Josh Mortensen (00:03.071)

Okay. Safron Rossi, welcome to the Explorer Poet Podcast.

Safron (00:07.192)

Thank you Josh for having me.

Josh Mortensen (00:09.365)

Yeah, absolutely. I’ve been very much looking forward to this conversation with you. I guess before we jump in, I am curious from your perspective, how do you, I don’t know, how do you explain what it is that you do? Because it seems like you do a handful of different things, writing and editing, but how do you sum up what it is you do? And I guess the field in which you do it.

Safron (00:29.827)

Mm-hmm.

Safron (00:37.814)

Right, well, so I’m a professor of mythology in the Jungian and Archetypal Studies Master’s PhD program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. so, you know, that sort of sums it up, which is that I’m a scholar, researcher, writer on the mythic imagination and the way that is

understood as central in terms of Jungian and archetypal psychology. So I teach, I write, mentor students, and I am also a consulting archetypal astrologer. So that’s the second sort of side of my work and my passion. So yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:36.949)

Okay, interesting. Yeah. This whole world of archetypes and myth, it’s for me, it’s kind of a blending of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, they kind of bring these two people together and that their writings and that kind of their their way of explaining things to me that it just helps me. It’s like a model that helps me to really understand the world and the way that people work. And I’m sure it’s not whatever version of it exists in my head is not

but it’s been extremely helpful for me, especially since I’m, I guess I’m something of the seeker archetype where I just, I’m so curious and always want to know. And which also makes me curious about you and why, you know, what is it in life that drew you towards this focus around story and myth and psychology or the psyche? I’m curious, when did that all start for you?

Safron (02:29.026)

Right, right.

Yeah, well, I figured you were going to ask me that. I think where it all began was as a kid, just having an incredible passion for Arthurian legends. I was mad for them and I couldn’t end myth and fairy tales, but it was particularly Arthurian legends that I really became.

deeply enamored by. that was something that I held on to as a kid and getting through high school. And then when I went to college, I went to Hampshire College, which is a very liberal arts school in Massachusetts. And I was able to continue my

deep interests in Arthur Rihanna through like the way I was putting together my portfolio. Like that’s what you do at Hampshire. You have an interest and so you just start taking classes that sort of circumambulate that and deepen your knowledge of it. And what I knew really deeply, like in an embodied way,

not so much, I didn’t understand it in an intellectual way, but in an embodied way, was that, and this was very, very strong once I was in college, it was that myths meant something. And I don’t mean that in like the historical sense, which of course is important, you know, cultural developments of different civilizations and traditions and the development of religious symbolism, like all of that is, and obviously that’s

Safron (04:28.11)

some of the most mainstream ways in which myth is looked at historically, religious studies, culturally. But that wasn’t what I was really intuiting and feeling, that somehow these ancient stories, these stories that didn’t make any rational sense, that we know are not true, quote unquote, had the deepest, deepest significance.

But I didn’t know what that was. mean, I’m 18, 19, 20 years old. I mean, what do I know? So I didn’t know what that was, and yet I felt it. And so I kind of just kept studying in more of the sort of mainstream way in which we study these myths and stories. And then I found, when I finished college, I found…

And it was in a way circling back to my early family, just what was in the sphere, but Joseph Campbell. And I found the hero with a thousand faces and simultaneously to that found Pacifica Graduate Institute, which has a mythological studies program. You know, the internet, this is the year 2000, 2001. So the internet is just kind of, you know.

starting and you can find places you’ve never heard of by doing a search online and in the description of the myth program at Pacifica, they basically said what it was that I was feeling but didn’t have any language for which was that from the depth psychological perspective drawing on the work of C.G. Jung, James Hellman and Joseph Campbell, myths are

living stories that relate to the deepest essence of what it is to be human, and that their significance can be recognized in that kind of almost like collapsing between time and space and recognizing that these stories live within us, even though we are so modern, so enlightened. So yeah, so that’s that’s

Safron (06:53.202)

So it wasn’t until I started in graduate school that I was introduced to depth psychology and all of that. But I had all of the exposure to the mythic imagination, if you will, leading up to it. So, yeah, but what about you?

Josh Mortensen (07:12.941)

What about me in regards to myth and…

Safron (07:14.402)

Yeah, like how did you come to like, does myth begin in your life?

Josh Mortensen (07:19.603)

Yeah, I think that I just have always naturally been some kind of a storyteller. I could always see similar to you, I could always see that there was something deeper when it came to stories or myths. And but the truth is that I grew up in a very religious context, I was raised LDS or Mormon. And so when I the myths that I was that I was raised on were very, were very concrete, they were very, you know, what what Joseph Campbell would say was we literalized our myths. And so

everything was, there wasn’t a lot of depth to it. You just took it at face value. And so I lived in that world for a long time. there was just sort of a, I guess you could say there was kind of like a lack of a lack of sustenance there or like substance. so it felt like, you know, being, it felt like maybe being thirsty, but not be not in the

The thing that you think should give you that relief is there, but it’s not providing that satiation to your thirst. so at some point in my early thirties, I stepped away from the religion of my birth and of my youth. And then I would say the way that I tell people, and I’ve talked about this several times on my podcast, but the way that I think about it or the way that I experienced it was kind of a Nietzschean descent into nihilism where

the religion that was the framework for my understanding of reality had collapsed. And then I was left to think, what’s the purpose of anything? Because when you have such a understanding of the world, everything is supported by that religious belief. And so when I lost faith in my

religious institution, I lost faith in almost all institutions. And that’s that descendant to nihilism where you’re like, well, you can’t trust any of the stories anymore. You can’t trust any of the groups. so for me, started, I think I just started to kind of slowly rebuild kind of my understanding of what reality is and what my purpose here is. And it started with an understanding of just physical sciences, biology, evolution, things I had never really looked into before.

