When we tell our stories, we open opportunities for others to share their stories. If we engage with each other, we will find common patterns, symbols, and themes that can grow our confidence and strengthen our social bonds. My theory is that storytelling is a key component to the life journey. Through my work, as an educator, writer, mother, publisher, and curriculum developer, identifying symbols, archetypes, and themes from my personal unconscious using literature, meditation, and art has allowed me to move toward my path of completion and wholeness.  

Storytelling can open doors to self-discovery. This project explores methods of awareness that lead to the unlearning of the myths told to many in our society. This review of literature on storytelling as a form of rhetoric with attention paid to the power of archetypes and themes will explore these ideas and review literature on adult transformational learning theory, rhetorical dimensions of myth and narrative, and the use of art, and literature to bring conscious awareness to archetypes and themes that can inform learners and possibly guide them toward a desire to discover and/or write their own personal myth. These tools can create communities as we discover that we live in a collective classroom.

STORYTELLING

For thousands of years, the stories of society have harmed vulnerable groups, but the focus of this project proposal is the impact on women. It is time to reclaim personal power. In my own life, I stagnated my natural feminine intuition and wisdom when I allowed myself to be influenced by societal messaging and myths. The most damaging were the ones that told me that my purpose and worth were dependent upon fulfilling society’s demand for me to become a wife and mother. 

A society of people living their best lives, utilizing tools for self-discovery, benefits us all. The world is changing. Old traditions and stories no longer serve humanity. Narratives are changing. Maya Zuckerman states that the “Collective Journey is a nonlinear, multi-platform, physical and digital experience and story of several diverse people, groups, tribes, networks, coming together for a higher purpose and a common cause” (7). Zuckerman’s position is that stories make us human and new narratives are crucial in times of transformation. 

If it is a problem to believe the stories that lead us away from our authentic selves, unlearning may be a key to the solution. This project will utilize storytelling as a tool to personal transformation. It is built on a foundation that storytelling is a rhetorical form of persuasion. Storytelling is the oldest form of rhetoric (Smith 18) and this historical tool is used to make sense of our experiences

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, is a senior Jungian analyst as well as the author of Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. She tells us that: “Stories are medicine” (504). “Story cannot be ‘studied’. It is learned through assimilation, thorough living in its proximity with those who know it, live it, and teach it–more so through all the day-to-day mundane tasks of life…” (505). She further elaborates that stories are full of archetypal energy which could be metaphorically “described as being like electricity” (509) that can “animate and enlighten”. She believes that archetypes can change us and without this contact there is no transmission of story that leaves the listener with “only rhetorical translation or self-interested aggrandizement” (509). As she finishes her afterword of this large collection, she hopes that we “will go out and let stories, that is life, happen to you and that you will work with the stories from your life…not someone else’s life…till you yourself burst into bloom. That is the work. The only work” (511).  

 TRANSFORMATIONAL ADULT LEARNING THEORY

The life cycle of the butterfly from caterpillar to chrysalis to adult is known as a representation of transformation. For anyone who has watched one pump color into the wings and take its first flight they are left with a sense of wonder and awe. Transformational Learning Theory allows learners to breakout and develop, like the butterfly, elevating and expanding their viewpoint of themselves and the world. If learning was directed at nurturing the soul, greater levels of self-awareness and consciousness may emerge in our society. We live in a time that requires life-long learning as we struggle to make meaning of the ever-changing world around us. Transformative learning can guide the human spirit through a maze of self, society, language, and culture. Soul connects the individual to their world.

Jack Mezirow is credited with the linear process of transformational learning, but as Lisa Baumgartner has written, the theory has grown and expanded since it is a “complex process involving thoughts and feelings” (18). Research using Mezirow’s theory provide insight to the importance of relationships, feelings, and context. There are prior experiences that include what people believe in and how they react to certain situations and include their desires, dreams, perspectives, and faith (Valamis). The learner has lived prior experiences which shape how they perceive things around themselves. An event will occur that will shake this foundation. “In sum, it is important to remember that transformational learning process involves emotions” (Baumgartner 21). 

A sudden event or a long culmination of disruptive experiences can initiate a transformational learning moment.  Mezirow’s theory looks for how adults make sense of these new out-of-order moments. Merriam and Baumgartner, describe Mezirow’s psychocritical approach as a 10-step model with four components: experience, critical reflection, reflective discourse, and action. The learner must dig deep into the experience, talk with others about his or her new viewpoint to gain new judgement, and then act on the new perspective. They further note that, “culture, spirituality, relationships, and emotion affect the transformative learning process” (172). 

