Hi my name is Jon and I am myth curious! And being a little ‘right brainded’, as I like to call it, I like how they speak to that side of the brain(and how they speak to the symbolic imagination, maybe). And when Jason went chasing after a golden fleece, it wasn't literally a golden fleece he was after, it was more like some kind of a treasure hard to attain.
And then there is something so 'tricksterish' about myth. And what you might normally think is good can somehow be bad. And what you might normally think is bad can somehow be good. And it seems to upset the stable moral order or turn it upside down. And I like it when Hermes stole some of Apollo's cattle because it makes me think there is something mercurial that can outwit Apollo's normal sunlit daylight world of rationality that often seems to dominate everything. And myths can lead you into something less black and white, and deeper maybe, and more ambiguous or paradoxical or nuanced.
……………
If archetypes are like different ways the world reveals itself. If they are like different ways the world shines through. Sometimes I think about the difference between Hero and the Trickster.
The heroic consciousness can be a lonely business, with all those battles to fight, all those monsters to slay, and always having to fight off the dark, and then save the world, and trying to keep everything in order all day. But the heroic age of Psychology has passed said Hillman(and sometimes I think the heroic consciousness has also passed in myself). Or at least, in that way of thinking about it. And it can be more fun to live out of the Trickster who is more likely to thrive in chaos, and to find some joy and pleasure in the world. And I can see Natraj, the dancing King as a kind of a Trickster figure. And Hermes as a god of thresholds and boundaries and liminal spaces is a Trickster.
……………..