The Practice of Mythobiography a Via Creativa Devotional
As the 1st Quarter Moon rises, we walk the Via Creativa embracing the joy of making, of playing, and birthing the unseen into form.
Invocation
Holy One,
You who breathe story into the marrow of our bones,
who weaves galaxies and gardens alike into living parables,
draw us now into the mystery of living and connecting.
Unveil for us the hidden symbols within our days:
let our wounds reveal their fire,
let our joys flow like rivers of blessing,
let our companions shine as guides upon the path.
Teach us to speak our lives not as bland report,
but as living myth,
as a song carried by the One Life in all things.
Strip away the silence that would bind our tongues,
and give us courage to name ourselves as sacred stories.
As we write, may our words become prayer.
As we remember, may our memories become ritual.
As we weave, may our weaving root us deeper in Your presence.
Let our lives be the soil where hope takes root,
the tether that binds spirit and flesh,
the map that leads us into compassion, justice, and love.
In the stillness,
in the telling,
in the creating,
may we know ourselves at home in Your luminous web.
Amen.
The Sacred Moment
Today, the first quarter moon cuts a bold curve through the night, a bright edge of becoming against the sky. May we feel the call to create, to explore, to dance with the holy spark that stirs within us. In the generative tension of the First Quarter Moon, we walk the path of the Via Creativa: the way of inspiration, of sacred imagination, of shaping what has never been before. Our souls reach not for certainty, but for expression: for the joy of making, of playing, of sketching the unseen into form.
This is a moon to imagine, to risk, to begin.
Theme: The Practice of Myth
Every first quarter moon, we focus our practice on the Via Creativa. We draw on the powers of growth to build momentum toward a deeper and truer connection to the One Life in all things. This itself is an enacted myth, a story with power. Aligning ourselves to the lunar phases and connecting them to the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality it is the practice of myth in action.
Mythology is the most important lost art of our day. As we disenchanted our world during the so-called Enlightenment, we chose a path that could only talk about what we can measure. In that narrowing, we lost our connection to meaning, purpose, and community. Mythos is the practice of connecting to the cosmos, the Divine, and the people in our lives. Through metaphor, and through the ritualizing of those metaphors, we bring them into our body. Myth allows us to connect deeply to the immeasurable aspects of life: compassion, justice, love, hope, and the future world to come. It is the tether that binds our spirit and our flesh.
Science is a beautiful and powerful tool. It shows us the cosmos through logic and reason. But science can only see what it can quantify and measure, and those measures are limited. If we want to understand how to build relationships, forge community, and cultivate peace, we need myth. Myth is how we understand the cosmos through creativity and action. It gives us language to hold onto, images to feel, metaphors that reach the unseen parts of ourselves and the wider world. Where science shows us structure, myth lets us live into meaning.
I grew up reading the works of Joseph Campbell, and from him I learned the heart of the Via Creativa. He taught me how to connect to the stories that mattered to me, from the traditional stories of my faith to the inspirational retelling of the moon landing and the image of the blue marble floating in space. Campbell showed me that any story I connect with is part of my mythology. That insight liberated me to draw not only from the tales of my lineage but also from history, music, and the arts. Myth was not just in sacred texts, but in the great stories that stir our collective imagination.
To live, to practice mythos, is to draw these metaphors into your thoughts and to ritualize them in your body. Tell yourself or others stories. They may be the ancient stories passed down in your culture, but more importantly, they can be the personalized stories you alter and tell in your own way. Try writing your own mythobiography: retelling your life as a myth, not to exalt yourself, but to make visible and visceral your connections to others and to the world around you. Choose a favorite myth or legend and ask how you might experience it in meditation or safely reenact it through ritual. Create a devotional painting, write a poem, or compose an original myth. The more you connect to your myths, the more connected you will be to your life.
The practice of myth is not about retreating into fantasy. It is about reclaiming the language of connection, about remembering that the world is alive with meaning that no calculation can exhaust. At this first quarter moon, as growth presses forward, let your practice of myth feed your own growth. Enter the story, embody it, and let it root you in the One Life that pulses through all things.
Myth is not something that once was. Myth is now. To practice it is to join the great act of creation, to be fully human, fully alive, and fully at home in this luminous, mysterious cosmos.
Practice: Writing Your Mythobiography
“Our stories are not luxuries. They are the maps of our survival, the soil where our truth takes root.”
Pamela Booker, “Resistance, Resilience"
Mythobiography is the art of retelling your life as myth. Not to inflate yourself into a hero of legend, but to make visible the sacred threads that bind you to others, to earth, and to the Holy that breathes in all things. This is not autobiography, where we recite events in order. This is mythos: where the events of our lives are re-membered into living symbols that carry power.
Writing your mythobiography is an act of survival and an act of creation. It is a way of claiming your life as holy ground. Example:
Step One: Gather the Fragments
Take a quiet hour with your journal. Make a list of turning points in your life:
births and deaths
triumphs and failures
moments of rupture
moments of rapture
moments of beauty
Do not judge them. Write them down as fragments. Notice how they feel in your body as you write. Which ones tighten your chest? Which bring tears? Which make you smile despite yourself?
Step Two: Find the Symbols
Next to each fragment, write down an image, creature, or element that could carry its meaning.
Did heartbreak feel like a forest fire?
Did joy arrive like a river swelling its banks?
Did survival feel like a stone that refused to crack?
Myths live in images, not in abstractions. Let your imagination choose the symbols that feel truest.
Step Three: Name the Allies and Adversaries
Every myth has companions, guides, and obstacles. Who has walked with you, offered you bread, or showed you kindness when you had none for yourself? Write them as allies: the fox, the grandmother, the unexpected stranger.
Then name your adversaries: not always people, but the forces that pressed against you: fear, addiction, despair, empire itself.
Mythobiography honors them too, for they shape the path.
Step Four: Weave the Journey
Begin to retell your story as myth. Choose one or two fragments and symbols to start. Write a paragraph as if you were a figure in a sacred story.
Do not worry about polish. Write raw. Let it come in images, in rhythm, in fragments. This is revelation, not performance.
Step Five: Ritualize the Story
When you finish, speak it aloud. Whisper it if you must. Let your body know the words. Draw one of the symbols in your journal. Light a candle, walk outside, or place a stone on your altar. This act seals the mythobiography in your flesh.
Step Six: Return and Expand
This practice is never finished. Each season, return to your journal and add new chapters. What new images have emerged? What new allies walked with you? In time, you will find yourself not just writing myth, but living it consciously, with awe and with agency.
The Call
This work is not indulgence. It is liberation. When you claim your story as myth, you declare that your life carries meaning beyond measure, that you are woven into the cosmic web. Begin with one fragment. Find its image. Tell it back to yourself as myth. Let this practice root you in the Via Creativa, where your life becomes both poem and prayer.
Closing Blessing
Spirit of Story,
we thank You for the fragments of our lives,
for the fire and the river,
for the companions and the trials,
for the silence that waited to be broken.
You have taught us that our lives are not accidents,
but living myths,
woven with the threads of countless others.
In our telling, we find connection.
In our symbols, we find strength.
In our rituals, we find Your presence breathing through us.
Let the words we have take root.
Let them rise as prayers,
as poems,
as practices that shape how we walk in this world.
Carry us now into our daily lives with courage:
to live our stories with compassion,
to honor the stories of others with reverence,
to weave all our myths together into the great web of Love.
So may it be.
Amen.
Bonus Materials
Charle’s Mythobiography