Transformational Learning theory challenges traditional forms of teaching and learning. “Our journey of self-knowledge also requires that we care for and nurture the presence of the soul dimension in teaching and learning” (Dirkx 80). Images can play a role in teaching us to learn from the soul.  Dirkx shares that “to explore an idea means to also give voice to the images that shape its value and meaning for the participants” (85) and further proposes that learning rooted in nourishing soul can enable individuals to find their way in the world.

We collectively live and learn together in what I would like to call a Classroom of Earth Citizens. As Ilchi Lee says in his book, I’ve Decided to Live 120 Years, “we have a responsibility to make our lives a blessing for the planet and for the people we love, as well as ourselves” (17). If the first half of life is a search for success, the second half of life is completion. “Completion means everything is realized and to make complete or whole. What do you make complete? Yourself, your life” (44). Lee advises, “We all ask at some point in our lives, ‘Who Am I?’…and…Humans are the only animals that ask, ‘Who Am I?’” (45). We are wired to search for life’s meaning and to pursue wholeness.

I argue that we lose touch with this quest when we attempt to conform to societal messages of who we should be. It stunts us from becoming who we were born to be and puts a wall between our instinctual understanding of our personal destiny. Lee tells us that, “we need not grieve the labels we once used to define ourselves…we can now live as the people we really want to be, filling our lives with what we want and adjusting our pace for ourselves” (49).

Carl Gustav Jung, born in 1875, can be considered the first modern transformation guide. Viviane Crowley notes in Jung: A Journey of Transformation: Exploring his Life and Experiencing His Ideas that “C.G. Jung is world famous as a doctor of the soul” (9). He believed that self-realization is simply a journey to meet the Self and is essential for personal well-being. He guided his patients to take personal responsibility, rather than dogma or doctrine, to make their own decisions about truth based on one’s own experiences. Over the years, many of his immediate students and enthusiasts have found ways to introduce his work to a wider audience. 

Jung is credited with creating a vision for the future that continues to exist for us today. He introduced us to personality types, extroversion, and introversion, the masculine and feminine within, Ego and Shadow, as well as the search for the true Self. The spiritual goal for all of us is find and realize our true self which Jung called Individuation. Viviane Crowley shares that “Jung saw individuation as the most important goal in life – the process by which we become truly ourselves. We evolve and eventually arrive at true self-acceptance and integration” and she goes onto to summarize that: 

“It means that all masks and pretenses must be stripped away. In the process of individuation, we each find our own vocation – our life’s work and what it is we are meant to do. For each of us has a unique destiny and a significant role to play in the great human drama” (36). 

Sharon Blackie tells her members that “Individuation …is the alchemical great work – it’s about how we might grow into our most authentic self as we journey through life…and into elderhood eventually…” (Hagitude, Module 4). Estés notes that when we are younger, we are guided by society and family, and we become what is expected of us. Jung called this the Persona. It is our mask presented to the outside world. The goal of individuation is to release the persona and embrace the changes needed to align ourselves with our passions, callings, and longings. 

When Jung published his study of mythology, Symbols of Transformation, before World War I, he began to make a mark on the world. Until his death in 1961, just as he was completing his final writings in Man and His Symbols, he contributed ideas, methods, and psychological techniques for our personal use. With or without knowing it, Ilchi Lee, confirms Jung’s proposal that the first half of our lives is for satisfying the needs of the Ego and accomplishing outer achievements as we build our families and contribute to the social and economic world. Jung believed that the second half of life had a deeper purpose to connect us with a deeper and wiser understanding of our strengths and weaknesses and who we really are or are meant to be. This is work of uncovering and discovering our Self. 

MYTH AND NARRATIVES

James Herrick explores the relationship between stories and arguments in his essay “Narration and Argument”. He presents these main points about narrative, it brings arguments to life, sets ideas in contrast, allows marginalized voices to speak, can win over the audience with humor, focuses attention, and builds community. Rhetoric also follows the main points of narrative through its persuasive nature. Smith shares Aristotle’s position that “intrapersonal rhetoric is often converted to interpersonal persuasion: the way we persuade ourselves, is the way we persuade others” (2). He also states that, “rhetoric is essential to human existence because it can deal with the mental states that affect our perceptions” (3). That is what makes rhetoric such a major component of education.

In Craig Smith’s chapter, “Rhetorical Dimensions of Myth and Narrative,” he notes that “the use of sound as symbols for objects, feelings, perceptions…that is language-may have developed over 60,000 years ago” (17). As communities came together, myths and arguments “were considered forms of logos, words that made sense of the world” (17). Smith outlines myths as rules of society to provide order and moral codes. The Greeks understood that “the stories we spin into myths are not always national or cultural; they can be personal and serve as guides in our personal decision making” (18). Smith argued that our survival depends on the ability to adjust to our changing worlds and so he states, “that is why storytelling is the oldest form of rhetoric” (19). It is suggested that our myths can inspire our most meaningful human actions as individuals or in collaboration with others. It is our myths that can build and mold civilizations, that led us communities that constructed pyramids and cathedrals in communal efforts spanning over centuries. “Human beings are mythic creatures” (Moon & Dempsey 3). 

