In an Instagram Reel, John Selig described this image — Mount Etna as a cosmological diagram: Typhon pinned underneath, his rage powering the volcano; Hephaestus at the forge above, that same rage transmuted into craft; Prometheus chained on the side, the fire bringer who suffered for giving us what the gods had kept for themselves; and Zeus at the crown, not a creator of fire but the one who directs it.

It set my imagination ablaze!

John’s handle is @stolenfires_. That name tells you everything about his approach: myth is Promethean fire, meaning held by the gods and waiting to be taken — not as belief, not as doctrine, but as a lens you can actually use. What he wants is for you to leave the conversation with something in your hands.

We spent this episode inside Greek myth as a living, working system. We examined the Theogony as three successive orders of creation — and why Zeus’s is the first one generative enough to let everything be born, even the monsters. We read the Odyssey as the story of a man who cannot go home yet because his unconscious won’t let him — the sailors as impulses that thwart the ego until it’s ready. We talked about what happens to a culture that runs entirely on Athena consciousness while Poseidon goes ignored. And we talked about creativity, perfectionism, and what myth can do for people who are stuck.

What We Cover

We use Prometheus — the fire-bringer who stole meaning from the gods and handed it to ordinary people — as the lens for this conversation. Along the way we explore:

Stolen Fires and What the Name Actually Means. The name is two things at once: a cosmological statement about myth as Promethean fire, and — as someone pointed out to John recently — an accidental description of a mythology hot-take platform. He didn't plan that second meaning. The Trickster did. The core idea: myth holds meaning the way the gods held fire. John's work is the theft.

Myth Doesn't Require You to Believe Anything. Myth and history are not the same category. Mythologizing history breaks it. Historicizing mythology breaks it too. One lives in the world of the imaginal; the other is the world of record. You can work with myth — let it illuminate your life, your psyche, your moment — without making a single metaphysical commitment.

Typhon, Hephaestus, and the Shape of Shadow Work. Zeus didn't destroy Typhon. He pinned him under Mount Etna, where his rage powers the volcano — and Hephaestus's forge sits at the top, transmuting that same rage into craft. Integration instead of obliteration. The energy doesn't disappear. It gets redirected. That's the shape of shadow work, and it's also the shape of the creative process.

Satan and the Cultural Shadow. Monotheism needed a bucket for everything that didn't make the approved list, and Satan is what it built. A lot of what ended up in there isn't all that bad — it's just human. The qualities most associated with the mythic Satan map cleanly onto basic features of human nature, and the Greco-Roman roots of the image run deeper than most people realize.

Three Orders of Creation. The Theogony gives us three successive cosmological regimes, each more generative than the last. Uranus won't let anything be born. Kronos swallows his children rather than risk displacement. Zeus frees everyone and starts an order in which everything gets to exist — including the monsters. The Greek pantheon is so crowded because Zeus's order requires it to be.

The Sailors as Unconscious Impulses. The sailors in the Odyssey aren't named or characterized because they're not really separate people — they're the unconscious impulses that keep thwarting what the ego says it wants. Odysseus doesn't reach Ithaca until they're all dead. The friction isn't always the enemy. The sailors may be telling him something he isn't ready to hear yet.

Athena Consciousness, Poseidon Consciousness, and What We've Left Out. Ian McGilchrist's hemisphere theory maps onto the Greek gods: Athena as the rational, ordering, left-brain mode; Poseidon as the holistic, oceanic, right-brain mode. We've built a civilization that runs almost entirely on Athena consciousness while Poseidon goes unaddressed — and John thinks the epidemic of depression among his generation follows directly from that.

Spirituality and the Brain. The part of the brain that activates depression is the same part that activates spirituality. When the spiritual mode is engaged, it becomes physiologically impossible to be depressed. This isn't a spiritual claim. It's neuroscience. And you don't have to believe in anything to get there.

The Tyranny of Heaven. Uranus and Gaia: heaven and earth, the ideal and the actual. Heaven wants the thing to be perfect. Earth wants the thing to exist. Any version of something is necessarily not every version of something — which is obvious, and is still the exact mistake most creatives make constantly, holding the work hostage to what it could be until it never becomes what it is.

Chapters

00:00 Welcome

00:03:49 The Name Stolen Fires

00:04:56 Myth Without Belief

00:05:42 Typhon, Prometheus, and the Volcano

00:06:53 Satan and the Cultural Shadow

00:08:30 How the Volcano Became a Map

00:10:17 Zeus as Air, Not Fire

00:11:30 Three Orders of Creation

00:18:29 Into the Odyssey

00:19:31 The Sailors as Unconscious Impulses

00:21:57 Odysseus Isn’t Ready for Ithaca

00:26:42 Myth Is Fractal

00:34:20 The Modern Mind and Its Limits

00:35:10 Meaning, Depression, and the Missing Lens

00:41:45 Spirituality and the Brain

00:48:05 The Myth and Creativity Course

00:49:05 The Tyranny of Heaven

00:50:10 Where to Find John

Memorable Quotes

“The trick with myths is to not take them literally and to turn them into lenses that you can then look at your own life through.” — John Selig

“Typhon is put underneath Mount Etna, and his fiery rage powers that volcano and then Hephaestus’s forge is at the top, turning that rage, alchemizing it into something beautiful.” — John Selig

“That’s how it feels to do shadow work, to channel your grief into something creative, to face a part of you that you don’t wanna face. All of those things are in that image and it’s cosmic and natural and personal all at the same time.” — John Selig

“Myth doesn’t require you to believe anything. These stories didn’t happen. Getting history and mythology confused is one of the biggest problems in our world today.” — Boston Blake

“Mythologizing history or historicizing mythology. It breaks it. One lives in the world of the imaginal and one is the world of the historical.” — Boston Blake

“If that spiritual part of your brain is activated, it becomes physiologically impossible to be depressed.” — John Selig

“Any version of something is necessarily not every version of something.” — John Selig

“Take the mess you’re working on and make it sacred.” — John Selig

Resources & Links

John Selig’s website: https://stolenfires.com

Stolen Fires on Instagram: @stolenfires_

Stolen Fires on YouTube: @stolenfires

Stolen Fires on TikTok: @stolenfires

Stolen Fires on Substack: https://stolenfires.substack.com

John’s Myth and Creativity Course (May 2026): https://stolenfires.com

Episode page: https://bostonblake.com/mythic-podcast/john-selig-stolen-fires

If this episode landed for you, feel free to add to the pot: https://bostonblake.com/contribute/

https://mythicpodcast.com

About the Guest

John Selig is a writer and educator specializing in the psychology of myth, symbol, and creativity. He has traveled the world visiting the sacred sites of many cultures and is currently writing a book investigating the deeper practical meanings hidden within the world’s myths and religious stories. A lifelong creative, John has worked in music, writing, game design, podcasting, and video, and coaches people in seeing their lives through mythic and symbolic lenses through his one-on-one Mythwork sessions. He has taught at Harvard, UCLA, and School of Rock. Learn more at https://stolenfires.com.

