CENTRE FOR MYTH STUDIES University of Essex OPEN SEMINAR A qualitative study of the Cymric/Welsh mythic Land of the Dead Dr Elizabeth Brodersen Thursday 27 June 2024 7.30 – 9.00 pm (BST) Online All welcome To register for this free Zoom event, please email: pps@essex.ac.uk before 11.30 am on the day of the seminar (mention CMS open seminar) ‘Pendragon sinking into the ocean’. Image of Red Dragon via Deviant Art (Creative Commons) This presentation explores the symbolic journey to the Land of the Dead as envisaged through Old Welsh/Cymric cosmogony. Myth making is an archaic form of artistic a ..read more

CENTRE FOR MYTH STUDIES University of Essex OPEN SEMINAR The Sun-Flower: An eco-centric footnote to Book IV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses Dr Leon Burnett University of Essex Thursday 6 June 2024 7.30 – 9.00 pm (BST) Online All welcome To register for this free Zoom event, please email: pps@essex.ac.uk before 11.30 am on the day of the seminar (mention CMS open seminar) George Frederic Watts, Clytië (c. 1868-75). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York At the start of Book IV of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the three daughters of Minyas shun the celebration of Bacchus that is taking place outside. One of the ..read more

CENTRE FOR MYTH STUDIES University of Essex OPEN SEMINAR Myth and the Physical World: The Case of Wolfgang Pauli Professor Roderick Main University of Essex Thursday 16 May 2024 7.30 – 9.00 pm (BST) Online All welcome To register for this free Zoom event, please email: pps@essex.ac.uk before 11.30 am on the day of the seminar (mention CMS open seminar) Wolfgang Pauli in Pontresina, Winter 1931/1932 The Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) was a major influence on Carl Gustav Jung’s (1875–1961) later reformulation of his concept of the archetype as “psychoid,” that is, as ..read more

CENTRE FOR MYTH STUDIES University of Essex OPEN SEMINAR The Alchemical Oedipus: Re-Visioning the Myth Reginald Ajuonuma University of Essex Thursday 14 December 2023 7.30 – 9.00 pm (GMT) Online All welcome To register for this Zoom event, please email: pps@essex.ac.uk before 11.30 am on the day of the seminar (mention CMS open seminar) ‘Death of Laius’, The Delphian Society: The World’s Progress, Part III (W. B. Conkey Company, 1913) The Oedipus myth is foundational to depth psychology due to Freud’s use of Sophocles’ play Oedipus Rex in the creation of psychoanalysis. But analytical psycho ..read more

CENTRE FOR MYTH STUDIES University of Essex OPEN SEMINAR The End of Eternity and the Mesopotamian ‘Rod and Ring’ Dr Ben Pestell University of Essex Thursday 23 November 2023 7.30 – 9.00 pm (GMT) Online All welcome To register for this Zoom event, please email: pps@essex.ac.uk (mention CMS open seminar) ‘Queen of the Night’ relief, thought to represent Ishtar or Ereshkigal. Clay, Iraq, 1800-1750 BCE. Now in the British Museum. Image © The Trustees of the British Museum. Figures of authority are often depicted holding a staff. The meaning of such sticks varies according to cultural context, an ..read more

CENTRE FOR MYTH STUDIES University of Essex OPEN SEMINAR Mythical Monsters and the Monstrous in Myth: Harpies and Erinyes in Modern Fiction Dr Ana González-Rivas Fernández Autonomous University, Madrid Thursday 2 November 2023 7.30 – 9.00 pm (GMT) Online All welcome To register for this Zoom event, please email: pps@essex.ac.uk (mention CMS open seminar) Monstrous is everything that challenges the normative, that transgresses aesthetic, ethical, and moral laws. Despite our efforts to conceal it, the monstrous ends up revealing itself, scandalizing and terrifying us because it threatens our h ..read more

The Myth Reading Group will meet on ‘Zoom’ on Thursday 9 February 2023, 5:30-6:30 pm (UK time). The link to join is posted in the comments for this post. All are welcome. The theme for the Spring Term is Japanese Myth. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Susanoo no Mikoto kills the Eight-headed Serpent, woodblock print triptych, 1887 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) Last term we encountered the Japanese deity Susanowo in his dealings with the sun goddess Amaterasu. At the end of the tale, Susanowo is expelled from the High Plain of Heaven in punishment for his destructive behaviour. This week’s text picks up his ..read more

The Myth Reading Group will meet on ‘Zoom’ on Thursday 26 January 2023, 5:30-6:30 pm (UK time). The link to join is posted in the comments for this post. All are welcome. The theme for the Spring Term is Japanese Myth. Izanami, from Noragami # 36 (2014), by Adachitoka The story of the deities Izanami [She Who Invites] and Izanagi [He Who Invites] is told in two eighth-century works, the Kojiki [Records of Ancient Matters] and the Nihongi [Chronicles of Japan]. The two works differ in certain details, but the fundamental account remains the same. The text for the Myth Reading Group is taken fro ..read more

The Myth Reading Group will meet on ‘Zoom’ on Thursday 17 November 2022, 5:30-6:30 pm (UK time). The link to join is in the comments for this post. All are welcome. The theme for the Autumn Term is ‘Beauty’. Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche (plaster, 1794). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (public domain) In this session we shall look at Apuleius’ rendering of the tale of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ from his The Golden Ass (2nd century CE). Jealous that the princess Psyche is being worshipped for her beauty more than she, the goddess Venus sends her son Cupid, the god of love, to punish Psyche ..read more

The Myth Reading Group will meet on ‘Zoom’ on Thursday 20 October 2022, 5:30-6:30 pm (UK time). The link to join will be posted in the comments for this post. All are welcome. The theme for the Autumn Term is ‘Beauty’. William Etty (1787-1849), Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed (exhibited 1830). Tate. “Observation will not do, appreciation is required”, writes George Santayana in The Sense of Beauty (1896). In The Hidden I: A Myth Revised (1990), Frederic Raphael explores this proposition by taking, and revising for the moder ..read more