Merriam and Baumgartner note that storytelling has become a popular topic in current literature trends surrounding transformational learning. Storytelling is a historical tool for making sense of experiences. “Stories leading to transformation need to challenge the beliefs of the listener, and over time these stories can change public opinion…” (193). Songs and poems can shake up an individual’s assumptions and great a transformative growth experience.

CARL JUNG’S INFLUENCE ON PERSONAL MYTHS

 “In what myth does man live nowadays?” Jung pondered this idea as he explored myths and archetypes in Volume 5 of Symbols and Transformations. As he concluded this set of writings he noted:

“I suspected that myth had a meaning which I was sure to miss if I lived outside it in the haze of my own speculations. I was driven to ask myself in all seriousness: “What is the myth you are living?” I found no answer to this question and had to admit that I was not living with a myth, or even in a myth, but rather in an uncertain cloud of theoretical possibilities which I was beginning to regard with increasing distrust. I did not know that

 I was living a myth, and even if I had known it, I would not have known what sort of myth was ordering my life without my knowledge. So, in the most natural way, I took it upon myself to get to know “my” myth, and I regarded this as the task of tasks…”  

Finding no clear outline of a myth for himself earlier in his life, Jung turned to the inner world of his unconscious. Jung provided a model for this in his personal journals and creative imaginings, in what was later published as The Red Books. Through observation of his dreams, he worked to connect to his own mythmaking. Although he shifted away from these highly creative methods and back to an analytical model, he ultimately recognized that he was articulating his own myth and finding ways to make conscious the images that had previously been tucked away in his unconscious mind. He began to “build” his own script by literally playing with stones on the waters shore of Bollingen. 

In Building the Cathedral: Answering the Meaning Crisis Through Personal Myth, Sadie Alwyn Moon and Brendan Graham Dempsey offer a current and modern guide based off Jung’s memoir and his memories as a child playing with blocks. As a confused adult he had an internal insight of a village of cottages, a castle, and a church with an altar. Jung tells of walking around the water’s edge when he notices stones and gravel that can recreate his vision. On a later stroll, out of pure chance, he finds a four-sided pyramid shape honed and smoothed by the water and Jung notes that he had found his altar. Moon and Dempsey quote his reflection: 

“I thought about the significance of what I was doing, and asked myself, ‘Now, really, what are you about? You are building a small town and doing it as if it were a rite!’  I had no answer to my question, only the inner certainty that I was on the way to discovering my own myth” …”I had to achieve a kind of representation in the stone of my inner most thoughts…Or to put it another way, I had to make a confession of faith in stone. That was the beginning of the ‘Tower’, the house which I built for myself at Bollingen” (5-6)

Jung lived and worked in his literal building and at his 75^th birthday erected a stone cube block on the lakeshore. Three of the sides had inscriptions and in Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, Jung shared that the third side, facing the lake has a theme of alchemy. The inscription reads: 

“I am an orphan, alone; nevertheless, I am found everywhere. I am one, but opposed to myself. I am youth and old man at one and the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I have had to be fetched out of the deep like a fish, or fell like a white stone from heaven. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of aeons” (227)

David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner study this topic and after 80 years of clinical practice, personal development workshops, and teaching psychological topics they have found that each of us struggles with our own personal mythology when we try to weave the fragments of our experience into coherent story. Their work, Personal Mythology: Using Ritual, Dreams, and Imagination to Discover Your Inner Story, finds that mythologies shape our every thought, perception, and action, helping us to feel safe and secure in our identities. They note that when our personal mythologies do not grow and change along with us, we find ourselves stuck in self-defeating life patterns. They offer self-guided, weekly, suggestions for personal transformation. 

Like those previously mentioned, books and workshops on personal myth include exercises to help individuals with a process that can take time and require guidance. There are a variety of methods such as writing prompts, biographical interviews, guided meditations, art, dream analysis, studying traditional myth like the work of Joseph Campbell and Jungians such as Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Craig Chalquist, Sharon Blackie, Jean Shinoda Bolen and others. Although there are a wide range of techniques and methods, all require that an individual activate the imagination from a creative playful place. In the end no one can tell anyone what their personal myth is because the discovery is a personal journey. 

