{"id":960,"date":"2012-01-19T14:43:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-19T20:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/?p=960"},"modified":"2012-01-19T14:43:28","modified_gmt":"2012-01-19T20:43:28","slug":"finding-joe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Joe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n
Finding Joe, the movie<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe<\/a>.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell\u2019s monomyth or \u201cJourney of the Hero\u201d as they call it in the movie.\u00a0 I bought it and didn\u2019t regret it.\u00a0 It presents the monomyth in terms that a layperson unfamiliar with Campbell can understand.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking for a biography of Campbell or a study of ancient myth, this is not it.\u00a0 The movie tells the story of the monomyth in very general terms and only tangentially and infrequently mentions ancient myth.\u00a0 Instead, it presents the theory in terms that people who are not interested in mythology, but are interested in personal development, can appreciate.\u00a0 The imagery is beautiful and the soundtrack is moving, if somewhat monotonous.\u00a0 The movie has children playing various parts in the monomyth and it is beautifully filmed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Hero<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I showed it to my wife and my 12 year old son, and they loved it.\u00a0 I was a little disappointed that it did not discuss ancient myth more, but this makes it more accessible to a general audience.<\/p>\n

Campbell\u2019s monomyth has always been a powerful influence on me.\u00a0 I first picked up The Hero With a Thousand Faces <\/em>in a train station bookstore on my way to college.\u00a0 Later I read the Masks of God <\/em>trilogy and other books by Campbell.\u00a0 When I started exploring Paganism and my wife was wondering what the hell I was involved with, I drew on Campbell\u2019s Hero <\/em>to explain it:<\/p>\n

Everybody has a \u2018secret life\u2019 or a secret part of themselves.\u00a0 If somebody doesn\u2019t think they do, it\u2019s just because that secret part is secret even from them.\u00a0 And not everything that is in the secret place is pretty, nor is everything in that place ugly just because it is secret.\u00a0 That is what Joseph Campbell meant when he wrote: The unconscious is that<\/p>\n

\u201crealm we enter in sleep. We carry it within ourselves forever.\u00a0 All the ogres and secret helpers of the nursery are there, all the magic of childhood.\u00a0 And more importantly, all the life-potentialities that we never managed to bring to adult realisation, those other portions of ourselves, are there; for such golden seeds do not die.\u00a0 If only a portion of that lost totality could be dredged up into the light of day, we should experience a marvelous expansion of our powers, a vivid renewal of life.\u00a0 We would tower in stature.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

What I\u2019m involved in now is an exploration of that place (of the \u201cogres\u201d and \u201csecret helpers\u201d), through myth and symbol and ritual. This exploration, this journey, is what is sacred to me. [\u2026]<\/p>\n

In addition to the myths of the seasonal cycle, cultures across time have told stories of a symbolic hero who journeys to the underworld to accomplish some task, and returns bringing light or enlightenment to the world.\u00a0 Joseph Campbell calls this the \u201cmonomyth\u201d, because, while the stories vary in their details, they all have the same structure. [\u2026]<\/p>\n

This \u201chero\u2019s journey\u201d, as Campbell points out, is reflective of a psychological journey that leads to the reconciliation of our divided psyche and spiritual wholeness.\u00a0 He draws on Jung heavily.\u00a0 Campbell and Jung and others like him were concerned that, as many people experience a loss of meaning of traditional religious symbols and rituals, that they are left without \u201cguides\u201d to help them in their journey.\u00a0 Their world becomes overly rational, devoid of the richness that symbol and myth bring to one\u2019s life.\u00a0 They attributed the pandemic of \u201csoul-sickness\u201d that they saw to this rootlessness.\u00a0 Jung suggested that we needed new myths, but only began to hint at an outline of one.\u00a0 Campbell, on the other hand, offered his readers the myths of myriad cultures as substitute guides.\u00a0 This is what he meant when he wrote: We do not have<\/p>\n

\u201cto risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us \u2014 the labyrinth [the path to the unconscious] is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path [the myths], and where we had thought to find an abomination [the \u201cogres\u201d], we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I am researching these myths, studying them, picking and choosing, part-deliberately and part-intuitively, integrating them, and creating myths for myself and rituals to accompany them.<\/p>\n

I have seen reviews of the film that said it was like an infomercial, filled with talking heads, redundant and platitudinous.\u00a0 I can certainly understand those reactions.\u00a0 But I love Campbell and his message too much not to love this movie.<\/p>\n

As I watched Finding Joe <\/em>with my family, the word that kept coming to mind, strangely enough, was \u201cgospel\u201d, as in \u201cgood news\u201d.\u00a0 I thought, \u201cThis is my gospel!\u201d\u00a0 Perhaps it was because the movie had an almost missionary-like atmosphere to it that reminded me of movies produced by the the Mormon church<\/a> for their missionary efforts.\u00a0 In any case, although this no one featured in this movie was Neopagan, I felt that it truly captured the reason for my interest in Neopaganism.\u00a0
\n<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell\u2019s monomyth or \u201cJourney of the Hero\u201d as they call it in the movie.\u00a0 I bought it and didn\u2019t regret it.\u00a0 It presents the monomyth in terms that a layperson unfamiliar with Campbell can understand.\u00a0 If you\u2019re looking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,349],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-joseph-campbell","tag-monomyth"],"yoast_head":"\nFinding Joe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell's monomyth or "Journey of the Hero" as they call\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding Joe\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell's monomyth or "Journey of the Hero" as they call\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Allergic Pagan\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-01-19T20:43:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/files\/2012\/01\/finding-joe-poster.jpeg?w=231\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"John Halstead\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"John Halstead\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/\",\"name\":\"Finding Joe\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-01-19T20:43:28+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-01-19T20:43:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#\/schema\/person\/86a4cdab2fc73a27db39787f483e4c4b\"},\"description\":\"Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell's monomyth or \\\"Journey of the Hero\\\" as they call\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Finding Joe\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/\",\"name\":\"The Allergic Pagan\",\"description\":\"My search for the sensible transcendental.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#\/schema\/person\/86a4cdab2fc73a27db39787f483e4c4b\",\"name\":\"John Halstead\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9317e24f4cd4250e589cbcd98a70be51?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9317e24f4cd4250e589cbcd98a70be51?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"John Halstead\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/author\/allergicpagan\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Finding Joe","description":"Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell's monomyth or \"Journey of the Hero\" as they call","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Finding Joe","og_description":"Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell's monomyth or \"Journey of the Hero\" as they call","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/","og_site_name":"The Allergic Pagan","article_published_time":"2012-01-19T20:43:28+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/files\/2012\/01\/finding-joe-poster.jpeg?w=231"}],"author":"John Halstead","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"John Halstead","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/","name":"Finding Joe","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#website"},"datePublished":"2012-01-19T20:43:28+00:00","dateModified":"2012-01-19T20:43:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#\/schema\/person\/86a4cdab2fc73a27db39787f483e4c4b"},"description":"Finding Joe, the movie You should really check out this movie: Finding Joe.\u00a0 It is about Joseph Campbell's monomyth or \"Journey of the Hero\" as they call","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/2012\/01\/19\/finding-joe\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Finding Joe"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/","name":"The Allergic Pagan","description":"My search for the sensible transcendental.","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#\/schema\/person\/86a4cdab2fc73a27db39787f483e4c4b","name":"John Halstead","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9317e24f4cd4250e589cbcd98a70be51?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/9317e24f4cd4250e589cbcd98a70be51?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"John Halstead"},"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/author\/allergicpagan\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/allergicpagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}