”The Quarry Men:” A Conversation on New Mythology

with Carridine Poran and Willi Paul

Carridine invited Willi to talk after reading tens of Willi’s interviews with people involved with permaculture and mythology. Willi’s compelling applications of mythology to social and environmental crises turn the familiar conversation surrounding myth on its head. Carridine also found his commitment to online archiving admirable. He invited Willi to have a conversation he believed would be productive of a greater synthesis between depth experience and social organizing for sustainable change.

You can find Carridine and Willi at the New Mythology Permaculture and Transition Group and the Depth Psychology Alliance - New Mythology Group.

Here is the first round of that conversation.

*******

ONE

CP: I notice again and again people asking you, "Yes, but why do you call your stories myths?"

WP: This is a great question. I am advocating a new “brand” of mythology that fits our struggles and transitions. The foundation in this shift are my 8 Key Elements in the New Mythology:

1. Localization – back to sustainability and community; self-sufficiency
2. Nature- Centric
3. Spiritual
4. Future-based
5. Universal themes(s) and message
6. Para-Normal in conflict or characters
7. Initiation, Journey and Hero
8. Permaculture & Transition: values and principles

My tales have transformed the hero, initiation and journey from Joseph Campbell’s vision with modern fears about climate change, mass destruction of Nature and a dash of Hollywood. It matters not how long the pieces are, just the alchemitized struggles and lessons.

Archetypes for my new myths are modernized as well. Archetypes are very powerful images or dreams in our creative tool kit that can offer insights and guidance on our journey:

• Growing Season / Cycle
• Spiritual Healing
• Visioning
• Giving Thanks

Joseph Campbell was often asked how a new mythology was going to develop. His answer was that it would have to come from poets, artists, and filmmakers. In this talk, Campbell explores what he called creative mythology—the way in which artists can and do give a sense of the transcendent in a universe apparently empty of meaning.

So, in my 50 New Myths, it’s not about “story vs. new myths,” it’s much more about the revitalized power of myth!

//

CP: But is there a difference between myth and other kinds of stories? People ask why you call your myths because they are expecting something else when they hear the word myth. I'd like to explore your notion of myth as well as my own. Not only that, I'd like to somehow consider all you are doing and all the themes you are wrestling with in relation to what I know of myth as certain kinds of stories. You say your interest is in "therevitalized power of myth" and I'd like to consider that revitalization as a process in relation to Campbell‘s idea of creative mythology.

I think that first demands that we ask what mythology is. What is its power? That is what I see as the relevance of older mythologies, Greek and Roman or otherwise. We can investigate them and their uses in their own societies. They were connected to religious cults and rituals, to initiation rites as well as to popular entertainment. Part of the question is where these stories originate. They have been studied for more than two thousand years and a wide variety of meaning has been derived from them. Still there is no consensus on what a myth is. Part of the power of myth seems to be this mutability.

I think it would be very interesting to compare your 8 Key Elements in the New Mythology to concerns in these old mythologies. I think there are many parallels. And I think the main differences to be found are based on thedifferent crises being addressed.

Where both could be said to be concerned with nature and spirituality and human truths (universal themes) and values, yours are distinguished by the call to return: to return to sustainable (future-based) ways of living, to the retrieval of meaning out of meaninglessness. Another way they are distinguished is by the gigantic problems your myths must address. These concerns however can still be likened to old concerns: in many of the old Greek Myths you see a concern for staying within bounds and the consequences of boundless desire. I think a core value in all sustainability work and all planning for seven generations type thinking is the notion of conservation, of respecting limits. Myths in both eras hammer home the dangers of greed and over-consumption.

TWO

WP: You write: “Part of the question is: where do these stories come from?” It is beyond my scope to tell you where the classic myths come from; it is empowering to know where mine come from. This gut-level awareness for new rituals, the new symbols, sacredness and alchemy make new myths way more powerful than the old ones, yes? To be slightly critical: the old myths are like “TV re-runs” while the new myths are bursting out of our current predicaments. A huge matter of degree of importance; of nostalgia vs. a fire in the backyard!

I just discovered the notion and underpinnings of Campbell’s creative mythology. This is exciting because I now have a higher relationship with his vision and the world. I honestly did not know that this was the next stage of the journey until I read this:

“In the context of traditional mythology, the symbols are presented in socially maintained rites, through which the individual is required to experience, or will pretend to have experienced, certain insights, sentiments and commitments. In what I'm calling creative mythology, on the other hand, this order is reversed: the individual has had an experience of his own - of order, horror, beauty, or even mere exhilaration-which he seeks to communicate through signs; and if his realization has been of a certain depth and import, his communication will have the force and value of living myth-for those, that is to say, who receive and respond to it of themselves, with recognition, un-coerced.”