About Mythic

Mythic is a podcast about meaningful living through the power of myth, ancient lore, modern pop culture, and depth psychology. Hosted by Boston Blake — ICF Professional Certified Coach, and lifelong student of mythology and depth psychology — Mythic brings together the stories that have have something to teach us.

https://mythicpodcast.com

Topics

Greek mythology, depth psychology, Jungian psychology, archetypal psychology, practical mythology, myth and meaning, mythology podcast, Prometheus, Typhon, Hephaestus, Zeus, Theogony, Hesiod, Odyssey, Odysseus, shadow work, mythology and creativity, creative process, perfectionism and creativity, Uranus and Gaia, Ian McGilchrist brain hemispheres, Poseidon consciousness, Athena consciousness, modern meaning, existential depression, spirituality and neuroscience, John Selig, Stolen Fires, Mythwork coaching, myth as lens, Boston Blake, Mythic podcast

Hello and welcome to Mythic, a podcast where we explore meaningful

living through the power of myth, depth, psychology, archetypes, and symbols in

literature, in pop culture, in ancient stories, and in the world around us.

If you're wondering what happened to the theme song, well, I scrapped it.

Most people fast forward past it anyway, and I want to respect your time.

It also makes editing a lot easier for me.

My guest today is John Selig, who you may know as at stolen fires on Instagram.

His Instagram has really blown up lately because he's been posting reels

with some really insightful takes on mythology, specifically the Odyssey and

the story of Prometheus among others.

He's also making really great connections between Norse

mythology and Greek mythology.

We're not going to get into that in today's conversation.

We are really focusing on myth as Promethean fire.

Looking at myth through this lens starts to answer the question, what

is the practical value of myth?

How can I actually use it in my mortal daily life?

John and I are really up to some of the same stuff.

Our missions are very much aligned, and this conversation was just

a mythic love fest, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Without further ado, here is John Selig.

I'm so excited to meet you.

Me yeah.,, I've been following you since I started my account.

You were one of the first five people I followed, I think, honestly.

'Cause I was like, who's doing similar stuff?

Who's out there talking about myth and meaning?

Your path sounds kind of similar to what I'm trying to do, you know what I mean?

I finally bit the bullet and started really putting my face out there

and doing all these new posts and, knock on wood seems to be working.

I want to help people with creativity and with, understanding their own

life through mythic and symbolic lens.

And that's a very specific offer that I think a lot of people need, but not a lot

of people understand that they need it.

So that's where I come in with the education.

So hopefully it's gonna work, but I imagine you find that too,

it's hard to find your people.

Absolutely.

And both my mom and my sister are graduates of Pacifica Graduate Institute.

So myth and Jungian psychology are in my family, and I love that world.

So the vision of this podcast specifically is, one, to make mythology useful, to be

able to understand it as it relates to your own life and the world we live in.

And then also to elevate mythic voices, people who are doing the academic work.

You are the.

I love your Instagram so much I can hardly stand it.

Your take on things, the way you work with myth.

There's always sort of esoterica in the background, but you bring it to

the meat and the bones of things,

I just, I think we are really, really aligned in a way that is unusual.

We're not all under our heads with academia, but we're

also not like super woo.

I feel the same way I'm serious.

I started this instagram four years ago before I really started going hard and you

were one of the first people I followed.

I was like, this guy gets it.

I'm gonna talk to him someday.

And then when you reached out, I was like, yes.

This is amazing.

So I'm so honored.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure.

I remember when you appeared as Standup for the Gods, because I was reading.

Was it?

Na, not, was it Natalie Haynes who wrote Stand Up, Standing Up for the Gods,

and I thought your channel was her.

Stand Up for the Classics.

why I ended up changing it.

It was too close to her.

I

Ah.

her.

And.

then you were doing still images there, you weren't doing reels yet?

Or, I don't remember seeing any reels 'cause I hadn't seen your face.

And then you rebranded as Stolen Fires.

And I think we've gotta talk about that name.

Stolen Fires.

What did Prometheus do?

against the will of the gods, he took the fire and gave it to us.

And that's a powerful image.

And I feel like maybe that's one of the things that myth can be

when we properly understand it.

It's like that meaning that the gods have for us.

The gods in the abstract.

Like they're part of the myth.

I'm not saying we have to believe in anything literal, but I'm saying if

we engage with these stories of the gods, there's meaning there, there's

fire that we can take and apply to our lives, and one of the hashtag, I

don't know anything about social media.

I'm learning as I go, but one of the hashtags I started with was practical

myth, because I think that's what we need.

We need to look at these things, not just as silly old stories, but as like lenses

we can apply to our life that builds on the wisdom of, 5,000 years of stories and

tradition and, so that's a big part of it.

The other part of the name that I must have done unconsciously, because someone

just pointed out that my channel is all about mythology hot takes Hot.

Takes.

Stolen Fires.

It's the same thing.

And I just was like, I can't even believe I did that.

Wow.

So that's the longer story.

You touched on something that I don't think gets enough

airtime, and that is myth doesn't require you to believe anything.

Myths.

These stories didn't happen.

Getting history and mythology confused is one of the biggest

problems in our world today.

Mythologizing history or historicizing mythology.

It, it breaks it.

One lives in the world of the imaginal and one is the world of the historical.

But this idea of homo sapiens, storytelling animals, that this fire,

this ability to tell a story, this ability to narrate our existence.

That's what myth does.

I love the idea of myth as fire.

And you presented something on Instagram that I have just not

been able to get out of my head.

You presented this image of Mount Etna with Typhon buried underneath,

with Prometheus chained to the side, with Hephaestus working the

bellows of the volcano, and with Zeus sitting as the crown on top.

And I have never heard anything like that.

You used it as a metaphor for the alchemical creative

process, and my mind went

like a volcano.

Oh, love to hear it.

Let's play with it.

Where did that come from?

What was your thought process there?

It's kind of a long story, At some point during the pandemic, I just

leaned into all my weirdest interests, So I learned a ton about quantum

physics and astrophysics and scientific metaphysics and all of that stuff.

And I was like, wow, there's a lot here.

it's also incredible how much science actually doesn't know.

I love that.

Now that doesn't mean that any woowoo mystical thing you can

come up with can fill those blanks adequately, but I just like holding

that tension of we don't know.

And I've always loved myth.

so I also went on a myth bender during the pandemic.

