The hero's journey is not mythology's only story....
The Chinese proverb “there are many paths up the mountain” has stuck with me ever since my teacher said it in India 2017. The initial spiritual teachings which I followed were rooted in yogic traditions. Although they were deeply significant in assisting me with development and healing, there came a time where I felt I was denying so much of my colourful emotional spectrum which I came to know as a wonderful part of being a human. Myth has offered me another pathway for my spiritual journey.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
This quote by Joseph Campbell captures why I have fallen in love with mythology as a roadmap through life, there is so much expression and variety of experience held within them. The myths teach us about the stories of these great beings who are the archetypal forces which exist within each one of us. We can read about their lives and through them come know the many pathways that we can expect to pass through whilst being human. It’s through the tales of their descending to the depths and rising into the light we are taught the frameworks for evolutionary living.
We can also see the role that each emotional state plays for us and how to lean in to shift through them into higher states of consciousness. We can see how the depths of anger, despair, isolation, of forgetting who we are paves the road to our own becoming and living from our fullness. Through reading theses stories we can find meaning whilst we are walking through the more challenging times and also unlock the key energetic pieces required in order for a shift to be created.
A common mythological teaching or theme that we have all heard of is the hero’s journey. This is often called a mono-myth. However, there are so many more evolutionary pathways held within mythology that to only focus on this one is to miss other significant teachings about what we can expect to move through and how we move through it. Different people will resonate with different myths depending on the patterns that extend through them. Perhaps the myths can all be joined in by the overarching heroes journey. However there are more detailed paths, finer teachings and other stories that are here to offer us guidance through the many patterns of living.
It’s within the stories that various alchemical teachings and transformations are conveyed, we can understand the nature of things through a lens which is entirely different to the one many of us have grown up perceiving through. Religion or science are the most common two for explaining the nature of our existence. However mythology is another way and it offers us a roadmap through the psyche and into a spiritual evolution of consciousness through this realm.
The myths can be seen on a multiplicity of layers, they teach us about cosmic events, archetypes and the dynamic relationships between archetypes amongst other things.
Speaking as a woman, I have found so much richness in the colourful mythologies of Egypt as a way to embrace life in all its depth. We can read the story of Isis, the great Goddess temporarily forgetting who she is, cutting off her hair and roaming the land grieving and see ourselves in the many stages of her story. The rage of Sekhmet transformed into fiercely loving compassion, or the Grandmother Creatrix, Star mother Neith who pulled out creation from the desires she held within herself.
I have found so much depth and comfort in reading about the Goddess’s and their transformational pathways. Their stories are not separate from our own. Through contemplating each one we can learn how to recognise the myths flowing through our own inner and outer worlds. Its not to say the outer event is the same but it's learning to read the unseen energies which move beneath the stories is the part which will really open us to their depths. Myths are not fixed in the past, they are alive and moving through all of humanity as we play out their elaborate dramas through ourselves.
As Richard Rudd says, “drama has transformation woven through it” . Know these dramas and know the many faces of our own through the human experience, as well as the opportunity of growth into higher states of consciousness that each one presents.
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