Traversing the Underworld: What Myth can Teach us During the Pandemic

Maybe, if we carry our temple with us, remember our humanity and seek each other out with a passionate longing and humility, we might leave the underworld having learned the lessons of the dead that weave it.

Something fundamental in our culture has ended. What exactly, I can’t quite put my finger on. As many things in the liminal, it’s hard to grasp. But if we want to birth something new out of it, we have to come to terms with endings. We have to come to terms with the ultimate ending, the very thing Covid-19 forces us to look at: our inevitable death... See more

In endings we find totality, and the only soil from which something new emerges. Transformation is, for many scholars of myth, one of its most important qualities. But transformation for the sake of itself means nothing; the monomyth inevitably tells the story of an individual transforming so that they can come into their rightful place in their co... See more

What does it mean to be a hero in the liminal? Perhaps not what it means to be a hero in the regular world. It may be that there is an inversion at play — that to survive the underworld, we need to embody the opposing qualities of our old culture. Humility over control. Surrender and acceptance over striving and efforting. This does not mean becomi... See more

Voyagers move through the liminal with at least some sense of what it is. They travel with their eyes open to the suffering and tragedy the pandemic has brought. The voyage through the liminal and in so doing grapple with the profound change that must now happen to birth something new, so that we don’t return to an economic system and cultural valu... See more

A culture that defines itself on striving its way to the future has been forced into the timeless underworld; a place full of ghosts and voyagers, infinite possibility and potent danger. This pandemic has not called us into a heroic adventure, but forced us to descend into silence and darkness and humility.

When we talk of the underworld, we are speaking the language of the mythopoetic. We are drawing on a very old, very important way of knowing, one I believe is essential in these times.

Myths are an essential part of this ‘making of humans’ — they contextualise our existence and give us psychological coherence.