October 24, 2022 • 46 mins
Key Topics
01:39 Introduction to Dr. Craig Chalquist
03:35 Depth psychology, mythology, and terrapsychology
07:41 The terrapsychology of San Luis Obisbo
10:32 Dionysus and San Francisco (Burning Man, Emperor Norton, and the Bushman)
20:21 The Orphic myth playing out in San Francisco and the day of the orange sky
31:24 The Trickster in politics
35:20 Hermeticism Reborn - Hermes Trismegistus and the mage archetype
41.12 Virtual reality storytelling environments as training for the imagination
Helpful Links:
- Dr. Craig Chalquist's website
- California Institute of Integral Studies
- Pacifica Graduate Institute
- Professor David Odorisio
- Hermeticism
- The Freud Museum
- James Hillman
- The Mythologium
Connect and Support
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Boston (00:19):
Hi there.
And thank you for joining mefor another episode of Mythic.
I have an amazing guest today, butbefore we talk about the good doctor, I
want to acknowledge that the podcast iscoming back after a really long break.
It has been months since my last episode.
(00:39):
And here's the reason for it.
Just over a year ago, I started aprofessional development training
that required a lot more timeand energy than I expected.
And as a result, some of my favoriteprojects fell by the wayside.
Including this podcast and I am sorry.
I apologize for my extendedand unexpected absence.
(01:00):
But before that happened.
I recorded a lot of interviews.
And during the unexpected hiatusI heard from some listeners.
And you told me that you wantedmore storytelling, like in
the first couple of episodes.
So that's coming back soon.
And to make sure that I can stayon a more consistent schedule.
I've hired an editor to help me catchup on the backlog and move forward.
(01:24):
If you'd like to help me keep thememployed, you can visit mythic
podcast.com and hit the, buy me a coffeebutton and you can make a one-time or
ongoing contribution to the program.
Okay enough behind the scenes stuff.
Let's get to today's discussion.
Dr.
Craig Chalquist is on the show today.
Dr.
Chalquist is a professor,author and consultant.
(01:44):
He's a depth psychologist.
Who writes and teaches at the intersectionof psyche story and imagination.
What's great about Craig is hehas one foot in the academy.
And another foot in the world.
Making him great to talk to about reallydeep, intricate, and complex topics.
Craig is a former associate provostat Pacifica graduate Institute
(02:06):
and former full professor in thedepartment of east-west psychology
at CIIS in San Francisco.
He has designed and launched 40psychology philosophy mythology
and ecotherapy courses for graduatestudents and undergraduates.
His books include ecotherapyhealing with nature in mind
,Counterpoint and Myths Among Us: When Timeless Tale Return to Life. (02:26):
undefined
And this year he launched THELORECAST, a podcast to deepen
into the stories that we live by.
You'll find links for all ofthose in the show notes and now
without further ado here is Dr.
Craig Chalquist.
(02:50):
Dr.
Chalquist, thank you so muchfor being with me here today.
Will you introduce yourselffor our listeners a little
bit about your origin story?
Craig (03:00):
Hey everybody.
I'm originally from Southern California,I was born in San Diego and my background
until recently was mostly psychology,particularly depth psychology.
I practiced as a psychotherapist on andoff for nine years before I became a
full-time educator and I'm a core facultymember as well as a student at the
(03:24):
California Institute of integral studieswhere I'm working on my second PhD, which
is going to be in philosophy and religion.
My first one was in depthpsychology, so it's good to be here.
And I'm glad you're here too.
Boston (03:39):
And what specifically is depth psychology.
How do you define it?
Craig (03:44):
Many different possible definitions.
the simplest one that I sometimesshare with students is the
multidisciplinary approach to studyinghow consciousness and the unconscious
interact, which is really bare bones.
I'm actually studying thisphilosophically right now.
One way of thinking about it is it'san elaboration of an ancient wisdom
(04:05):
path that now takes the form of thepsychology that looks into the depths
below the surface of things like moodand behavior and conscious life to see
what's going on underneath, not justpersonally, but collectively as well.
That wisdom path Ireferred to as hermeticism.
A lot of hermetic influencesin depth psychology.
Boston (04:27):
Fascinating.
as soon as you said hermeticism, thisis where that link between psychology
and mythology slip in so beautifully.
How do you think hermetics --Hermes.
Where do you think depthpsychology and mythology overlap?
Craig (04:44):
Huge question.
You know, there's a pictureof Freud that I really like.
Actually not Freud Fred's desk, that'sfloating around on the internet somewhere.
And it was taken by somebodywho sat at Freud's desk in
what's now the Freud Museum.
And when you look across Freud's desk,what looks back at you is all these
figurines and statuettes of gods.
(05:08):
And I really liked that view.
So even Freud was aware that mythologyworks like a kind of collective
psychology and that it's always with us.
I'm very distrustful of these, schemeas that say, you know, we start out in
magical thinking and then mythic thinkingand then supposed rationality, No, myth is
something that's always with us, I think.
(05:29):
And so, psychology, which here inthe states markets itself as a strict
science is full of mythological motifsand images and old patterns that replay.
And of course, part of James Hillmanproject was to show that, to show how
much mythology there was in psychology.
So there's some overlap right there.
Boston (05:51):
Thank you.
I was first introduced to your work.
I think it was throughthe Mythologium last year.
You gave a lecture through the MythologiumConference and introduced me to a term I
had not heard which is terrapsychology.
Can you tell me about terrapsychology?
Craig (06:06):
Yeah.
some years back there was a group of usat Pacific Graduate Institute, who all
at first unconnected with each other.
We all, were all having experiencesof the intensity of the presence
of the places where we were.
So for instance, for part of thattime I was living in San Diego.
and The city kept showing up in my dreams.
(06:29):
And I learned that some of thedream characters that I previously
had thought were just parts of myown psyche were actually accurately
reflecting things that were going onin the city that I had no knowledge of.
So we began to look for what I calledat that time the psychoanalysis of
place And asking things like, howis it that a place can be showing
(06:53):
up like this internally for us?
You know, and what is place presence?
What is all this soul of place stuffthat you've you hear about or genius loci
whatever, So that was the beginning of it.
And then we met each other, Matt Cochranand Molly Mitchell, and then other
people joined up afterwards and we allin different ways, we're doing doctoral
work on that, different aspects of it,
Boston (07:14):
Can you give me an example of these aspects of place that
were showing up in your dreams?
Craig (07:20):
Yeah.
The, a couple of examples.
One is, you know, I went allover California investigating the
different place presences as part ofmy doctoral work, and that project
ended up extending after graduation.
So I've written it up in myAnimate California trilogy.
So it took three books.
(07:40):
It could have been longer.
And, I often encounter that.
So for instance, when I, thefirst time I went to San Luis
Obispo, I had never been up there.
I had seen pictures of thefreeway going through the town,
but I'd never been there myself.
And the night before I went, I had adream in which one of those freeway
images popped up with the word polluted.
(08:03):
And I went, wow.
And there's so many different waysof interpreting a dream like that.
And I was wondering if it meant somethingabout me or my psyche or whatever.
And then when I got there, I quicklyrealized there was a massive level of
ecological crisis happening up there,whether it was invasive species or a
broken sewer line in the city or AvilaBeach, which had a 90 year old spill
(08:27):
and basically had to be completely.
So there was a lot of ecology disasterhappening when I went up there.
So the dream accurately reflected.
the first dream I ever got onto aboutall of this was a feminine figure, who in
the dream told me that she was San Diego.
And I had no way of understanding thisbecause the dream theory and practice
(08:51):
that I had learned from depth psychologyin my years practicing therapy all made
it about us, about human beings, but itdidn't explain to use a young Ian term.
It didn't explain how the presence ofa place, the complexities of a place
could personify could turn into a dreamcharacter and actually address me.
(09:12):
And when I talked to other people,they were having similar experiences.
So we all decided weneed to study it more.
Boston (09:19):
And what does it look like to study it more.
How do you study this?
Craig (09:24):
There's a body of practice that came out of this theory and practice
called Terrapsychological inquiry.
And terrapsychology is my own coinagefor what we, a group of us were doing in
terms of looking at how, the things ofthe world, not only the natural aspect and
(09:45):
plants and birds and trees and all that,which is studied by eco psychology, not
only how those things become part of us,but also the built environment, cars and
freeways and houses and things like that.
How do those get into us?
So terrapsychological inquiry became aresearch method, a qualitative research
(10:06):
method for studying this, and so we lookfor recurring mythological and other kinds
of motifs popping up in particular places.
We studied the geology and the geography.
We talked to long-time residentsof a place, ask them questions
about what they're noticingand what's coming up for them.
There's a number of things we do to tryto tune into what's happening in that
(10:30):
particular place and what makes it unique.
Boston (10:32):
You said something in the Pacific of course, the, Applied Myth program.
And you, I think you said it likethis, that the living heart, the
heart of Dionysus beats in SanFrancisco, or something to that effect.
I've lived in San Francisco for25 years now with some times away.
(10:58):
I 100% agree with thatassessment on so many levels.
And I really want to hear what youmeant by that and play with this
idea, uh, because I definitelyhave my own thoughts on it.
The heart of Dionysusbeats in San Francisco.
Tell me about that.
Craig (11:16):
Yeah, it's fun to talk over this with somebody who's been a resident of the
place so long and knows it pretty well.
