Goddesses: A Skeleton Key Study Guide - Webinar
Skeleton Key Study Guides are a new series of study guides for books by Joseph Campbell. Written by a team of today’s experts in myth, these guides can help you discover the joy of Campbell’s insights and experience the power of myth.
Each guide contains chapter summaries and notable quotes, plus prompts for discussion topics, essays, and creative projects. Skeleton Key Study Guides open a portal for you to the depth and breadth of Campbell’s ideas.
In this Skeleton Key Study Guide to Joseph Campbell’s Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine, you’ll find summaries of Campbell’s chapters about many different goddesses, as well as quotes, reading suggestions, discussion topics, and prompts for essays and creative projects.
To learn more, visit jcf.org/studyguides
Thank you so much for your enthusiasm for this work!
Yours in myth,
The Joseph Campbell Foundation Team
This webinar was recorded on July 9th 2023 (Promo Codes are good through July 22nd 2023)
Goddesses post-webinar Q&A followup
Q: Following up on the bipolar Persephone question…. Hekate found Persephone and facilitated the return of Spring. Who might fulfill the Hecate role for the modern day bipolar Persephone?
A: The image of the fairy tale godmother comes to mind—an elder whose wisdom and love are so powerful that they can seem to work magic, someone who has maybe had similar experiences and knows how to navigate the passage back and forth.
Therapists and medications can do that as well. Hecate brings balance to Persephone’s journey, and with a clinical diagnosis such as bipolar disorder, the therapists and correct medication can bring balance to an individual and allow them to live life to the fullest.
Q: Artemis as a virgin goddess is filled with authenticity and wilderness but also as from many ancient sources, but she is also ferocious and pitiless, which are your insights on this ?
A: Wilderness can be every bit as ferocious and pitiless as civilization can. Psychologically, some of the questions she raises include when and how am I ferocious and pitiless? When and how should I be ferocious and pitiless? What can my ferocity serve?
Authenticity too can be ferocious. Being your authentic self is not always a smooth walk through the woods, and the holding of these same energies in a goddess such as Artemis illustrates that individuals can have both and may in fact need both to encounter all of the beings of the woods.
Q: In "Mists of Avalon" Vivienne and others who have become nuns, opened the idea that the Goddess is never gone; she goes underground until needed.
A: We love the image of nuns as underground goddesses! And it fits: women who have aligned themselves with the sacred, whose clothing and lives set them apart, who move around in a special numen of holiness.
When we think about the connections with the goddess and the natural world, I think we can see this pattern too. No matter what we are doing and whether or not we are conscious of it, the natural world is there. So too is the goddess present throughout the world and societies, but we are not always looking or listening for her.
Q: Any thoughts on what goddesses we are seeing more of today?
A: We are seeing so many goddesses today! A few random examples: Action movies show warrior goddesses. Joanna believes that Ted Lasso shows contemporary versions of Hera and Aphrodite (see Joanna's website at joannagardner.com for her blog post on that topic). Stranger Things brings us the amazing young goddess El (which actually mean "god" in Hebrew). And so many more. Maybe the question is where aren't we seeing the goddess today?
Olivia found many interesting connections to goddess traditions in Yellowjackets especially through the character of Lottie, who acts as a sort of Hecate figure in facilitating rituals that while it does save their lives, clearly has long-ranging psychological impacts. The rise of social media, especially through forms such as TikTok has also spread awareness of mythology and goddesses, and these forms of communication allow a lot of people to engage with stories and ideas that they may have never heard of.