I reread all the Norse myths.

I reread a lot of the Greek myths.

I got a book on runes.

Like all these things just came together.

And all the time we had during the pandemic just made it all fit.

One of the things that I was fascinated by is Satan.

And I, again, none of this has to be literal, guys.

It's okay.

Don't get scared.

Satan is such a powerful image in our culture, The worst side of monotheistic

culture is that we took everything that's not on the list and we pushed

it down into this bucket called Satan.

And a lot of stuff didn't make the list, So some of it's not all that bad, but

to some people, anything that's not underlined in the Bible is just repressed.

And I think a lot of the bugs in our culture that we're seeing come from

this widespread long-term systematic repression of much of human nature.

So I'm not a Satanist, I'm not defending Satan, but I'm saying as an image, it's

something we need to sit with because it's very rich and has a lot to teach us.

And the major qualities that we see in the mythic figure of Satan

happen to correspond to a lot of the major qualities of human nature.

Kind of interesting.

And so that led me to start writing a book.

I never quite finished the book, but I wrote this book on the history and

the evolution of the image of Satan.

And as I was writing this book, which is like 70% done, sitting on my hard drive.

So someday maybe, but I had a chapter on the Greco-Roman

influences on the Satan story.

And Lucifer is first seen as the name of a Roman deity.

Typhon is the adversarial archetype that we see a lot of that gets pulled in.

Even Hephaestus is thrown down from Heaven by Zeus, It's

similar to the Lucifer story.

So there's all this crosstalk there.

Long story short.

I ended up writing like four chapters just on Greek myth, and I was

like, oh, hey, I think maybe this is what I should be writing about.

And that's where I started seeing those ideas.

As someone trained in depth psychology, like Carl Jung's work, I heard about

the way Zeus defeated Typhon, and I was fascinated because you would

think in these cosmic stories of good and evil the good God would just

obliterate the spirit of discord.

But that's not what happens.

Typhon is put underneath Mount Etna, and his fiery rage powers that

volcano and then Hephaestus's forge is at the top, turning that rage,

alchemizing it into something beautiful.

And so I felt that in the myth as I was trying to write this book and work

through these ideas and understand.

I know these are trying to tell me something.

What is it that they're trying to tell me?

That's always my question.

What does it mean?

What does it mean if I hold it a little differently?

And so that image of the volcano, And then working Prometheus into it too.

I'm glad you connected to that image 'cause that's probably

what started me on this path.

That getting something out of that, that's how it feels to do shadow

work, to channel your grief into something creative, to face a part

of you that you don't wanna face.

Like all of those things are in that image and it's both cosmic and natural

and personal all at the same time.

Yeah it's actually what put me on this path.

So I'm really glad that one connected for you.

And I wanna play with these images a little bit with you because

the other things that connected for me.

Now you bring in Lucifer you bring in the adversary.

But then Prometheus is very much a Christ figure suffering for his actions.

The image of him chained to Mount Etna's remarkably similar to Jesus

on the cross even the pierced liver.

And then Hephaestus

is the one who forged Prometheus's chains, but under duress.

So he's using the fire of Typhon to forge the chains of the light bringer.

Of the fire bringer.

Who gives fire to humanity.

All of this is under Zeus's direction, and you identify Zeus as a fire god.

I'm still thinking of him as an air figure.

As an air god distant and a mental force that then places these other entities.

He traps Typhon.

He, in some stories, is the one who lames Hephaestus.

He chains or orders the chaining of Prometheus.

So he's not the creator of the fire.

He's making sure the fire rises to him and then he can direct it as lightning bolts.

So there's this whole creative force.

And then you've got his shadow, which is the procreative force, his unbridled lust.

And then there you have the downard motion.

And this starts to connect to tantra and chakra cycles.

This image seems to have no end.

Yes.

This is so great.

I'm so glad we're talking because it's so wonderful to have that perspective.

So yes, Zeus is absolutely an air god.

But I think he's typically depicted as maybe both, There's certainly a

mental aspect to Zeus and, the role he plays in our minds, our lives,

our bodies the order of things.

And we can come back to that.

I think Zeus's order is something definitely worth talking

about because there's a reason things are the way they are.

But to your point that let's see, we said Hephaestus is chained, or no,

Hephaestus is thrown down and lamed.

And then Prometheus is chained and then Typhon is underneath.

Zeus didn't destroy Typhon.

Zeus integrates Typhon, And because Zeus's order is the most creative option, if

we quickly zoom back to the Theogony, we have Father Uranus, The first father.

And what does he do?

He doesn't let anything be born.

He says, oh, these Cyclops is gross.

He puts 'em back into Gaia.

He says, oh, these a hundred handed giants gross.

He says, no, this cannot be born.

Under Uranus's order, nothing can be born.

Kronos castrates him and starts a new order.

Now we have the Kronos Saturn order, and what does Kronos Saturn do?

More things are allowed to be out and about, but not everything.

It's very small list of things that are allowed.

What does he do?

He eats all his babies.

He takes them within him, doesn't let them come out.

It's another form of order that's too tight, too tyrannical, And so finally,

when Zeus overthrows, Kronos Saturn and frees his siblings and starts a new

order, it's the most generative order.

This is where everything gets to be born.

And that's why Gaia tolerates Zeus.

'cause everyone gets to be born in zeus's order.

And the good news is that means there's a place for everyone and everything.

Even Typhon, the antithesis of Zeus.

If we look at Zeus as like a vision at the top, bringing things together, Typhon

is a vision at the bottom with no vision.

Just discord pulling everything apart.

A thousand snake heads, a thousand animal heads all screaming in disharmony.

It's the absolute symbol of the opposite of what cosmic order is.

I love it.

And we have to have it this way where Zeus is out and about with all the ladies

and out and about with all the animals.

It's generative life force, right?

It's a metaphor, guys.

I know people don't like it sometimes the way they depict Zeus's encounters

in Greek myth and fair enough.

Some of it's pretty rough, but it's a metaphor for this, unstoppable life force.

That means sometimes we get monsters.

That's the trade off.

If we want everything to be able to be born, that means everything has to be

able to be born, does that make any sense?

I feel like that's all part of this.

Yeah it makes perfect sense.

And something that I've thought about that you've expanded further

is the idea of the Olympians.

To go back to Ouranos or Uranus.

No, he won't let anything be born.

And I didn't think of it as a matter of perfection, although you can

use that in the creative process.

He won't let anything be born, including the Titans who are,

supposedly, beautiful shined glow.

But then you have but Gaia then enlists Kronos and says, yeah,

no I need my children to be born.

Also.

This hurts.

You gotta get outta here.

