Blog - OPUS Archives and Research Center

If you are not aware of the Joseph Campbell Foundation’s fabulous MythNow Blog, you are now!

JCF Associate Brad Olson, Ph.D. joined Opus, JCF and Pacifica for the Symposium for the Study of Myth that we co-hosted on Labor Day Weekend. Brad was inspired by some of the presentations and conversations that took place over the weekend and has written a great blog article that “examines Petrarch’s mind-expanding “peak” experience to reveal a surprising resonance between disturbance and discovery”. Check it out by clicking here. Feel free to make any comments here, conversation is welcome!

We’re so excited to share this fabulous news! New Mythos Grant winner and Pacifica alumnus, Kwame Scruggs, Ph.D. and his non-profit organization, Alchemy, Inc., has been honored at the White House with the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award!

First Lady, Michelle Obama, presented Kwame with this distinguished award for his inspirational and successful work of bringing myth and drumming to urban settings. Opus sends heartfelt congratulations to Kwame for this wonderful achievement! For more on this story, please click here to read an interview with Kwame himself.

Don’t forget to read too about the extraordinary work Kwame has been able to accomplish through the 2010 New Mythos Research Grant awarded to him by Opus Archives: Myth, Mentoring, Initiation, and the Prima Materia: A Black, Blacker than Black. Voices of Urban Male Adolescent Youth.

The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and the power to serve others.

~Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Bee Goddess of Rhodes

The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM) has announced a call for papers for their upcoming biennial symposium, ‘Lady of Ten Thousand Lakes: Finding Wisdom in Places‘. The symposium will be held in St. Paul, Minnesota on April 20, 2013.

The ASWM is a wonderful group of brilliant and creative scholars, students and artists. “The goal of ASWM is to support the work of those whose scholarly/creative endeavors explore or elucidate aspects of the sacred feminine, women and mythology.”

Lady of Ten Thousand Lakes: Finding Wisdom in Places

Call for Papers

Much of mythology is grounded in place. Suggested topics for this symposium might include, but are not limited to, the following:

How do and should the scholarship in Goddess Studies and Women’s Mythology and Spirituality engage with the sense and reality of place? What women’s myths are especially grounded in a place or places? What happens when such disciplines as Natural History, Ecology, and other sciences of place interact with Women and Mythology?

What does place mean methodologically? How does our scholarship change when place becomes an element or partner in our research? How does this intersect with Embodied Research or Embodied Methodologies? What are the criteria for solid scholarship using these new models?

Do issues of place add an activist quality to our scholarship? Does activism have a place in scholarship? What does it mean to find wisdom in places?

Visit ASWM’s website for more information and instructions on submitting a proposal by clicking here.

We certainly find ourselves living in interesting times, and our dreams are reflecting not only the challenges, surprises and graces that we find in our outer waking lives, but also what is being evoked and felt deeply in our inner dreaming lives. Dreams are the medicines of the soul, individually and collectively. Remember what Joseph Campbell said, “Dreams are private myths, and myths and are public dreams”.

: Art mimics nature…

The weekend of November 9^th -11^th, Steve Aizenstat, Robert Bosnak and Maren Hansen are giving a public program called “Dreams: Medicines of the Soul”, and all proceeds will benefit Opus Archives and Research Center.

The weekend will be an exploration of dreaming psyche through the ancient Asklepian tradition of dream healing. If you have been feeling the call to engage more deeply with dreaming psyche, I hope you will come to this event and support Opus at the same time. For more information and to register, please visit Pacifica’s Public Program here.

If you are not planning to come to this event, please consider making a donation to Opus directly. You can do so by clicking here.

Thank you!

Safron Rossi, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Opus Archives and Research Center is a non-profit research center, on the campuses of Pacifica Graduate Institute, that houses the archives of Joseph Campbell, Marija Gimbutas, James Hillman, Jane and Joseph Wheelwright, Christine Downing, Marion Woodman, Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig, and Katie Sanford. In addition to safeguarding these important resources, Opus works to foster ongoing research in the fields of depth psychology and mythological studies.

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