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Mythic Mind: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Andrew Snyder
Pursuing wisdom through primary and secondary worlds. Mythic Mind is a conversation about stories, thought, and the inner life. We read literature and philosophy, talk through film and games when they help, and ask what these works reveal about the soul, the good life, and the Christian imagination. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis and Narnia, Kierkegaard, Beowulf, myth and fairy stories, Tolstoy, and the great books all take their turn at the table. Hosted by Andrew Snyder, Ph.D., the show gathers fellow readers and thinkers around a common table. Some episodes are lessons. Most are recorded discussions. All of them aim at seeing more clearly, not merely consuming more content.
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- 6 days ago34 min
196 - Kierkegaard's Concept of Anxiety: Anxiety Is Not an Ailment to Be Removed
Watch the video:https://mythicmindfellowship.com/kierkegaards-concept-of-anxiety-anxiety-is-not-an-ailment-to-be-removed-mythic-mind-ep-196/Today I'm giving you a free look into my Mythic Mind Fellowship course, The Psychology of Søren Kierkegaard: Life in Anxiety & Despair, as we begin with the preface and introduction to The Concept of Anxiety. Before the argument proper, Kierkegaard's pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, the Watchman of Copenhagen, tells us what kind of book this is and what kind of book it is not: not a clinical study, not a self-help manual, and not a theology textbook borrowing a psychological title. He is a psychologist with theology in view, writing a monograph rather than a system. The course is underway now and is included with Fellow and Companion memberships, so joining the Fellowship gets you the rest of it.We look at what happens when sin is handled in the wrong field (aesthetics, metaphysics, or psychology on its own), why earnestness is the proper mood for this book, and how Haufniensis maps four neighboring disciplines: first ethics, dogmatics, psychology, and second ethics. Psychology can trace the real possibility of sin, but it cannot cross the qualitative leap. That is why its proper object is anxiety, which is not an ailment to be removed but the threshold where we face either despair or faith.Chapters:0:00 A free look at the Kierkegaard course0:30 The texts for this study5:53 The preface and introduction6:52 Vigilius Haufniensis and Kierkegaard's pseudonyms8:28 A psychologist with theology in view10:40 The Watchman of Copenhagen: a monograph, not a system16:49 Sin out of place: the false moods19:39 Earnestness, the proper mood22:35 Four disciplines: first ethics, dogmatics, psychology, second ethics27:44 Psychology's limit and the qualitative leap29:43 Takeaways and what comes nextThe Psychology of Søren Kierkegaard: Life in Anxiety and Despair (course introduction): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ6KDO2mNPYAnxiety Means You Can Choose (Mythic Mind, ep. 189): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwKDIRfQGQYKierkegaard on Man’s Highest Perfection (Mythic Mind, ep. 193): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJXOC2PfR3MThe Death of Ivan Ilyich: Am I Guilty? (Mythic Mind, ep. 194): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIgiz_wQbXkOblivion's Sheogorath and Kierkegaard's Sickness unto Death (Mythic Mind Games, ep. 34): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZUgEUzaBXU📚 Books discussedThe Concept of Anxiety by Søren Kierkegaard (Thomte translation): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780691020112Philosopher of the Heart: The Restless Life of Søren Kierkegaard by Clare Carlisle: https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9781250798428Freedom and Its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Despair by Gregory R. BeaboutJoin the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membershipListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies#Kierkegaard #TheConceptOfAnxiety #Philosophy #ChristianPsychology #Existentialism #MythicMindBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- 1 weeks ago44 min
195 - Eschatology in Arda: Did Middle-earth Know Its Ending?
