Mythic – Détails, épisodes et analyse

In an Instagram Reel, John Selig described this image — Mount Etna as a cosmological diagram: Typhon pinned underneath, his rage powering the volcano; Hephaestus at the forge above, that same rage transmuted into craft; Prometheus chained on the side, the fire bringer who suffered for giving us what the gods had kept for themselves; and Zeus at the crown, not a creator of fire but the one who directs it.

It set my imagination ablaze!

John’s handle is @stolenfires_. That name tells you everything about his approach: myth is Promethean fire, meaning held by the gods and waiting to be taken — not as belief, not as doctrine, but as a lens you can actually use. What he wants is for you to leave the conversation with something in your hands.

We spent this episode inside Greek myth as a living, working system. We examined the Theogony as three successive orders of creation — and why Zeus’s is the first one generative enough to let everything be born, even the monsters. We read the Odyssey as the story of a man who cannot go home yet because his unconscious won’t let him — the sailors as impulses that thwart the ego until it’s ready. We talked about what happens to a culture that runs entirely on Athena consciousness while Poseidon goes ignored. And we talked about creativity, perfectionism, and what myth can do for people who are stuck.

We use Prometheus — the fire-bringer who stole meaning from the gods and handed it to ordinary people — as the lens for this conversation. Along the way we explore:

Stolen Fires and What the Name Actually Means. The name is two things at once: a cosmological statement about myth as Promethean fire, and — as someone pointed out to John recently — an accidental description of a mythology hot-take platform. He didn't plan that second meaning. The Trickster did. The core idea: myth holds meaning the way the gods held fire. John's work is the theft.

Myth Doesn't Require You to Believe Anything. Myth and history are not the same category. Mythologizing history breaks it. Historicizing mythology breaks it too. One lives in the world of the imaginal; the other is the world of record. You can work with myth — let it illuminate your life, your psyche, your moment — without making a single metaphysical commitment.

Typhon, Hephaestus, and the Shape of Shadow Work. Zeus didn't destroy Typhon. He pinned him under Mount Etna, where his rage powers the volcano — and Hephaestus's forge sits at the top, transmuting that same rage into craft. Integration instead of obliteration. The energy doesn't disappear. It gets redirected. That's the shape of shadow work, and it's also the shape of the creative process.

Satan and the Cultural Shadow. Monotheism needed a bucket for everything that didn't make the approved list, and Satan is what it built. A lot of what ended up in there isn't all that bad — it's just human. The qualities most associated with the mythic Satan map cleanly onto basic features of human nature, and the Greco-Roman roots of the image run deeper than most people realize.

Three Orders of Creation. The Theogony gives us three successive cosmological regimes, each more generative than the last. Uranus won't let anything be born. Kronos swallows his children rather than risk displacement. Zeus frees everyone and starts an order in which everything gets to exist — including the monsters. The Greek pantheon is so crowded because Zeus's order requires it to be.

The Sailors as Unconscious Impulses. The sailors in the Odyssey aren't named or characterized because they're not really separate people — they're the unconscious impulses that keep thwarting what the ego says it wants. Odysseus doesn't reach Ithaca until they're all dead. The friction isn't always the enemy. The sailors may be telling him something he isn't ready to hear yet.

Athena Consciousness, Poseidon Consciousness, and What We've Left Out. Ian McGilchrist's hemisphere theory maps onto the Greek gods: Athena as the rational, ordering, left-brain mode; Poseidon as the holistic, oceanic, right-brain mode. We've built a civilization that runs almost entirely on Athena consciousness while Poseidon goes unaddressed — and John thinks the epidemic of depression among his generation follows directly from that.

Spirituality and the Brain. The part of the brain that activates depression is the same part that activates spirituality. When the spiritual mode is engaged, it becomes physiologically impossible to be depressed. This isn't a spiritual claim. It's neuroscience. And you don't have to believe in anything to get there.

The Tyranny of Heaven. Uranus and Gaia: heaven and earth, the ideal and the actual. Heaven wants the thing to be perfect. Earth wants the thing to exist. Any version of something is necessarily not every version of something — which is obvious, and is still the exact mistake most creatives make constantly, holding the work hostage to what it could be until it never becomes what it is.