ARCHETYPES

Archetypes are important in our everyday lives. Helena Bassil-Morozow in her book, Jungian Theory for Storytellers,states that there is an endless list of archetypes embedded in our language and culture. Carl Jung placed these archetypes in the collective unconscious and “archetypes in their basic state are ‘invisible for the unconscious. Yet, they take different guises in particular cultures and in individual minds” (15). Each human mind is unique, but Jung’s position that we are all connected in the collective unconscious notes that individuals become conscious and bring forth common archetypes through symbolic imagination. For humans to bring forth archetypes into their lives, a symbolic process is needed that language alone cannot clarify. 

Using Jung’s ideas, archetypes can come out as group beliefs within a particular culture, and these can come in many forms: myths, fairy tales, dreams, fantasies, tribal life, as well as the narratives in film and television. Bassil-Morozow summarizes that “part of the individuation process, archetypal characters and processes cover a comprehensive range of experiences, from falling in love to keeping alive the creative impulse” …and…”archetypes play an important role in the processes that help people explain and organize their existence” (41). 

Kim Krans, a trained depth psychologist, artist and creator of the round shaped Archetypes oracle art deck and author of the book The Wild Unknown Archetypes Guidebook, teaches us that the imaginal realm of imagination is the territory of the archetypes and “Humans have long been grappling with naming, understanding, harnessing, and developing the archetypes that surround and inhabit us” (24). She tells us that, “It is possible that archetypes have their own agendas, their own work to do on us” (2). We can find them in the spaces where everything is possible: poetry, images, and metaphor. According to Krans, “They captivate our minds and hearts, so we are compelled to take the next step on our inner quest” (29). She provides a definition from the root words of ARCHE meaning first and TYPE meaning model or kind. The name implies that these are old and original energies that have been “swirling since the beginning of time” (13). She defines the following characteristics of archetypes: 

• Archetypes are patterns
• Archetypes are universal
• Archetypes are timeless
• Archetypes are infinite
• Archetypes contain both light and dark
• Archetypes use image
• They can never be fully captured

Krans teaches us through her art and words that archetypes have intentions. They insist on the imagination; they insist on multiplicity; and they insist on the collective. They want us to grow as humans with rich stories to live and tell others. 

The works of Darren Kelsey and Michael Osborn build upon the position that storytelling is at the core of collective consciousness. Kelsey points out that humans cooperate and “this mysterious glue is made of stories, not genes” (12). He notes that strangers can cooperate because they have common beliefs in “goods, nations, money, and human rights. Yet none of these things exist outside the stories that people invent and tell one another” (12). Osborn has written extensively about archetypal metaphor in his book, Michael Osborn on Metaphor and Style. His examples continue to build a foundation for the use of archetypes as a tool for transformational learning in adults, most notably women seeking to unlearn the societal myths that have suppressed their journeys to their true selves. 

Most of us, as consumers of story, are familiar with the plot line of the Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell, building off Jung’s concepts introduces us to the monomyth and the stages of the Hero’s Journey in his work: The Hero with a Thousand Faces originally published in 1949 and revised in 1968 after Jung’s death. A male protagonist sets out, has a transformative adventure, and then returns home. He departs, he is initiated, and comes back with new insight or rewards. George Lucas credits this model for expediting his creation of the Star Wars franchise and we can see the model. Joseph Campbell spent his career breaking down most all the mythologies of the world revealing the archetypal hero in all of them and proving his theory of the monomyth that all mythic narratives are a single great story. 

Campbell was also fascinated with the personal myth, and he wrote in Pathways to Bliss that “the way to find your own myth is to determine those traditional symbols that speak to you and use them, you might say, as bases for meditation. Let them work on you…Let them play on your imagination, activating it. By bringing your own imagination into play in relation to these symbols, you will be experiencing…the symbol’s power to open a path to the heart of mysteries” (97). In review of his work, I believe he was evolving into the work of combining images and archetypes to the hero’s journey and creating a platform for individual myth development. 

THE FEMININE JOURNEY

Although many have criticized Joseph Campbell for his masculine focus, Saffron Rossi edits collections of his work in the book Goddess: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine (2013),

that share Campbell’s words: “Many of the difficulties that women face today follow from the fact that they are moving into a field of action in the world that was formerly reserved for the male and for which there are no female mythological models” (xiii). Campbell continues that “she may lose her own nature” and “her biologically assigned role was to give birth and to rear children”. It is doubtful that Campbell had been exposed to the work of Jungian analyst archetypal psychologist Jean Shinoda Bolen who published the first edition of Goddesses in Everywoman in 1985 and revised thirty years later in 2014 with a continued conviction that “A psychology that supports individual women to make their own choices and see themselves as protagonists in their own life story changes them. And this has a ripple effect across the globe” (xviii). As Bolen describes the archetypes of each goddess to her reader, she shows how these personality traits can show up in real lives. “The goddess archetypes are deep desires that vary from woman to woman; for autonomy, creativity, power, intellectual challenge, spirituality, sexuality, and relationships” (xix).  As Campbell was concluding his career, he felt that as a woman moves through her own life journey, there are few if any female models for her quest.

