The stories of gods or heroes descending into the underworld, threading through labyrinths and fighting with monsters, brought to light the mysterious workings of the psyche, showing people how to cope with their own interior crises.*
Karen Armstrong

Mythological images are the images by which consciousness is put in touch with unconsciousness. That’s what they are. When you don’t have your mythological images, or when your consciousness rejects them for some reason or other, you are out of touch with your own deepest part.**
Joseph Campbell

The next time
I find myself awake in
the long darkness of the night,
Wading through and unable to resist
all the difficult stuff,
I am going to reimagine it within
my myth^ – dark caves to navigate with
burning torches, fearsome creatures to be
provided with form to shrink them – because
a myth is not only about the enjoyable stuff,
It also succours our wellbeing, enabling us to be
agents rather than victims.

*Karen Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth;
**Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
^The megamyths of history may not serve us as they did our forebears, but they can still inform our more personal myths so necessary for today. Such a myth requires the metaphysical/mystical, cosmological, sociological, and pedagogical. And if our myths are not to our liking, or are not working, we can change them.