So, indeed, creative mythology is my current example of the revitalized power of myth.

As to your reflection on the crisis of the day (or yester year), I agree in principle but technology to destroy the planet with one button or protracted regional conflict seems to separate the old from the new mythologies.

Can you explain what you mean by seven generations type thinking?

THREE

CP: First: by seven generations type thinking I mean the attitude that one must take in making decisions: one must consider the world not just in terms of the effects and rewards for oneself but in terms of seven generations of people that come after. (See Oren Lyons.)

Yes, our gut-level awareness of new myths makes them way more powerful than the old ones for us. In the Joseph Campbell lecture on creative mythology you linked to, I liked that he pointed out that the environment of the old myths had passed away and so they really couldn't be relevant to us. Their guts and our guts react to different things. If I live in a modern city, a Bible written for shepherds who lived 2000 years ago is probably not going to reach me at a gut level. We have to explore our own images arising from our own "current predicaments" and "fires in the backyard" as you say. The old myths are indeed "TV re-runs", and re-runs from the very beginning of TV: Dobie Gillis and Beaver Cleaver. It is hard for us even to imagine what might have been enjoyable or useful about those stories.

I agree with you when you say "but technology to destroy the planet with one button or protracted regional conflict seems to separate the old from the new mythologies." This is what I meant when I said, "your [new myths] are distinguished [from the old myths] ... by the gigantic size of the problems your myths must address."

I appreciate Campbell's notion of creative mythology and I'm glad you got a lot out of it. The quote you posted includes a description of a process of how myths come about:

"In what I'm calling creative mythology, on the other hand, this order is reversed: the individual has had an experience of his own - of order, horror, beauty, or even mere exhilaration-which he seeks to communicate through signs; and if his realization has been of a certain depth and import, his communication will have the force and value of living myth-for those, that is to say, who receive and respond to it of themselves, with recognition, un-coerced."

This is one answer to my question "where do myths come from?" And I think the process you have been using is like this, for instance with Myth Number 1 about the Gulf Oil spill. There's the horrific event. And then you add to it the story of the leatherback turtles. That is your way of communicating your realization concerning the experience.

When I ask this question of process, I mean how do we arrive at the new myths? The process Campbell describes is one of many. For example, there is the process described by Robert Bosnak in his recent free lecture, Introduction to the course on Alchemical Psychology.

Bosnak describes an alchemical process parallel to Campbell's Creative Mythology. It involves the same elements as Campbell's does: a person's experience, a sign or image (in alchemical terms, a tincture/corpus) used to communicate the inspiration, and the inspiration itself -- "the force and value of living myth." Bosnak is applying his alchemy to psychology and individual healing whereas Campbell is talking about stories for the individual as a socially responsible self. A more significant difference I think is the source of the creative inspiration.

Bosnak talks about the lyrical organization of our perceptions in relation to these elements: (1) experience, (2) image and (3) inspiration (approx. 10 minutes into his lecture.) And what is this lyrical organization of our perceptions? As I understand it, as it resonates with my interests, lyrical organization would be reality apprehended or judged as that which makes sense or has meaning rather than the more familiar material organization of our perceptions which apprehends Reality as anything which has an existence independent of us – in spite of us, regardless of us. For me, this may be the whole of the question regarding new mythology and our attempts to tackle the huge problems of our time. What is our relation to reality, to truth, to nature?

Following this introduction about lyrical organization, Bosnak starts talking about the acquisition of an image from a dream encounter and an interpretive processing of the image through alchemical stages of "heat.” There are two chief differences between Campbell's process and the process Bosnak is describing. First rather than a person having an experience and then "seeking to communicate it through signs" Bosnak describes the person being given an image from "deep deep down." It’s not that the person has an experience which they understand and then chooses a way of narrating it to others. In Bosnak’s process, the person doesn't understand the image. The second difference then is the discovery of the meaning of the image through these stages of interpretation.