Maria Tatar is one of many, who disagrees with Campbell’s assertion that females lack role models. She is a scholar of folklore, children’s literature, and German cultural studies at Harvard and recently released a new book: Heroine with 1001 Faces (2021) as a response to Campbell’s iconic male-focused text. She starts her text with a story of one of Campbell’s students at Sarah Lawrence approaching her professor and asking Where are the Women? and declaring that she wants to be the Hero. Tatar provides examples prior to, and during Campbell’s life, and calls attention to our modern-day heroines. She pays special attention to one of my childhood idols Nancy Drew. After an in-depth analysis of the independent female detective from the extensive series of books that started in the 1930 through the 1970s and beyond to a television series she asks, 

“Is it an accident that so many of our female Supreme Court justices cite the Nancy Drew series as a source of encouragement and inspiration? Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor have all professed their love for the teen investigator, finding themselves, as did O’Connor, ‘totally absorbed’ by the series. The girl gumshoe was evidently also a role model for Hillary Clinton. It seems more than likely that part of the appeal for these accomplished women was not just that Nancy solves mysteries but that she is committed to serving justice—that is what Nancy does supremely well” (299).

She does not leave out the work of Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run with the Wolves. Tatar provides a well-researched and thick volume full of more than enough role models over many centuries and across many continents for strong female presenting heroines. Sharon Blackie, an award-winning writer, psychologist, and mythologist has created a wide variety of content for those who want to journey toward transformation.  As noted on her website by “The Sunday Times” periodical, “She knows her archetypes, knows her Jung, knows her fairytales, and knows her neuroscience, and is sick of being patronized by men who don’t”.

In Blackie’s book. If Women Rose Rooted: A Life Changing Journey to Authenticity and Belonging (2016) she offers readers a new archetypal model of the Eco-Heroine for this challenging age of social and ecological crisis. She notes that the “world which men have made isn’t working. Something needs to change. To change the world, we women need first to change ourselves – and then we need to change the stories about who we are” (12).  She believes that story matters and that we make sense of our world through story. “And so the stories that we tell ourselves about the world and our place in, and the stories that are told to us by others about the world and or place in shape not just our own lives by the world around us. The cultural narrative is the culture” (13). She goes on to say if foundation stories show women as inferior and weak then that is how they will be treated. She is making a call for different role models and if we can write and tell stories about wise and powerful women who are strong it will allow the space for women to live up to those stories and to be taken seriously and have their voices heard. 

As a Jungian, Blackie speaks of the individuation process but notes that “the journey we need to take today is one which rips us out of the confined spaces of our own heads and plants us firmly back into the world where we belong, rooted and ready to rise” (16). She calls for finding authenticity, awakening creative powers, and finding our own visions for how we can support our ailing planet Earth. She declares that “The Heroine’s Journey we need to make today is, above all, an Eco-Heroine’s Journey” (17) and that it goes beyond simple environmentalism. It is a return to nature and a return to our native wisdom. “If women remember that once upon a time we sang the tongues of seals and flew with the wings of swans, that we forged our own paths through the dark forest while creating community of its many inhabitants, then we will rise up rooted like trees” (19). Her final rally cry is if we can do that “women might indeed save not only ourselves, but the world”. Her outline will be the subject of an learning module in my multimodal application project. 

It is important to mention that Blackie has extended her guidance with another archetypal project titled Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life (2022). It deserves mention not only because it fits my proposal vision, but she created the membership module offering that I envisioned this capstone project, and she launched in October of 2022. I am currently participating in the program, and it is ongoing until September 2023.

Maya Zuckerman’s article, “From the Hero’s Journey to Our Collective Journey”, offers a summation of this topic. Like Tator and Blackie, she puts forth a challenge to break free from the hero myth. She also draws on the work of Joseph Campbell and notes that he saw variations of the universal story structure of this cycle of life in most every culture he studied. The “hero leaves for the quest, learns from the mentor, fights the monsters, dies and resurrects, finds his power, returns with the elixir. Wash, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum” (2). Zuckerman calls for alternative narratives and presents the gendered journey that is more inclusive than the traditional male dominated versions. She argues, like Blackie, that “the perpetuated narratives of man in conflict with an enemy or in conflict with nature are no longer serving us” (4). She puts forth a feminine journey where the hero gathers courage and is “reborn as a complete being in charge of her own life” …and…” this journey starts by questioning authority, then gaining the courage to stand up for herself, and finally embodying the willingness to go it alone and face her own symbolic death” (4). 