And so he chops in, tosses his genitals, and then we get Aphrodite from that,

which I think is really important.

So now we have procreative force in the world.

And then Kronos, he rules with his sickle, with his scythe, the iron

fist and it's his rule and no other.

Even though the titans are there, things are allowed to be born,

but he won't risk his own power.

This is different 'cause he has a concept of the future of his own power.

And so he swallows his children instead of forcing them into the mother.

He takes them in and presumably tries to carve them in his own image.

Zeus frees them.

But then he says, I'm doing this differently.

I'm still the king, but everyone gets a seat at the table.

So now you have the idea of the Olympians.

I'm going to rule beside my brothers and sisters.

And then that pantheon grows.

And then to your point, everything gets to be born.

There's a place for everything under the sun, including the monsters.

And in a sort of theory of mind, if Typhon and Zeus are shadows of one another, Zeus

can be this singular focus, the eagle eye, the lightning bolt specificity,

Typhon with the thousand snakes and the many, the, the, it's madness.

And so if Zeus is perfectly, is a perfectly ordered place for

everything, Typhon is something where there is no order.

It's madness.

It's many, it's an, it's a million voices in your head.

And I, what I think is true, I don't know exactly how well this holds up,

but the reason Greek philosophy was so important to the culture is there

was still some kind of living memory of not having an ordered psyche.

Their minds were different.

There was a, the fear of female orgasm was a big thing.

The idea of giving over and losing yourself was a way to madness and

that connects to a way to Typhon.

I'm wondering, am I making sense?

Does this click?

It's absolutely very fascinating.

I haven't thought of it in quite those terms.

I know people talk about that the different theories of mind

and, oh, there's a term for it.

Like the modern mind as we know it is actually pretty young,

maybe 3000 years old, instead of older, like many people think.

But but that's an interesting take.

I do think that Greek myth and philosophy is always in this

constant dialogue of us versus the the forces within, And the mind.

It evolved late.

It's true.

We're mostly animals.

We're mostly unconscious.

We have this little cherry on top that lets us think that

we're in charge, but really.

Come on.

And so the forces underneath, that's monstrous.

That's Poseidon, that's Typhon.

That's all these things that we have to negotiate with and navigate.

And the big Greek stories, it's always Athena versus Poseidon.

Why?

What's up with that?

Poseidon's, the horse, Athena's the bridle and Athena's very young.

So there's this always this like question of are we civilized?

We're trying to civilize.

Sometimes they overcorrect, and they become overly rational,

cruel, Apollonian, Luciferian.

Sometimes they're, it's just rational.

But sometimes, we see, also in the Iliad and the Odyssey,

people are weeping like 24 7.

They were more in touch with their emotions in a way that our

culture has completely shut off.

So to me, I see this constant tension of opposites.

We're so rational, but we have so many emotions, and so I think you're

right, that kind of goes back to maybe an older way of being and

feeling and experiencing the world.

But it's endlessly rich, like you said, they're bottomless.

You can just keep looking at it and applying it to different things.

Everything from cosmic order to inner states, the psyche, the emotions.

Every myth has something to say about most of those layers.

It's wild.

It is wild and I, you just brought in the Odyssey, which

you've been posting a lot about lately.

And you've given takes on the Odyssey that have never occurred to me.

I've read the Odyssey seven or eight times in the last decade.

And it's different every time I read it.

The first time I read it, I was Telemachus, and now

I'm closer to Odysseus.

What's alive for you with the Odyssey right now?

You read it, so I imagine it's still working on you.

Oh yeah I'm in it big time, so I've read the Odyssey many

times, right now I'm reading Daniel Mendelson's translation, and I

recently read Steven Fry's retelling.

I love Steven Fry.

He's a great entry point for people who want to dive in.

Very accessible, very readable.

Not as dense as the, actual ancient texts, but still very thorough

and symbolically, right on.

So yeah, I, I absolutely love the Odyssey.

I'm also working with Jason Hawley.

He's an astrologer and he's running a course on the The

Odyssey that I'm helping out with.

It's like an experiential reading of The Odyssey.

So we really go

Beautiful.

talk about what does this mean for us?

What's the psychology of this, how do we feel into it, and that's been

really rich and rewarding for me.

'Cause I've thought about The Odyssey my whole life, but it's

nice to revisit these ideas now from this different sort of lens.

But yeah, the thing that's really alive for me in the Odyssey, it's a few things.

Again, you can read it in a psychological way, a cultural way,

a religious way, a ritual way.

You can read it as the story of a culture finding its identity.

You can read it as the story of one man grappling with impossible

odds or dealing with his PTSD.

There's endless ways to read it that are all applicable.

I think good symbolism gives you a lens that's multipurpose.

And I think the Odyssey is just so excellent at that.

The big thing that I'm thinking about lately is that it's weird that, in the

story of the Odyssey, it's Odysseus and his crew of sailors, and in so many of

the scenes we have these sailors, but they're not really characterized at all.

They're faceless.

They're nameless.

They just follow him around and they're almost like plot devices, and I've

been really digging into this idea it really feels like Odysseus is something

like the ego or the consciousness.

Or the intellect.

And he's trying to chart a course.

He's trying to set a goal, he's trying to do something, and then these sailors

keep showing up and doing exactly the opposite of what they're told.

When we get to the bag of winds.

Odysseus is don't touch it.

It's all the winds that could knock them off course.

By a deity, they're given this gift.

It's contained in a bag.

It's like the winds are contained.

We're gonna make it home in a day or two.

Just don't touch the wind bag.

And then Odysseus, what does he do?

He goes to sleep.

And while he's asleep, the sailors take over and they do exactly

what they were told not to.

They open the bag and then all the bad winds blow them off course again.

So there's tons of examples like this and again, trained in depth psychology, that

really feels like the unconscious at work.

You can look at the sailors as these unconscious impulses

that challenge what we think we want, And we do this every day.

Oh, I should really go to the gym.

Oh, I didn't.

What's up with that?

We think we're rational creatures, but we do not act rationally,

certainly not all the time.

And so I look at the sailors, one of the ways, by the way, none of these

interpretations of anything we're talking about are canonical, They're one angle

on an endlessly interpretable thing.

And but seeing it that way has been useful for me because there's two angles to this.

One, yeah, it's frustrating for the ego.

I want to do this, but my unconscious keeps putting up obstacles.

What's up with that?

Why?

then if you look at it, if you flip it, what is it that the

unconscious is trying to tell you?

Is it that you don't actually want the thing?

Is it that you're not ready for the thing?

Is it that the thing would actually put you in a worse place?

Is it fulfilling a different need in the wrong way?

So for example, if I, everyone's trying to, lose weight, right?