I think it is this difference in process that allows for a truly powerful, healing realization in Bosnak’s alchemy: the dream image is created by a much deeper source than our conscious inventiveness. Coming as an influx from a more earth-connected or natural, more ecological mind, the image speaks the language of Nature. Because of this deep source, free from our alienated ways of thinking, it is capable of offering great insight with which the soul can be tied to the contemporary disaster in a much more intimate and holistic way. This does not exclude conscious inventiveness: it only adds the requirement that that inventiveness be interpreted by this more ecological mind.

Bosnak gives an in depth example of this process of working with images starting around 37 minutes into the lecture. I suggest starting to listen earlier for the procedural context. Bosnak describes his process in the terms that his teacher James Hillman used.

Tell me what you think.

FOUR

WP: To start, I would gently remind us that Myth Number 1 also includes my first recipe for new myth making, a process that is later refined in Myth Lab.

Is not Nature more powerful, direct and free source of inspiration and guidance than the “intellectual corps.” of psychology?

"Deep deep down” is not easily identified or felt these days with the disruptive power of television, Internet and “wide-max” theatres. We must be leery of “experts or writers or psychologists, etc.” who interchange the terms mythology and alchemy. My alchemy types support symbol making and new myths. Alchemy is the spiritual driver for the new world. Here are some types of alchemy to consider when building new myths and rituals:

• Imaginative Alchemy: This alchemy excites and creates our ideas, conflicts and even prayers in our brains.

• Eco Alchemy: Seeds, soil, plants and animals living, birthing and dying in an inter-related system pulsed by eco alchemy.

• Shamanic Alchemy: This is alchemy transmutates healing through ceremonies and rituals lead by a trained spiritual leader.

• Sound or Sonic Alchemy: The ancient alchemic power of song from cave rants to classical music and rock’n’roll.

• Digital Alchemy: Electronic learning and feeling working with computers including chat text, email and documents.

• Community Alchemy: People working with people: transforming attitudes, sharing ideas and making plans.

• Earth Alchemy: Planetary consciousness building and human evolution on a universal scale.

Furthermore, archetypes in my quiver are defined as very powerful images or dreams in our creative tool kit that can offer insights and guidance on our journey:

• Growing Season / Cycle

• Spiritual Healing

• Visioning

• Giving Thanks

Out of Nature evolves permaculture – a blend of science in spirit is so needed to get to the Post-Chaos Era. It’s time to integrate permaculture and transition principles with the tools of the new world:

• Appreciation for land preservation and environmental sensitive crops (non-GMO)

• Saving and sharing seeds

• Knowledge Sharing

• Inclusivity (Youth to Seniors)

• Resilience (back-up systems)

• Localization (local food and alt economic systems)

• Re-use & Re-cycle

• Alternative energy sources & practices

• Social justice

• Obtaining and using the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC)

Here are six new symbols in my work in sacred permaculture tool kit:

• Diversity (Soil)

• Growth (Seeds)

• Harvest (Basket)

• Transformation (Fire + Smoke)

• Stewardship (Compost Pile)

• Localization (Community Well)

FIVE

CP: I can say that I have read through your process as it is stated on the page where Myth Number 1 appears and as it is refined in Myth Lab. That's why I think I was able to map it onto both Campbell's creative mythology and Bosnak's alchemical psychology.

The lists you sent in this e-mail are, I think, the reason why people ask you, "What has this to do with myth?" People ask you that question because these lists don't communicate the grand scale of your work. I hope through this correspondence to get to the place where people recognize in your work all of these listed elements in their mythic identity

.

If there was any writer in this mix who interchanged the terms mythology and alchemy, I was that writer. I did so only to talk of similarities of process.

Nature is indeed a more powerful, direct and free source of inspiration and guidance than the intellect or any human being's attempt to produce wisdom by juggling generalized intellectual ideas. I shared Bosnak's words to talk about symbols given by nature -- through dream and vision. I wasn't selling Bosnak or his approach to things. I looked at Bosnak's video myself to confirm that at the core of what he is offering (a course, a book, accreditation) is a simple process which I am (and you are) already practicing. The only question is at what level Nature is being engaged.

I think the greatest contribution to community to be made by what used to be called social ecology is the recognition that Nature is the first symbol user. Dreams come from Nature, they come through our bodies which are part of nature, and they come to us, to our minds, which we have somehow concluded are not part of nature.

What we now call psychology and complicate with so many layers of jargons and credentials is first and foremost given to us by Nature. Through dreams, Nature instructs us in the nature of truth and balance. We ourselves have grown so far from such truths that we require alchemies and other arts to transform our self-talk back into something that can understand our own Nature.