Josh Mortensen (09:46.749)

eventually I got around to the question of psyche and psychology. Once I started reading, actually a friend, somebody in my family had just randomly come into possession of a couple of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell books and so I read them. And then once I started reading them, I thought, this is just, it was so eye-opening. And for reading Joseph Campbell, I came to see history

in a completely different way as like this, representation of cultural evolution. And then reading Carl Jung, I was able to see the dynamics of, you know, myself and individual psyche. And then also, what was fascinating was I could extrapolate that to different layers of society or groups. And the kind of the functioning of the situation was the same. And yeah, so once I started reading, you know, these, these types of

scholars or authors, I just became enamored with it and it just became fascinating. And the thing about reading both Jung and Campbell for me is that while it is intellectually stimulating, there is also a feeling that I get that’s very like enlivening. It’s very enlarging. And I really enjoy that.

Safron (11:05.058)

Yeah. Yeah, Campbell’s writing style in particular has this, I almost there’s something of like, what’s the right word? Like he has this energy in his writing where you feel like you’re lifted up, like toward whatever it is that he’s talking about. It’s very

enchanting in a way and encompassing. I think it’s just for me, my experience reading Jung is different in that with Jung, I feel like I get dropped down deeper into experience because of the way he’s able to give language to things which are so difficult to formulate words for or concepts for. So.

So for me, they sort of pull in two different directions, like on a feeling level. Yeah, Campbell kind of goes up. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (12:10.827)

I could see that, yeah, because Campbell is all about find your bliss and reach consciousness through your creative adventures or whatever. And Jung is a little bit more like, let’s go into the depths and look at the scary things.

Safron (12:20.404)

Yeah.

Safron (12:25.496)

Well, but one interesting thing, I don’t know if you’ve come across this in your conversations or in your reading, but you know, yes, Campbell said follow your bliss, but what often is not known is that he had an addendum to that, which is that the path to the bliss means many blisters. That it’s not just a kind of, you know, transcendent.

you know, just find what you’re passionate about and it’s all just going to be kind of, you know, roses and unicorns. But that it’s the connection to that sense of calling or that passion that helps us endure the blisters and the difficulties and the closed doors and the hard work that inevitably form the path by which we’re

you know, fulfilling and being in relationship to that thing that we long for so much. So I always say that when someone says follow your bliss, because I feel sometimes that pop culture has kind of denuded it of his fuller, you know, understanding of what it takes to be in touch with that. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (13:47.489)

Yeah, absolutely. I agree. think that the same is true of many of Jung’s ideas as well. They get like simplified or kind of dumbed down to kind of fit a very simple, like you’re saying, pop culture narrative. I see that all the time when people talk about things like introversion and extroversion, when people talk about synchronicities, they talk about it in a way that’s completely off the path of what Jung, I think what Jung meant when he brought up those issues.

Safron (14:00.536)

Hmm.

Safron (14:07.05)

No,

Safron (14:15.832)

Right.

Josh Mortensen (14:16.865)

But what’s really interesting to me about, from my experience of having a religion that was given to me and then walking away from that and then having to decide, okay, if I’m not gonna be a nihilist, then I’ve got to come up with something. You’ve got to kind of build this back together and put it together. And I think that the combination of Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, it has helped me almost kind of.

Safron (14:35.406)

Mm.

Josh Mortensen (14:45.985)

discover or create my own version of a framework that’s worth pursuing, like a life lived that’s worth pursuing. Jung’s idea of individuation and not in like the simplest, selfish or be an individual type framework, but in the same sense that you’re talking about Joseph Campbell and how

Blists requires blisters. think that individuation is the same way. And in a sense, it’s kind of the, almost pair up very well as far as where we’re trying to get as far as individuals or as unique psyches. It’s a very difficult road to walk, but it’s one worth walking. Yeah, go ahead.

Safron (15:30.189)

Yeah.

Safron (15:35.95)

Yeah, no, if I can just, you know, I really appreciate what you’re saying and where can we see that in the mythic imagination? So, for example, thinking about the Arthurian knights and the quest for the grail. So this quest arrives, this grail has to be found because the land is sick and the king is sick and there are these problems that have to be resolved.

So all these different knights know that they have to find the grail. But what’s the way? They’re not given the path. And in fact, in many of the older versions of the grail story, like the Wolfram von Eschenbach, which is the German writer, who is the powerful, beautiful version of the Parzival myth.