So I haven't ever lived in San Francisco.
I've taught there for years.
So I know at that way a bit, notthe way a resident would you know.
Not everybody does terrorist psychologythis way, but because of my strong
interest in myth, which people outsidethe west just referred to as sacred
(11:38):
stories, or old tellings or whatever.
I'm always curious about whichmythological presences are
strong in particular places.
And it tends to be one plus a wholestory that they're embedded in.
So when I first started working in SanFrancisco, I noticed that the place
(11:59):
felt really intense and loud to me.
And even that I was starting to learn tothink and perceive terrapsychologically,
so I was looking for recurring motifsand there was a day when I've, when I was
pretty new to the city where I was ridingthe cable cars up and down the Hills.
I was starting to read about the cityand I was thinking about how, a drunken
(12:22):
city planner named, Jasper O'Farrell,instead of running the roads on contour
up the hill so the characters of thetime could actually reach the top, he
just, he designed that part of the cityfor the roads to go straight up the
hill, and nobody had any way of goingup that steep route except by walking.
(12:43):
So, mining's gifts were converted.
They were brought up from undergroundand they were turned into what
we now recognize as cable carsin order to meet that difficulty.
So I noticed in myself that when I go upa steep hill and down and up the steep
hill and down, the psychotherapist inme was like, this place is a mood swing,
Boston (13:04):
Okay.
I hadn't thought about that as ageographic experience, but yes.
Craig (13:08):
Yeah.
When I first got there, I was,I was really moody and after
awhile, my psyche adapted to it.
As you know, there's always somethinggoing on there, there's big showy street
parades and all kinds of drama, right?
Strong cultural life in the city.
So that, and the place as a queerhaven, which is what one of my doctoral
(13:29):
students, did her dissertation on.
Why is the city like that?
Why is it that people are drawnhere and feel safe here, you know?
And so that, and a number of otherthings got me thinking about Dionysus the
gender queer drama God of altered states.
That was another thing I noticed too.
I, when I worked at CIIS for thefirst time, I would say about a
quarter of my doctoral studentswere interested in psychedelics.
(13:53):
And I remember being mystified.
Why is everyone so intogetting high in altered states?
But then when I understood whois there, I went, oh, of course,
of course that's how it is.
Also Dionysus in Greek mythology isa figure that Heraclitis told us is
sometimes very close to Pluto or Hades,I should say, in Greek mythology.
(14:14):
And in some tellings is Hades.
So the presence of money in San Franciscoand the plutocracy that rules, the
city politics for one, there's thatthere and a lot of underworld themes.
When the fire and earthquake happened in1906, a lot of people got buried under
(14:36):
ground that now freeways were set up over.
The Golden Gate Bridge was supposedto be some version of battleship gray
and the primer coat went on and itwas flame orange, and they went well.
Yeah, that kind of works,So they left it that way.
There was a group of people who.
We're builders working on the bridge.
And they had, at that time, they had netsbelow it to catch people who fall off.
(15:00):
So a number of them fell and would havebeen killed without those nets as they
were building the bridge in the 30s.
And so they all formed a drinking club.
So there's Dionysus again, and itwas called the Halfway to Hell Club.
So, it's pretty clear to me thatDionysus ruled San Francisco.
I should mention too about the heart.
There's an old Orphic story thatwhen Dionysus was a child, some
(15:25):
of the Titans, they're basicallythe giants of Greek mythology.
They wanted to eat him.
So they distracted him with shiny gadgets.
in other words, the tech boom, you know.
While he was playing with thesetoys, they set up a tripod with a
big bowl that they cooked him in.
And they dismembered him and they ate allof them except his heart, at which point
(15:50):
Zeus became aware of what was going on.
So Zeus threw lightning thatelectrocuted the Titans.
And there's various versions of howthis happens, but basically Dionysus
was regrown from the heart, whichis why he's called twice born.
You know, that theme of deathrebirth is strong in the city.
(16:11):
It's even on the city flag, thephoenix is the city's symbol.
Whenever I think of that song, Ileft my heart in San Francisco.
I think about Dionysus being regrown.
Boston (16:21):
It's so good.
It's so rich.
And in recent decades, the thingthat I'm aware of is, Burning
Man emerging from San Francisco,starting on the beach by the water.
It being moved out to the desertas an annual cycle, that is the
phoenix rises and falls away.
(16:42):
For one week a year, it's the thirdlargest city in Nevada, and then
it ceases to exist at, and this andthat, a huge percentage of those
people come back to San Francisco.
You also said something thatreally caught my attention.
The tech boom.
I have this sense right now of SanFrancisco that we're in between chapters.
(17:05):
San Francisco natives talk aboutthe city undergoing a complete
transformation, seven year cycles.
Everything here happens in sevenyear cycles, and there does
seem to be some truth in that.
There's been a merger of tech.
And you mentioned a lot of your studentswere interested in psychedelics.
(17:25):
So there's this interest in thepsychedelic experience that is Dionysian.
There's also the extreme,there's so much mental illness.
In San Francisco, thereis the disintegrated.
You know, what happens when youcan't integrate the experience and
(17:48):
I'm bouncing from topic to topichere, but one I wanted to bring in
is the story of, Emperor Norton.
do you know this story?
Craig (17:55):
Yeah, that's a great story.
Boston (17:57):
It's a great story.
That Emperor Norton was a man who mayhave been delusional or may have been an
incredible performance artist or both.
But he lived a dream that he broughtSan Francisco into his integration of
madness and culture and transformation,and strikes me as a Dionysian figure.
Craig (18:19):
Yeah, totally.
I really like Emperor Norton.
I wish I could've met him.
Boston (18:24):
Me too.
Craig (18:25):
He's fascinating.
And he was a tremendous activist insome ways when people, John Brown
and others, when people were beingvictimized, he stood up to the oppressors.
He did it in the city itself, And,I love how, I don't know if there's
still any restaurants left that dothis, but, he created his own money
Boston (18:41):
Yes.
Craig (18:42):
And he would use it and they would accept it, like if he
went out to dinner or something,cause he was basically homeless.
And they used to have certificates.
Remember that said this establishmenthas been patronized by Emperor
Norton or something like that.
This is great.
Boston (18:56):
I want to go.
That would actually be areally fun scavenger hunt.
I'm sure those still exist, especially upin North Beach and in the older places.
Craig (19:03):
Yeah.
Boston (19:04):
There's something about reinvigorating that that is what's
missing from San Francisco right now.
When I moved here, there were out,there was a man, there was this.
Oh, there was this African-American manwho stood outside six Saks fifth avenue.
He was there every day that I was.
So I assume he was there on thedays that I wasn't and he sat and
(19:25):
he sang, he performed, he had anamazing voice and there were people
who painted themselves silver.
And just
Craig (19:35):
Yeah.
Boston (19:35):
posed this was happening all over the place.
There was the Bushman.
I don't know if you ever encounteredthe Bushman out on the pier 39,
he would hide himself in brushand then jump out at people.
Craig (19:50):
Oh, so Pan was there
Boston (19:52):
So Pan was there too, also connected with Dionysus and
the Underworld and Hades-- Pluto.
And that underwhelm the underworldand performance element were all
just kind of swirling in together.
So these are all very interesting.
(20:12):
What do you think, what do youthink is the value of looking at
the world through this mythic lens.
Craig (20:18):
Several years ago, I was teaching class and I made a prediction.
I made it in a coupleof different classes.
I told students about the Orphic myththat I think is playing out there.
And I said, all this tech drivengentrification is temporary.
Because sooner or later, Zeus is goingto become aware of it, throws lightning
(20:39):
bolts, and that'll be the end of that.
so right before the T this recenttime where the tech companies
started moving out, do you remember?
There was a whole series of lightningstrikes in Northern California
that
Boston (20:49):
certainly do.
Yes.
Craig (20:51):
terrible fires, people's homes got burned up.
There were casualties.
So that would be the Zeus piece of theOrphic story, And then after that, I
was in Martinez when that happenedright across the bay for you guys.
And that day where the sunnever came up, it was orange
all day, kind of a dim orange.
And so at that point, a lot of techcompanies started pulling out of the city.
(21:14):
When you mentioned that thecity is an in-between place.
I imagine it in terms of the storybeing between the heart of San
Francisco is still intact and it'sstill beating, and now it needs to
have a body reconstituted around it.
That's how I would hold it.
So there's an actual predictive valuein understanding things this way.
Boston (21:33):
I'm inspired to ask you about that day of the orange sky.
Because, I moved back to San Francisco.
I had spent six months inOklahoma for the first part of
the pandemic with my parents.
I moved back.
I woke up the next morning and the sky,
The sky was incredible.
It was like, are we in the other world?
But what struck me evenmore was the stillness.
Craig (21:56):
Yeah.
Boston (21:57):
The birds were quiet.
There were no crickets.
There was no wind.
There was no wind in San Francisco.
It was dead silent.
And I went up to the topof Twin Peaks, dead silent.
what does your, what doyou imagine about that day?
What's what does thatday represent to you?
Craig (22:19):
You know, when people ask me, is there an archetype of the time that
we live in being activated right now?
Like on a global scale?
Not just locally.
I always go back to the archetypeof the apocalypse, but with the
understanding that when you lookat apocalypse in different mythic
pantheons, it's always two-sided.
(22:42):
It's not just everything fallsapart and the world ends.