So let's say I eat a big old bowl of granola before bed every night, and I'm

like, oh, I really gotta stop doing that, and then next night I do it again, right?

So we might say oh what's going on there?

The unconscious is I need more.

The unconscious is there is a lack.

The unconscious is I don't have enough.

I don't have enough energy.

I don't feel.

Resourced.

And maybe that's misplaced.

Maybe what I really need is sleep, or maybe what I really

need is a break or a vacation.

But that's its way of rearing its head and saying, what you think

you want is not what we need.

And so there's this tension there.

Again, like in the Odyssey, Odyssey is never gets back to Ithaca

until all the sailors are dead.

That's a powerful image, Like in some ways Odysseus is the worst captain of all time,

He's the only survivor.

But I think if we look at that less literally and more like a metaphor

or pointing toward a deeper layer of understanding that's maybe necessary.

Because as the sailors die off, it's Odysseus facing all these different

things that he needs to face in order to become the person who can get to Ithaca.

And all in the background, there's this tension this feud with Poseidon.

Odysseus.

He's a veteran of war.

He's been away for 20 years.

He didn't see his kid grow up.

Everyone he knows has died.

They did horrible things in the war.

He's dealing with a lot.

And I think every time the sailors thwart his progress, it's because

there's something he needs to face before he's ready to go back to Ithaca.

And Poseidon is the one maybe orchestrating this, not literally, but

the things that Poseidon represents emotion, instinct, unconscious,

All those things are rearing their heads because he needs to deal with this.

Even the cyclops, it's a child of Poseidon, we can interpret that as it's

something put in front of Odysseus because it's in that realm, that trauma, emotion,

sticky, unconscious realm that he needs to face in order to take the next step.

This is a lot, but I feel like they all give you different angles

and images to work with here, because it's very psychological.

And if you start to see it that way, not it becomes like a guidepost.

Where's that happening in my life?

What are my sailors doing?

Which gods have I wronged?

That's a question that is always useful.

Again, don't take it literally, but which gods have I wronged?

Which Gods am I ignoring?

We all do it.

Absolutely.

And yeah to ignore a God or to challenge one head on is

generally a recipe for disaster.

Hubris in the face of one is, it's gonna get you.

It's these immortal forces are within us.

I love this take of the sailors, like of these being the impulses

that he has to overcome.

You pointed out in another one of your videos we're getting Odysseus's

story from Odysseus, the story of the monsters, the story of the goddesses.

The story of every supernatural encounter is Odysseus relating

that story to someone else.

We get, Calypso and when you.

When you go to the etymology, you start and start thinking

about it psychologically.

Philosophically, this text is it's hard for me not to read it as a story of PTSD.

It's very difficult to avoid that construct because the man who leaves Troy

has no business being in polite society.

He cannot rule, he cannot rule Ithaca.

He cannot rule himself.

He has been taken so far from his center and the Iliad, Peter

Struck university of Pennsylvania.

He has an online mythology course, so you can take up Penn's

course, and he talks about the Iliad as being a cautionary tale.

Like this is the Greeks talking about war, like the horrors that it can create.

It has gone too far and we must never give over to that again.

We must be a better society.

And even then, it's a story of ancient history.

Or it's ancient myth.

One thing that's difficult to get my head around is when we talk

about ancient mythology, 600 BC, these stories were already ancient.

Yes.

Yeah.

oral stories that this tradition this Homeric tradition

wrote down and sang recorded, but they were already ancient stories

and the reason they're relevant, the reason we can interpret them

in an infinite number of ways is because they are infinitely relevant,

personally, socially, cosmologically.

I want to get back to this idea of this image of the sailors.

It's when he goes to sleep, Odysseus says, don't do this.

And then he goes unconscious.

And while the prefrontal cortexes is offline restoring itself,

the basic impulses come and say

he's keeping it for himself.

There's gold in that bag.

All of the things that the sailors start telling each other and

then it blows them off course.

But some part of Odysseus is not ready to go home.

Knows he cannot go home yet.

Yeah.

this.

I love this take.

that up.

It's wild.

And I think it's, I think it's applicable.

I think it is actually a useful lens.

The trick with myths is to not take them literally and to turn

them into lenses that you can then look at your own life through.

And that's when it starts to really open up.

The way the sailors function in this interpretation at least, is a lot

like dwarves in Germanic mythology.

These little guys that come out when you go to sleep, and some of them will play

tricks on you, or some of them will fix your problems while you're sleeping.

Or some of them will, help you create, an artifact There's a similarity there.

You go offline and the dwarves come out.

It's something like that.

There's another take though that I think is actually mind blowing is

Greek mythology is often fractal.

So Odysseus goes to sleep and then the sailors take over

and they set them off course.

There's another myth where on a different level, maybe a more cosmic

level, Zeus goes to sleep, and Hera and Poseidon try to take over,

So it's the same concept playing out at a higher octave or a different

level of reality in the cosmos.

The natural forces, the patterns.

Again, let's not take it literally, but let's think about what that might mean,

whether in terms of the human psyche, The ordering thing goes to sleep and

then, what else desire comes up and tries to take over and become the ruler.

There's so many ways to interpret that Natural Forces You can hold

it in lots of different ways, but I love that there's just this clear

parallel, like Zeus lets his guard down and then hera, Poseidon, and I

think Athena come and try to take over.

It's very interesting.

And that's exactly,

I don't know that story.

Yeah.

It's only in two or three sources.

But yeah, you can and then I think Thetis is the one who helps.

She goes and gets Briareus one of the hundred handers, our buddies,

the Hekatonchires, and he comes and he like menaces, Hera and Poseidon

and makes them back down, and it's so interesting, Because these ancient

things like that Zeus-- He allied himself with them during the Titanomachy.

like that's playing into it in some way.

It's very, Some myths.

You're like, yeah, that's what that means.

Other myths.

You're like, whoa, I gotta sit with that.

They're not always clear.

It's a very powerful myth, I'll try and find the source

for you, but it's out there.

If you search for, it'll find it.

I will find it.

when you brought that in, given where our conversation started with

this idea of Typhon and Zeus placing Typhon, Typhon being something

that he he found a use for it.

He found a way to channel Typhon's struggle into creativity.

And breus, the Hekatonchire.

He he finds a use for that.

He allies himself with a more, with a primitive way of fighting.

I don't know what this might represent in, in martial context, I am thinking

he rallied either, either a cult, some group that he had an agreement with

or or some primal part of the self.

Zeus leads from above, but Zeus is perfectly willing to get down and

dirty, to protect the power to identify with the primal unformed forces.

And now I'm imagining in this pre-history that there's some tribe out there

of, men who fight from the shadows.

Who, who fight with a hundred hands coming out of the darkness.

