“I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.”

― Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Princess of Mars

What does it mean to say that the world was once enchanted, but now it is not? To answer that question, one must ask, “what is a myth, and how can it be both true and false?” On this week’s Mosaic Ark, the ladies were joined by Substack author John Carter (a pseudonym taken from one of his favorite book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs.) John Carter’s imagination is boundless, and with that boundless imagination he asks a lot of fascinating questions about history, science, religion, stories, and myths. One of the big questions of our time is this – what happens to a society built with the imaginative force of myth, when imagination is relegated to secondary status (when acknowledged at all) in the public sphere? If the effect of that secondary status is a crumbling society, how can that society be fixed? In short, how does one reenchant the world? Join us as we wrestle with this concept, and please share your ideas in the comments. —Streamed October 12, 2024

Postcards from Barsoom: https://barsoom.substack.com

"The Re-enchantment of the World": https://barsoom.substack.com/p/the-reenchantment-of-the-world

Dr. John Carter, PhD, on X: @martianwyrdlord

“Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures.” — St. Francis of Assisi, “Canticle of the Creatures” (1225)

As the fallen-away followers of our Lord Jesus Christ might have said, this is a hard teaching, especially this week. How do we praise God for “every kind of weather” after the devastating and deadly floods in Appalachia this past week? How did St. Francis do it in the face of the trials of his day? This week the ladies of the Mosaic Ark discuss St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is today (October 4). Was he simply the tree-hugging, animal-loving hippy portrayed by Franco Zeffirelli in his 1972 film? Or was he the devout but shrewd son of a wealthy merchant who founded a world-wide movement? Spoiler alert: He was both! Join us as we talk about why people still love this saint so much, and what he has to teach us about the modern world. — Streamed October 4, 2024

Mimetic Desire. This was the phrase used by René Girard to describe the human condition of wanting to obtain that which others have already obtained; not to be confused with envy, mimetic desire is simply an extension of the way we learn what we should and shouldn’t want — food, shelter, love, etc. Can this be observed in everyday life, in fiction, in geopolitics? Yes, yes, and yes, through a phenomenon called Mimetic Rivalry. Join the ladies of the Mosaic Ark as we discuss some of the more famous mimetic twins, and tell us in the comments if you can see what we see in these pairings: Indiana Jones and René Belloq from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Simone de Beauvoir and Mother Theresa of Calcutta (two single ladies and historic contemporaries with two very different ideas about love) and the trifecta of mimetic twins — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin, leaders of the Allies during World War II. —Streamed September 27, 2024