The Stories

Thirty-six stories from traditions across five continents, Sumer to the silver screen, Gilgamesh to Fight Club. The psyche has been telling the same handful of stories for as long as we've been human. Your dreams are drawing from this well.

Aboriginal Australian

The Dreaming / Dreamtime (called Tjukurpa by the Anangu)60,000+ years of continuous traditionIn Aboriginal Australian cosmology, the Dreaming is not the past.

Anglo-Saxon epic

BeowulfBeowulf fights three monsters: Grendel (the shadow), then Grendel's mother deeper in the mere (the Great Mother), and, fifty years later as an old king, the dragon (death at old age).

Arthurian legend

The Grail QuestThe knights of the Round Table quest for the Holy Grail, the vessel of wholeness that can heal the wounded king and restore the wasteland.

Buddhist

The Buddha and Mara~5th century BCEOn the night of his enlightenment, the Buddha is visited by Mara, the personification of desire, fear, and delusion.

Celtic/medieval romance

Tristan and IsoldeThe love potion makes literal what is psychological: Anima projection experienced as fate, as divine compulsion, as love that destroys the social order because it serves a deeper order.

Chinese / Taoist

The Tao Te Ching and Yin-Yang~6th century BCEThe Tao Te Ching describes a reality organized around the dynamic interplay of opposites: yin and yang, dark and light, feminine and masculine, receptive and active.

Contemporary literature

The AlchemistPaulo Coelho, 1988Santiago's treasure was buried under the very spot where his journey began.

Contemporary literature/film

Fight ClubChuck Palahniuk, 1996A repressed office worker's Shadow manifests as a separate, charismatic personality who creates an anarchic movement.

Danish fairy tale

The Shadow (Andersen)Hans Christian Andersen, 1847A scholar's shadow separates from him, becomes more successful, and eventually takes his place, reducing the original to the shadow.

Egyptian mythology

OsirisOsiris is murdered, dismembered, and scattered by Set (the Shadow brother).

English literature

The Lord of the RingsJ.R.R. Tolkien, 1954The hero is not the warrior (Aragorn) but the humble hobbit (Frodo) whose task is not to seize power but to SURRENDER it.

Film/modern mythology

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes BackLuke enters the cave on Dagobah and fights a phantom of Darth Vader, whose mask, when broken, reveals Luke's own face.

German literature / Buddhist influence

SiddharthaHermann Hesse, 1922Siddhartha must live through every stage (asceticism, hedonism, despair) before arriving at the river (the unconscious) where the ferryman (Wise Old Man) teaches him to listen.

Greek epic

The OdysseyHomerOdysseus's ten-year journey home after Troy is the archetypal individuation narrative: encounters with the Terrible Mother (Scylla, Charybdis, Calypso), the Anima (Circe, Nausicaa, Penelope at different levels), the descent to the underworld, and the final return as a transformed man who must reclaim his own house.

Greek mythology

Psyche and ErosPsyche (soul) must complete impossible tasks to reunite with Eros (love).Demeter and PersephoneThe Mother who loses her daughter to the underworld and grieves so deeply that the world turns to winter.

Grimm fairy tale

The Frog PrinceThe princess must keep her promise to the repulsive frog; in the Grimm original she finally hurls it against the wall, and even that honest fury breaks the spell.The Handless MaidenA girl's father cuts off her hands (loss of agency) as a pact with the devil.

Grimm fairy tale / Robert Bly's analysis

Iron JohnA boy's golden ball rolls into the cage of the captive Wild Man, who will return it only if the boy frees him, using the key stolen from under his mother's pillow.

Hebrew Bible

Jonah and the WhaleThe prophet who refuses his calling is swallowed by a great fish, spends three days in its belly, and is vomited back onto land to fulfill his purpose.

Hindu / Indian

The Ramayana~500-100 BCE (written); oral tradition far olderPrince Rama is exiled from his kingdom, loses his wife Sita to the demon king Ravana, wins the help of an army of vanaras, monkey-people whose greatest hero is the monkey god Hanuman, and fights to reclaim her.The Bhagavad Gita: Arjuna and Krishna~200 BCE - 200 CEThe warrior Arjuna stands between two armies, paralyzed by the moral impossibility of the battle.

Hindu mythology

KaliThe Dark Mother who wears a necklace of skulls and dances on corpses, and is also the liberator, the destroyer of ignorance, the fierce protector.

Italian literature

The Divine ComedyDante Alighieri, 1320Beatrice, Dante's idealized beloved, guides him through Paradise after Virgil (the Wise Old Man) guides him through Hell and Purgatory.

K'iche' Maya

The Popol Vuh: The Hero TwinsPre-colonial; written version 1554-1558The Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, descend to Xibalba (the underworld) to avenge their father.

Native American (multiple nations)

Coyote storiesCoyote creates and destroys, is wise and foolish, helps humanity and stumbles over his own appetites.

Navajo / Diné

The Beautyway / Walking in BeautyAncient, living traditionThe Navajo concept of Hózhó (often translated as 'beauty' but meaning wholeness, harmony, balance, and health in all dimensions) is the goal of Navajo ceremonial life.

Norse mythology

LokiLoki is the gods' necessary irritant: the boundary-crosser who creates as much as he destroys, whose final act of chaos triggers Ragnarök, which is also renewal.

Russian fairy tale

Baba YagaThe terrifying old woman in the house on chicken legs who either helps or devours those who come to her, depending on their readiness.

Sufi / Islamic mystical

Rumi and the Beloved13th century CE; tradition ongoingRumi's poetry is organized around the relationship with the Beloved: the divine Other who is simultaneously the human beloved (Shams-i-Tabrizi), the divine, and the innermost Self.

Sumerian / Mesopotamian

The Epic of Gilgamesh~2100 BCEAmong the oldest written stories in human history.

Sumerian mythology

The Descent of InannaThe goddess Inanna descends to the underworld, is stripped of everything at each of seven gates, dies, and is reborn.

West African / Caribbean

Anansi storiesThe spider-trickster who wins through cleverness rather than strength, who earns the Sky God's stories by paying an impossible price and gives them to humanity.

Western literature

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. HydeRobert Louis Stevenson, 1886A respected doctor creates a potion that releases his Shadow as a separate personality.

Yoruba / West African / Afro-Caribbean diaspora

The OrishasAncient, with living contemporary practiceThe Orishas are divine presences in Yoruba tradition: Ogun (the warrior/builder), Oshun (love/beauty/river), Yemoja (the ocean mother), Eshu/Elegba (the trickster/crossroads), Obatala (wisdom/creation), Shango (thunder/justice/passion).

Zen Buddhism

Zen Ox-Herding PicturesTen stages of seeking, finding, taming, and transcending the ox (the Self, the true nature).