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Life​-​affirming Mythologies: The Blackfoot Myth of the Buffalo Dance

from Blisters on the Way to Bliss by Dr. Catherine Svehla

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“Life isn’t meant to be happy. That’s not what it’s about. Ah, the damage that is caused by that attitude. All life is sorrowful. Sorrow is the essence of life. But can you handle it? Are you affirmative enough in your relationship to life to say ‘yea’ no matter what happens?” —Joseph Campbell

One of the functions of mythology is to help us establish our relationship to life, to provide the context and meaning for experiences of all sorts.
According to Campbell, a life-affirming mythology is one that makes room for both the joy and sorrow in life and treats them both as inevitable.

In this program I tell a Blackfoot myth about the buffalo that Campbell often used as one example of a life-affirming mythology. It provides a way for people to accept all of it—death and killing and the fact that life feeds on life— and find beauty, sacredness, and connection.

The track image is Medicine Man, Performing His Mysteries over a Dying Man by George Catlin.

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from Blisters on the Way to Bliss, released June 1, 2014

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Dr. Catherine Svehla Fort Collins, Colorado

Storyteller, scholar, artist, & desert activist with a PhD in mythology & depth psychology.

Myths & stories contain the wisdom of the human race. I want to know how we can keep the mystery in life alive? How can myths connect us to a larger sphere of being & meaning?

Many of these tracks are Myth in the Mojave programs that first aired online on Radio Free Joshua Tree.

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