It’s described that the Knights all had to enter the woods at the point where it was darkest for them on the path. So it’s not the same path. It’s not even the same potentially woods that they’re entering. Each one has to find their own path. And I think that that is really an image for what individuation is, which is the discovery of one’s

truly unique self that at the same time in that process of discovering that it actually means a huge broadening and widening of even how we define ourselves because it is a process of psychological wholeness. But that’s quite distinct from individualism which I think is what you were saying that and particularly in our western American culture.

society, there’s such a, those are two very distinct things. Having this sense of like the credo of being an individual and what we think comes with that versus the often very difficult work of being in relationship to the larger person that you are, which you know, I can hear just in your own story.

Safron (18:02.188)

I imagine, you know, leaving, but the background, religious, I mean, these things that you knew, these things that on one hand offered a sense of safety and knowledge, but at the same time, as you were saying, like, there’s no, there’s no milk in the cup. There’s, there’s something is missing and that’s a profoundly, well, people have these experiences and these are painful.

I mean, what Jung might describe it or Campbell would describe it is that we fall out of the myth. And that is awful and necessary, but damn, it’s awful when we’re no longer held right in a, a, in a paradigm that we recognize and feel connected to. But that would be part of individuation, the falling out of the myth in order to then from the like,

Josh Mortensen (18:51.978)

Absolutely.

Josh Mortensen (18:56.087)

Yeah.

Safron (18:58.092)

the soil of your own being, discover what’s truly yours. Or, yeah, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (19:03.937)

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I feel like that’s what that’s what Carl Jung can give can give you kind of with that individuation myth or that individuation path is, is your, you know, go finding that darkest spot in your own forest and go pursue that. And when I when I read something like the Mass of God from Joseph Campbell, I’m able to see how

know, giving up your myth so that you can create a new, like your own individual one. That’s not just something that we do as individuals, but that’s something that groups of people have been doing for forever over and over where there’s a myth that is adopted. And I love the way Joseph Campbell actually puts it where he kind of, he has so many different ways of describing myth. But one of them is really simply that the purpose of myth is

is to help move us towards greater consciousness, greater awareness. And as you go through these different phases of the myth, maybe it’s not linear, but maybe we have gradually moved towards a more conscious state. There is something about the Western world and our monotheistic roots that

allow us as people who live today to even consider being individuals or to want to pursue something like individuation. It’s in a sense, it’s like the myth. Joseph Campbell just, I guess he helps me see how we got here and then Carl Jung kind of helps me see a little bit of where we’re going.

Safron (20:50.008)

Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, I would, I think the, an important thing is that these myths that civilizations, cultures express and cultivate and participate in and believe that that’s actually an arising, like those stories and those, the gods and the figures, those are

arising out of the depths of the collective unconscious that these different archetypal patterns, which we can talk about as values, or we can talk about as gods, sort of the spiritual image of an archetypal pattern as a god, a divinity, that they constellate and that they arise and people and groups are

finding stories for them. Where do they come from? Well, I don’t know, they come from dreams and they come out of the imagination from poets and dancers and singers. And it’s almost like myth making is a response to what is constellating. And then just as that in a way emerges, so too do certain archetypal patterns and figures

end up losing energy and going dormant. And that would be like the falling away of a particular religion that it just sort of peters out and then something else arises because it gathers all this psychic energy around it. So I don’t think it’s a conscious thing that people do, but it’s that we humans through

Safron (22:47.852)

the history of humanity are responding to and participating in the creative making and expression of these archetypal realities or experiences. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (23:05.857)

Yeah. And you said that they arise out of the collective. I’m curious how far, like how deep do you think they actually go? Do you think that they’re in some way these, these story arcs and these archetypes are encoded in our DNA? Is it that deep?

Safron (23:19.97)

I think that would accord with the way Jung talks about the archetypal patterns of the psyche. The collective unconscious he calls the, what is it, like six million year old man. Like the collective unconscious is the repository of all of humanity. Every single person, I don’t know how, but in some way our

shared, combined, lived experiences somehow are the food that feeds the collective unconscious.

And those archetypal patterns, going back to Jung’s theory, are expressed along a pole. On one side of the pole is the instinctual. So that’s the body, that’s our animal nature, flight and fight and survival and procreation. And so talk about DNA, right, then in the sense of the our biological embodied life, the instinctual basis of life.

So that’s one end of the spectrum of archetypes. And then the other is what we would call the spiritual, which would be the images that religion gives us. And we see in myths, we see in culture, which are the archetypal energies, you know, expressed through philosophies and concepts and divinities. So that’s the spectrum on which these

patterns of nature. That’s the way I like to think about archetypes, because I think we can get, it can get a bit heady when we’re talking about these patterns, and it is in many ways, but if we bring it really down, what are archetypes but the patterns of nature? Right?

Josh Mortensen (25:23.489)

Yeah, I agree. think that it’s inherent to our existence. think it’s something that we’re born with. There’s this quote from Rumi that sums it up really simply for me where he says, are not a drop of water in the ocean, but you are the ocean in a drop of water. the way I think about that, when I say that, sometimes I’ll say that to my wife and she’ll shake her head and be like, I have no idea what that means.

Safron (25:43.554)

Mmm.