That, that would be

Yeah, that's so right.

A great

gorilla warfare or something.

It's not, it's not one thing.

Maybe it's a multiplicity, and I think that's what they represent.

You have, what do you have?

You have the cyclops the hekatonchires.

Those are the first children of Uranus and Gaia.

You have Cyclops one eye, heavenly, they're all named for lightning thunder

flashing, They're all this idea of the top of the pyramid, The very point.

The eye.

Monovision.

N o depth.

They're just, this is it.

That's, there's one option.

Then the flip of that, the next thing that gets born is this just like

seething multiplicity of a hundred hands and waving arms and 50 heads.

And so we're seeing this like navigation, this mediation of extremes

and polarity as the world starts to come into focus during the creation.

I love that.

I think your take, that's another beautiful take on what the hekatonchires

might mean, could mean a group.

the king who allies himself with the natives to beat a rival.

That's absolutely something.

There's, there are plenty of fruitful historical interpretations

too, and I love that we're just blending them all together.

Your images are great.

You.

So are yours.

and that is the beauty of this is being able to try on all of these different

lenses and we're still looking at something ineffable through all of

these lenses and somehow doing this.

This conversation that I am in with you, I'm going to think about for

hours, days, and probably weeks.

Yeah.

Things are going to keep going click.

And this is what myth does that nothing has ever been able

to do for me other than myth.

We're spending a lot of time in Greek mythology, which is my realm.

It's what I know very well.

You also seem to be really versed in Norse mythology.

You've made connections between the Norse myths and the Greek

myths that I have never considered.

How did you get there?

What was the journey to, to learning these stories?

there's one little itch I wanna say before we

totally leave Greek myth.

You mentioned Zeus defeating Typhon again.

And how does he do it?

He integrates him.

He subdues and integrates him into the order.

We mentioned that Greek mythology is fractal.

These stories repeat at different levels.

If we look at Hercules.

Hercules is a son of Zeus.

And what does he do first?

He defeats the lion.

It's always said, interestingly that the lion is a son of Typhon, And so here

we have Zeus's son, subduing the lion turning him into armor, integrating the

lion, and making it part of the order where he then goes on to defeat other

monsters and build more of society.

And so that's a

fractal

recapitulation

of Zeus defeating Typhon and so these structures are there, these the

functional interpretation of myth, I don't really know what to call

it, but these patterns are there.

And when you start to see them, you're like, holy cow.

Yeah.

deeper than everyone thinks.

I love how you're taking this.

You've have killing The Nemean Lion, integrating the lion.

That's happening at the mortal level.

Zeus is integrating Typhon.

The primordial didn't have that.

That's what Zeus began.

That was the new introduction, is integration instead of

separation, instead of castration.

Hermes was the grandfather of Odysseus.

So you have this liar, you have the mortal liar.

And then you have the immortal liar who is also the messenger.

The different shapes of creation.

We've talked about that also.

Then once you get into the hi the heroes you have the same

theme show up again and again.

Very often the killing of an animal, whether it's the boar or the lion.

Sorry, I'm just you've given, now my mind is going on a is going on a quest to find

parallels.

fun with it because there it's I'm so glad to be talking

to you Boston, because this is I, like I said, I saw you online.

I was like, this guy gets it.

And now this conversation is like everything I hoped

and more so I'm loving this.

We're doing it.

Right on.

Same, yeah, I wanna shift this conversation to a more about you

and what this work is for you.

You talked a little bit about your background and the, 2020 and pursuing

all of your wonderfully weird interests.

Which, that's also where this began, this part of the work began for me.

I suddenly had a bunch of time to write, so I wrote a bunch of articles about myth.

The videos that you produce is a lot of work.

It may not look like it on the completion end, but I know what it takes to put

those out, to edit them, to put them out, almost every day, Why are you doing this?

What is possessing you to bring this to the world when I'm sure you have

other things in life to do as well.

That's a really wonderful question.

It's almost like a challenge, it's like, why?

There are a lot of reasons.

Where to start.

I think most people have a lack of meaning in their life, and I think

it comes from taking everything super literally, super scientifically.

Science is amazing.

I love science.

I love science just as much.

I'm not saying that myth and woo is good and science is bad.

No, science is incredible.

But each one is a lens.

And each one can give us meaning.

The work of Ian McGilchrist describing the differences in brain hemispheres.

It fits perfectly.

You can map his theory onto the fall of Lucifer myth perfectly.

I'm gonna do a video on that someday.

Like it's just, it's right there in front of us.

Our culture just pushes us to one style of being that isn't

bad, but it's excessive now.

It maps really well to Athena consciousness versus

Poseidon consciousness.

But, Poseidon is the lower, the holistic, the what is the ocean?

It's just one big thing.

Made of waves.

Made of drops.

It's one big thing all at once.

Whereas the rational Athena is the polis, the civilization the craft.

It's like that, that left brain.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

It's important and it's beautiful.

It's done so much.

But our balance is a little off.

I I'm 38 and.

I gotta say a lot of my friends are really depressed.

And I think it comes from a lack of meaning and a lack of being able to orient

your life or look through a lens that doesn't just end with, it doesn't matter.

We're just a speck on a speck and a speck near a speck.

That's a, that is true.

And it's also

not

true because we

have multiple ways to look at it, So if you only have one

way, that's your only option.

But if you have other lenses, then you can start to interpret things.

You can, your life can be symbolic.

I know it probably sounds really woo, but I don't mean it in that way.

But if you learn to see your life a little bit, like you can see myth,

you start to see patterns, you start to ask different questions, and then

that can help you grow, so I think that's what keeps me coming back.

And I think, from my first band when I was 14, I called it Animus because I was

into Carl Jung, so I've been drinking the Kool-Aid for a long time, I've always

thought about these things and I've always had this intuition that there's more here.

Even religion take apart the religious part.

I'm not saying you need to have any dogma or belief, but Genesis is awesome.

Symbolically,

you can read that myth a zillion different ways and apply it to your life a zillion

different ways and learn so much more about yourself by using that as a lens.

We got Adam and Eve in the serpent.

That story is endless, You don't have to believe anything.

You don't have to dogma anything.

You can just play with the story and look at it in this they're like gems

with facets, We depth psychology people say that a lot, so true, and

you can look at your life through that.

And so yeah, so I, I have found it to just be like, not only just endlessly

interesting like you mentioned, like we, you can just keep going.

They seem to be endless.

There's not like a limit oh, I figured it out.

That doesn't happen.

So this is just so interesting.

It's so enlivening, it's oh, I get excited about it.

Wow, that just happened.

Or wow, your pattern is playing out just like freaking Odysseus.

That's incredible.