Did the people of Middle-earth know how their story ends? Rev. Jeffrey Wade joins Andrew Snyder and Josh to discuss his master's thesis on eschatology in Arda. His question is not only what Tolkien believed, but whether the inhabitants of Arda themselves know their telos: the promise of resurrection, reunion, and the setting right of all things. Letting the text stand on its own rather than reading it through a scholar's agenda, he argues that this hope is woven into the story from the Ainulindalë onward.One striking thread is water. The music of Ilúvatar lingers in the waters of Arda, and Rev. Wade traces moments of grace and eucatastrophe that happen near water, from Bilbo's riddle game and Lake-town to the Ford of Bruinen, Nimrodel, and Mirrormere. He also shows how hope is handed down through song and story among Men, hobbits, Dwarves, and Ents, and points to the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth in Morgoth's Ring as one of its clearest statements.The conversation then asks how much of this hope survives in Peter Jackson's films and why Hollywood struggles with virtuous characters. It closes with Rev. Wade's story of how the films led him to the books, and why he calls The Lord of the Rings a love letter to creation. Rev. Jeffrey Wade is a Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod pastor in Iowa, with an MDiv from Concordia Seminary (2014) and an MA in Language and Literature from Signum University (2025).Chapters00:00 Introducing Rev. Jeffrey Wade01:12 The thesis: do the inhabitants of Arda know their eschatology?03:21 Reading theologically and letting the text stand05:24 Water and the music of Ilúvatar07:28 What is Arda?11:12 What makes this approach unique in Tolkien scholarship15:50 Best sources: the Ainulindalë and the Athrabeth19:57 The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: hope at the water's edge23:33 Why water? Baptismal echoes24:22 How the hope is handed down: lore, song, and catechesis27:51 Bombadil vs. the Barrow-wight: hope vs. despair29:20 Eschatology in the Peter Jackson films34:26 Can film viewers catch it? Hollywood and virtue37:00 Recommended reading on Tolkien and theology39:50 How the films led Rev. Wade to Tolkien43:36 ClosingGet the book: Morgoth's Ring (J.R.R. Tolkien): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780261103009Get the book: Tolkien's Theology of Beauty (Lisa Coutras): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9781137553447Get the book: The Flame Imperishable (Jonathan S. McIntosh): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9781621382942Get the book: Tolkien On Fairy-stories (J.R.R. Tolkien): https://bookshop.org/a/129785/9780007582914Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membershipListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind MoviesBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- 2 weeks ago38 min
194 - The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Am I Guilty?
Watch the video: https://youtu.be/mIgiz_wQbXkWe all know we will die one day. It is another thing to consider that it is I who am going to die.In this Mythic Mind conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) is joined by David and Jack to read Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich. We trace a man who did everything "properly," climbed the ladder, decorated the right house, and still ended up utterly alone, until suffering forces him to ask the one question he has always avoided: am I guilty?Topics include how ordinary people keep death at arm's length, why suffering can become a grace, and what it means to finally take responsibility for the life you've lived. Along the way we find Tolstoy reaching some of the same places as Lewis and Kierkegaard by a very different road.Related:• Kierkegaard on Man's Highest Perfection (Mythic Mind, ep. 193): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJXOC2PfR3M• Till We Have Faces, Part One: Orual Behind the Veil (Mythic Mind, ep. 114): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KhXO9V0PRwJoin the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.com/membershipListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies#MythicMind #Tolstoy #DeathOfIvanIlyich #BookClub #Philosophy #Theology #CSLewisBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- 3 weeks ago54 min
193 - Kierkegaard on Man's Highest Perfection
Watch the video:https://youtu.be/lJXOC2PfR3MWe are pressed to dissolve into the mass, to wear a demographic as a self, or to win identity from whatever community we most esteem. Kierkegaard’s answer cuts the other way: the glory of the human being is to recognize utter dependency on God.In Mythic Mind episode 193, Dr. Andrew Snyder is joined by Zach and David for an Exploring the Psyche conversation on Kierkegaard’s discourse “To Need God Is a Human Being’s Highest Perfection.” They push past the easy proverb that a person needs only a little, through Job and vanity that can even dress itself as renunciation, to the Christian claim that greatness is not pagan self-sufficiency but knowing how much we need God. Along the way: first self and deeper self, the moving wheel of fortune versus the eternal, inwardness against self-enclosure, Christendom versus contemporaneity with Christ, and why casting Kierkegaard as a secular existentialist misses the Christian (even Boethian) grain of the text.Topics include needing little versus needing God, praying for the powerful because they need God most, grace and being capable of nothing, the hard wine before the good wine, and how anchoring in God frees the temporal self for real community rather than atomism.Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.comFellows and Companions can join The Psychology of Søren Kierkegaard: Life in Anxiety and Despair, beginning the week of October 4, plus Academy courses, Inkwell essays, and the fuller life of the community.Listen to and watch Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies &Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- Sep 28, 202643 min
192 - Exploring the Psyche: Why Socialism Is Poison to the Soul