Josh Mortensen (25:51.915)

What it means to me is very simply that if all of these things are encoded in us all the way down at the level of the DNA, or they emerge in some way through us, or as you’re saying, they are the patterns of nature, then they are, it is, it’s something that is so deeply ingrained in us. And the question is, well, why, why have these patterns?

And I think like what you’re saying, it’s the patterns of nature. So almost all mammals are gonna have some of these patterns. And if you go back further, there’s gonna be, know, birds and reptiles that have similar patterns encoded into them. But the interesting thing about being a human is that we have such advanced skills of observation and kind of, you know, mental analysis. And there’s this fascinating conundrum that humans have where we have to…

Because of our intelligence, we have to interact with the world in a different way. Our adaptation, our survival mechanism was our intelligence, which may sound, for some people, it just seems so straightforward that they’re having an experience at all. But for me, seems like we are…

If we as individual psyches or as a collective are going to make sense of our environment, of the reality that we live in, there must be some process by which our minds or our bodies go about making that sense. And I think that it’s pretty obvious from way back when that symbols appeared and that they, know, even animals understand symbols. They navigate the world through symbols. And eventually we

those symbols with words and those words became stories and it seems like it’s inevitable that we use stories and symbols and archetypes to interpret the world, interpret our experience.

Safron (27:55.33)

Yeah, or make meaning of our experience, be able to understand it in a fuller way. mean, know, Campbell said that myth serves four functions. And so he broke it down in a really helpful way. And…

So the four functions as he saw it in a very general way was that it has a cosmological function. These are myths that help us understand our small tribe or culture in relationship to these cosmological powers like night and day and rain, know, these, these.

amazing things that just happen and we are, you know, in relationship to. That there’s a mystical dimension, a mystical function to myth, which is that it helps us humans understand something of our relationship to the divinities, to the great mystery of how all of this is and what is it

What is my responsibility to the gods and what is the mystery of it? And not in this, and it’s how am I embedded in it in a meaningful way or how are my people embedded in it in a meaningful way? And then there’s the sociological, which is…

much more about, I mean, I always use the example of like the 10 commandments, like how do we get along as people living in a culture together in a civilization? What are the rules, right?

Josh Mortensen (29:56.929)

Yeah, what are our values or our morals and what do we agree upon?

Safron (29:59.798)

are shared values. That’s right. And then the fourth function would be the psychological, which is most directly involving the individual, which is how, you know, the way that certain myths and stories aren’t speaking about the creation of the world, and they’re not speaking about civilization and morals and ethics, but they’re speaking about

the value of the individual life and helping the individual move through those period, those thresholds and crises, developmental periods and processes that belong to what it is to be an embodied feeling human person. And so, so for Campbell, we can look at different myths and in a particular, from a particular tradition.

and link it and see the way in which it’s serving one or maybe multiple in certain cases of these functions. And ultimately then these myths, these guiding, these stories, these stories of deep meaning and significance help us be in relationship to each other and

nature and the divine and give us orienting principles by which we can move and navigate and re-story what it is that we’re experiencing and what it is that we’re longing for. I think that’s the other thing. Myth also speaks to the things we long for.

Profound, mean, what are, you know, myths, love stories? They’re giving language and image to the deep longing we have to feel love. You know? Or courage, or power, you know, or change, transformation, myths of transformation have so much to do with our inherent need.

Josh Mortensen (32:08.213)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Safron (32:24.206)

for experiences of deep revolutionary change at some point, again, individually, collectively. so yeah, I think what we long for is as much important to me in terms of thinking about myths as it is also about meaning making. And then, sorry, the last thing, just, feels like a part of this. We could also say that part of what

in-depth psychology is considered healing is the helping of someone to find a more appropriate story for their life or stories. Stories that give a meaningful and richer and fuller and deeper sense of significance for who they are and what they’ve been through. myths do that, fairy tales do that.

great literature, you know, which would be like modern myths do that. They help us recognize what it is that we’ve gone through and have a much richer imagination for it.

Josh Mortensen (33:37.421)

Yeah, absolutely. could just sit here and let you keep going because it’s moving. There’s so much power to it because it’s one thing to analyze it, but it’s another thing to actually feel it. The way that you talk about the four methods or the four approaches, yeah, the four functions of myth.

Safron (33:41.998)

Thank

Yeah.

Safron (33:58.696)

functions. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (34:04.051)

That’s really powerful for me too, because I grew up in such a state where everything was so literalized. so was this, was used, you know, the myth was used to help us understand everything. But what was missing, I think, was that other form that you were discussing or that other function around the psychological, around the individual. this, that right there, the function of that function of myth and then pairing that with Carl Jung’s

Safron (34:10.478)

Hmm.

Safron (34:24.936)

No.

Josh Mortensen (34:33.741)

kind of model of the psyche, those two things become extremely powerful tools. Because once you see every story as a representation of yourself, that’s like the first step. You go, okay, I’m gonna watch this movie and I’m gonna think about this movie as if it’s entirely about me. Or I have this dream and this dream is so crazy and I’m telling my friend about it and there’s so many crazy characters and events.

