sideways” out-of-time messages to u,s as we navigate a sea of shifting circumstances and relationships. We recognize and call on invisible forces whose existence our western world denies, such as ancestors, nature spirits, divine beings, and the informing spirit of our soul.
(photo by Simon Wilkes)
Mythopoetics might be a modern way to practice what human beings have done as a matter of course far back into prehistory. We are but one facet of a great ecology, and one of the most responsible things we can do in light of that is to respect (re-spect, or re-see) ourselves as a part of that, as part of the great story. We re-member, we make ourselves again a member, of the World Soul. And we do this through the practice of making beauty. Beautiful speech. Beautiful gesture. Beautiful loving. Beautiful creation. Beautiful beholding.
I would suggest that what we mean when we talk about “mythopoetics” has everything to do with experiencing the world’s animacy. Stories teach us and illuminate reality so we might be in a better relationship with forces far beyond us.
Initially animism held a derisive connotation, being used to describe the belief in “primitive,” and therefore inferior, cultures that the world is imbued with life force, spirit, or soul. In recent decades it has been reclaimed as a foundational understanding within earth-rooted, dare I say, healthy human culture’s that give them the ability to create systems that orient and balance them with the natural world.
What becomes evident if one takes seriously the perspective offered in folktale and myth is that this world is deeply relational. These old stories come from cultures that were to varying degrees earth-rooted, or were at least closer to being earth-rooted than modern western culture is. They were contending with forces both seen and unseen and their stories hold knowledge and wisdom about how to proceed with that contending.
(photo by Anastasiya Romanova)
A strong contingent of authors who wrote in the mythopoetic milieu were seeing how the folktales and myths they worked with were undermining the cultural norms of the West, and their writing attempts to transmit what they were seeing. We can confidently say they were reaching backward in time to the cultures from which their people came, who were still rooted in their membership to the wild world.
Indigenous teachers and practices also became a part of the movement. In some instances this looked like full-blown cultural appropriation of Native American tradition, and in others meant the blessed opportunity to hear directly from wisdom carriers from intact traditions, such as Malidoma and Sobonfu Somé of the Dagara tribe in Burkina Fasso.
If we take the two historical reference points we’ve named–Tolkien’s mythopoeia and the mythopoetics of the 90’s–we can maybe see two halves of a whole. In the 90’s there was a lot of intellectual work being done to draw meaning out of old stories to help understand life now. Tolkien on the other hand worked with mythic themes to create a story that's had lasting and substantial impact. What lies in the space between these two approaches is the task of working with mythic images, stories, and themes to shape our lives into a tale of mythic beauty and import. By this we don’t mean imposing the narrative structure of the Hero’s Journey on your life to make sense of it. There’s something much more intricate, nuanced, and participatory here. There’s something that is much more preoccupied with beauty, grief, longing, and love, than with making sense of things. This is a way of opening ourselves to the most grand and harrowing experiences of life, because that is the nature of myth. It’s the stuff of life. And it definitely contradicts the messaging western consumerism constantly feeds us as it attempts to seduce us into a stupor of comfort.
What we don’t necessarily get from the mythopoetic movement of the 90’s is a sense that there is something for us to do with myth. Weekend retreats run by Robert Bly, Michael Meade, and James Hillman were noted for being impactful for what they were, but perhaps not empowering their attendees with skills and practices to take into their lives. They also did not seed communities that could share in the insights and shifts of perspective they gained. These weekend experiences were perhaps simply not capable of making a considerable impact on the indoctrination imposed by western culture. But 30+ years on, this beast seems to be dragging people out into the woods once again.
We at The School of Mythopoetics have picked up where the movement of the 90’s left off. We’re stoking the fires of lived practice and animist vision. We’re lighting the hearth for community to form. And we’re expanding beyond colonised/appropriative narratives and interpretations, and the preoccupation with the dichotomy between masculine and feminine. There’s something calling us to re-see the world around us with the eyes of the youngest child. And we know how necessary guides and helpers will be for us to not succumb to the ways our culture defines adulthood.
Di Prima again writes:
THE ONLY WAR THAT MATTERS IS THE WAR ON THE IMAGINATION ALL OTHER WARS ARE SUBSUMED IN IT
Mythopoetics, more than a word, becomes a way of seeing, experiencing, and orienting life, imbuing it with meaning, making it with beauty, both tender and fierce.
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As always, keep it mythic friends!
Rainer Moon Raven