There's a few tellings that are likethat, but for the most part, there's a
double movement where in the first phaseof apocalypse, everything comes undone
everything descends into the underworld.
And of course, with how we treat thisplanet industrially we're turning
the upper world into the underworld.
(23:04):
Because we're not into the underworldjourney in ourselves and our own psyches.
So as Jung pointed out, when wehave work to do internally and we
don't, we externalize it right.
So instead of making all the descents,giving up old attitudes and even
old institutions that don't serve usanymore, we hang on to them and so then
(23:25):
we do the underworld ride literally.
But the second phase is when things rise.
And I think about, the, when Ilooked at, went outside and I looked
at the sky that day, I thoughtimmediately about the Ragnarok.
Ragnarok and how at, in the end ofNorse mythology, the gods and the
giants fight each other, and all kindsof celestial stuff happens, blood
(23:49):
and orange color and all this other,all these other horrible things.
And then there's a universal destructionby fire brought about by Surtr who is...
he swings his fiery sword andit all comes to an end, but then
a new earth rises afterwards,a new gods come onto the field.
so that's, that's theother side of apocalypse.
(24:11):
the phoenix burns itself up, but thenit does so that it can rise again.
So that's the kind of thing Ithink about when I see all these
apocalyptic happenings in the worldthat we're in the descent phase,
but what will the rise look like?
Boston (24:26):
How should we ride this descent?
Craig (24:30):
I think we should ride it together.
I think we need to reallystrengthen our bonds with each
other and with the natural world.
I have a lot of faith in human'sability to bear up under really
catastrophic times, not juston large scales, but small too.
But we always do it when wehold together with each other.
I saw a very small exampleof this many years ago.
(24:52):
I think it was 1989, but there wasa big earthquake in Northridge.
And it, it pushed houses off theirfoundations and killed some people.
And it was a pretty big quake.
I was living in, nearby and,forget the name of the town, but
it'll come back to me in a second.
Anyway, I was about 10miles from the epicenter.
(25:14):
And in my, in the apartment complexI lived in, no power, no water.
The local grocery store was lootedwithin two hours of the earthquake.
No food.
The way the building was laid out,there was a central courtyard.
And so a lot of us gathered to talk, andwe didn't have any idea when emergency
rescue people might come by or anything,or when the power would go back on.
(25:36):
So one person said, you know, I'm aplumber, and I can inspect people's
pipes and let you know where that is.
And somebody else said,I'm a construction manager.
I can look over the integrity of thebuildings and this guy next to me
said, I just bought a ton of steaks andthey're all in my freezer and they're
going to rot if we don't eat them.
(25:57):
So I think we should have a big barbecue.
So everybody pulled together and thenwithin a couple of days, the power was
back on and the water and everything else.
Boston (26:06):
and everyone was closer than they had been before.
Craig (26:09):
Yep.
Boston (26:11):
Brings an interesting component into this, which is how humans bond under
the pressures of horrific circumstances.
Craig (26:20):
Yeah.
Boston (26:22):
At the end of the day, there's a, there's an impulse to gather, an impulse
to survive, and an impulse to commune
Craig (26:29):
Yeah.
Boston (26:30):
that we get distracted by or distracted from when life
happens on a computer screen.
Craig (26:38):
Yeah.
I see some of that too, in the pandemicwhen people are, you know, all those
beautiful voices from Italy and otherplaces, Palestine, where people were
singing together, you know, that's,that's the humanity I recognize.
Boston (26:53):
It's so important to remember those things.
And I do forget.
I admit my optimism is waning in recenttimes, I'm also reminded that there
are forces of light at work at the sametime there are these shadowy forces.
I'd like to spend a little more time onwhat you said about the underworld coming
(27:16):
into the above world, coming into theoverworld that if we don't do the work on
ourselves, if we don't make the descentand do our work and come back transformed,
then we, then it comes up with us.
How does, yeah.
Will you say a little more about that?
Craig (27:34):
Some years ago, back in my therapy days, I had a client who at first was
really out of touch with her own sadness.
She had gone through terrible lossesand never really mourned anything,
And during this one session shesaid, I can't understand why there's
so many sad people in my life.
And it wasn't just thatshe was projecting.
(27:57):
They were actually carrying someof that for her, So it was showing
up outside because it wasn'tbeing worked with and felt inside.
So I think whole civilizations go throughthat where the current institutions
procedures worldviews, we talk a lot aboutworldviews in the CIIS philosophy program
and, and the values embedded in them.
(28:18):
When all of those are worn out, then weneed to descend, meaning we need to get
rid of them or transform them somehow.
I was talking to my dad some yearsago before he died and he and I
are politically miles apart, never,hardly ever talked politics at all.
But we were watching the news togetheronce and he was cursing about the
(28:41):
incompetence and gridlock of Congress.
And surprisingly, he said, whatdo you think about all this?
And I said, I can't, I don't understandhow an institution, and not just Congress.
The whole apparatus, how aninstitution that was built in the
1700s for a much smaller group ofpeople can possibly be up to the
(29:05):
challenge of 21st century governance.
I don't, that makes no sense to me.
And he said, well, whatdo you think we should do?
And I said, basically keep theideals and rebuild everything.
And he actually agreed with mefrom the other side of the aisle.
I think that when we, when there'sthings that need to be rebuilt
because they're were worn out orthey just need to be discarded...
(29:25):
When we hang on to them,the decay multiplies.
Boston (29:29):
It's like rot..
Craig (29:33):
And that's what we're living in right now that we're, I think
we're in a pandemic because theworld worldwide, not just in the
States, the body politic is sick.
The wrong people are incharge almost everywhere.
Boston (29:45):
Yeah, that absolutely speaks to some of my own feelings
and observations about it.
I've not really so far in the podcast,I've steered clear of any kind of
specifics around politics, but I.
But I'm going to break that right nowbecause I see people who are truly insane.
(30:10):
who've managed to be electedwho are representative.
It's not the person who's in there it'sthat they were elected to be there.
And a crazy woman yelling through amailbox is somebodies representative
Craig (30:27):
That's right.
Boston (30:29):
And that, that can even happen, that election can even
happen tells us that it is brokenat a really fundamental level.
and that the rot has been spreading.
and the more I think about it, Idon't see a way to stop the spread.
It seems like it has to collapsebecause the rot is gaining power.
(30:49):
And then, this whole conceptof alternative facts ever since
those two words were uttered, itlike that has just metastasized.
Craig (31:01):
Yeah.
Boston (31:02):
And that has me thinking about other archetypes in play and you
know, Dionsyus has a trickster aspect.
Hermes is probably ruling the dayright now in world of half-truths and
immediate communication and money.
And it just seems like you'vegot a liar on the throne.
How do you imagine we find our individualroles in this drama, as it unfolds.
Craig (31:28):
I always suggest to my students to try I'm listening through dreams and
through personal reactions and thingslike that-- imagination-- to get a
sense of what the world wants from you.
How is the world itself calling out to us?
You know, another example of theusefulness of the mythic education.
(31:51):
Before Trump was elected, regardless ofwhat anybody listening to this thinks
of him, whether they like him or don'tor whatever, there's a mythic background
to power plays of all kinds, includingelections, and there's a Shoshone
story about Coyote, who's a trickster.
He wanted to steal the firefrom the desert people cause he
(32:12):
wasn't getting any attention.
So he put on a wig and he went northwith his accomplice, his accomplices.
Like a stinkbug was one of them andporcupine and people like that and he
stole the fire and he ran away with it.
And there's different versionsof how this story ends.
(32:34):
Some say that an Ember from the fire burnsup as a wig and then burns up coyote.
And others say that he handed theember off, to one of his minions who
then brought fire into the world.
So there's differentversions of how it ends.
But I wrote an article, a blogactually awhile ago about this
called Trickster Goes to Washington.
(32:54):
This was before the election.
So when a governance system has becomerigid and business as usual on both sides
of the aisle for too long, that's aninvitation for a Coyote to blow it up.
That's why Trickster comes, right.
There's a great story from West Africaabout issue where there's a couple
(33:15):
of farmers who were on differentsides of the road, and they've got a
relationship that therapists would callpseudo mutual, which means basically
they pretend to like each other, butthey actually despise each other.
So as she goes walking down the roadone day when they're both out in the
field and he's wearing a hat, that'sred on one side and black on the
other, and he waves to both of them.
(33:38):
And then they both start arguingabout what color the hat is, and
it completely blows everything up.
And once they've after they fight eachother and get all their anger out,
then they become close with each other.
So Trickster brings chaos, but inservice to a new kind of order.
And of course how human beings carrythese archetypal energies goes all the
(33:59):
way across the spectrum from carryingthem well, like a Martin Luther king
being basically our king Arthur, but in,in a noble sense, to carrying them badly
and very unconsciously and impulsively,you know, so that's a possibility too.
And in terms of Trickster also, when yougo to the original stories, Trickster
is a force of nature and often amoral.
Boston (34:22):
In a recent podcast conversation, I discussed.
This from a differentangle with David Odoriso.
Craig (34:29):
Ah, good.
Boston (34:30):
And we were talking about the Lucifer, the devil as a
he's a perfect trickster figure.
Once you Christianize it.
Once you create this good versusevil, then it's all good and all bad,
but the Trickster is still there andw consciousness waiting to happen.
(34:50):
being able to see it once againand the absurdity of it-- the
I'm right and you're wrong.