But at some point, for you to really get some value out of that dream, you’ve got to be able to look at it as if that dream is about you. And so what Jung does with his model of the psyche with the various, you know, the self and the ego and the shadow and the persona and the anima, what that helps me do then is when I have a dream or I watch a movie, I can identify the characters.

as various archetypes. And then you can see kind of the processes that they’re going through and how they interact. And one of the beautiful things about art, about story, about movies, paintings, music, whatever it is, is when the artist captures what the real feeling is between the archetypes or what the real story is. And in such a way that…

your own psyche recognizes it and there’s this feeling of connection and it’s beautiful and it’s powerful.

Safron (35:55.97)

Right. Yes.

Yeah. And I would say, think part of what’s so powerful about that experience is because somehow the, what the artists, the filmmaker, the actor, I mean, it’s always really kind of an amazing synergy of things that make for incredible art, but even painting music. That what has been brought forward

is archetypal in the sense that it’s all of a sudden deepened our sense of the experience rather than made it narrower or smaller or more confined. And that’s the difference between an archetype and a stereotype. Stereotypes flatten.

and archetypal figures, archetypal scenes and situations qualitatively always give us a sense of something’s been deepened. Yeah, we feel art, might recognize ourselves. And so there’s a knowing, but there’s also a sense of, wow, this is, there’s more than even I know. But that’s it. But it’s like a little light has been

shone on it all of a sudden into the depths that continue and the mystery of it. And so I feel like that, yeah, that those moments as you’re saying in great art, we both recognize ourselves and somehow experience a deepening of something that’s beyond us and yet we participate in in some way. And that’s really powerful.

Josh Mortensen (37:50.945)

Yeah. Yeah, it’s almost like a direct encounter with the mystery, like the mysterious. And so then there’s this, this numinous effect of enlargening where you go, it’s, you know, it’s that realization that there’s so much more than you could ever fully wrap your head around. It’s, it’s a, yeah. But you said, okay, so earlier you said, before we started recording, you had said something about Joseph Campbell and

Safron (37:56.096)

Yeah, that’s right.

Safron (38:08.375)

Right.

Josh Mortensen (38:20.407)

how you felt like maybe he was disappearing in society. And I wanted…

Safron (38:23.758)

Well, no, I was just, I always have a question mark or I wonder, and where’s this coming from? It’s coming from, obviously a kind of generational move. You know, I’m in my late forties and I now have students that are in their twenties and thirties. And when someone’s, when I mentioned Joseph Campbell and I get a kind of blank, quizzical look, I’m often floored. And so, you know, I, and I think that’s because

growing up, I was coming, you know, I was growing up at a time when, you know, Campbell, the power of myth was aired, what is it, 1989, I think, because it aired after he died. You know, he, so I grew up where in that milieu where everyone knew about Campbell and Bill Moyers and the power of myth and all of that. And that isn’t necessarily the case anymore. And so I wonder, you know, how

and where people are connected to Campbell’s work. And I think it’s really important. you know, I think one of the things that I wonder about too is, and I don’t think it’s controversial to say this, but we have been living through a period where it seems that differences

are what people really pay a lot of attention to. How are we different as a culture, as a group, a peoples that belong to the larger roiling definition of what it is to be an American, even in academia, whatever. It’s just that there’s been so much emphasis on what separates and differentiates us.

And the thing about Campbell is that his work is all about what connects us, where we are alike, not in an effort to wash away cultural, religious differences and particularities. Those are of course important, all of our multiplicity, but as humans, where are we alike? What do we share? And so I, you know, I wonder if…

Safron (40:53.422)

Yeah, that I think is important and I just wonder where that sits, you know, in terms of the kind of cultural conversation, let’s say, that we’ve been, that that happens. So those are my thoughts.

Josh Mortensen (41:10.029)

Yeah. Yeah, I don’t know if I have a great answer for you. I know that I’m very interested in Joseph Campbell and some of the people that I hang out with are. But one thing I think I definitely notice is that I hear the name Carl Jung more often than I did before. And it may be just because I’m more familiar with him. I’ve read a bunch of his books and I’m like a little bit of a Jungian nut myself just because I find it so fascinating.

Safron (41:17.9)

Yeah, right, right.

Safron (41:29.069)

Uh-huh.

Safron (41:39.278)

So maybe there’s a new term for that, Jungnut. Wingnut, Jungnut, no, kidding. Okay, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (41:39.67)

Josh Mortensen (41:43.373)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jungnut. Yeah, I try to, it’s interesting because coming from the world I come from, I could easily see how somebody could look at Jung and begin to think of them as some kind of a, think of him as some kind of a religious leader or a new kind of prophet, especially, you know, especially now that the Red Book is available.

Safron (42:09.294)

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (42:09.797)

and it reads so similar to some forms of scripture and ancient story or whatever. So I could see how that could take place, but at the same time.

Safron (42:17.859)

Right.

Josh Mortensen (42:24.525)

Obviously that’s like the last thing Carl Jung would ever want. But I can see there’s this thing happening where because of science, because of technology, because of social media, the myths are collapsing all around. People are losing faith in institutions. The Overton window is expanding. And there is this…

Where before there was kind of this tension between science and spirituality or rationality and religion. I think what people like Carl Jung are providing and maybe even people like Joseph Campbell, because he’s certainly done this for me. There’s like, they’re creating this bridge where it’s like, yeah, we’re supposed to, we are spiritual beings. We are myth centered beings, but we can still be rational. We can still make sense.

