1

There is a broad and in some respects unrecognized artistic tendency, operating in a variety of different media, the primary feature of which is the invocation of magic and myth- not merely the use of such themes as a story element, but the incarnation of a transcendent reality within the mundane sphere.

2	This tendency represents an unrealized but extremely powerful mystic impulse, an instinct common to all cultures and peoples, which is now seeking a new mode of expression in the modern world.

3	The nature of this expression is distinct from all previous modes of spirituality, because it draws freely from a common heritage of world culture and tradition, while laying claim to no particular doctrine or identity.

4	The personal experience of this transcendent reality, which may be referred to as mythic resonance, is among the most fundamental of human experiences, providing a rich source of inspiration and insight.

5

Reason and the scientific method are valid and essential ways of understanding the material world. However, no perfectly rational understanding of the realm of myth is either possible or desirable. Understanding in the mythic realm is essentially ineffable, and its expression necessarily involves both contradiction and ambiguity.

6	It is equally misguided either to take myth literally or to dismiss it as meaningless, the fallacies of fundamentalism and of scientism.

7	The images of the mythic realm are symbolic and not literal, but they cannot be reduced down to anything in the mind or the world. Mythic symbols are allegorical of something more fundamental, providing access to essential truths.

8

The experience of the realm of myth is most transformative when it is met at the source, experienced as an ineffable mystery, and confronted directly. All second-hand interpretations (whether anthropological, historical or psychological) are a step away, useful only intellectually but not fundamentally.

9	Any specific myth contains a mythic problem, or in some cases a complex of mythic problems. The nature of a mythic problem is a profound mystery, the solution to which is a transcendent insight, a transformative seeing-beyond.

10	The insight that can be attained through the experience of myth is in itself an ethics, providing a doorway to human excellence in every facet of life.