There's also an argument to be made.
This is the recent low-key TV series,positioning trickster as free will,
like that freewill is chaotic and thatthere's not necessarily order to it.
And that these things are inin balance or in struggle.
Craig (35:14):
Yeah.
Boston (35:16):
What are you working on now?
Craig (35:19):
So I'm looking into the possibility of hermeticism being reborn.
The phoenix has been flying aroundafter me and most of my life, so
I'm very fond of that particularenergy, and familiar with it.
And it occurred to me, um, I don't know,three or four years ago that hermeticism
(35:39):
also known as the way of Hermes, whichstarts in Egypt with ancient roots,
the way back in Egypt and religion.
It's a wisdom path that puts magicfirst in some ways, not magic with a
K or magic literal, but living withwhat we might call enchantment and it
(36:01):
hugely influenced Jung, and he even hada kind of hermetic ring that he wore.
But it's in his thought too, andalchemy's technical hermeticism, Jung
was onto Gnosticism, which is a relatedbranch, way early, before his career
really got fully started in some ways.
So hermeticism has shown up againand again on the world stage.
(36:22):
Just one example of many Copernicusgot the idea of the sun and the center
from reading the Corpus Hermeticum.
and he admitted it in a letter.
He said, where else would it be?
The hermetics tell us it's there,you know, so huge influence.
so I'm interested in the possibilityof that wisdom path being
updated, in all sorts of ways.
(36:42):
It's originally, it's an earthhonoring, cosmos honoring path.
But I think there's a misunderstanding ofit that, the figure of Hermes, Which also
is part of hermeneutics, that $10 wordfor interpret, things like that, that it
actually refers to Hermes the trickster.
But Hermes Trismegistus is a wizard.
We might talk about thearchetype of the mage.
(37:05):
So that's really the figurewho's in the center of this.
He's based on Thoth, who was also thatarchetypal energy in ancient Egypt.
So from this comes all this stuffthat Jung was into-- alchemy and some
esoteric studies and things like that.
But you know, can we put togethersome hermetic practices, and see
where that gets us-- see if ithelps encourage us to Revere the
(37:29):
world and get along with each other?
So I'm probing that.
Boston (37:33):
Yeah.
What do you think some of thosepractices might look like?
Craig (37:38):
There's an ancient practice that comes from the days of, Egyptian
priesthood, where the priests would goout at certain times of days, and the
big ceremonies were at Dawn and dusk,and they would face the directions,
which here in the states, a lot ofus associate of course, with American
Indian practices, which they're part of.
(37:58):
But it turns out paying some sort ofreverence to the cardinal directions
is a part of many cultural traditions,including some of the Celtic ones that are
back in my ancestry, Irish in particular.
And so, that would be at one practicewhere they would actually go out and
greet the directions as though theyhad themselves were divine powers.
(38:19):
That would be one practice.
They were practicing vegetarians.
They were interested inart, culture and lore.
They not only recorded theancient stories, they retold them.
So this is all part of it too.
Mindful speech as part of it.
Ethical behavior.
In the Corpus Hermeticum, they use theword God interchangeably with big mind.
(38:40):
Which is an interesting metaphor.
God, for them, wasn't afather figure up in Heaven.
God was non-gendered, basically thecreative power behind everything.
They said, if you wantto know God, be not evil.
So it has an ethical core.
there's a lot built into it actually.
So, you know, if we dust it off andwe have some stories that are maybe
(39:01):
a little bit different, a little bitupdated, then I wonder where that goes.
Do we need a new mythology,or do we need a new religion?
Or as Brian Swim asks and ThomasBerry, do we need a new big story?
I actually don't think so.
I think we need new storytelling, butbig stories and big religions, and
mythologies have, a way of excludingpeople that don't resonate with them.
(39:25):
So if there's a set of practicesinstead, that might offer something
that's a little more inclusive.
Boston (39:30):
That rings true for me.
One of the things that I thinkwe're disconnected from right
now because of mass media, isthat stories arise out of place.
That stories are native to a culture.
And when we talk about these oldmythologies, they spread by people
coming into contact with one anotherand sharing and trading their stories.
(39:53):
And seeing what they had in common,recognizing they had similar
stories for the sky and for theearth and this animated, enchanted
world that they were all a part of.
And when we watch Netflix,
Craig (40:09):
Yeah.
Boston (40:09):
we all have access to the same stories.
And so many of them are.
Joseph Campbell, blenderized.
Craig (40:18):
Yeah.
Boston (40:19):
So this idea of a set of practices that then people can do
stories emerge also out of behavior.
And so I can really see also justthe embodiment component to bring
stories alive in the body, pullingthis all the way back to Burning Man.
It's an embodied ritual.
And as my friend, Melanie says, tryingto describe burning man to somebody
(40:42):
who's never been there is like drawinga picture of a snowflake and expecting
them to understand downhill skiing.
Craig (40:49):
Yeah.
Boston (40:49):
There are as many ways to have that experience as there are
humans to have that experience andwe all somehow create a mythology
around it, create a story around it.
Is there anything that you wantto bring into this conversation
before we transition out.
Craig (41:09):
one thing you mentioned Campbell, and one of my favorite books
by him actually is Creative Mythologyand it doesn't get enough billing.
His hero stuff gets all the billingbecause Hollywood likes that.
It's formulaic, theway they use it anyway.
But, in Creative Mythology, he sayswe're all bearers of new kinds of myths.
And the creative people among us,the artists, the performing artists,
(41:32):
everybody along those lines.
That the great figures of literatureand just us writing in a journal
in some ways, I would add.
We're all working on our ownmythological stories in some ways.
They don't have the status of theinstitutionalized myth that's been
handed down over the centuries,but we're all potential mythmakers
according to his way of holding it.
(41:54):
Recently I started playing with virtualreality just to see how I would, my psyche
would respond to it, and you can actuallygo into places where there's a fi fire in
front of you and you're out in the woods.
And so when you have the.
The, virtual reality set on, whereveryou turn your head, you see forest
and there's forest sounds and there'sowls flying by and stuff like that.
(42:16):
And there's others seats like a logover here on a camp chair over there.
So you can meet in those places, whichI think would be fun, but what I noticed
was it made me long for a real campfire,
Boston (42:27):
Wow.
Yes.
Craig (42:28):
So but we can do both.
We can meet all the way across theworld in a virtual campfire that
isn't as cool as a real one, but atleast we can meet there and talk and
tell stories, And then when we're inperson, we can do it the right way,
Boston (42:41):
Oh, that is so delicious.
I hadn't thought about that potential ofVR, which, which headset are you using?
Craig (42:53):
Oculus 2.
There's another program.
I forget the names.
But you can go to, you can gointo earth orbit and sit outside
one arm of a space station whereagain, there's a circle of chairs.
And so in front of youis the moon, but huge.
And then there's shuttles flyingby every now and then, and
(43:15):
there's stars all around you.
And then probably a third of yourvisual field is earth turning.
And it gives you a little bit of a senseof what it must be like to be up there.
And not nearly as, again, not nearlyas good as actually doing it, but
it gives Earthrise which Campbellwrote about a different meaning.
In some ways, and you cansee the shadow side of this.
(43:37):
There's a lot of them actually,a lot of shadow sides.
It's a virtualization of theimagination for one thing.
It flattens everything, but it doesgive you at least a taste of wonder.
I think, if you're open to it,
Boston (43:51):
And th the potential of doing it as a communal experience, I can see it
being a way to unplug as an individual,of retreat, but to go and have a
campfire conversation in Earth's orbit.
I can see that having somereally interesting effects on the
storytelling that might emerge----the conversations that could happen.
(44:12):
that is not to be discounted.
Craig (44:14):
Yeah.
It could be a trainingdevice for imagination.
if it's used properly, there's alwaysthat, I've gone into other places
that are just horrible online, wherethere's no, they're not regulated
and, Facebook otherwise known asMeta, now just opened it up for every
adult on Earth who has a headset.
So I can imagine the really abusive,low level, awful conversations that
(44:39):
are going on between avatars rightnow, cause I've been in some of them.
Or that people just come upand insult you for no reason.
They don't even know who you are.
So there's all that yuckyshadow stuff as well.
But if it's used right, thenit can be an invitation to a
different kind of storytelling.
Boston (44:53):
Yeah, I've I deleted my, all of my meta accounts recently.
I just couldn't anymore.
And I guess I'm waiting forthe next I'm waiting for the
one that's not quite so Meta.
Craig (45:08):
If you need his metaphor.
Meta's dismembered, right?
It's a a psychic dismemberment,
Boston (45:16):
And we need metaphor.
The whole thing, put together.
Craig (45:20):
Yep.
Boston (45:21):
So if people want to follow your work, how can they get ahold of you?
Craig (45:25):
The best way is through my website, which recently got redesigned.
So it's my last, thank you?
It's my last name.com.
So Chalquist.com.
There's a newsletterpeople can sign up for.
I send out something monthly aboutwhat I'm up to in events that
are coming and things like that,but that's probably the best way.
Boston (45:45):
I will link to that in the show notes, of course.
Craig, thank you so much again for yourgenerosity, your time, your bringing all
of your wisdom and experience to Mythic.
I look forward to more conversationswith you in the future.
Any parting words?
Craig (46:01):
No, just thanks for this opportunity and for
the great conversation.