The Heroine doesn’t necessarily die and leave the world, but she transforms the world for herself and others. She makes life better for all. This journey is more inclusive and “can encompass the masculine and feminine, and two-spirited journey, which can be any of the straight and LGBTQAA–lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, asexual, ally–as well as those who experience the world as gender-neutral” (6).

Like Zuckerman’s call for the collective journey, we can note that Jung was concerned with the development of the collective. He saw the source of every society’s renewal could be found in its individuals. If they will navigate beyond the walls of their culture and bring back to benefit all, Jung declared that is what individuation is all about. The expansion of consciousness transforms the individual, but also has the potential to transform their culture as well by bringing back new insights. Jung felt that was the path to cultural renewal. There are many who feel that individual meditation practice does not just serve the meditator, but it puts forth waves of energy and intention for all who do or do not practice. 

When I interviewed Jessica Snow, meditation guide and the owner and creator of: “You Are Magic LA” and “ArtXMagic”, we talked about storytelling, myths, archetypes, and the works of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Joseph Campbell. I asked Jessica about her thoughts on Campbell and the Hero’s Journey. She affirmed that a shift is happening away from the linear masculine model and that “Joseph Campbell deeply understood through years of study that human beings are storytelling creatures, and whether we’re conscious of it or not, stories are driving the action of our lives individually and collectively.” She spoke of things moving in cycles and sometimes we come back to relive the same lessons. She argues for something that is “more multi-dimensional, more multifaceted” and that the previous model is about one guy on his own. She thinks, “we’ve seen that this whole planet is connected. All of humanity is connected…”

Jessica also notes that when Campbell was writing about the hero’s journey in the late 1940s, 

“It was a stretch even for humans of that era to recognize there might be a mystical, or, you know, archetypal element to their little human life”.  She points to our current timeline and that there might be ways to expand these narratives and move away from hyper individualism.

She uses the visual of water and a pebble and that each of our actions can have a ripple effect. I agree with Jessica that as we journey through the different stages we may start a career, and then stop it, and then do something different. She concludes that if we can recognize the archetypal elements (the child, the maiden, the mother, the wise woman, the crone), we affect each other and we deepen the understanding of our experiences in a positive way when we can share with each other.

On the other hand, societal messaging can have a negative ripple effect on our lives. When we are told that our worth is dependent upon living the ways in which traditions, the media, or influences tell us to be, it can stagnate and stall our personal journeys. As Gianna Biscontini writes in her book Fuckless: A Guide to Wild, Unencumbered Freedom, it is time to consider the false stories (the fucks) that are holding you back. These stories are “someone else’s fears, experiences, opinion, or thoughts. They can be harmless or harmful. They almost always keep you liked” (13). These narratives are barriers to our best selves and usually contain “You should____,” “You can’t _____”, You aren’t _____enough”. Personally, I have only begun to escape this glass box. I have thrown off the lid, and I am still climbing the ladder out of the societal myths that kept me from my personal path of individuation. This management of societal expectations keeps us busy and wandering around a maze of dis-ease. We are out of balance.

If we build off the work of Carl Jung, archetypes are primal forms and come from the mental system. He states that we all live together and share a collective unconsciousness, and in that place resides the archetypes that we can access as the characters that support our personal journey toward our individuation or “process to becoming oneself” (Bassil-Morozow 42). We are the heroine of our own adventure toward actualization of our authentic soul self. This is each of our own storyline. “Our ultimate aim in life is to solve the inner and outer conflicts, and to establish an emotional balance that would protect us from worry, conflict and pain” (Bassil-Morozow 88). Jung called this psychological state of peace and happiness the Self and that the bumpy road or life’s challenges and obstacles is part of the pursuit to this impossible state. As they say, it is not the destination but the journey. “The path to finding one’s spirituality is not easy, by it may lie in the study of fairy tales, myths, legends and traditions” (Malecka 276) and may be a path that we can create for ourselves. 

ONE EXAMPLE OF LITERATURE AS A TOOL FOR SELF DISCOVERY: WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES: MYTHS and STORIES of the WILD WOMAN ARCHETYPE

“Yet in most tales, the wild self, most ever holding a fine and great heart like a torch afire, finds her way back to her true and wild someplace, the mother ground of her greatest strength, greatest creativity, greatest visionary way of life” (Estés, “Clarrisa Pinkola Estés”).

