Myth Fest: Step Into the mythic
- Heather A. Taylor
- Apr 29
- 7 min read
Myth Fest 2025 Arts and Music
The Intersection of Mythology & the Arts
Myth Fest 2025 was a wonderful day of inspiration, creativity, and imagination as twelve artists shared their process of incorporating mythology into their craft. To learn more about the artists click here.
Below are the opening and closing remarks made at Myth Fest by Dr. Heather Taylor.
Opening Remarks
Hello and welcome to the International Society of Mythology’s first ever Myth Fest. The next few hours are certain to be inspiring as we prepare to Step Into the Mythic and hear from illustrators, graphic artists, composers, musicians and other artists discussing how their work and mythology intertwine.
Thomas Merton says, "art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” We hope that holds true for everyone here today; to lose yourself in the panelists’ conversation as you perhaps resonate with their message or are captivated by the creativity, sparking that authentic piece of soul in yourself that yearns to be found and expressed.
Mythologist Joseph Campbell says “The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature." We think art and mythology are guides to this mantra. Indeed, Campbell says, “The artist's function is the mythologization of the world — the harmonization of nature and the human spirit”(The Inner Reaches of Outer Space).
Throughout time it has been patrons who have supported the arts and artists. Today is no exception so we begin Myth Fest in gratitude.
art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
ISM Co-Founder Lydia Griffiths deserves a world of credit for finding and reaching out to the artists who are here today. She also created many of the graphics you saw on social media or in the newsletters and helped to organize the entire event. Lydia will be hosting panel 2 and available throughout the day for questions.
ISM Co-Founder Dr. Heather Taylor toiled behind the scenes working in collaboration with Lydia to set the stage for today. ISM Co-Founder Dr. Jason Batt who created the Myth Fest logo, runs the ISM website, and handles all our technical work. Jason, a published author, will be hosting panels #1 and 3. ISM Co-Founder Dr. Selena Madden is monitoring our chat and available to help answer logistical questions, give updates on the schedule and will provide links as well as bios. ISM Co-Founder Talia Harris is also available to answer questions and provide support throughout the day.
An enormous thank you to all the artists who are here today and have so generously donated their time, art and conversation. You open our minds and hearts into new ways of knowing and being and we are so grateful.
Thank you to those who support ISM and Myth Fest. Your contributions help us be able to host the event and shine a light on the arts and mythology. And thank you to all who are showing up now. We value your connection to the arts and the mythological community, your support, and the enthusiasm you bring.
So now we are going to turn our focus to what brought us together today: the intersection of mythology and art.
ART AND MYTHOLOGY
Nearly all mythological characters are creators in their respective stories. In Greek Mythology, Daedalus designs a labyrinth, Hephaestus forges fine crafts, the Fates weave destiny at their loom and Apollo charms all with music from his lyre.
When the winged stallion Pegasus flies to Mount Helicon, the land of the Muses, he strikes a rock in the earth and water erupts, forming one of the most famous springs in mythology. This nourishing wellspring is said to baptize artists with wisdom, creativity, and inspiration
but water… symbolically, often represents the depths of the unconscious and water, quite literally, can drown us if we get too swept away.
Today we are grappling with this liminal space of an old world dying and new world being reborn. Mythology and art have been guides for these times since we first began sharing stories. Artists and intuitive people have always been the ones to tap into these deep waters and wrestle with what is trying to emerge or what is being destroyed to allow for new growth.
It is often the artist, poet, and storyteller who has his or her pulse on what is rising up in the collective unconscious. We try to catch the hem of a muse’s cloak or illuminate the invisible, as we toil away in the dark of the night with the passion of Aphrodite and commit hours of hard work to harness the energy of her husband, Hephaestus to forge new material made from love and craft.
This collective unconscious is not literal. Rather, it speaks in images and metaphors. Joseph Campbell states that “the artist is the one who brings the images of mythology to consciousness and gives them form.”
It is the artist who depicts the stories of the waters created by Cyane, the nymph who dissolves into tears trying to stop Pluto’s abduction of Persephone; the snakes writhing atop of Medusa’s head protecting the feminine force as earthen warriors, or the Laurel tree with Daphne’s story etched in its bark.