And I hope that whoever watches,this will be inspired to have their
own conversations about things thatmatter and things that are deep.
Boston (46:18):
That's all for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
For more episodes, show notes and otherresources, visit mythicpodcast.com.
That's also where you can subscribe tomy newsletter, which includes information
about upcoming virtual events, includingthe monthly mythic webinar where we look
(46:38):
at personal growth through a mythic lens.
Until next time, journey on.
Hi there.
And thank you for joining mefor another episode of Mythic.
I have an amazing guest today, butbefore we talk about the good doctor, I
want to acknowledge that the podcast iscoming back after a really long break.
It has been months since my last episode.
(00:39):
And here's the reason for it.
Just over a year ago, I started aprofessional development training
that required a lot more timeand energy than I expected.
And as a result, some of my favoriteprojects fell by the wayside.
Including this podcast and I am sorry.
I apologize for my extendedand unexpected absence.
(01:00):
But before that happened.
I recorded a lot of interviews.
And during the unexpected hiatusI heard from some listeners.
And you told me that you wantedmore storytelling, like in
the first couple of episodes.
So that's coming back soon.
And to make sure that I can stayon a more consistent schedule.
I've hired an editor to help me catchup on the backlog and move forward.
(01:24):
If you'd like to help me keep thememployed, you can visit mythic
podcast.com and hit the, buy me a coffeebutton and you can make a one-time or
ongoing contribution to the program.
Okay enough behind the scenes stuff.
Let's get to today's discussion.
Dr.
Craig Chalquist is on the show today.
Dr.
Chalquist is a professor,author and consultant.
(01:44):
He's a depth psychologist.
Who writes and teaches at the intersectionof psyche story and imagination.
What's great about Craig is hehas one foot in the academy.
And another foot in the world.
Making him great to talk to about reallydeep, intricate, and complex topics.
Craig is a former associate provostat Pacifica graduate Institute
(02:06):
and former full professor in thedepartment of east-west psychology
at CIIS in San Francisco.
He has designed and launched 40psychology philosophy mythology
and ecotherapy courses for graduatestudents and undergraduates.
His books include ecotherapyhealing with nature in mind
,Counterpoint and Myths Among Us: When Timeless Tale Return to Life. (02:26):
undefined
And this year he launched THELORECAST, a podcast to deepen
into the stories that we live by.
You'll find links for all ofthose in the show notes and now
without further ado here is Dr.
Craig Chalquist.
(02:50):
Dr.
Chalquist, thank you so muchfor being with me here today.
Will you introduce yourselffor our listeners a little
bit about your origin story?
Craig (03:00):
Hey everybody.
I'm originally from Southern California,I was born in San Diego and my background
until recently was mostly psychology,particularly depth psychology.
I practiced as a psychotherapist on andoff for nine years before I became a
full-time educator and I'm a core facultymember as well as a student at the
(03:24):
California Institute of integral studieswhere I'm working on my second PhD, which
is going to be in philosophy and religion.
My first one was in depthpsychology, so it's good to be here.
And I'm glad you're here too.
Boston (03:39):
And what specifically is depth psychology.
How do you define it?
Craig (03:44):
Many different possible definitions.
the simplest one that I sometimesshare with students is the
multidisciplinary approach to studyinghow consciousness and the unconscious
interact, which is really bare bones.
I'm actually studying thisphilosophically right now.
One way of thinking about it is it'san elaboration of an ancient wisdom
(04:05):
path that now takes the form of thepsychology that looks into the depths
below the surface of things like moodand behavior and conscious life to see
what's going on underneath, not justpersonally, but collectively as well.
That wisdom path Ireferred to as hermeticism.
A lot of hermetic influencesin depth psychology.
Boston (04:27):
Fascinating.
as soon as you said hermeticism, thisis where that link between psychology
and mythology slip in so beautifully.
How do you think hermetics --Hermes.
Where do you think depthpsychology and mythology overlap?
Craig (04:44):
Huge question.
You know, there's a pictureof Freud that I really like.
Actually not Freud Fred's desk, that'sfloating around on the internet somewhere.
And it was taken by somebodywho sat at Freud's desk in
what's now the Freud Museum.
And when you look across Freud's desk,what looks back at you is all these
figurines and statuettes of gods.
(05:08):
And I really liked that view.
So even Freud was aware that mythologyworks like a kind of collective
psychology and that it's always with us.
I'm very distrustful of these, schemeas that say, you know, we start out in
magical thinking and then mythic thinkingand then supposed rationality, No, myth is
something that's always with us, I think.
(05:29):
And so, psychology, which here inthe states markets itself as a strict
science is full of mythological motifsand images and old patterns that replay.
And of course, part of James Hillmanproject was to show that, to show how
much mythology there was in psychology.
So there's some overlap right there.
Boston (05:51):
Thank you.
I was first introduced to your work.
I think it was throughthe Mythologium last year.
You gave a lecture through the MythologiumConference and introduced me to a term I
had not heard which is terrapsychology.
Can you tell me about terrapsychology?
Craig (06:06):
Yeah.
some years back there was a group of usat Pacific Graduate Institute, who all
at first unconnected with each other.
We all, were all having experiencesof the intensity of the presence
of the places where we were.
So for instance, for part of thattime I was living in San Diego.
and The city kept showing up in my dreams.
(06:29):
And I learned that some of thedream characters that I previously
had thought were just parts of myown psyche were actually accurately
reflecting things that were going onin the city that I had no knowledge of.
So we began to look for what I calledat that time the psychoanalysis of
place And asking things like, howis it that a place can be showing
(06:53):
up like this internally for us?
You know, and what is place presence?
What is all this soul of place stuffthat you've you hear about or genius loci
whatever, So that was the beginning of it.
And then we met each other, Matt Cochranand Molly Mitchell, and then other
people joined up afterwards and we allin different ways, we're doing doctoral
work on that, different aspects of it,
Boston (07:14):
Can you give me an example of these aspects of place that
were showing up in your dreams?
Craig (07:20):
Yeah.
The, a couple of examples.
One is, you know, I went allover California investigating the
different place presences as part ofmy doctoral work, and that project
ended up extending after graduation.
So I've written it up in myAnimate California trilogy.
So it took three books.
(07:40):
It could have been longer.
And, I often encounter that.
So for instance, when I, thefirst time I went to San Luis
Obispo, I had never been up there.
I had seen pictures of thefreeway going through the town,
but I'd never been there myself.
And the night before I went, I had adream in which one of those freeway
images popped up with the word polluted.
(08:03):
And I went, wow.
And there's so many different waysof interpreting a dream like that.
And I was wondering if it meant somethingabout me or my psyche or whatever.
And then when I got there, I quicklyrealized there was a massive level of
ecological crisis happening up there,whether it was invasive species or a
broken sewer line in the city or AvilaBeach, which had a 90 year old spill
(08:27):
and basically had to be completely.
So there was a lot of ecology disasterhappening when I went up there.
So the dream accurately reflected.
the first dream I ever got onto aboutall of this was a feminine figure, who in
the dream told me that she was San Diego.
And I had no way of understanding thisbecause the dream theory and practice
(08:51):
that I had learned from depth psychologyin my years practicing therapy all made
it about us, about human beings, but itdidn't explain to use a young Ian term.
It didn't explain how the presence ofa place, the complexities of a place
could personify could turn into a dreamcharacter and actually address me.
(09:12):
And when I talked to other people,they were having similar experiences.
So we all decided weneed to study it more.
Boston (09:19):
And what does it look like to study it more.
How do you study this?
Craig (09:24):
There's a body of practice that came out of this theory and practice
called Terrapsychological inquiry.
And terrapsychology is my own coinagefor what we, a group of us were doing in
terms of looking at how, the things ofthe world, not only the natural aspect and
(09:45):
plants and birds and trees and all that,which is studied by eco psychology, not
only how those things become part of us,but also the built environment, cars and
freeways and houses and things like that.
How do those get into us?
So terrapsychological inquiry became aresearch method, a qualitative research
(10:06):
method for studying this, and so we lookfor recurring mythological and other kinds
of motifs popping up in particular places.
We studied the geology and the geography.
We talked to long-time residentsof a place, ask them questions
about what they're noticingand what's coming up for them.
There's a number of things we do to tryto tune into what's happening in that
(10:30):
particular place and what makes it unique.
Boston (10:32):
You said something in the Pacific of course, the, Applied Myth program.
And you, I think you said it likethis, that the living heart, the
heart of Dionysus beats in SanFrancisco, or something to that effect.
I've lived in San Francisco for25 years now with some times away.
(10:58):
I 100% agree with thatassessment on so many levels.
And I really want to hear what youmeant by that and play with this
idea, uh, because I definitelyhave my own thoughts on it.
The heart of Dionysusbeats in San Francisco.
Tell me about that.
Craig (11:16):
Yeah, it's fun to talk over this with somebody who's been a resident of the
place so long and knows it pretty well.
So I haven't ever lived in San Francisco.
I've taught there for years.
So I know at that way a bit, notthe way a resident would you know.
Not everybody does terrorist psychologythis way, but because of my strong
interest in myth, which people outsidethe west just referred to as sacred
(11:38):
stories, or old tellings or whatever.
I'm always curious about whichmythological presences are
strong in particular places.
And it tends to be one plus a wholestory that they're embedded in.
