Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Mondays, June 1 - June 29, 2026
7:00 - 8:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$150 Paid Patreon Members / $175 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Joseph Campbell wrote the hero's journey into the cultural DNA of our time: a narrative template that shapes everything from Star Wars to corporate leadership seminars. But few know the Campbell who wrote about alchemical laboratories and Cubist studios, who traced individual mythology from medieval Troubadours to modernist painters, who argued that artists—not traditional religions—had become the prophets and mythmakers of our time.
Creative Mythology (1968), the capstone to his four-volume Masks of God, is perhaps Campbell's most prescient work. Tracing an arc from Troubadour love poetry through modernist visionaries like Joyce, Mann, and Picasso, Campbell argued that creativity itself is prophecy—a radical guide for humanity navigating the Space Age and beyond. Over five weeks of close reading and discussion, this class will explore Campbells’s central arguments about how mythology transforms in the modern world: the Troubadours and courtly love as the first flowering of individual mythology, the alchemical tradition as spiritual self-discovery, the Grail romances and Arthurian cycle as bridges between collective and personal myth, and modernist artists as prophets for our technological age.
Each session will combine scholarly investigation with creative and spiritual exploration. Participants will contemplate their own role as mythmakers in an age of profound transformation—cultural, technological, environmental, spiritual. Treating Campbell's text as invitation rather than gospel, we will also interrogate its limitations and examine what his vision of artist-prophets means for our world today.
Campbell asserted that “mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion." This insight will drive the heart of this course: a creative project where participants develop their own "creative mythology"—whether through writing, visual art, or other media. Students will discover how their creative practice connects to archetypal patterns while remaining uniquely their own, accessing depths that rational analysis cannot penetrate. The final session offers a workshop space to share these explorations in a format grounded in reverence and receptivity.
Students will leave this course with a deeper understanding of Campbell beyond the hero's journey; practical tools for recognizing mythological dimensions in their creative work; a developed personal mythology (in the form of an original creative project); and insights into how individual vision connects to archetypal wisdom. They will also gain fresh language for understanding their creative process as a form of prophecy and myth-making.
Dr. Teddy Hamstra is an author, educator, and professional mythologist. In addition to teaching with Morbid Anatomy, Teddy works with the Joseph Campbell Foundation as it is Digital Intellectual Property Coordinator and holds a PhD in English Literature & Visual Studies from the University of Southern California where his dissertation was entitled "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism." His writing may be found across numerous online outlets and his Substack "Creative Mysticism" is an ongoing exploration of the mystic imagination.
Images: Parsifal, ca. 1910, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo; A Restoration (Une restauration), ca. 1876, Édouard Joseph Dantan; The Sculptor's Studio, ca. 1887, Édouard Joseph Dantan.
Five Week Class Taught Online Via Zoom
Mondays, June 1 - June 29, 2026
7:00 - 8:30pm ET (NYC Time)
$150 Paid Patreon Members / $175 General Admission
PLEASE NOTE: Classes will be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time
Joseph Campbell wrote the hero's journey into the cultural DNA of our time: a narrative template that shapes everything from Star Wars to corporate leadership seminars. But few know the Campbell who wrote about alchemical laboratories and Cubist studios, who traced individual mythology from medieval Troubadours to modernist painters, who argued that artists—not traditional religions—had become the prophets and mythmakers of our time.
Creative Mythology (1968), the capstone to his four-volume Masks of God, is perhaps Campbell's most prescient work. Tracing an arc from Troubadour love poetry through modernist visionaries like Joyce, Mann, and Picasso, Campbell argued that creativity itself is prophecy—a radical guide for humanity navigating the Space Age and beyond. Over five weeks of close reading and discussion, this class will explore Campbells’s central arguments about how mythology transforms in the modern world: the Troubadours and courtly love as the first flowering of individual mythology, the alchemical tradition as spiritual self-discovery, the Grail romances and Arthurian cycle as bridges between collective and personal myth, and modernist artists as prophets for our technological age.
Each session will combine scholarly investigation with creative and spiritual exploration. Participants will contemplate their own role as mythmakers in an age of profound transformation—cultural, technological, environmental, spiritual. Treating Campbell's text as invitation rather than gospel, we will also interrogate its limitations and examine what his vision of artist-prophets means for our world today.
Campbell asserted that “mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion." This insight will drive the heart of this course: a creative project where participants develop their own "creative mythology"—whether through writing, visual art, or other media. Students will discover how their creative practice connects to archetypal patterns while remaining uniquely their own, accessing depths that rational analysis cannot penetrate. The final session offers a workshop space to share these explorations in a format grounded in reverence and receptivity.
Students will leave this course with a deeper understanding of Campbell beyond the hero's journey; practical tools for recognizing mythological dimensions in their creative work; a developed personal mythology (in the form of an original creative project); and insights into how individual vision connects to archetypal wisdom. They will also gain fresh language for understanding their creative process as a form of prophecy and myth-making.
Dr. Teddy Hamstra is an author, educator, and professional mythologist. In addition to teaching with Morbid Anatomy, Teddy works with the Joseph Campbell Foundation as it is Digital Intellectual Property Coordinator and holds a PhD in English Literature & Visual Studies from the University of Southern California where his dissertation was entitled "Enchantment as a Form of Care: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Mysticism." His writing may be found across numerous online outlets and his Substack "Creative Mysticism" is an ongoing exploration of the mystic imagination.
Images: Parsifal, ca. 1910, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo; A Restoration (Une restauration), ca. 1876, Édouard Joseph Dantan; The Sculptor's Studio, ca. 1887, Édouard Joseph Dantan.
