Phil Cousineau - Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Our Lives

Praise for
ONCE AND FUTURE MYTHS

Phil Cousineau's Once and Future Myths reveals the
timeless power of sacred story with personal charm and sweeping
vision. Whether delving into the pathos of time or travel, the pains of
the creative process, the deep need for mentors in our youth culture,
or the mystique of sport and city life, with grace we are shown the
soul behind the surface of things, the rich meaning behind our
everyday lives. Poet and travel-meister Cousineau has
given us a twenty-first-century guidebook for the
re-enchantment of the world.

MICHAEL GROSSO, Ph.D., author of
The Millennium Myth and Soulmaking

One can always count on Cousineau to address the deeper mysteries
of life in warmhearted, searchingly honest, and helpful ways.

ALEXANDER ELIOT, author of The Global Myths

Praise for The Art of Pilgrimage

If Joseph Campbell, the Dalai Lama, and Bill Moyers were
to have collaborated on a book about journeysI suspect it
would look very much like The Art of Pilgrimage.

Austin American-Statesman

Phil Cousineau's lifetime of pilgrimage has taken him from
the depths of lost jungles to the heights of the human soul, always
with passion, curiosity, warmth, wisdom, and humor. And in this
little golden guide, he brings us along with him. This is an
experience not to be missed, for any reason.

MORT ROSENBLUM, author of Olives:
Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit

Other Books by PHIL COUSINEAU

The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work

Deadlines: A Rhapsody on a Theme of Famous
and Infamous Last Words

The Soul of the World: A Modern Book of Hours

(with Eric Lawton)

Soul: An Archaeology: Readings from Socrates to Ray Charles

Prayers at 3 A.M.: Poems, Songs, Chants, and
Prayers for the Middle of the Night

UFOs: A Manual for the Millennium

Design Outlaws: On the Ecological Frontier

(with Christopher Zelov)

Soul Moments: Marvelous Stories of SynchronicityMeaningful
Coincidences from a Seemingly Random World

The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred

A World Treasury of Riddles

The Soul Aflame: A Modern Book of Hours

(with Eric Lawton)

The Book of Roads: Travel Stories from
Michigan to Marrakesh

ONCE

AND

FUTURE

MYTHS

The Power of Ancient Stories
in Our Lives

PHIL COUSINEAU

Foreword by

STEPHEN LARSEN

CONARI PRESS

First published in 2001 by Conari Press,
an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC
York Beach, ME
With offices at:
368 Congress Street
Boston, MA 02210
www.redwheeiweiser.com

Copyright 2001 Phil Cousineau

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Cousineau, Phil

Once and Future Myths: the power of ancient stories in our lives /
Phil Cousineau ; foreword by Stephen Larsen.
p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-57324-864-91. Myth 2. Life. 3. Cousineau, Phil. I. Title.
BL304.C69 2001
291.1'3dc21
2001001822

Book Design: Suzanne Albertson

Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American
National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials Z39.48-1992 (R1997).

01 02 03 04 Phoenix 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Jo,
my once and future love

ONCE AND FUTURE MYTHS

ONE
The Myth of the Creative Struggle:
Late-Night Thoughts from Sisyphus to Sinatra

TWO
The Myth of Time: From the Valley of the
Kings to Silicon Valley

THREE
The Mythic Power of Mentorship: From
Odysseus to Zorba

FOUR
The Myth of Travel: From Easter Island to the Moon

FIVE
The Myth of the City: From the Walls of
Jerusalem to the Cafes of Paris

SIX
The Myth of Sports: From the Fields of Olympia
to the Field of Dreams

The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance
of Beauty and the Beast, stands this afternoon
on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue
waiting for the traffic light to change.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

Perhaps if we could really listen to what the myths are
telling us

we could hear what I heard myself saying not so long ago:
Everybody has to be the hero of one story: his own.
I said it lightly; or rather something said it in me,
for we know more than we know, more than we
understand.
And if it is true, what an awesome undertaking!

P. L. TRAVERS

Maybe true.
Maybe not true.
Better you believe.

OLD SHERPA SAYING

FOREWORD

by STEPHEN LARSEN, Ph.D.,

author of A Fire in the Mind:
The Life of Joseph Campbell and The Mythic Imagination

H uman beings ceaselessly mythologize their environments. That is why most traditional cultures have a sacred well, tree, or mountain, in which this or that event is conceived of as happening in illo tempore, that time in which the veil parted between this world and the invisible one, and something sacred took place. Around that something they will embroider a web of stories, establish a frame of reverence and perhaps base a culture or a way of life upon it. Thus sacred space is established, and equally, sacred time, marking when as well as where the event took place (celebrating the birth of Christ in Bethlehem each year at Christmastime).

The stories become testaments, old or new, that choreograph the life of the community, giving it a mythic warrant, a sacred raison d'tre. According to historian of religion Mircea Eliade, the profane, a temporal order, looks toward the sacred, an eternal order of things, to dignify it with greater meaning. The tracks of the encounter with the sacred in human history are found everywhere. They are synonymous with the human quest for meaning. An understanding of human culture, then, seems inseparable from what is generically called mythology. James Joyce said, Eternity is in love with the productions of time, and the reverse seems equally true: Mortality conducts a perennial love affair with immortality. The personal and the universal dance in and out of our lives and our dreams.

The urge to understand mythology as a discipline in and of itself began in the latter part of the nineteenth century and then broke forth riotously, as if it were some new species of life, long denied recognition, in the twentieth. The early ethnographers were scholars who studied the ethnicities (the bewildering variety of world cultures other than monolithic Euro-American) to look for patterns that might help to explain the roots of their own culture. Sir James Frazer's monumental twelve-volume The Golden Bough showed scholarsand the educated publicthat crosscultural themes and patterns were widespread and persistent. A divine figure, the dying and reviving God of Spring and the equivalent human figure of the Year King (the king who must die) permeated European and Middle Eastern history.

A perennial landscape began to be discerned, with its mythic dramatis personae and events. Beneath the human realm lay a spooky underworldoften equated with the land of the dead, into which all mortal beings pass and from which they make an eternal return. Existence on the human levels was to be ennobled and immortalized by heroes and their miraculous quests. The origins of things, the encounter of good and evil, the nature of destiny and the meaning of lifeall are addressed in mythology.