So when I first started working in SanFrancisco, I noticed that the place
(11:59):
felt really intense and loud to me.
And even that I was starting to learn tothink and perceive terrapsychologically,
so I was looking for recurring motifsand there was a day when I've, when I was
pretty new to the city where I was ridingthe cable cars up and down the Hills.
I was starting to read about the cityand I was thinking about how, a drunken
(12:22):
city planner named, Jasper O'Farrell,instead of running the roads on contour
up the hill so the characters of thetime could actually reach the top, he
just, he designed that part of the cityfor the roads to go straight up the
hill, and nobody had any way of goingup that steep route except by walking.
(12:43):
So, mining's gifts were converted.
They were brought up from undergroundand they were turned into what
we now recognize as cable carsin order to meet that difficulty.
So I noticed in myself that when I go upa steep hill and down and up the steep
hill and down, the psychotherapist inme was like, this place is a mood swing,
Boston (13:04):
Okay.
I hadn't thought about that as ageographic experience, but yes.
Craig (13:08):
Yeah.
When I first got there, I was,I was really moody and after
awhile, my psyche adapted to it.
As you know, there's always somethinggoing on there, there's big showy street
parades and all kinds of drama, right?
Strong cultural life in the city.
So that, and the place as a queerhaven, which is what one of my doctoral
(13:29):
students, did her dissertation on.
Why is the city like that?
Why is it that people are drawnhere and feel safe here, you know?
And so that, and a number of otherthings got me thinking about Dionysus the
gender queer drama God of altered states.
That was another thing I noticed too.
I, when I worked at CIIS for thefirst time, I would say about a
quarter of my doctoral studentswere interested in psychedelics.
(13:53):
And I remember being mystified.
Why is everyone so intogetting high in altered states?
But then when I understood whois there, I went, oh, of course,
of course that's how it is.
Also Dionysus in Greek mythology isa figure that Heraclitis told us is
sometimes very close to Pluto or Hades,I should say, in Greek mythology.
(14:14):
And in some tellings is Hades.
So the presence of money in San Franciscoand the plutocracy that rules, the
city politics for one, there's thatthere and a lot of underworld themes.
When the fire and earthquake happened in1906, a lot of people got buried under
(14:36):
ground that now freeways were set up over.
The Golden Gate Bridge was supposedto be some version of battleship gray
and the primer coat went on and itwas flame orange, and they went well.
Yeah, that kind of works,So they left it that way.
There was a group of people who.
We're builders working on the bridge.
And they had, at that time, they had netsbelow it to catch people who fall off.
(15:00):
So a number of them fell and would havebeen killed without those nets as they
were building the bridge in the 30s.
And so they all formed a drinking club.
So there's Dionysus again, and itwas called the Halfway to Hell Club.
So, it's pretty clear to me thatDionysus ruled San Francisco.
I should mention too about the heart.
There's an old Orphic story thatwhen Dionysus was a child, some
(15:25):
of the Titans, they're basicallythe giants of Greek mythology.
They wanted to eat him.
So they distracted him with shiny gadgets.
in other words, the tech boom, you know.
While he was playing with thesetoys, they set up a tripod with a
big bowl that they cooked him in.
And they dismembered him and they ate allof them except his heart, at which point
(15:50):
Zeus became aware of what was going on.
So Zeus threw lightning thatelectrocuted the Titans.
And there's various versions of howthis happens, but basically Dionysus
was regrown from the heart, whichis why he's called twice born.
You know, that theme of deathrebirth is strong in the city.
(16:11):
It's even on the city flag, thephoenix is the city's symbol.
Whenever I think of that song, Ileft my heart in San Francisco.
I think about Dionysus being regrown.
Boston (16:21):
It's so good.
It's so rich.
And in recent decades, the thingthat I'm aware of is, Burning
Man emerging from San Francisco,starting on the beach by the water.
It being moved out to the desertas an annual cycle, that is the
phoenix rises and falls away.
(16:42):
For one week a year, it's the thirdlargest city in Nevada, and then
it ceases to exist at, and this andthat, a huge percentage of those
people come back to San Francisco.
You also said something thatreally caught my attention.
The tech boom.
I have this sense right now of SanFrancisco that we're in between chapters.
(17:05):
San Francisco natives talk aboutthe city undergoing a complete
transformation, seven year cycles.
Everything here happens in sevenyear cycles, and there does
seem to be some truth in that.
There's been a merger of tech.
And you mentioned a lot of your studentswere interested in psychedelics.
(17:25):
So there's this interest in thepsychedelic experience that is Dionysian.
There's also the extreme,there's so much mental illness.
In San Francisco, thereis the disintegrated.
You know, what happens when youcan't integrate the experience and
(17:48):
I'm bouncing from topic to topichere, but one I wanted to bring in
is the story of, Emperor Norton.
do you know this story?
Craig (17:55):
Yeah, that's a great story.
Boston (17:57):
It's a great story.
That Emperor Norton was a man who mayhave been delusional or may have been an
incredible performance artist or both.
But he lived a dream that he broughtSan Francisco into his integration of
madness and culture and transformation,and strikes me as a Dionysian figure.
Craig (18:19):
Yeah, totally.
I really like Emperor Norton.
I wish I could've met him.
Boston (18:24):
Me too.
Craig (18:25):
He's fascinating.
And he was a tremendous activist insome ways when people, John Brown
and others, when people were beingvictimized, he stood up to the oppressors.
He did it in the city itself, And,I love how, I don't know if there's
still any restaurants left that dothis, but, he created his own money
Boston (18:41):
Yes.
Craig (18:42):
And he would use it and they would accept it, like if he
went out to dinner or something,cause he was basically homeless.
And they used to have certificates.
Remember that said this establishmenthas been patronized by Emperor
Norton or something like that.
This is great.
Boston (18:56):
I want to go.
That would actually be areally fun scavenger hunt.
I'm sure those still exist, especially upin North Beach and in the older places.
Craig (19:03):
Yeah.
Boston (19:04):
There's something about reinvigorating that that is what's
missing from San Francisco right now.
When I moved here, there were out,there was a man, there was this.
Oh, there was this African-American manwho stood outside six Saks fifth avenue.
He was there every day that I was.
So I assume he was there on thedays that I wasn't and he sat and
(19:25):
he sang, he performed, he had anamazing voice and there were people
who painted themselves silver.
And just
Craig (19:35):
Yeah.
Boston (19:35):
posed this was happening all over the place.
There was the Bushman.
I don't know if you ever encounteredthe Bushman out on the pier 39,
he would hide himself in brushand then jump out at people.
Craig (19:50):
Oh, so Pan was there
Boston (19:52):
So Pan was there too, also connected with Dionysus and
the Underworld and Hades-- Pluto.
And that underwhelm the underworldand performance element were all
just kind of swirling in together.
So these are all very interesting.
(20:12):
What do you think, what do youthink is the value of looking at
the world through this mythic lens.
Craig (20:18):
Several years ago, I was teaching class and I made a prediction.
I made it in a coupleof different classes.
I told students about the Orphic myththat I think is playing out there.
And I said, all this tech drivengentrification is temporary.
Because sooner or later, Zeus is goingto become aware of it, throws lightning
(20:39):
bolts, and that'll be the end of that.
so right before the T this recenttime where the tech companies
started moving out, do you remember?
There was a whole series of lightningstrikes in Northern California
that
Boston (20:49):
certainly do.
Yes.
Craig (20:51):
terrible fires, people's homes got burned up.
There were casualties.
So that would be the Zeus piece of theOrphic story, And then after that, I
was in Martinez when that happenedright across the bay for you guys.
And that day where the sunnever came up, it was orange
all day, kind of a dim orange.
And so at that point, a lot of techcompanies started pulling out of the city.
(21:14):
When you mentioned that thecity is an in-between place.
I imagine it in terms of the storybeing between the heart of San
Francisco is still intact and it'sstill beating, and now it needs to
have a body reconstituted around it.
That's how I would hold it.
So there's an actual predictive valuein understanding things this way.
Boston (21:33):
I'm inspired to ask you about that day of the orange sky.
Because, I moved back to San Francisco.
I had spent six months inOklahoma for the first part of
the pandemic with my parents.
I moved back.
I woke up the next morning and the sky,
The sky was incredible.
It was like, are we in the other world?
But what struck me evenmore was the stillness.
Craig (21:56):
Yeah.
Boston (21:57):
The birds were quiet.
There were no crickets.
There was no wind.
There was no wind in San Francisco.
It was dead silent.
And I went up to the topof Twin Peaks, dead silent.
what does your, what doyou imagine about that day?
What's what does thatday represent to you?
Craig (22:19):
You know, when people ask me, is there an archetype of the time that
we live in being activated right now?
Like on a global scale?
Not just locally.
I always go back to the archetypeof the apocalypse, but with the
understanding that when you lookat apocalypse in different mythic
pantheons, it's always two-sided.
(22:42):
It's not just everything fallsapart and the world ends.
There's a few tellings that are likethat, but for the most part, there's a
double movement where in the first phaseof apocalypse, everything comes undone
everything descends into the underworld.
And of course, with how we treat thisplanet industrially we're turning
the upper world into the underworld.
(23:04):
Because we're not into the underworldjourney in ourselves and our own psyches.
So as Jung pointed out, when wehave work to do internally and we
don't, we externalize it right.
