ONCE, WE GATHERED, IN THE dark, around fires, and we told stories of the gods who controlled our fates and moved the world, the mortals who shaped the destiny of nations and crossed swords or wits with beings of supreme power, of why things were and are.
At its core, myth is meaning-making through storytelling, a way of understanding people, places, natural phenomena. Why does the sun rise, why do the stars shine, how did that island come to be, how did that hero rise or fall, what are the origins of life? From the Greek word “mythos,” meaning “speech, thought, or story,” myth is a way of making sense of things through narrative. Myth was storytelling of significance, meant to impart wisdom of the world, the secret workings of the universe, life itself.
We still gather and tell such stories, by fires, through printed books, by the light of computers.
There is a tendency to speak of myth as symbolic, metaphorical, but it can also be literal. There are many cultures today for whom ancient narratives are truth, not fantasy. Myth is not a thing of the distant past. While it is rooted in the past, in stories that have endured millennia upon millennia, it remains, it endures. And throughout time, new tellers made old stories new, changing details to fit the time, the place, to better frame a drought, a famine, a changing political landscape. Myth provides the basis for systems of belief, for truths literal or symbolic, for fields of study, for understanding. It is narrative with power.
And myth doesn’t just belong to nations—it belongs to us. We create our own myths as we shape our world, grow our own personal and national mythologies that help us make sense of the institutions we build, the decisions we make. Myth is ancient origin story, but it is also the origin story we tell ourselves as we build our present and our future. Myths, ancient and modern, illustrate truths both subtle and overt, beliefs we hold, or held.
Mythic stories are universal. Or so we claim. Myths occur in all cultures, in so many similar ways, but much of what we mean by the universality of myths is their subtext, their themes, their widespread nature. In the specifics, many mythic stories reinforce traditional power structures, patriarchy, sexism, racism. Myths help make meaning of the world—but the world changes. And so myths change in their retelling. Sometimes in subtle ways, other times drastically. One generation’s hero can be another’s villain.
The Mythic Dream is a confluence of those elements—it is a way of engaging with classic narratives by recontextualizing them, giving them new perspectives, new worlds to inhabit. Those reimaginings in turn can help us create meaning for the world today, or illustrate truths perhaps obscured in the myth’s original version. Here, many of our authors have used those classic tales to interrogate issues of gender, politics, sexuality, patriarchy, power dynamics, and family. They’ve used those grand narratives to tell very human stories.
Mythic personalities who were once supporting characters, who used to be blurred figures on the edges of their own stories, take center stage. Instead of focusing on Actaeon, Artemis takes the lead. Achilles becomes a side note in his mother’s tale. Blodeuwedd becomes far more than just flowers. And Idunn, once barely more than a provider to the gods, is the one who holds all the cards. There are reversals at play here, too. A terrifying bogeyman becomes the greatest source of comfort. A curse of lycanthropy is embraced as a gift.
These stories are the dreams of classic myths. Dreams take private and public elements, and filter them through our subconscious. With The Mythic Dream we asked our authors to filter classic myths through their dreaming minds, to parse their private lives, their imagination, the world around them, and to bring all those elements they’ve absorbed consciously and unconsciously to their narratives. For some, the myth was a roadmap to new adventures; the journey is immediately recognizable, but the sights are quite different. For others, the individual elements are familiar, but their travels took them down very different paths. But for all these dreamers, the destination was the same: an adventure or perspective that feels wholly new, and yet rooted in ancient truths.
Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.” So we invite you in to The Mythic Dream, to join us as we reimagine our collective past, explore our present, and take hold of our future through the lens of classic myths.