I agree that the deep deep down is not easily felt or accessed. But that is one of our crucial problems. I do believe we can turn off the distraction boxes that have been built for us -- not for all time maybe, but for time enough to allow for meditation, reflection and contact with real things. Distraction is the problem of the consumer and the tool of the capitalist. More and more I think we must reject the identity of consumer and rebuild the identities of citizen, community member, mentor, sage, shaman...

SIX

WP: In terms of sources, my interviews continue to offer insight and directions; PR for the interviewees and education / connections for readers. Out of all of the titles that folks have given me since 2009, teacher (shaman) is the role that works best. And there is no “grand scale of work” here! Please do not think of it as such. I am just seeing the pieces and laying them down, like a railroad engineer for others to follow.

As a species, humans are in a juvenile stage in terms of symbols and alchemy. Is my secret wish that Nature-borne symbols and alchemy will one day help to replace the mindless tyranny in organized religion.

If we can get back to Nature by destroying it, then we might live through the great paradox of climate change or the Chaos Age. This is one theme in my 50 New Myths.

Question 1: “Nature is the first symbol user,” do you mean “symbol generator”? I recommend this piece for symbol transmutations:

Question 2: “Through dreams, Nature's instructs us in the nature of truth and balance.” I would appreciate more detail here.

Question 3: Is yoga alchemy? Meditation? Exercise?

Question 4: What are some New Myths about the consumer?

SEVEN

CP: We will have to agree to disagree on the subject of the "grand scale of your work." Just considering the interviews alone reveals a grand scale. And I would think you are the only person who has seen all the pieces because you are the one who has laid them all down. You have mental access to the contents of all of it. I don't mean to suggest that you remember everything everybody has said, but I bet as you talk to people little bells ring and get you thinking, "oh this reminds me of something so and so said when I interviewed them."

In terms of the mindless tyranny of organized religion, I'd say that is one of the big bad guys to be included in a new mythology. Not organized religion as such but an embodiment of the various states of mind which make it up. I think when we look at the original inspirations for religions, the burning bush, the dying god, or you look at the large forms that arise in the history of any given religion, Saints and Archangels as dragon slayers, Madonna and Child, we can see that Nature-borne symbols and alchemy (or something akin to it) have always been present.

Organized religion, or the bad in it people often emphasize, is an embodiment of negative states of mind. These states can be characterized. That is, they can be cast as the characters of myths. The interactions between these characters can be dramatized. It is the Interactions between these states of mind which mummify the vital nature-borne symbols Bosnak describes in his alchemical process. Organizing religion has meant adding intercessors and harum-scarum until the symbols become permanent Mysteries. These are not the mysteries of alchemy which open to investigation as discovery and transformation. Instead they are- permanent Mysteries there to solidify the power of a priestly class; that class claims sole right to these mysteries of them and so too to an authority than demands obedient ignorance.

The relation between these two states of mind, Caste Priest and Caste Suppliant, as a permanent conflict becomes a recurrent narrative in a new mythology. Identified as states of mind in relationship rather than solely as “organized religion,” the priest and suppliant my theme can be seen to play out in other institutions, from City Hall to the Psalters.

Of the remaining four questions, I will save three for tomorrow and answer one in a brief introductory way. Question number 4: New myths about the consumer: I think in composing myths we first build a pantheon and a setting, like you do here. One God or Power is Priest/suppliant, One God or Power is Producer/Consumer or encouraged appetite. The setting, too, you've already got going, for instance the Chaos era, which is a situation as much as it is a place or period of time. Once you have these, and they are True Representations, the myths tell themselves. So arriving at True Representations is most important: What is an example of the consumer god? What is its power? My immediate answer to that is, did you see Spirited Away? The character of No Face in that movie is the character of the consumer. It helps if you understand the director's point of view, I've quoted it on my blog:

EIGHT

Hi C: Note that the film maker references "survival" twice in the first paragraph

“I would say that this film is an adventure story even though there is no brandishing of weapons or battles involving supernatural powers. However, this story is not a showdown between right and wrong. It is a story in which the heroine will be thrown into a place where the good and bad dwell together, and there, she will experience the world. She will learn about friendship and devotion, and will survive by making full use of her brain. She sees herself through the crisis, avoids danger and gets herself back to the ordinary world somehow. She manages not because she has destroyed the ‘evil,’ but because she has acquired the ability to survive.