There is not much peer-reviewed academic literature on the impact of Estés’s work, but Marta Poplawska and Marta Malecka give examples of myths and stories that Estés shares and how they were portrayed by the historical male perspective and how they can be interrupted for female transformation work. The most notable comment, to support this project, is that “Estés draws our attention to the fact that in oral tradition these were usually women who were storytellers while the process of writing the folk tales down was taken over by men, which considerably influence the way the characters were presented, and among them the female characters” (Malecka 19). The female perspective is brought forth in Estés’s work and “is a kind of invitation to a metaphorical journey into the depths of femininity, and the stories presented within it serve as road signs helpful to this journey” (Poplawska 275). It is also pointed out by Malecka, in her article, “Ferocity Impulsiveness Transformation Anthropological Threads”, that this text allows the reader an opportunity to discover the primeval nature of being female. For it to happen, “awakening is necessary” (275). But she further notes that, “such liberation is extremely difficult due to the fact that from their earliest years women are brought up and put into rigidly defined social roles”. 

In my interview with Jessica Snow, I said that I knew we had a common interest in the work of Clarissa Pinkola Estés and her myths and stories of the wild woman archetype and I invited her to share. She described it as “a miraculous book”. She notes it is a book of the present and the future even though it was written almost thirty years ago. She defines it as “one of the most magical books I own, and especially because for millennia, much of our mysticism and spirituality was developed by males…it is dripping with spirit and is centered on the women’s experience and stories that relate to women’s lives specifically.” 

In an interview with Danielle Petersen, the founder of “Wild Soul Living” and facilitator of an online monthly book club focused on Estés book, I asked her to tell me what had drawn her to the text. She explained that the name of her company had come from her own personal journey and then when she came in contact with WWRWW it was a time of: “What I now call my reclamation, you know, like reclaiming myself. I actually read the book, and I was like, Oh, my gosh! I was doing this…and I must bring… this to the world”. 

I asked her what else motivated her to start an online gathering to discuss the book and she told me: “It burst out of me” and at first it wasn’t about the book. The more she reread the book herself she felt it needed a larger and wider platform. She explored some online spots and her first 14 sessions, over 14 months, covered each chapter and she had over thirty participants. “I  was really surprised at the depth that these women would bring”. Danielle is getting ready to start her fourth cycle beginning with “Chapter 1: The Howl: A Resurrection of the Wild Woman” in the January 2023.   

When I asked Jessica if she identified with the Wild Woman archetype, she replied that she feels it belongs to her and that she can feel it at a “gut level – a soul level”. As she travels in her own worldly journey, Jessica feels like the wild woman wanders with her. As she has aged, she feels like it is easier to connect with the archetype of the wild woman “because I realize that even everything we think of as man-made is really a layer on top of the earth. And so, she’s always there.” She feels a ferocity in this character. She can be “thrilling and scary” at the same time. She builds on the topic of negative societal messaging and how the wild woman aids through the chaos of “You’re at this age – You do this thing. You’re at this stage – You must do that thing”. Jessica has been working with this text for decades. Over time she went from thinking the wild woman was a way to be extraordinary but now she views the archetype as “more of an alchemy”. She brings her into her consciousness when “it is called for and then we let her run to the forest when it’s not, and as I have gotten a little bit…older, I have more and more respect”. 

Danielle did not initially relate to the concept of the archetypes in her personal journey. “I just didn’t really have it those first few years”. The archetypes arrived for her through yoga and the two Hindu deities of Durga and Lakshmi. She didn’t tie the archetypes together until she came across the book by Sally Kempton titled, Awakening Shatik: The Transformative Power of Goddesses of Yoga. “These archetypes are absolutely there…I get emotional just thinking about my experiences…there is powerful energy when you discover them”. Danielle has begun a new monthly online book club for Kempton’s book. “Sally’s work choruses Estés, and there is something I feel in these stories.” With strong emotion she exclaims, “there is something these women are holding, it’s intelligence beyond what we could even imagine. I call it innate intelligence, like the plants. You know the earth has it and I feel like women are the closest thing to it, men have it too, …but it’s a feminine energy.” 

I asked Jessica to share her favorite story from the hundreds of pages presented by Estés and she declared it was “Vasilisa the Wise” and her interactions with Baba Yaga. It is similar to Cinderella where there is a stepmother and two sisters who treat Vasilisa terribly and send her to Baba Yaga thinking that will be the end of her. She carries a little doll in her pocket that was gift from her biological mother who passed away. Jessica compares the doll to intuition. Baba Yaga gives her series of impossible tasks, and the doll helps her. Baba Yaga sends her home with a skull on a stick with burning eyes, and when the evil stepmother and sisters see it, they burst into flames. “And now Vasilisa can go forward free”. 

