Presidio Screenings
of Joseph Campbell’s Final Lectures

Mythos 1: The Shaping of Our Mythic Tradition, five of Joseph Campbell’s final lectures, will be screened at the Main Post Interfaith Chapel in the Presidio this spring. An introductory evening, Monday, April 13, starts the series with a screening of The Hero’s Journey.

In the last years of his life, Professor Campbell embarked on a lecture tour, drawing together all he had learned about what he called the “one great story” of humanity. The current series features the first five of these lectures. Robert Walter, long-time Campbell colleague and president of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, hosts the screenings and discussions afterwards.

Special guests, as noted below, will be featured at all but the first evening.

SCHEDULE & GUESTS

• April 13 – The Hero’s Journey
  Series Host Robert Walter
  Robert Walter is Executive Editor of Joseph Campbell’s collected writings and is the President of the Joseph Campbell Foundation. His career has included being a theatrical producer and director at Lincoln Center, a writer and publisher, and a teacher who created the award-winning KitTech program. He was a founding Trustee of United Religions Initiative. Bob, a Taoist, is the project director of Mythos and the host of this series.
• April 27 – Psyche & Symbol
  Special Guest John Beebe
  Psyche and Symbol starts the adventure from within us—in our psyche and souls. Campbell explains, in psychological terms, the universal themes operating in all people and cultures that link us together. He explains further how myths emerge from the unconscious and how, in every culture, these myths have evolved to guide the individual through the cycle of life.
  
  John Beebe, MD, is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, teaches psychiatry at University of California San Francisco, and is past present of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He is author of Integrity in Depth and numerous articles, book chapters, and movie reviews, and he is a popular lecturer in the Jungian world.
  
  
• May 11 – The Spirit Land
  Special Guest Ann-Marie Sayers
  The American Indian stands as an example of a people with a living, vital mythology, in harmony with the natural world. Here Campbell explores how, for American Indians, myths serve to awaken in them rituals to prepare for the obstacles of the real world.
  
  Ann-Marie Sayers is Tribal Chairperson of the Indian Canyon Nation of Mutsun Ohlone and Director of Coastanoan Research, a nonprofit developing Indian Canyon Village, joining indigenous culture with high-tech green technology. She is well-known as a preservationist, overseeing excavation sites throughout the region.
  
  
  
• May 18 – On Being Human
  Special Guest David Whitley
  Campbell discusses the characteristics we share in common with the animal world and that point where animal behavior ends and human behavior begins. Starting with paintings from the caves of Lascaux in France, he then traces the myth’s emergence and the central importance of the goddess in early hunter-gatherer societies.
  
  David S. Whitley, PhD, has served as chief archaeologist at UCLA and is the owner of W & S Consultants, an archaeological consulting firm. He is also an adjunct professor in the School of Geographical Sciences at Arizona State University and the author of Introduction to Rock Art Research, selected by Choice in 2006 as an Outstanding Academic Book. He is America’s leading scientist in cave painting and rock art.
• June 8 – From Goddesses to God
  Special Guest Betty De Shong Meador
  Betty DeShong Meador, PhD, a Jungian analyst in private practice, teaches at California Institute of Integral Studies and Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara. She is the author of Innana, Lady of Largest Heart, which translates the hymns the earliest known author of written literature, Enheduanna, who lived 4300 years ago in Mesopotamia and venerated the goddess Innana.
  
  
• June 22 – The Mystical Life
  Special Guest Don Frew
  Elder Don Frew, a Wiccan priest, is past President of Covenant of the Goddess, the world’s largest Wiccan organization. He has been an interfaith activist for more than 20 years, including nine years on the Interfaith Center at the Presidio Board of Directors. He has served on United Religion’s Initiative Global Council and the Religious Assembly of the Parliament of the World Religions since 1993.

The Interfaith Center at the Presidio was created to welcome, serve, and celebrate the diverse spiritual wisdom and faith traditions of the Bay Area. At home in the Main Post Interfaith Chapel, the Center is networked with hundreds of interfaith groups locally and globally. We share a common commitment: to promote daily, enduring interfaith cooperation, to end religiously motivated violence, and to create cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the Earth and all living beings.

This program is made possible through the generosity and support of the Joseph Campbell Foundation, its president, Robert Walter, and our distinguished guests.