You start to see it and it makes life more alive, more meaningful, and if.

I do can help people be a little more meaningful in their own

life or a little more creative.

Creativity is a big part of what I do, and I think it's the same idea.

Creativity is our one big way to install meaning in our life as well.

And so I, I connect these and that's part of what I do in like

my consulting and things like that, but I think it's really important.

At the end of the day, it's like it lights me up.

I think it's so fun to think about all the time and I think it helps make life better

and more interesting and more meaningful.

So I don't think I could stop if I wanted to,

Your model where you started with Poseidon and Athena as

the hemispheres is really, is a really interesting juxtaposition or or balance.

One way I think about it using McGilchrist because there's something about myth

that satisfies both hemispheres.

It can be applying a rational, a rationalist viewpoint

to a non-rational story.

It's like it sits at the corpus callosum instead of it being left or right.

It's like a gateway to.

To the right hemisphere in my way of thinking.

You put a myth and it's that creative spark, and you use that word vitalizing.

There's the vitality available through myth, through this Promethean fire,

and it sits there and it's this thing that most people pass by a myth and

they go, oh, there's a story I'm not interested, it's a fairytale, it's

fiction, blah, blah, blah, blah.

It's a myth.

It's a lie like myth.

The irony of the word myth meaning both a lie, a falsehood, and also

something that contains truth.

That is so perfect.

That is such a perfect description of a myth.

And I forget Jean Shinoda Bolen quotes Jung, I think, and she's saying that a

myth is a story that's never happened, but is always happening and so when we stop

and we look at a myth and we go, wait, oh wait, this story is happening now.

How is it in my life?

How is it in the world around me?

It activates that, need, that, ability to make connections that are non-rational.

It opens us into the realm of interconnectivity comprehension

instead of apprehension.

And

Yeah.

The fire of myth is vitalizing.

And this is why I started using it in my coaching, is being able to share a

story, a myth with someone, and they see themselves in the myth and suddenly

they're a part of something bigger.

Suddenly a story from 3000 years ago is resonant with them and

it's not part of their religion.

So they're, they don't have a bunch of preconceived stuff around it,

and they can, there's no baggage.

They just get to be with the story.

So I guess this is a lot of words to say.

I shared your mission.

Like that's what this can do in its cleanest form.

Yeah.

No, it's so well said.

Thank you.

And that's exactly, I think what we're both trying to do, and it's,

it is deeply therapeutic, Just think about it for two seconds.

We are animals who evolved.

To do this, we

To assemble in rituals, We don't have to take ritual, literally,

it's a tool for interfacing with the non-lingual parts of our psyche,

which by the way is most of it.

'Cause language evolved very late.

So only the cherry on top can handle language.

So the ritual image symbol, they're all techniques for

getting to the lower parts of us.

Because if you notice, all of our symbolism goes back to nature.

That's what we evolved in.

That's what made us what we are.

They, it works for a reason.

It actually is very coherent and you don't have to take any of it literally.

there's that.

And you reminded me of a different Jung quote.

It's a called or not the gods are always present, And so that is what we're doing.

There's a therapeutic aspect to this because you can deny the meaning

of myth, you can deny that these stories have anything of value.

you're still going to act in the patterns that the myths describe,

even if you don't realize it.

And so I really think that's worth people, meditating on.

'cause it's really true.

You can see, there's a reason all of the great psychoanalysts are

got a lot of their ideas from myth.

It's because it describes human patterns.

And so yeah I could go on forever.

I love this stuff and I think it is important.

And there's, anything that gets you a little bit outta your left brain, a little

bit more into your right brain is healing.

I'm sure you're familiar with Lisa Miller.

She wrote that book oh, what is it called?

I dunno.

She wrote a book on how basically the part of your brain that turns on

depression is the same part of the brain that turns on spirituality.

And so

I am not familiar with this.

No, this is new.

yeah, it's The Awakened Brain, Lisa Miller.

And so it, again, it doesn't mean religious, it doesn't mean dogma.

It doesn't mean literal believing, but if that spiritual part of your brain is

activated, it becomes physiologically impossible to be depressed.

How mind blowing is that?

And how sad is that?

Because people hear that and they're like, yeah, it must be nice,

but I don't believe in anything.

You don't have to, you just have to shift your perspective a little tiny bit.

And it's fun.

this is actually useful.

So yeah.

So that's my soapbox.

Sorry.

I love your soapbox, and I just read Martha Beck's

Beyond Anxiety and she's talking about anxiety and creativity.

It is impossible for anxiety to exist in the presence of being creative that

one mechanism shuts off the other.

And that maps perfectly.

Spirituality and creativity go together.

creative thinking.

Like thinking, isn't it?

It's creative experience.

It's creative exploration, it's spiritual experience.

The idea of spirituality as a reconstruction of the world in a

non-rational way, that there's something, and may non-rational may not be exactly

it, but it's not about solving a problem.

It's not about breaking things apart.

It's about seeing things in a new way,

I almost like a rational, like it's not even, it's

not rational, it's not irrational.

It's just like a different, it's apples and oranges,

a rational.

Oh, I like that.

I don't know if that's correct, but that's what I say.

That might not be a

I've used non-rational to, to avoid irrational,

This has to be experiential.

Yeah.

This work has to be experiential.

It has to happen in conversation.

It has to happen in the freedom to be wrong.

'Cause you can't be, you just have to be willing to go and Oh, that.

And what we end up with is, oh, I've never thought of that before.

It's not wrong.

It might not be as resonant for me as it is for somebody else.

That's not my business.

If it brings you alive, that's the point.

That's the point.

And like you say, it may not even be resonant, But again, are

we Odysseus or are we the sailors?

Like the sailors are, they're going against Odysseus's will, but I

think Odysseus has to do all the things that the sailors cause.

In order to actually get where he is going.

So I'm not anyone a pass to just do whatever their impulses say,

but there's a wrestling there, there's a dialogue happening.

So I think you're spot on.

You're right in.

You're right in it.

Your point too, like those are both different parts of the psyche.

It's not about what one is doing and another is not like

the psyche is doing this.

This is a wrestling match that's happening between layers

and levels of consciousness.

In one of your videos, you talk about Odysseus getting off the island of Calypso

and that Calypso, he's not with a woman.

He's in the arms of the goddess.

He's sleeping with death.

He is sleeping.

This is depression.

He's deep in depression and he cannot get himself to move.

And so Zeus sends Hermes to say, Calypso, you gotta let him go.

Like it's time, like he, he needs to get on the road.

This is his psychic process.

It's okay, I've done all of this I can do, I still can't go home,

but I can get off this island.

And what does he do?

He builds a boat.

He gets busy with his hands.