In the text of the story Estés elaborates on the tale and the nine tasks that Baba Yaga requires of her. Estés leads the reader to see that these are tasks that women should ask of themselves. Allowing the too-good mother to die, exposing the crude shadow, navigating in the dark, facing the wild hog, serving the non-rational, separating this from that, asking the mysteries, standing on all fours, and recasting the shadow. The evil stepmother and sisters were parts of her internal messaging that needed to be destroyed. When she set them into flames, she was transforming herself. Jessica and I spoke about transformation and how women experience so many cycles of death and rebirth in our lives. We agreed that this is the way life works, there is nothing wrong with it. It is part of the human experience.

Marta Poplawska agrees with Jessica that this tale, recounted by Estés, is a tale of intuition and that “in order to gain intuition a woman must complete certain tasks which form the whole initiation. She references Estés stages and the “importance of eliminating all the obstacles inhibiting women’s development and maturity, one of them being an overprotective mother who prevents a girl from facing new challenges” (17). In Estés words, “another way to strengthen connection to intuition is to refuse to allow anyone to repress your vivid energies…that means your opinions, your thoughts, your ideas” (118). Poplawaska concludes that Estés believes that this is a story of liberation and the protagonists moving away from subservience to maturity and self-reliance. 

Jessica Snow shares that what she’s loves about WWRWW is that Estés points out how stories, folk stories, sacred stories, oral traditions have been layered over. “She’ll often say in that book this part has been left out, or this part has been changed, or this part has been raised, erased by the overculture”. When I asked her to expand on the term, she tells me it is subduing the stories. “The overculture was like, Yeah, that doesn’t serve our purposes. So you’ve got to leave that part out.” In Estés words: 

“I coined the word ‘overculture’ to mean the larger society which often attempts to tell girls, women and elders what we ought, should and must be, do, act, react – but, and, as you know, often the deeper wild nature says otherwise – for the wild instinctual nature is wise and wild both, with innate gifts and creative callings – all following the naturally insightful voice of the true self, rather than the often ‘one-inch deep overculture’s voice’ that values uniformity and only pre-authorized dancing” (Estés, “Clarrisa Pinkola Estés”).

ART

“Every soul essence has a specific imprint or pattern within it.  Some have said it is like our mission. This pattern is a blueprint for our deepest self”, shares Seena B. Frost (2010).  Frost studied at Yale Divinity School.  She was a psychotherapy clinician and supervisor in California for over thirty years. Informed by the work of Carl Jung, Fritz Perls, and others, Frost created a process called SoulCollage® based on a belief that “when the soul wishes to experience something, she throws an image of the experience before her, and enters into her own image”.  In 2003, the first trainer session was held, and there are now over six thousand trainers across the world. Many are therapists who use this technique to aid their patients toward transformation and healing. I am registered to qualify as a SoulCollage® facilitator in April of 2023. 

ARTxMAGIC is an organization that was started by Jessica Snow and Somsara Rielly in 2018 to bring SoulCollage® to an audience in the Los Angeles, California area.  The two came together in the early 2000s when literally, art met magic. Somsara, a collage artist, illustrator and designer and Jessica, a meditation guide, content creator, and multimedia alchemist found a spark when they both attended a SoulCollage® workshop.  Feeling a call, they attended facilitator training and adopted the name that literally means Art is Magic. They believe that it is everyone’s birthright to tap into their creativity and intuition. Their mission is to conduct classes that allow people the opportunity for personal evolution. The workshops teach how to make individual oracle or Tarot cards and the process moves it a step further with a writing exercise that opens the creator of the card toward a transformative experience for individual growth. SoulCollage® is a tool to guide the work toward individuation. 

I asked Jessica to reflect on Soul Collage®, the experience of using symbols, images, and themes in the technique of paper collage and journaling, on why she thinks it is such a dynamic personal tool of personal narrative. She tends to start a workshop using a theme because “themes are important because the breadth and width and depth of life is a lot for a little human being to process and integrate” into their everyday life. Themes help us to take archetypes, symbols, and language and get a focus that narrow it down a bit. She uses the example of a camera lens coming into focus. The themes she was taught by Seena Frost are “egalitarian and run through all humans – these are core human topics”. If the goal is to bring the collective unconscious to the surface, the use of SoulCollage® allows some “containment”. For example, if we need to weed the entire backyard, we start with a tiny patch in the far-right flower bed. But as Jessica notes it is never just that one area of our life, we can start off in that theme (maybe career goals) and “there are layers and layers that have tendrils that reach out to other areas.” I have seen the transformation in myself and others. It has been these many interactions that have led me to want to use these tools to present opportunities for others to learn, grow and transform. 

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