THE NEW MYTH™:
LIVING YOUR STORY OF DIVINE UNION
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For thousands of years, the narrative arc of the lone hero has shaped our mythic landscape. When Joseph Campbell did his comparative literature review of the world’s myths for his seminal work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he discovered the monomyth — the Hero’s Journey — at the center of these stories.
Yet, Campbell’s monomyth and Hero’s Journey template only represent ONE phase of our personal and universal story, and many people are still using this old map to traverse the new collective landscape we’re navigating now.
If we look to myth as a mirror, the monomyth reflects an active, individualist, yang approach to the trials and triumphs of the human experience and idealizes the masculine values of independence, productivity, consumption, and competition that have dominated our overculture for thousands of years.
By observing ourselves and the world through the lens of the hero, our stories reflect the qualities of the overexpressed masculine and reject the values of the repressed feminine, creating more dualistic thinking and division. This is an old story, yet many people are still living and creating within this construct.
In the 1980s, one of Campbell’s students, Maureen Murdock, challenged him by claiming that the Hero’s Journey was a different experience for women.
Campbell reportedly responded, “Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological tradition, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place people are trying to get to.”
His reply didn’t satisfy Murdock, so she created a new body of work called the Heroine’s Journey (“a woman’s quest for wholeness”). Murdock framed this as an inner quest into the unconscious realm of the unseen world and a descent into the shadows to confront all that was lost in denying and diminishing the feminine aspect.
After healing her split with the feminine nature, the heroine reconnected and established a healthy dynamic with her own masculine aspect. Through this integration of the inner masculine and feminine principles, the heroine returned to a state of wholeness — she was the gift that she brought back to share with the world.
The Heroine's Journey outlined the next essential stage in our personal and collective stories of transformation, and Murdock’s work remains a tremendous inspiration for me. However, this model was about women, a pendulum swing in the opposite direction of Campbell, and it was rooted in a second-wave feminist perspective, which limited its scope.
As a new era dawns, we are being called to live a new story. And as our collective soul awakens to a more unified consciousness, our mythical architecture expands. I believe the next evolution in our archetypal narrative, beyond the hero and the heroine, is humanity’s return to divine union — this is what I call the New Myth™.
The Hero’s Journey outlined the first stage of differentiation that established our identity in the physical, material world. The hero paved the path to individuation, gave us the confidence to answer the call to adventure, and developed our unique character within the greater narrative of life.
The Heroine’s Journey mapped the next phase of our growth, a descent into the unseen world to heal the feminine split, restore the masculine foundation, and live from our inherent wholeness. The heroine granted us the courage to step into the unknown and face ourselves, accept our own darkness, and rediscover our holism.
The New Myth is the final act in the evolution of humanity — the journey from separation to union and the return to God, our eternal Source / Creator. This transformational story arc blesses us by reflecting who we truly are, humbles us in our divine surrender, and inspires us to reclaim our true power as co-creators. This is the mythic narrative of the golden age.
If you have chosen to walk this devotional path and live your unique version of the New Myth, this is your call to step forward. You’ve lived your story of transformation, and now it’s time to tell it.
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