Safron (43:21.708)

yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, Campbell’s, I think one of Campbell’s sparring partners was not rationality or history or, you know, science, but rather the taking of something meant to be understood symbolically.

Josh Mortensen (43:22.763)

You know, I think that’s what I see.

Safron (43:49.198)

and historicizing or literalizing it. That was his issue, not with like history itself or, you know, I mean, or space exploration and being able to see, you know, down to the scientific basis of how matter and space is made. But to think…

But to think that because we understand so much about the nature of reality, that that means that myths aren’t important anymore. That’s the mistake, he would say. Myths don’t have to be, we don’t have to be looking at those stories as ways of pseudo-science explaining the physical nature of things. There’s this whole other level that those stories are really getting at.

to reject them without an understanding, a proper understanding of the psychological metaphorical dimension. That’s the joust he’s having, so to speak. The enemy on the other side, yeah.

Josh Mortensen (45:01.185)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, he does this great job of pointing out, you know, the story arcs in the myth and he does a great job of pointing out maybe, you know, what the myths have borrowed from other myths that came before them. But at the same time, he does a good job of not letting that take away from the importance of the myth or the power of the myth.

Safron (45:19.992)

Sure.

Josh Mortensen (45:28.555)

And there’s like an example there of how you can apply, rather than reject religion and its stories outright, you can just look at it from a different perspective, particularly since if you imagine all of myth as an ongoing evolution, it’s a living story, it’s changing constantly. You see it even in the way that Disney has changed over the years. You see the stories evolving in real time. And…

And we’re all a part of that, like especially since we’re in this age where the myths are losing their grasp. so I think Joseph Campbell pointing out that the myths changing is a good thing and that you shouldn’t, that there are different ways of looking at myths or different functions of myths. And then, you you pair that with something like the red book where Carl Jung comes along and he says, you don’t have to literalize Christianity.

but you can still apply the myth to yourself and it becomes the most powerful thing you can do in this time because we are all a product of our time and age, which is the evolution of those myths moving forward. Yeah, go ahead.

Safron (46:38.072)

Partly, yeah, we’re partly related to the spirit of the times, but we’re also related to the spirit of the depths. And that would be the archetypal, right? The transpersonal, the ahistorical. That’s why the myths can work, because they connect us to what is timeless and eternal and deep, deep.

within within.

Josh Mortensen (47:10.187)

Yeah, truths that have always been but have maybe, know, stories that may have never actually literally happened, but have always been true.

Safron (47:11.181)

Yeah.

Safron (47:18.542)

That’s right. mean, my favorite definition of myth is from a kindergartener. So, you know, shout out to the genius of six year olds and it’s myths or stories that are not true on the outside, but they’re true on the inside.

Josh Mortensen (47:36.897)

Yeah, that’s perfect. That’s what Joseph Campbell was kind of getting at that when there was an interview and it might’ve been the one with Bill Moyers where he said that a lot of times people treat myth, they think the word myth means it’s a lie. yeah, falsehood. And that’s just not the case. You just have to think about it a little bit deeper and get into it.

Safron (47:37.358)

Right? I mean, who needs a PhD in mythology?

Safron (47:55.374)

Yeah, falsehood. Yeah.

Safron (48:02.902)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (48:05.119)

I do want to ask you about your own book. You’ve got a book called Kore Goddess.

Safron (48:10.23)

Yeah, the core, yeah, core.

Josh Mortensen (48:12.031)

Yeah. Sorry, did I say the name wrong? Is it the core A?

Safron (48:15.542)

Yeah, so you actually pronounce the E, so it’s core-A. Uh-huh. Yeah. that’s okay. That’s all right. Yeah, no worries. That’s right. That’s right. So, yeah, go on.

Josh Mortensen (48:20.666)

I see. Okay, see, that’s my, those are all my fubs is pronunciation. Okay, so the core a goddess. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I was just curious about the, you know, what the Quora goddess means to you, but also why is that an important thing for you to kind of bring into the collective at this time?

Safron (48:45.74)

Well, so very briefly, kore is the ancient Greek word for virgin or maiden. And so this is an archetypal figure that we see across many different mythologies. from, you know, in the tradition of depth psychology, there hasn’t been

what I felt was not enough attention given to this archetypal figure and where it shows up both in the depth psychological literature and then exploring how does this figure move in life? What are the principles or the values that belong to this figure? And so my book is really an exploration from those two sides. And the thing about the core that is so significant

depth psychologically speaking, is that for Jung, even though this wasn’t something that he developed, but some of the first generation female analysts picked up here and there, in which I tried to draw together and, you know, sort of a kind of review of the history of this figure in the field, is that Jung thought he understood the core to actually be a self-

figure for women in contra distinction to the wise old man or like a philomon figure being a self figure for men. And, you know, if the self capital S self as we would say, really personifies the inner God, that’s a very significant figure to be able to have as many possible images for and understandings.

in order for people to be able to follow their own trail through the dark woods, so to speak. And so that was part of my sort of sense about pursuing this topic, which is, well, who is the core? What are some of the mythic figures that personify this archetypal pattern? What are the values that belong to this archetypal pattern? How do those show up in life? And some of the themes

Safron (51:14.606)

So where does that show up in life? It’s around the themes of sovereignty. You know, if we think about virgin, not in a literal biological sense, but as a metaphor, to be virgin means to be unto oneself, right? To belong to oneself. That’s profound.