Are there modern day survival myths? Do they involve individuals or groups? Of course, it's back to the Chaos Age v. the Post-Chaos Age....

NINE

CP: I'm working on the questions you asked me about nature and dreams. In the meantime, if you want to get a sense of me you can read my blog entries on my Grove project: here's what I've written there grouped by theme. You can scroll all the way to the bottom or you can read them backwards, I'm not sure what difference it will make.

I'll do my best to answer all the left-over questions in one e-mail.

I'm going to combine the third question and the fourth question in one answer:

Question 4: How is this vision (of the Grove) instructing us today? Or has it morphed digital?

(Not sure what morphed digital means: perhaps you mean that the place where the mentor appears in now the internet?)

Question 3: Is yoga alchemy? Meditation? Exercise?

I think I've already said that I don't really have much of a relationship to alchemy. I have a way of doing my work that I am pleased with, that I think is authentic and that is based in personal experience. That is not to say that it is unique. In so far as it deals with real things and alchemy or active/embodied imagination or creative mythology deal with real things, there are parallels between all these ways of doing the work, including my own.

The little I understand about alchemy I described in one of my previous answers: in short, it is a process of interaction with an object capable of yielding transformative insight. The alchemist brings the whole force of inquiry to bear on a super-dense image: the image “heats up” until it explodes releasing “scintilla.” My process of working on the Grove very closely parallels that. I was given a dream image in response to the death of my mentor. In an effort to honor him and to heal my grief, I concentrated on this image in order to evolve it into the perfect tribute. Having to materialize this thing in physical space and to design its aspects to ensure that there were appropriate to his memory, I brought to bear previous decades of study and work. The result was countless insights and a greater wholeness within me than I had ever possessed before.

I take your question regarding yoga et al, in terms of this understanding of transformative work; is yoga, exercise, meditation alchemy? I would say yes. The continual practice of exercise generally speaking can promote health and regulate mood and bring clarity of purpose. That can certainly be a transformation to a person who previously lacked those things. Meditation generally speaking also seems like alchemy insofar as it transforms consciousness and can bring about progressive improvement. Yoga, I think, is clearly a parallel to alchemy and that parallel can be made clear by seeing it in terms of prayer: Yoga is often seen as the step beyond prayer, that is, beyond the faith that directs wishes toward a deity. Yoga is a practice which intends to bring about direct experience of deity. I read somewhere, "It is not enough to believe in God, one must endeavor to touch God." Through intense bodily regulation yoga achieves higher and higher states of consciousness.

Your fourth question can be answered on several levels: How is this vision (of the Grove) instructing us today?

On an archetypal level the vision of the grove instructs us as it has since its first appearance in consciousness. And how has this archetype instructed us? As I just read in the brief essay available online by Craig Cholquist, WHAT GOOD IS AN ARCHETYPE: "As Jung pointed out, an archetypal image left unresearched is no more comprehensible than an ancient baptismal font whose history remains unknown." A vision, above all, must be explored and as it is explored many insights come and the explorer grows, and as the explorer grows, the instruction can deepen and branch off in new unexpected directions.

On a historical level, how is this ancient Greek vision of a grove in the underworld instructing us today? First and foremost, it instructs by its continued reappearance. It instructs us in the ways that we are connected to the rest of humanity past and present.

On a contemporary level, the grove can raise up our own structures to the level of the mythologized shapes from the past: what more is the mentor in the grove than the teacher in the classroom? Why do we sense the teacher in the classroom as such a lessening of the mentor in the grove? To me, the ability to see this likeness calls us to act in front of a class out of a holistic and heightened sense of education, making the act of teaching today not just a mechanical communication of skills but rather a passing on of the wisdom necessary to live a good and satisfying life. These days the vision of the grove instructs me to encourage mentoring relationships.

TEN

CP: Okay, now I'll answer question one and two together. Question 1: “Nature is the first symbol user,” do you mean “symbol generator”? I mean Nature is the first symbol user not the first symbol generator. Although I have to say reading your and Metcalfe's Primer, I was most excited by the idea of the myth generator: To find some way of harvesting dreams from the internet to create a world wide web of dreams! In that net, we could catch, like schools of fish, commonalities constellating tens of thousands of dreams into myth formations, monsters, adventures, pantheons, a new global mythology! The gods are human fantasies in swarm. They are our murmuration. Myths are our stories about these larger human patterns. This idea is very, very exciting and inspiring! I would like to help in any way I can to bring such a thing into existence!

