The Hero and the Goddess The Odyssey as Pathway to Personal Transformation

Homer's The Odyssey could almost be said to have launched Greek civilization and it has influenced the West ever since. Human potential leader Jean Houston provides empowering experiential exercises at every key stage of Homer's epic to play with The Odyssey as if it were the story of our own journey. She inspires us to enter into it as if we believe that our lives have meaning-meaning that can come into focus and delight through an encounter with the hero Odysseus and the Goddess Athena who, for ten years after the Trojan War guided Odysseus through many ordeals. The Greek gods and goddesses embody the grand patterns of life we now know as archetypes. In partnership with them, we can create or restore deep connections between our mortal selves and the immortal realities. As we set sail with Odysseus in this book, together we will endure loss and suffering, the search for the divine Beloved, and the joy of finally arriving home. Dealing truthfully with these themes will help us to effect healing in areas that have kept us immobilized and in anguish. By raising our own tragic dimension to a mythic level, our wounding becomes an opening through which grace can enter. We awaken to a larger, nobler life. This is a book, then, to be done, not just read. It provides an experiential journey into a mystery that has engaged the human spirit for some three thousand years. Now, as it did originally, it beckons us to participate in a powerful adventure of the soul that is at once universal and intensely personal.

Jean Houston, Ph.D., a principal founder of the Human Potential Movement and the new field of Social Artistry, is author of twenty-six books. In addition to teaching at her Mystery School, she works with the United Nations and other international agencies to train leaders in developing countries throughout the world.