So instead of making all the descents,giving up old attitudes and even
old institutions that don't serve usanymore, we hang on to them and so then
(23:25):
we do the underworld ride literally.
But the second phase is when things rise.
And I think about, the, when Ilooked at, went outside and I looked
at the sky that day, I thoughtimmediately about the Ragnarok.
Ragnarok and how at, in the end ofNorse mythology, the gods and the
giants fight each other, and all kindsof celestial stuff happens, blood
(23:49):
and orange color and all this other,all these other horrible things.
And then there's a universal destructionby fire brought about by Surtr who is...
he swings his fiery sword andit all comes to an end, but then
a new earth rises afterwards,a new gods come onto the field.
so that's, that's theother side of apocalypse.
(24:11):
the phoenix burns itself up, but thenit does so that it can rise again.
So that's the kind of thing Ithink about when I see all these
apocalyptic happenings in the worldthat we're in the descent phase,
but what will the rise look like?
Boston (24:26):
How should we ride this descent?
Craig (24:30):
I think we should ride it together.
I think we need to reallystrengthen our bonds with each
other and with the natural world.
I have a lot of faith in human'sability to bear up under really
catastrophic times, not juston large scales, but small too.
But we always do it when wehold together with each other.
I saw a very small exampleof this many years ago.
(24:52):
I think it was 1989, but there wasa big earthquake in Northridge.
And it, it pushed houses off theirfoundations and killed some people.
And it was a pretty big quake.
I was living in, nearby and,forget the name of the town, but
it'll come back to me in a second.
Anyway, I was about 10miles from the epicenter.
(25:14):
And in my, in the apartment complexI lived in, no power, no water.
The local grocery store was lootedwithin two hours of the earthquake.
No food.
The way the building was laid out,there was a central courtyard.
And so a lot of us gathered to talk, andwe didn't have any idea when emergency
rescue people might come by or anything,or when the power would go back on.
(25:36):
So one person said, you know, I'm aplumber, and I can inspect people's
pipes and let you know where that is.
And somebody else said,I'm a construction manager.
I can look over the integrity of thebuildings and this guy next to me
said, I just bought a ton of steaks andthey're all in my freezer and they're
going to rot if we don't eat them.
(25:57):
So I think we should have a big barbecue.
So everybody pulled together and thenwithin a couple of days, the power was
back on and the water and everything else.
Boston (26:06):
and everyone was closer than they had been before.
Craig (26:09):
Yep.
Boston (26:11):
Brings an interesting component into this, which is how humans bond under
the pressures of horrific circumstances.
Craig (26:20):
Yeah.
Boston (26:22):
At the end of the day, there's a, there's an impulse to gather, an impulse
to survive, and an impulse to commune
Craig (26:29):
Yeah.
Boston (26:30):
that we get distracted by or distracted from when life
happens on a computer screen.
Craig (26:38):
Yeah.
I see some of that too, in the pandemicwhen people are, you know, all those
beautiful voices from Italy and otherplaces, Palestine, where people were
singing together, you know, that's,that's the humanity I recognize.
Boston (26:53):
It's so important to remember those things.
And I do forget.
I admit my optimism is waning in recenttimes, I'm also reminded that there
are forces of light at work at the sametime there are these shadowy forces.
I'd like to spend a little more time onwhat you said about the underworld coming
(27:16):
into the above world, coming into theoverworld that if we don't do the work on
ourselves, if we don't make the descentand do our work and come back transformed,
then we, then it comes up with us.
How does, yeah.
Will you say a little more about that?
Craig (27:34):
Some years ago, back in my therapy days, I had a client who at first was
really out of touch with her own sadness.
She had gone through terrible lossesand never really mourned anything,
And during this one session shesaid, I can't understand why there's
so many sad people in my life.
And it wasn't just thatshe was projecting.
(27:57):
They were actually carrying someof that for her, So it was showing
up outside because it wasn'tbeing worked with and felt inside.
So I think whole civilizations go throughthat where the current institutions
procedures worldviews, we talk a lot aboutworldviews in the CIIS philosophy program
and, and the values embedded in them.
(28:18):
When all of those are worn out, then weneed to descend, meaning we need to get
rid of them or transform them somehow.
I was talking to my dad some yearsago before he died and he and I
are politically miles apart, never,hardly ever talked politics at all.
But we were watching the news togetheronce and he was cursing about the
(28:41):
incompetence and gridlock of Congress.
And surprisingly, he said, whatdo you think about all this?
And I said, I can't, I don't understandhow an institution, and not just Congress.
The whole apparatus, how aninstitution that was built in the
1700s for a much smaller group ofpeople can possibly be up to the
(29:05):
challenge of 21st century governance.
I don't, that makes no sense to me.
And he said, well, whatdo you think we should do?
And I said, basically keep theideals and rebuild everything.
And he actually agreed with mefrom the other side of the aisle.
I think that when we, when there'sthings that need to be rebuilt
because they're were worn out orthey just need to be discarded...
(29:25):
When we hang on to them,the decay multiplies.
Boston (29:29):
It's like rot..
Craig (29:33):
And that's what we're living in right now that we're, I think
we're in a pandemic because theworld worldwide, not just in the
States, the body politic is sick.
The wrong people are incharge almost everywhere.
Boston (29:45):
Yeah, that absolutely speaks to some of my own feelings
and observations about it.
I've not really so far in the podcast,I've steered clear of any kind of
specifics around politics, but I.
But I'm going to break that right nowbecause I see people who are truly insane.
(30:10):
who've managed to be electedwho are representative.
It's not the person who's in there it'sthat they were elected to be there.
And a crazy woman yelling through amailbox is somebodies representative
Craig (30:27):
That's right.
Boston (30:29):
And that, that can even happen, that election can even
happen tells us that it is brokenat a really fundamental level.
and that the rot has been spreading.
and the more I think about it, Idon't see a way to stop the spread.
It seems like it has to collapsebecause the rot is gaining power.
(30:49):
And then, this whole conceptof alternative facts ever since
those two words were uttered, itlike that has just metastasized.
Craig (31:01):
Yeah.
Boston (31:02):
And that has me thinking about other archetypes in play and you
know, Dionsyus has a trickster aspect.
Hermes is probably ruling the dayright now in world of half-truths and
immediate communication and money.
And it just seems like you'vegot a liar on the throne.
How do you imagine we find our individualroles in this drama, as it unfolds.
Craig (31:28):
I always suggest to my students to try I'm listening through dreams and
through personal reactions and thingslike that-- imagination-- to get a
sense of what the world wants from you.
How is the world itself calling out to us?
You know, another example of theusefulness of the mythic education.
(31:51):
Before Trump was elected, regardless ofwhat anybody listening to this thinks
of him, whether they like him or don'tor whatever, there's a mythic background
to power plays of all kinds, includingelections, and there's a Shoshone
story about Coyote, who's a trickster.
He wanted to steal the firefrom the desert people cause he
(32:12):
wasn't getting any attention.
So he put on a wig and he went northwith his accomplice, his accomplices.
Like a stinkbug was one of them andporcupine and people like that and he
stole the fire and he ran away with it.
And there's different versionsof how this story ends.
(32:34):
Some say that an Ember from the fire burnsup as a wig and then burns up coyote.
And others say that he handed theember off, to one of his minions who
then brought fire into the world.
So there's differentversions of how it ends.
But I wrote an article, a blogactually awhile ago about this
called Trickster Goes to Washington.
(32:54):
This was before the election.
So when a governance system has becomerigid and business as usual on both sides
of the aisle for too long, that's aninvitation for a Coyote to blow it up.
That's why Trickster comes, right.
There's a great story from West Africaabout issue where there's a couple
(33:15):
of farmers who were on differentsides of the road, and they've got a
relationship that therapists would callpseudo mutual, which means basically
they pretend to like each other, butthey actually despise each other.
So as she goes walking down the roadone day when they're both out in the
field and he's wearing a hat, that'sred on one side and black on the
other, and he waves to both of them.
(33:38):
And then they both start arguingabout what color the hat is, and
it completely blows everything up.
And once they've after they fight eachother and get all their anger out,
then they become close with each other.
So Trickster brings chaos, but inservice to a new kind of order.
And of course how human beings carrythese archetypal energies goes all the
(33:59):
way across the spectrum from carryingthem well, like a Martin Luther king
being basically our king Arthur, but in,in a noble sense, to carrying them badly
and very unconsciously and impulsively,you know, so that's a possibility too.
And in terms of Trickster also, when yougo to the original stories, Trickster
is a force of nature and often amoral.
Boston (34:22):
In a recent podcast conversation, I discussed.
This from a differentangle with David Odoriso.
Craig (34:29):
Ah, good.
Boston (34:30):
And we were talking about the Lucifer, the devil as a
he's a perfect trickster figure.
Once you Christianize it.
Once you create this good versusevil, then it's all good and all bad,
but the Trickster is still there andw consciousness waiting to happen.
(34:50):
being able to see it once againand the absurdity of it-- the
I'm right and you're wrong.
There's also an argument to be made.
This is the recent low-key TV series,positioning trickster as free will,
like that freewill is chaotic and thatthere's not necessarily order to it.
And that these things are inin balance or in struggle.
Craig (35:14):
Yeah.
Boston (35:16):
What are you working on now?
Craig (35:19):
So I'm looking into the possibility of hermeticism being reborn.