Creativity, he's a craftsman, and he starts making something, and

that's how he gets off the shore.

The way off the island is through creativity.

I fully believe that.

That is, that, that's probably 50% of what I do is creative

work and creative consulting.

And it's, I don't see it as different from this work, depending on the

receptivity of the person I'm working with, I'll bring in more or less of the

archetypal or the mythic or the occult.

But I think it's it doesn't matter.

They're playing from the same thing.

What's the core message of Genesis?

We create, like God creates, because we are in God's image.

We are the only animals that have a say in our own nature.

That's pretty significant.

We are creative beings.

. Boston Blake: Here, Here.

If somebody comes to you if somebody goes to your website and they hire you as a

coach, what might an engagement look like?

What does it look like to be coached by you?

What's really important to me is meeting someone where they are.

So if they come to me and say, Hey, I've been really depressed.

That's a totally different process when they say, Hey, I'm blocked creatively,

If they come to me, under the hood, those things might actually be the

same, but you have to meet it where the person is ready to talk about it.

I used to work in Salem as a tarot reader because it was one way to get people who

wanted to look at the symbolic, again, you don't have to take it literally.

It's, it's, the cards don't have to be magic for them to be useful

lenses to apply to your life.

So I really will try to meet the person and understand who they are.

One angle I like to take is myth work.

Okay, what is your personal myth?

And a lot of people are like, oh I don't know.

And that's fine.

So tell me about some of the major episodes of your life.

What are the three best things that ever happened to you?

What are the three worst?

What's a story from your childhood that you like, cannot let go?

So with this work, it takes a while.

It can be in depth, but I help, I try to help people see aspects of

their self and their lives in a more mythic, symbolic lens, and then.

Then we apply it to whatever they're going through, Oh, I've been depressed.

Oh, I'm looking for a job.

Oh, I wanna finish this album.

Oh, I want to redo my website.

I've seen people with all sorts of stuff.

Oh, I want to leave my husband, oh, I'm trying to get pregnant.

I've helped people with not literally that last one.

I did not help them get pregnant in that sense.

But maybe in a, in the other sense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we really, I just try to like Hey, like there's a whole way of seeing that

we have together in this container.

Let's apply it to what's important to you.

Let's help you learn a little more about yourself, see the world a little

differently, and then tackle your problem or your goal a little differently.

It's been really fun.

It's really fruitful when it works, and in my personal life, I'm a creative,

I teach at a college for game design.

I am a lifelong rock musician, so I'm very tapped into the creative process and

all the good and bad that comes with it.

Talk about anxiety and creativity occupying the same circuit.

I've never heard it said literally, but I'm sure as heck felt it.

And so I yeah.

So any way I can be creative or more importantly, help other people bring

that creativity into their lives in a way that's, and therapeutic, let's do it,

And you have a course coming up that's focused on this in May.

What is it that you're doing in May?

So I am doing a course on mythology and creativity, So we

talked about some of these today.

There's patterns and myth if you learn to see it And if you learn

to pick them out in the right way, they can give you a leg up.

Or new lens to look at your life.

So what the course does is it goes through eight different myths.

It's an eight week course, So we do one myth a week and

we interpret it as a group.

I offer a few suggestions, and then the group kind of runs and we discuss

it, we pick out the patterns that can apply to the creative process,

A good example is the Theogony, Uranus and Gaia, the tension

between heaven and Earth.

Heaven wants things to be perfect.

Earth wants things to be what they are, The idea and the actual, the theory and

the practice, you can do it a million different ways, but there's always

this tension and the perfection of what heaven wants has to be cut off in order

for the thing itself to come forward,

And I don't know about you, but in my creative work, perfectionism is

a constant thing I have to navigate, And that's the tyranny of heaven.

That's heaven wanting it to be so perfect.

It can't actually exist and so it has to get cut off so that the thing

can actually come into being, any version of something is necessarily

not every version of something.

And that sounds so obvious as to almost be a throwaway, but it's exactly the

mistake we make as creatives all the time.

So that's one example of what we might do week one.

And then so we have a discussion about that and everyone is encouraged to bring

something they're working on, In any state of idea or draft or just total chaos mess,

Because I'm trying to, for myself just as much as, students as

well, but I'm trying to normalize this idea of creativity is messy.

It's gross.

You don't want anyone to see it, What's therapeutic, letting them see it.

So this like idea of taking the mess you're working on and making it sacred.

So the second half of the classes will be sharing the creative work and offering

different angles and seeing, opportunities for people to request feedback.

It's a very helpful, supportive environment where we ask

questions and give reflections and tie it back into the myth.

I'm really excited about it.

I'm working on a book At this rate, it'll be done in 2029.

But I'm working on a book about this very thing.

Like looking at the myths and interpreting them deeply and

putting it in practical terms for your life and your creative work.

So it's very alive to me right now, and I'm trying to put it into practice as I,

I try to finish an album, so I'm right there in the trenches with everyone else.

Right on.

And if somebody wants to get a hold of you and learn more about the

course or more about working with you, what's the way to do that?

Yeah, my website is stolenfires.com.

And so every link you need is there.

You can sign up for the mailing list and I'll be updating about the course there.

And I've got YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and all the things.

I would love

Cool.

people there and chat about this stuff.

Obviously all of those will be in the YouTube

description and in the show notes.

to make it really easy for people to find, I love the work that you're doing.

I truly depths of my soul.

I appreciate what you are bringing to the mythic conversation.

I think while we've been talking, your Instagram has

gained another 150 followers.

It is it's a thousand new people a day right now.

It's really exciting to see you growing like this.

Thank you.. you're not kidding.

And it's a very weird, overwhelming feeling, and I'm really grateful

and excited and, I'm just like, okay, let's keep this momentum.

I gotta keep the hot takes coming,

Is there anything we haven't hit today?

We are definitely going to have more conversations.

This is ex, this is a truly extraordinary chemistry, I feel.

And I want to, I wanna talk so much more with you but at least for this

one, what have we not hit on that you really wanna bring to the table?

I dunno.

I feel like that was pretty good.

I think we landed it, there's, it's endless.

We, the whole point is that this stuff is life giving and it's endless.

So we I really do hope we have many more conversations because, we almost

talked about the Norse myths and I think, you know what we'll do that next time.

Maybe that could be our starting point for the next one.

'Cause

Here.

So much there.

Thank you so much for spending the afternoon with me.

Morning with me.

Afternoon for you.

This has been to say it's been a delight understates it.

Thank you for your time.

you.

Thank you so much Boston.

I truly, again I've been excited about this for a long time, so I'm

really glad we finally made it happen.

And it's great to just speak with a like-minded, kindred, archetypal spirit.

So we're here.