00:00 Welcome

00:03:49 The Name Stolen Fires

00:04:56 Myth Without Belief

00:05:42 Typhon, Prometheus, and the Volcano

00:06:53 Satan and the Cultural Shadow

00:08:30 How the Volcano Became a Map

00:10:17 Zeus as Air, Not Fire

00:11:30 Three Orders of Creation

00:18:29 Into the Odyssey

00:19:31 The Sailors as Unconscious Impulses

00:21:57 Odysseus Isn’t Ready for Ithaca

00:26:42 Myth Is Fractal

00:34:20 The Modern Mind and Its Limits

00:35:10 Meaning, Depression, and the Missing Lens

00:41:45 Spirituality and the Brain

00:48:05 The Myth and Creativity Course

00:49:05 The Tyranny of Heaven

00:50:10 Where to Find John

“The trick with myths is to not take them literally and to turn them into lenses that you can then look at your own life through.” — John Selig

“Typhon is put underneath Mount Etna, and his fiery rage powers that volcano and then Hephaestus’s forge is at the top, turning that rage, alchemizing it into something beautiful.” — John Selig

“That’s how it feels to do shadow work, to channel your grief into something creative, to face a part of you that you don’t wanna face. All of those things are in that image and it’s cosmic and natural and personal all at the same time.” — John Selig

“Myth doesn’t require you to believe anything. These stories didn’t happen. Getting history and mythology confused is one of the biggest problems in our world today.” — Boston Blake

“Mythologizing history or historicizing mythology. It breaks it. One lives in the world of the imaginal and one is the world of the historical.” — Boston Blake

“If that spiritual part of your brain is activated, it becomes physiologically impossible to be depressed.” — John Selig

“Any version of something is necessarily not every version of something.” — John Selig

“Take the mess you’re working on and make it sacred.” — John Selig

John Selig’s website: https://stolenfires.com

Stolen Fires on Instagram: @stolenfires_

Stolen Fires on YouTube: @stolenfires

Stolen Fires on TikTok: @stolenfires

Stolen Fires on Substack: https://stolenfires.substack.com

John’s Myth and Creativity Course (May 2026): https://stolenfires.com

Episode page: https://bostonblake.com/mythic-podcast/john-selig-stolen-fires

If this episode landed for you, feel free to add to the pot: https://bostonblake.com/contribute/

https://mythicpodcast.com

John Selig is a writer and educator specializing in the psychology of myth, symbol, and creativity. He has traveled the world visiting the sacred sites of many cultures and is currently writing a book investigating the deeper practical meanings hidden within the world’s myths and religious stories. A lifelong creative, John has worked in music, writing, game design, podcasting, and video, and coaches people in seeing their lives through mythic and symbolic lenses through his one-on-one Mythwork sessions. He has taught at Harvard, UCLA, and School of Rock. Learn more at https://stolenfires.com.

Mythic is a podcast about meaningful living through the power of myth, ancient lore, modern pop culture, and depth psychology. Hosted by Boston Blake — ICF Professional Certified Coach, and lifelong student of mythology and depth psychology — Mythic brings together the stories that have have something to teach us.

https://mythicpodcast.com

Greek mythology, depth psychology, Jungian psychology, archetypal psychology, practical mythology, myth and meaning, mythology podcast, Prometheus, Typhon, Hephaestus, Zeus, Theogony, Hesiod, Odyssey,...

This episode marks the return of Mythic after a year and a half — and what a place to come back from. I recorded this conversation live at Pachalegria, a retreat and healing center in Zipolite, Mexico, at the close of my first men's tantra retreat. The man who led it — and built the place — is sitting right next to me.

Martin Bilodeau is a Québécois public figure, social psychologist, and bestselling author of Awaken Your Inner Buddha, A Practical Guide to Modern Tantrism and Chronicles of an Urban Buddhist (all currently available in French). His path runs through indigenous shamanism, Tibetan Buddhism, and Tantrism, with lineages from Osho, Yogi Bhajan, and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He spent half his life in India, Asia, and traveling the world before founding Pachalegria in 2020.

This is Martin's first English-language podcast.