The phoenix has been flying aroundafter me and most of my life, so
I'm very fond of that particularenergy, and familiar with it.
And it occurred to me, um, I don't know,three or four years ago that hermeticism
(35:39):
also known as the way of Hermes, whichstarts in Egypt with ancient roots,
the way back in Egypt and religion.
It's a wisdom path that puts magicfirst in some ways, not magic with a
K or magic literal, but living withwhat we might call enchantment and it
(36:01):
hugely influenced Jung, and he even hada kind of hermetic ring that he wore.
But it's in his thought too, andalchemy's technical hermeticism, Jung
was onto Gnosticism, which is a relatedbranch, way early, before his career
really got fully started in some ways.
So hermeticism has shown up againand again on the world stage.
(36:22):
Just one example of many Copernicusgot the idea of the sun and the center
from reading the Corpus Hermeticum.
and he admitted it in a letter.
He said, where else would it be?
The hermetics tell us it's there,you know, so huge influence.
so I'm interested in the possibilityof that wisdom path being
updated, in all sorts of ways.
(36:42):
It's originally, it's an earthhonoring, cosmos honoring path.
But I think there's a misunderstanding ofit that, the figure of Hermes, Which also
is part of hermeneutics, that $10 wordfor interpret, things like that, that it
actually refers to Hermes the trickster.
But Hermes Trismegistus is a wizard.
We might talk about thearchetype of the mage.
(37:05):
So that's really the figurewho's in the center of this.
He's based on Thoth, who was also thatarchetypal energy in ancient Egypt.
So from this comes all this stuffthat Jung was into-- alchemy and some
esoteric studies and things like that.
But you know, can we put togethersome hermetic practices, and see
where that gets us-- see if ithelps encourage us to Revere the
(37:29):
world and get along with each other?
So I'm probing that.
Boston (37:33):
Yeah.
What do you think some of thosepractices might look like?
Craig (37:38):
There's an ancient practice that comes from the days of, Egyptian
priesthood, where the priests would goout at certain times of days, and the
big ceremonies were at Dawn and dusk,and they would face the directions,
which here in the states, a lot ofus associate of course, with American
Indian practices, which they're part of.
(37:58):
But it turns out paying some sort ofreverence to the cardinal directions
is a part of many cultural traditions,including some of the Celtic ones that are
back in my ancestry, Irish in particular.
And so, that would be at one practicewhere they would actually go out and
greet the directions as though theyhad themselves were divine powers.
(38:19):
That would be one practice.
They were practicing vegetarians.
They were interested inart, culture and lore.
They not only recorded theancient stories, they retold them.
So this is all part of it too.
Mindful speech as part of it.
Ethical behavior.
In the Corpus Hermeticum, they use theword God interchangeably with big mind.
(38:40):
Which is an interesting metaphor.
God, for them, wasn't afather figure up in Heaven.
God was non-gendered, basically thecreative power behind everything.
They said, if you wantto know God, be not evil.
So it has an ethical core.
there's a lot built into it actually.
So, you know, if we dust it off andwe have some stories that are maybe
(39:01):
a little bit different, a little bitupdated, then I wonder where that goes.
Do we need a new mythology,or do we need a new religion?
Or as Brian Swim asks and ThomasBerry, do we need a new big story?
I actually don't think so.
I think we need new storytelling, butbig stories and big religions, and
mythologies have, a way of excludingpeople that don't resonate with them.
(39:25):
So if there's a set of practicesinstead, that might offer something
that's a little more inclusive.
Boston (39:30):
That rings true for me.
One of the things that I thinkwe're disconnected from right
now because of mass media, isthat stories arise out of place.
That stories are native to a culture.
And when we talk about these oldmythologies, they spread by people
coming into contact with one anotherand sharing and trading their stories.
(39:53):
And seeing what they had in common,recognizing they had similar
stories for the sky and for theearth and this animated, enchanted
world that they were all a part of.
And when we watch Netflix,
Craig (40:09):
Yeah.
Boston (40:09):
we all have access to the same stories.
And so many of them are.
Joseph Campbell, blenderized.
Craig (40:18):
Yeah.
Boston (40:19):
So this idea of a set of practices that then people can do
stories emerge also out of behavior.
And so I can really see also justthe embodiment component to bring
stories alive in the body, pullingthis all the way back to Burning Man.
It's an embodied ritual.
And as my friend, Melanie says, tryingto describe burning man to somebody
(40:42):
who's never been there is like drawinga picture of a snowflake and expecting
them to understand downhill skiing.
Craig (40:49):
Yeah.
Boston (40:49):
There are as many ways to have that experience as there are
humans to have that experience andwe all somehow create a mythology
around it, create a story around it.
Is there anything that you wantto bring into this conversation
before we transition out.
Craig (41:09):
one thing you mentioned Campbell, and one of my favorite books
by him actually is Creative Mythologyand it doesn't get enough billing.
His hero stuff gets all the billingbecause Hollywood likes that.
It's formulaic, theway they use it anyway.
But, in Creative Mythology, he sayswe're all bearers of new kinds of myths.
And the creative people among us,the artists, the performing artists,
(41:32):
everybody along those lines.
That the great figures of literatureand just us writing in a journal
in some ways, I would add.
We're all working on our ownmythological stories in some ways.
They don't have the status of theinstitutionalized myth that's been
handed down over the centuries,but we're all potential mythmakers
according to his way of holding it.
(41:54):
Recently I started playing with virtualreality just to see how I would, my psyche
would respond to it, and you can actuallygo into places where there's a fi fire in
front of you and you're out in the woods.
And so when you have the.
The, virtual reality set on, whereveryou turn your head, you see forest
and there's forest sounds and there'sowls flying by and stuff like that.
(42:16):
And there's others seats like a logover here on a camp chair over there.
So you can meet in those places, whichI think would be fun, but what I noticed
was it made me long for a real campfire,
Boston (42:27):
Wow.
Yes.
Craig (42:28):
So but we can do both.
We can meet all the way across theworld in a virtual campfire that
isn't as cool as a real one, but atleast we can meet there and talk and
tell stories, And then when we're inperson, we can do it the right way,
Boston (42:41):
Oh, that is so delicious.
I hadn't thought about that potential ofVR, which, which headset are you using?
Craig (42:53):
Oculus 2.
There's another program.
I forget the names.
But you can go to, you can gointo earth orbit and sit outside
one arm of a space station whereagain, there's a circle of chairs.
And so in front of youis the moon, but huge.
And then there's shuttles flyingby every now and then, and
(43:15):
there's stars all around you.
And then probably a third of yourvisual field is earth turning.
And it gives you a little bit of a senseof what it must be like to be up there.
And not nearly as, again, not nearlyas good as actually doing it, but
it gives Earthrise which Campbellwrote about a different meaning.
In some ways, and you cansee the shadow side of this.
(43:37):
There's a lot of them actually,a lot of shadow sides.
It's a virtualization of theimagination for one thing.
It flattens everything, but it doesgive you at least a taste of wonder.
I think, if you're open to it,
Boston (43:51):
And th the potential of doing it as a communal experience, I can see it
being a way to unplug as an individual,of retreat, but to go and have a
campfire conversation in Earth's orbit.
I can see that having somereally interesting effects on the
storytelling that might emerge----the conversations that could happen.
(44:12):
that is not to be discounted.
Craig (44:14):
Yeah.
It could be a trainingdevice for imagination.
if it's used properly, there's alwaysthat, I've gone into other places
that are just horrible online, wherethere's no, they're not regulated
and, Facebook otherwise known asMeta, now just opened it up for every
adult on Earth who has a headset.
So I can imagine the really abusive,low level, awful conversations that
(44:39):
are going on between avatars rightnow, cause I've been in some of them.
Or that people just come upand insult you for no reason.
They don't even know who you are.
So there's all that yuckyshadow stuff as well.
But if it's used right, thenit can be an invitation to a
different kind of storytelling.
Boston (44:53):
Yeah, I've I deleted my, all of my meta accounts recently.
I just couldn't anymore.
And I guess I'm waiting forthe next I'm waiting for the
one that's not quite so Meta.
Craig (45:08):
If you need his metaphor.
Meta's dismembered, right?
It's a a psychic dismemberment,
Boston (45:16):
And we need metaphor.
The whole thing, put together.
Craig (45:20):
Yep.
Boston (45:21):
So if people want to follow your work, how can they get ahold of you?
Craig (45:25):
The best way is through my website, which recently got redesigned.
So it's my last, thank you?
It's my last name.com.
So Chalquist.com.
There's a newsletterpeople can sign up for.
I send out something monthly aboutwhat I'm up to in events that
are coming and things like that,but that's probably the best way.
Boston (45:45):
I will link to that in the show notes, of course.
Craig, thank you so much again for yourgenerosity, your time, your bringing all
of your wisdom and experience to Mythic.
I look forward to more conversationswith you in the future.
Any parting words?
Craig (46:01):
No, just thanks for this opportunity and for
the great conversation.
And I hope that whoever watches,this will be inspired to have their
own conversations about things thatmatter and things that are deep.
Boston (46:18):
That's all for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening.
For more episodes, show notes and otherresources, visit mythicpodcast.com.
That's also where you can subscribe tomy newsletter, which includes information
about upcoming virtual events, includingthe monthly mythic webinar where we look
(46:38):
at personal growth through a mythic lens.
Until next time, journey on.
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