But yes, I mean Nature is the first symbol user in the same sense that I mean what I say in what you quote for question 2: “Through dreams, Nature's instructs us in the nature of truth and balance." The easiest way to proceed to elaborate on this is to again quote Craig Cholquist, this time from his essay on Jung's Red Book, from page eight, about dead center in that writing:

"This tree would show up in a dream at the end of Jung's life, the roots glowing with alchemical gold. Nature imagery never strayed far from Jung's deepest thoughts about the psyche. His observation that at bottom psyche merges with world marks him out as a grandfather of Ecopsychology. [my emphasis]” Here's thewhole essay:

"At bottom psyche merges with world" is what I mean when I say Nature is the first symbol user and that through dreams Nature instructs us in the nature of truth and balance. An example of that balance is Jung’s idea (approximately) that all conscious thoughts are half thoughts. Thinking only half a thought impels psyche to present in a dream the other half, the flipside of that thought. If you are too holy, you will dream of finding pleasure in something that defiles you. That's a balancing act. But what necessitates this balance of the "sacred and the profane"?

Consider this other quote from Chalquist's essay on the Red Book: "In later work Jung writes that when the ego has exhausted its efforts, the unconscious should be left to itself to do further work. The Cabiri now appear: gnomes who labor like dwarves under the earth. "You want to pull up with your own force what can only rise slowly....Spare yourself the trouble, or you will disturb our work." Jung takes the hint and takes a break from inner journeying for a while. (Hillman would criticize psychoanalysis one day for trying to dig every stone out of the quarry: “But what about the quarry?”)"

The important thing for me in that quote is that last question "What about the Quarry?" To me, this is a question that strikes the same target I was aiming at when I asked, “what necessitates this balance?” How do we account for the quarry? We have these qualities sacred & profane -- separated out of an original unity: maybe that original unity is the quarry. The quarry is an original abundance as well as a geometrization of that abundance.

All the stuff within consciousness pre-exists consciousness. It is something there to be conscious of. People have this ability to imbibe or embody a quality like "holy" and if they’re feeling too holy, they’re out of whack and something deep within them will send a message that says, "get real" or "act NATURAL." Or as Osho says it, "Live the way Nature intended you to live."

Who sends these messages? Who makes them up? I don't. You don't. We are subjected to them and dependent on them just as we are subjected to and dependent upon sleep. These meanings are made in the place deep within you (and without you) where psyche and world meet.

ELEVEN

Carridine Poran’s Bio

Carridine Poran is an artist and art instructor. Besides offering art instruction in traditional areas, “Kerry” founded Carridine Poran Creative Services, a program of art instruction in which artists assist communities in the production of group art such as murals, picture stories and oral history forums. These projects visualize community narratives and encourage mentoring relationships.

In his career as an artist, Kerry has been a galleried fine arts painter and sculptor and an illustrator of literary fiction. As an amateur he has been a playwright, actor, novelist and essayist. His work first and foremost concerns the link between the visionary landscape of the imagination and the life well lived.

Currently he is getting to know his newborn daughter, Frida, while at the same time revamping his website.

Willi Paul’s Bio -

Active in the sustainability, permaculture, transition, sacred Nature, new alchemy and mythology space since the launch of PlanetShifter.com Magazine on EarthDay 2009, Willi’s network now includes four web sites, aLinkedIn group, 3 tweeter accounts, a G+ site, multiple blog sites, and multiple list serves.

In 1996 Mr. Paul was instrumental in the design of the emerging online community space in his Master’s Thesis: “The Electronic Charrette..” He was active in many small town design visits with the Minnesota Design Team.

Mr. Paul has released 12 eBooks, 2140 + posts on PlanetShifter.com Magazine, and over 500 interviews with global leaders (site 1 & site 2). He has created 48 New Myths to date and has been interviewed over 25 times in blogs and journals.

Willi earned his permaculture design certification in August 2011 at the Urban Permaculture Institute, SF.

Please see his cutting-edge article at the Joseph Campbell Foundation and his pioneering videos on YouTube. His current focus is Myth Lab - a project that Willi presented at his third Northwest Permaculture Convergence in Portland, OR.

As a Senior Manager, Mr. Paul has worked for several Northern California sustainability, civil and software engineering firms. He now works part-time as a design / relocation consultant in the Bay Area.

Willi’s consulting work is at NewMythologist.com