We use Martin's framework of four spiritual emergencies as Ariadne's thread into the labyrinth — not naming all four explicitly, but tracing the arc of a life spent following the thread of awakening from Buddhism into shamanism, Tantra, and finally into the act of building a living vision on a hillside in southern Mexico.

Along the way we explore:

Buddhism and the Inner World. Martin discovered Buddhism at 17 through the books of Alexandra David-Néal, the first Western woman to walk into Tibet. He consecrated his twenties to practice — two hours of meditation a day, temple visits in India and Nepal, annual retreats. But the real challenge wasn't the monastery. It was bringing the Dharma into daily modern life.

Bodhicitta and the Belief That Changes Everything. The teaching that cracked Martin open: compassion as a way of seeing the world, not a feeling you wait to receive. The ego sees the world as something to take from. Compassion asks what you can bring. That single reorientation — from appetite to offering — underpins everything Martin does.

Why "Emergency"? Martin spent nearly 15 years managing services for homeless, addicted, and delinquent youth in Québec. What he saw confirmed it: every wound is a wound of unlove. Every act of harm is a cry for it. If all our damage is created by the absence of love, love is the only thing that will heal it. That's not romantic. It's urgent.

Tantra and the Body. We've never been more disconnected from our bodies than we are now. The body is always in the present moment — it's the mind that escapes. Tantra is the path that reconnects them: through breath, sensation, movement, and the radical act of feeling rather than managing life.

The Minotaur in the Labyrinth. One of the most vivid mythic images in our conversation: the Minotaur as kundalini, as primal life force — not a monster to be slain but an energy that got trapped by the engineered maze of the mind. Daedalus built the labyrinth with his head. The Minotaur didn't need to be killed. It needed to be freed. And what frees it? Ariadne's love.

Shame as a Control Mechanism. We were once invocators — beings who danced, screamed, and loved their way back to the divine. Then came 2,000 years of ideology that installed shame between us and our own bodies, our own power, our own direct experience of the sacred. Capitalism inherited that structure and kept it running. The antidote isn't permission. It's sovereignty.

The King and Queen Were Never Meant to Rule Alone. Every true mythology pairs masculine and feminine — active and receptive, power and love, strength and empathy. A ruler disconnected from the soul force — the virgin princess in the tower, the yin inside — becomes narcissistic and abusive. Power without love is abuse. Love without power is passivity. They were always meant to be together.

Shiva-Shakti and Cocreation. The feminine-masculine dynamic isn't about gender — it's about listening before acting, being receptive to what the world is telling you before you move. Martin guides groups this way: 70% listening intuitively before he leads. The Shiva-Shakti principle is the composition of wisdom.

Zipolite and the Living Dream. And then there's the place itself — the last bohemian village, a hillside above the Pacific where people have been living freely since the early 1970s. No rules, no structure, naked on the beach at night, no violence. LGBT community, hippies, artists, locals, expats, tourists — all coexisting. The New York Times writes about it every year. And into this, Martin has built a utopia. Not finished. Expanding. Buying land, building with stones so the iguanas keep their nests, preserving what's real before the commercial wave arrives.

We close with Joseph Campbell's line — dreams are private myths, myths are collective dreams — and the question it raises: what is the shared dream we're missing right now? What would it look like to stop begging for meaning from the outside and start imposing a little vision on reality?

This is that conversation.

0:00 Welcome Back to Mythic — Recording Live from Zipolite, Mexico

01:00 Introducing Martin Bilodeau: Author, Social Psychologist, Tantric Guide

02:00 Pachalegria: "I Created Boston" — On Being Recreated by a Place

02:30 The Four Spiritual Emergencies as Ariadne's Thread

03:00 First Emergency: Buddhism — Alexandra David-Néal and the Call of Tibet

04:00 Consecrating to the Path: Two Hours of Meditation, Temple Visits, Annual Retreats

05:00 Bringing the Dharma into Daily Life — The Real Challenge

06:00 Bodhicitta: The Belief That Changes Everything

07:00 Ego as Attachment and Aversion — vs. Compassion as a Way of Seeing

08:00 "The Best Way to Feel Love Is to Love"

