Joseph Campbell's The Masks of God have been a constant companion to me for more than 30 years, while his The Hero with a Thousand Faces outlines the common journey of the archetypal hero across a wealth of ancient myths from around the world.
A short animation from TED Ed presents a synthesis of Campbell’s foundational framework for the eleven stages of the hero’s quest - from the call to adventure to the crisis to the moment of return and transformation.
The modern age equates a good life with being extraordinary and distinguished. But the truth is likely to be quite different: learning to cherish and appreciate an ordinary life belongs to wisdom and the art of living, notes The School of Life.
"Come inside, see my mind...in kaleidoscope" - the governing metaphor of this website owes its origin to the late, great - gone-far-too-soon - Steve Harley.
Saw him in concert many times and in many places and it was always an intimate, unforgettable experience. A top singer, poet and raconteur.
His legacy? Enormous, and perhaps encapsulated in the crowd's reaction to these lines on the double live Face to Face album, a much-played, much-treasured possession of mine since teenagehood:
You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star - Friedrich Nietzsche
Ah, Nietzsche. Always so fashionable, always so little understood and even so little read, although the young man I vaguely remember being enjoyed Beyond Good and Evil, in which he argues that the good person is not the opposite of the evil person; good and evil, rather, are different expressions of the same nature, which bubble to the surface by complex and nuanced currents of potentiality and choice.
Research suggests that meditation can change brain structure, enhance mental abilities and work alongside traditional medicine to speed up healing.
Certainly, when I learned Transcendental Meditation through a formal course many years ago it was in some ways a life-changing experience, although I quickly moved away from the more cultish aspects of TM.
I don't entirely buy the claim that just a few minutes' daily meditation can make a difference between an anxious existence and a life of quiet contentment...but it helps.
Above and beyond the (too?) many unread volumes I already have, there are many other books that I'd still like to read, given sufficient life and leisure, including the following:
Hollowness, characterised by anxiety, depression, fear, isolation and low self-esteem, continues to silently stalk those devoid of meaning or purpose.
Except where professional help in terms of healthcare or even therapy can necessary, perhaps the nurturing of positive values is the best day-to-day response.
Dave Pollard wrote thought-provokingly of the "Now Time”, a multidimensional recursive eternal present familiar to aboriginal cultures the world over, and recalling Friedrich Nietzche's desire to be a "yes-sayer" to each moment.
This recalls Camus' celebration of Sisyphus starting afresh each day and more recently, Eckhart Tolle's "power of now".
T.S. Eliot's legacy remains profound and his poetry moves me deeply.
In 2016 I had the privilege of visiting his final resting place, East Coker.
I read or listen to the peerless Little Gidding often, and almost every line entrances, as if peering through a veil at something once known, but half-forgotten because not looked-for.
What if we could honour everyone - the estimated 110 billion or so humans who have ever lived?
Of course, our most urgent challenge right now is to keep working towards the goal of giving everyone alive right now access to basic needs - to water and food, security, health, education etc - and it's painfully clear that, with e.g. growing numbers of orphans around the world, we still have a huge task still ahead of us. (And yes, let's unashamedly say "us", rather than fall back on the third person, abstract term "humanity" that somehow suggests it's someone else's problem.)
Last night I read those letters, and they made me feel one hundred years old - from Stolen Car, Bruce Springsteen
I remember snow falling quietly on 14th Street in New York January 1999 and thinking it the most melancholy, yet most romantic sight imaginable.
I've long held a (completely invented) theory that one can distinguish not only people, but also places, in fact almost anything, by whether it is major- or minor- key dominant. Here I focus on the minor, which has always felt like my spiritual home.
The entries below highlight Dom Kelleher's subjective views on an ever-changing range and scope of subjects.
This is less a blog than a set of irregularly updated and often fragmentary views - on ideas and values, places and people - evolving over time into mini essais which pay humble homage to the peerless founder of the genre. The writing is provisional, always open to change as new thoughts and ideas emerge.
The kaleidoscope is Halcyon's prime metaphor, embracing constant change and viewing the world through ever-moving lenses.
For me the purpose of life is to know other people…is to discover what life is. Who inhabits the world? What is it to be human? What can I give to the world which it doesn’t have…a gift for tolerating my presence in this world..…and unless I know the people, I can’t know what it does not have - Theodore Zeldin
Imagining seeing how everybody else lives, just for one day. Life In A Day was a historic global experiment to create a user-generated feature film shot in a single day, July 24 2010.
Are we now entering the Anthropocene, an age shaped primarily by people?
Some geologists say we are already living in the Anthropocene age: the age of man. For example, almost 90% of the world’s plant activity, by some estimates, is to be found in ecosystems where humans play a significant role, thereby putting further strains on the planet's resilience.
I have long been curious about Pan, probably inspired - as I'm guessing many others have been too - by the beautiful and haunting passage in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter of The Wind in the Willows.
According to the always interesting Maria Popova, artist and writer Austin Kleon was invited to give a talk to students, the backbone for which was a list of 10 things he wished he’d heard as a young creator:
So widely did the talk resonate that Kleon decided to deepen and enrich its message in Steal Like an Artist. While all 10 tips illustrated above make sense, nos. 2, 3, 4, 6 and 10 resonate with me in particular.
As we pass the 70th anniversary of Dylan Thomas' death - or rather his work - has remained dear to me, one way of another, for nearly 40 years, from his poems, through the biographies I consumed at Edinburgh and subsequently, a profile on Great Lives and an excellent BBC commentary on Under Milk Wood.
During a guided "green meditation" in the summer of 2023, while focusing my attention on the beauty of a nearby plant, I was reminded of Thomas' The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.
My favourite films (text credits below to Far Out magazine), include the following:
All That Jazz (to follow)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
So come, my friends, be not afraid.
We are so lightly here.
It is in love that we are made;
In love we disappear
Very few have overcome greater obstacles than Helen Keller, who learned to communicate through the eyes and ears of others after a fever left her deaf and blind as an infant.
In The Light Of A Brighter Day, an essay first broadcast in 1951, the author activist and lecturer discussed her vision of faith.
Below is a small selection of some of Helen Keller's most inspiring ideas.