Each new age needs keepers of these stories to be expressed, translated, reimagined, and restory-ed into contemporary language while holding the essence of what has been lived through time in the waters, the land, the cosmos, or ancestral blood.
Psychiatrist C. G. Jung says:
The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the
unconscious activation of an archetypal image, and in elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present, and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life. Therein lies the social significance of art; it is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking. (CW 15 “Spirit in Man” para 130)
We humans, as a part of nature, are hard -wired to create and express ourselves through song, dance, sound, images, designs, and patterns. Art is created, forged, sung, drawn, recited, acted, and enacted.
Art is not a conversation for the artist alone, but a language that he or she shares, and exchanges with the universe and with those who experience, listen, or are seeking insight. Indeed art often hods a message for those looking into the mysteries held by myths and stories.
It can be hard to tap into this world of the creative given how the current cultural norms stress logical and rational thinking.
Mythology has been capturing this awe for millennia.
Author Deborah Anne Quibell writes in the book, Deep Creativity:
… Jung made a distinction between two oppositional forces present in our contemporary world: the spirit of the depths and the spirit of the times. We often find ourselves straddling both. The spirit of the times rushes toward outer success, rationalism, and directed thinking, and risks having the magical waters of imagination dry out upon materialistic shores. It is a distraction away from creativity, distancing us from the imaginative ways we can relate to the world. The spirit of the times values vapid production and intellectual explanation over imaginal understanding. It is the fast-paced snorkeler with a checklist, uninterested in a true encounter with the underwater world. The spirit of the times is a great temptress, and we can spend our entire life navigating her surface fluctuations if we are not careful.
The spirit of the depths, however, whispers of what is beneath, speaks in symbol, moves us back to the tides of creativity and currents of nondirected thinking. It reinfuses our cracked skin with moisture from the soul and imagination. Creativity calls us to come into a more conscious relationship with the spirit, to know the depths, to explore them as food for our art or creative expression. (60-61).
When an artist can tap into the mysteries of life, there is a sense of sacredness. Campbell says “Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion" (Creative Mythology 4).
It seems we are born to create, assemble, and weave, ideas and patterns together in new ways to add insight or perspective and understand both the sacred and the profane. A capture of awe in the ordinary.
Mythology has been capturing this awe for millennia.
Today we are joined by twelve talented artists in conversation with this awe, weaving together a connection as old as the stories being told, yet new again in the contemporary spirit of the depths. We will hear if they are inspired by the gods and goddesses, the muses, nature, the planet, the cosmos, the collective unconscious, their environment and surroundings, or picked up ideas in the ether, by experiences, by feel, by thought, or whispered to their soul.
We hope everyone here today will enjoy the conversations, the creations, the comradery, and embrace curiosity represented here at Myth Fest. So join us now as we step into the Mythic.
CLOSING REmarks
From mushrooms, witches, burials, Venus & Adonis, to writers on terrifying adventures and Jewish Folklore in Panel One; to swords and water, community, collaboration, and storytelling in caves or through stop motion and games in Panel Two; to golden threads, the creative process, emperors and nightingales, restorying or retelling, fear gardens, AI, wounds and traumas navigated with the foundation of myth, transformations, and connections in Panel Three: it is clear the soul is meant to express itself.
Jung, speaking of artists, says, “the creative urge lives and grows in him like a tree in the earth from which it draws its nourishment. We would do well, therefore to think of the creative impulse as a living thing implanted in the human psyche.(qtd in Deep Creativity 198).
We are all rooted in the wellspring of community, mythology, story, and purpose. Thank you all for joining us today, from the artists, to the contribution of each ISM founder, to the support of our members, and the people in the audience holding space and asking questions.
We are going to open it up for a mixer now where we can talk to all of you but I will end with one more quote from the beloved singer Paul Robeson who said, “artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s radical voice.”
We all know that myth holds the sacred truths and we need all your voices to speak out through all creative means of expression so stay rooted in the soil, branch out to the community, and continue reaching for the stars, sharing your gifts.
To learn more about the International Society of Mythology, upcoming events, or to join, go to ISMYthology.com
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