09:00 Why It's an Emergency: 15 Years with Homeless and Addicted Youth

10:00 Putting Love Back at the Center — The Heart vs. the Mind

11:00 The Mind as Dissector; Love as Radical Return to Essence

13:00 Om Mani Padme Hum: Compassion as the Ultimate Protection

14:00 Tantra and the Body: The Body as Portal to the Present Moment

16:00 We Were Never This Disconnected From Our Bodies

17:00 Mexico as Sensual Reconnection — Sweat, Stone Walls, Fish from the Ocean

19:00 The Tantra Workshop at Pachalegria: Movement, Community, Breath

20:00 The Minotaur in the Labyrinth — Kundalini as Primal Life Force

21:00 Ariadne's Love: What Guides Us Back to Our Own Power

22:00 Freeing the Minotaur: The Primal Force Needs to Devour the Ego, Not the Self

24:00 The Real Fear Is Not Powerlessness — It's Power

25:00 Leaving the US: The Machinery of Fear and Division, Seen from the Outside

26:00 Shame as a Tool of Control: From Invocators to Beggars for Salvation

28:00 Capitalism Inherits the Shame Structure of Religion

29:00 "Where Is the Adult?" — Outsourcing Dignity and the Crisis of Sovereignty

30:00 The Father Archetype and the Dearth of Authentic Leadership

31:00 The King and Queen Were Never Meant to Rule Alone — Mythology as Template

32:00 The Knight and the Princess: The Soul as the Virgin in the Tower

33:00 Power Without Love Is Abusive. Love Without Power Is Passive.

34:00 The Mind Separate from the Ego — Tantra, Breath, and Reconnection

35:00 Shiva-Shakti: Cocreation and the Art of Listening Before Acting

36:00 Martin's Vision: Building a Utopia at Pachalegria

37:00 Zipolite: The Last Bohemian Village

38:00 Coexistence, Impermanence, and Preserving Authenticity

39:00 Is There Anything We Haven't Covered? — We Need to Be Dreamers

40:00 "Dreams Are Private Myths, Myths Are Collective Dreams" — Campbell

40:30 Our True Mythology Is Caring, Loving, and Sharing — That's It

41:00 Pachalegria as a Living Dream — and Our Responsibility to Keep Dreaming

• Pachalegria — Retreat & healing center, Zipolite, Mexico: pachalegria.com
• Martin Bilodeau — Awaken Your Inner Buddha: A Practical Guide to Modern Tantrism (French)
• Martin Bilodeau — Chronicles of an Urban Buddhist (French)
• Alexandra David-Néal — Explorer and writer; first Western woman to enter Lhasa, Tibet
• Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche — Tibetan Buddhist teacher; founder of Shambhala
• Yogi Bhajan — Kundalini yoga lineage
• Osho — Mystic and teacher
• Joseph Campbell — The Hero with a Thousand Faces
• The Minotaur myth — Daedalus, Theseus, Ariadne, and the labyrinth
• Bodhicitta — The Buddhist teaching of awakening mind; compassion as the path
• Om Mani Padme Hum — The mantra of compassion in Tibetan Buddhism
• Shiva-Shakti — The divine masculine-feminine principle in Tantrism

Martin Bilodeau is a Québécois author, speaker, and spiritual guide whose work bridges social psychology, Tibetan Buddhism, indigenous shamanism, and modern Tantrism. He spent nearly half his life in India, Asia, and traveling the world, and worked for nearly 15 years as an organizer for services supporting homeless, addicted, and delinquent youth. He is the bestselling author of Awaken Your Inner Buddha and Chronicles of an Urban Buddhist (both in French), and the founder of Pachalegria, a retreat and healing center in Zipolite, Mexico. He is also

01:39 Introduction to Dr. Craig Chalquist

03:35 Depth psychology, mythology, and terrapsychology

07:41 The terrapsychology of San Luis Obisbo

10:32 Dionysus and San Francisco (Burning Man, Emperor Norton, and the Bushman)

20:21 The Orphic myth playing out in San Francisco and the day of the orange sky

31:24 The Trickster in politics

35:20 Hermeticism Reborn - Hermes Trismegistus and the mage archetype

41.12 Virtual reality storytelling environments as training for the imagination

• Dr. Craig Chalquist's website
• California Institute of Integral Studies
• Pacifica Graduate Institute
• Professor David Odorisio
• Hermeticism
• The Freud Museum
• James Hillman
• The Mythologium

What did you think of this episode? Let me know in the Comments section below or tweet me @bostonblake.