Josh Mortensen (51:34.645)

Yeah, because in a sense you haven’t been given to somebody else or nobody’s taken from you.

Safron (51:39.096)

That’s right. Or you haven’t, yeah, you haven’t allowed someone in. You are whole. And it can even be translated to mean undivided. Now that, what is it to have a connection for all people, regardless of their biological gender orientation, that matter?

of being in touch with some inviolable, essential core of self is profoundly important in terms of our psychological health and wholeness. And so I so that the book is exploring that through this particular archetypal figure. So it’s in service to psychology, it’s in service to mythology, and and sort of drawing this figure out.

Josh Mortensen (52:29.451)

Yeah, interesting.

Safron (52:36.79)

of the shadows, if you will. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (52:41.493)

Yeah, in a sense, if I was to maybe state it back to you and correct me if I’m wrong, it seems that in our world, we have a lot of myths where the central figure is a man. And it happens all the time in fairy tales and movies and whatever. so there’s this like, you mentioned the wise old man or the Philamon character. There’s like this image from the

that is available for men to pursue is like an ideal image. And are you saying that the Quora then is the same idea for, it’s this ideal image for a woman to pursue in a similar kind of individuation path?

Safron (53:21.716)

Right, right, in terms of individuation. So it’s not about becoming the core A, but it’s about having a relationship because it really is an archetypal figure. And so it’s transpersonal. We’re talking about, you know, something that isn’t human extends beyond it. But yeah, I mean, I think that’s a core point, Josh. And that’s really important to say, which is that in the absence of having the images by which we can

sort of point the north star of our inner development. We are lacking that kind of direction. And this has been, I think, one of the really significant contributions of goddess studies and goddess scholarship, again, all across sort of the different disciplines in which that might emerge, cultural anthropology and religious studies.

but it’s like being able to retrieve these amazing figures from traditions that are so deep, but of course, which we’ve lost sight of in our particularly Christian monotheistic Western, know, historical worldview. We have suffered from an absence of more…

feminine, and I use that in the symbolic sense, feminine figures that help shine a light on all these other archetypal patterns and principles and values. And so to retrieve those, it’s like it expands our language, so to speak, and our imagining, and helps us connect to dimensions of our deeper nature.

that we might not even have been able to recognize in the absence of having something like Artemis or Athena or Inanna to help us begin to see. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (55:31.169)

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Especially in, yeah, like you said, in this monotheistic world where all the goddesses you mentioned are like goddesses of the past and they don’t come up in our stories. yeah, we do have the Virgin Mary, yeah.

Safron (55:40.566)

Yeah, well, who do we have in Christianity? Yeah, we have Mary and she’s, thank Mary for Mary. But, know, that’s a very, very particular set of archetypal principles that she personifies. And there’s a lot other that don’t, that we don’t see if she’s who we have alone. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (56:04.652)

Yeah, absolutely.

This is really interesting because, so this reminds me of a quote from Joseph Campbell’s, his goddess. And I don’t think we mentioned this on the recording yet, but you are the editor of this book, which I found it to be very exciting. So in the introduction, there’s this quote where it says, and to repeat, there are no models in our mythology for an individual woman’s quest, nor is there any model for the male in marriage to an individuated female.

Safron (56:18.85)

That’s right.

Josh Mortensen (56:35.627)

We are in this thing together and have to work it out together, not with passion, which is always archetypal, but with compassion and patient fostering of each other’s growth. And I guess that’s what he’s pointing out is that we haven’t had that model for women in this individuation path. And what you’re proposing here is that the Korra goddess is part of that model. Yeah. I think that’s fascinating. Yeah.

Safron (56:43.918)

you

Safron (56:53.816)

part of it. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. And yeah, that this this image of a figure who is sovereign, she’s she is her own authority. She is an individual. She is connected and expresses the the the purest dimension of her essence.

She has a profound sense of boundaries that these are very significant.

dimensions that would belong to the, a sense of, a woman’s sense of wholeness and the many different parts of her own interior being.

Josh Mortensen (57:45.963)

Yeah.

from a female perspective, there is also the, or a feminine perspective, there’s also like the crone, which is like the older, an older version of an archetype.

Safron (58:01.912)

Well, it’s the old woman. That’s right, the wise old woman. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (58:05.581)

Yeah, and I’m curious, know, the relationship you see between the two archetypes or why the pursuit of one or just the focus on one may be more, I don’t know, useful or more impactful than the focus on the other.

