The Hera's Journey: Feminine Perspectives on the Call to adventure

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Many are familiar with Joseph Campbell’s monumental work in Comparative Mythology, especially his identification of the hero’s journey or the ‘monomyth’. Campbell identified that the stories found in cultures around the world had similar – or even identical – structure, indicating an undeniable universality of the main theme or teaching. This theme of the ‘hero’s journey’ outlines the key stages each hero must go through for his initiation into herohood.

But the language of the monomyth presupposes one significant detail that speaks perhaps more to Campbell’s generation than to relevance in the 21st century. The hero’s journey is presented from a masculine perspective and has always been approached as applicable regardless of gender. If a female protagonist is dropped into the story, the mythic structure has always remained unchanged.

Powerful as the hero’s journey is as a mythic structure, it does not speak to a key monumental difference between the hero’s journey and the hera’s journey. This experiential workshop presents a revisioning of Campbell’s monomyth with the particularities of a feminine call to the adventure of reclaiming wholeness. With a combination of lecture, storytelling and creative expression, we will illuminate the signposts that mark the hera’s journey from containment to freedom and empowerment.

Monday, July 9, 2018 (7:00 - 8:30 pm)
Workshop cost: $20 + hst