If you're enjoying the program, I'd love it if you share it with your friends and/or leave a five-star review wherever you listen to your podcasts.

How does the Hero myth necessitate the Villain? What does a post-Heroic myth look like? What's the connection between the decline of patriarchy and the decline of organized religion?

Dr. David Odorisio of Pacifica Graduate Institute shares his own synchronistic journey as we explore hero and villain archetypes in media and culture, as well as how the human potential movement must integrate the Senex and puer in order to outlive the personalities who founded it. Just a few of the topics we cover in this gripping conversation.

The month marks Wonder Woman's 80th Anniversary, and this interview is a love letter to Diana, whose origins are steeped in Greek mythology.

In this fabulous conversation, award-winning comics artist Phil Jimenez reveals the secrets behind Wonder Woman: Historia, his upcoming collaboration with writer Kelly Sue DeConnick for DC Comics Black Label!

Mythology has been central to some of Phil’s highest-profile projects, including  War of the Gods and Gods of Gotham, and of course, Wonder Woman. And after 20 years of immersion in the topic, he has thoughts.

We cover Dionysus’ gender, post-toga Olympian fashion, Hera's burden, and what makes Wonder Woman such an enduring character.

In "Five Questions," Phil shares what brings him joy!

For more, visit mythicpodcast.com.

Guest: Jennifer Whetzel, Ladyjane Branding

Contact: jennifer@ladyjanebranding.com

Website: https://ladyjanebranding.com

About Jennifer:

After more than 25 years in the marketing and advertising industry, and after finding significant symptom relief in medical cannabis and emotional support from community members, Jennifer Whetzel was inspired to use her professional expertise to help businesses in the cannabis industry.

In 2018, she founded Ladyjane Branding using the power of Archetypes to help companies develop unique brands that lead to deep connections with consumers. Her background in compliance also led to development of an online course teaching FDA-compliant messaging for CBD and cannabis brands called Sell Joy!

In 2019, Jennifer initiated “The Women in Cannabis Study,” an in-depth multimedia research project to understand the journey of women working in the cannabis industry. Results of the study will be forthcoming in a partnership with Hasty Storytelling and the basis of a book written by award-winning author of The Medicalization of Marijuana, Michelle Newhart.

In 2020, she co-founded Independent Diamond Brokers, which focuses on B2B networking and events for local Maine growers & retailers.

She is also on the Board of Directors for #thisisjaneproject, a non-profit focused on providing education and access to plant medicine for trauma survivors.

A prolific reader and lover of nature, in her spare time Jennifer can be found either with her nose in a book or in the woods on her property in Maine.

Things we mentioned in the episode:

Book: The Hero and the Outlaw by Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen

Book: Goddesses in Everywoman by Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen

Book: Goddesses in Older Women by Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen

Book: Circe by Madeline Miller

Book: The Medicalization of Cannabis by Michelle Newhart

Organization: Independent Diamond Brokers

Organization: Women in Cannabis

Book: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Show: Moving Art - Netflix documentary

Internal Family Systems

Who were the Titans? And what was the word's original meaning?

From the birth of Aphrodite to the rise of Zeus -- and what happened in between.

In this special Mother's Day episode, Boston tells the story of four generations of mother goddesses from Greek mythology. Gaia. Rhea. Hera. Maia.

Host Boston Blake connects the dots between Wonder Woman, Aphrodite, and the origin of the world according to Greek mythology.

Persons, places, and things mentioned in this episode:

Wonder Woman (the movie)

Wonder Woman (comics)

Clash of the Titans

Archetypes

Joseph Campbell

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

Edith Hamilton's Mythology

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Hesiod

Homer

Apollodorus

Wolverine

Entropy

Organizational psychologist Renita Wellman discusses her journey from Catholic school to an intentional community, narrative therapy, her Jungian perspective, and how the goddesses in everywoman manifest in her.