The New Acropolis School of Philosophy in Zaragoza presented a wonderful interactive activity, the Philosophical Laboratory on “The Hero’s Journey: Live your own myth”.

All participants had the opportunity to experience the myth through three exercises. This involved finding the three phases of the hero’s journey in three different myths: Ulysses, Gilgamesh and Heracles. Participants were encouraged to identify the departure, trials and return of each of these extraordinary heroes and discuss applications in life. In another exercise we had to draw a symbol, in teams, whereby we synthesized the values or tools that we were going to need in daily life. And finally, we collaboratively extracted the message from the poem Ithaca by Cavafy. We ended with some reflections from each team, highlighting the value of what we had learned.

We were able to appreciate how mythology contains treasures of symbolic and practical wisdom. Joseph Campbell was once asked in an interview why he devoted himself to the study of mythography, to which he replied: “Because it’s worth talking about. In folk tales, the main character is a hero or heroine. Someone who has found something, who has done something, or who has achieved something beyond the normal range of human achievement and experience. A hero is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself, something that transcends him”.