Watch the video:https://youtu.be/Juoxi8xM5eQSocialism is often sold as justice, necessity, or the only way to win. This Exploring the Psyche episode asks a harder question: what does that bargain do to the soul?In Mythic Mind episode 192, Dr. Andrew Snyder takes up a live Right-wing temptation around redistribution, democratic appetite politics, and seizing power "for our side." He grants the real injustice (vote-buying, short-sighted majorities, a disenfranchised base), steelmans the classical and Lewisian fears about democracy's degeneration and spiritual leveling, then refuses the conclusion that remakes persons into instruments. The court can sentence Socrates. Only Socrates can harm Socrates.Drawing on Plato and Aristotle, C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard (and Gregory Beabout), Dostoevsky's Crystal Palace, and Tolkien on the Machine and coerced wills, the talk argues that envy baptized as entitlement, managed security without risk, and power that treats neighbors as tools all shrink the self before God. Freedom requires gratitude, courage, and faithful action. A managed win for any base is still a loss for the person.Topics include democracy and demagoguery, envy and false entitlement, facticity and possibility, despair and the spiritless crowd, welfare soft slavery, Tolkien's Machine versus sub-creation, and why refusing the smaller victory is the psyche's first win.Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.comFellows receive Academy courses (including The Psychology of Søren Kierkegaard: Life in Anxiety and Despair, beginning the week of October 4), Inkwell essays, and the fuller life of the community. Since the fall season began, podcast downloads have nearly doubled. Membership is the deeper layer of the work you hear here.Listen to and watch Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies & Shows#MythicMind #ExploringThePsyche #Socialism #Kierkegaard #CSLewis #Tolkien #Philosophy #Theology #PsycheBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- Sep 21, 20261h 15m
191 - Exploring the Psyche: Identity and Becoming a Self
Watch the video:https://youtu.be/iXr8KuutfW0When Boethius lost everything, Lady Philosophy told him the wound beneath the wound: you have forgotten who you are. That diagnosis still lands. Who are you when the roles, tests, and labels fall away?In this Mythic Mind Exploring the Psyche conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder (professor of philosophy and theology) talks with licensed therapists Jeremy Key and Tyler Finders about identity: Myers-Briggs and Enneagram snapshots, the trap of "I am my diagnosis," agency that will not go away, and Kierkegaard's claim that the self is a relation in motion rather than a fixed type.Topics include authenticity versus persona, how suffering clarifies what is real, and why identity often arrives when you stop hunting for it and start seeking what is good.Related:• Exploring the Psyche: The Importance of Home (Mythic Mind, ep. 190): https://youtu.be/9__99dsKwiU• Anxiety Means You Can Choose (Mythic Mind, ep. 189): https://youtu.be/DwKDIRfQGQY• A Life Well Lived (Mythic Mind, ep. 188): https://youtu.be/2Dgj68PWXdQ• Fall Season: Exploring the Psyche (Mythic Mind, ep. 187): https://youtu.be/_Lbvd79c0d8Join the Mythic Mind Fellowship:https://mythicmindfellowship.comListen to/watch the Mythic Mind podcasts:- Mythic Mind- Mythic Mind Games- Mythic Mind Movies & Shows#MythicMind #ExploringThePsyche #Identity #Kierkegaard #Boethius #Psychology #Philosophy #TheologyBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- Sep 15, 20261h 16m
190 - Exploring the Psyche: The Importance of Home
In this Mythic Mind Exploring the Psyche conversation, Dr. Andrew Snyder talks with licensed therapists Jeremy Kee and Tyler Finders about the value of home: roots and responsibility, the fear of committing to the wrong thing, hobbits who leave the Shire in order to save it, and C.S. Lewis’s reminder that pleasant inns are not the final destination. Topics include belonging in a shifting world, establishing versus finding home, and why home still matters psychologically and spiritually.Join us for our season of "Exploring the Psyche" at https://mythicmindfellowship.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
- Sep 10, 20261h 17m
189 - Anxiety Means You Can Choose
Anxiety is usually treated as a disease to be eliminated. Medication and psychotherapy have their place, but what if, in our pursuit of so-called mental health, we are lobotomizing something essential to being human?In this Exploring the Psyche conversation, Andrew is joined again by licensed therapists Tyler Finders and Jeremy Key to ask what anxiety actually is. We argue that anxiety is not an impediment to agency, but a call of the human spirit to take responsibility for our choices in the moment where what has been meets what might still be.We talk about surface-level anxiety versus deeper existential anxiety, courage as every virtue at its testing point, spheres of control versus spheres of concern, and why anxiety cannot (and need not) be “cured.” It can only be answered: by reclaiming agency instead of surrendering it.If anxiety is how freedom feels, the question is not how to make it disappear, but how to let it educate us into responsibility.Join us for our season of "Exploring the Psyche" at https://mythicmindfellowship.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/mythic-mind--5808321/support.
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About Mythic Mind
Pursuing wisdom through primary and secondary worlds. Mythic Mind is a conversation about stories, thought, and the inner life. We read literature and philosophy, talk through film and games when they help, and ask what these works reveal about the soul, the good life, and the Christian imagination. Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis and Narnia, Kierkegaard, Beowulf, myth and fairy stories, Tolstoy, and the great books all take their turn at the table. Hosted by Andrew Snyder, Ph.D., the show gathers fellow readers and thinkers around a common table. Some episodes are lessons. Most are recorded discussions. All of them aim at seeing more clearly, not merely consuming more content.
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