Safron (58:23.358)

No, no, not at all. mean, again, what is depth psychology put forward, but that we have our inner world is a roiling multiplicity of figures. And so we need all of them. But and a relationship to all of them. But I think that, I mean, in terms of the

sort of thesis that I put forward in the book, I was drawing on a point that a very important Jungian analyst named Jane Hollister-Wheelwright, who actually had been in analysis with Jung, she had given this unpublished lecture back in the 80s on the power of the maiden. And she puts forward that what she was beginning to see in her work with her analysis ends was that

there was this mysterious, youthful maiden figure that was appearing in their dreams and that it seemed to be the self. there’s the figure in which one felt the greatest sort of numinous energy and value. And so she felt that we were seeing, as we talked, you and I talked about earlier,

that at some point certain archetypes constellate and certain archetypes kind of, you know, go back into the earth of the psyche, so to speak. But the core has been constellating in the psyches of women. And I think we can see that in the 60s and 70s and 80s in the second wave feminism and equality and all of these more socio

political, sociocultural movements and values and being articulated. What is the archetypal core that’s being expressed there? A sense of agency and autonomy and equal value. Well, in the mythopoetic language of the archetypes, that’s the ground of the core, the virgin, that I am as I am and can be in relationship

Safron (01:00:44.258)

but that my value and beingness is fully sovereign and true to itself. So in that sense, I think the quarry is profoundly significant in our day and age because of this question of being in touch with our beingness and our essential truth of who we are as an individual.

And I think that’s the case for men as much as it is for women, right? But obviously this figure is going to appear and maybe carry a certain psychic gravity for women, slightly different for men. Although the korea can be a very powerful anima figure for men, of course.

Josh Mortensen (01:01:34.507)

Yeah, that’s actually, that’s one thing I was going to ask you about as well as the relationship then to the anima or animus. So with the way Jung, at least the way I remember Jung talking about it is that the anima for a man is typically a young woman or a maiden, like you’re saying the Korra. And then the animus figure for women is often an older man or an older masculine figure.

Safron (01:01:35.63)

Yeah.

Safron (01:01:40.226)

Yeah.

Safron (01:02:02.338)

I don’t think it’s necessarily older or young. And in fact, animus figures tend to come in multiples. And so it can be a grouping. But yeah, his whole notion of anima animus was contra sexual. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:02:11.105)

Hmm

Josh Mortensen (01:02:15.851)

Yeah, so then if the the Korra kind of represents something similar to the self or that true kind of center, the thing acting on, perhaps acting on it is then this animus figure.

Safron (01:02:31.502)

How do you mean, how is animus acting on the self?

Josh Mortensen (01:02:32.109)

Is that how you see it?

Josh Mortensen (01:02:37.707)

Well, yeah, so take like from a masculine perspective, you may have like a fairy tale and the hero is gonna be a masculine figure and his job is to go rescue the maiden or the Quora. And then, so just in that same sense, the anima then is like this call to the quest or like here is the quest, go save this anima figure. And then to flip it around, if the self is,

from a female perspective, the self is this Korra figure or goddess. Then how does the animus, how does he call her into action?

Safron (01:03:15.63)

Well, he’s the connector. Well, he’s the bridge to use a more sort of Jungian term that he is somehow related to bridging the ego consciousness to this figure. And that would come through certain things like, what does the animus do? It functions to help differentiate. So as we differentiate our sense of what we value,

or what’s mine and what’s not mine, that connects us to that core, the core self. So it’s perhaps we could think of it as learning how to stand on one’s own and how the animus might be in service to that. so those are some of the ways maybe.

Safron (01:04:16.652)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:04:22.189)

Yeah, well, I think it’s an interesting idea and I think it is empowered. Especially, I have a daughter and so I look at my daughter and I think like, what is the image that she, what is the highest possible image that she can choose to pursue? What is her greatest potential? And it puts me forever in search of these type of characters, these figures that

come out of ancient myth or in, you know, that come out of new stories and new novels, or even, you know, for a child, for my daughter, in like children’s books and these female characters that do help her see that she can turn inward and that she can have that trust in self, that intuition, that individuation process for her own.

Safron (01:05:16.216)

That’s right. Yeah, I think that that’s lovely. I hope you give her the core. Get that book. Absolutely. Why not?

Josh Mortensen (01:05:22.455)

Do you think it’s up to me to give it to her?

the book. I thought you meant the actual archetypal image, like to instill it inside of her.

Safron (01:05:29.504)

No, no, no, the book, the book, like maybe when she turns 13 or something. But, but I mean, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (01:05:35.413)

Yeah, I will. Yeah, I do discuss a lot of that with her.

Yeah, Safron, I’ve really appreciated you taking this time to speak with me. I mean, I could talk to you about this kind of stuff for hours, but I won’t do that to you, but I really do appreciate you taking the time and discussing these things with me. If there’s somebody who wants to find you in your work, your writing, where would they go to find you?

Safron (01:06:01.836)

Yeah, I have a website. I mean, I can be found just by Googling me, but the title of my website is The Archetypal Eye. And I’m also on Substack. So yeah, those are the two main places.

Josh Mortensen (01:06:18.093)

Okay, awesome, and I’ll share those links in the show notes as well. But yeah, thanks again, Safron, I really appreciate it, and hopefully we can do this again sometime.

Safron (01:06:18.988)

Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thanks, Josh.

Sounds good. Okay. Thanks.

Josh Mortensen (01:06:30.029)

Okay, thank you, bye.