Mythology isn’t just a collection of quaint old stories you enjoyed as a child. Myths, whether we notice them or not, have a strong hold on our society and reflect how we humans make sense of the world and define our place within it.

From ancient civilizations to modern culture: myths, history, and spirituality shape our beliefs, values, and identities.

Through the Mythic Glass examines how myths, religion, and history encode power, identity, and the systems we live by.

Drawing from ancient stories to illuminate the present, my goal is for us to use myths and history as a mirror to see culture and ourselves through a different lens.

Let’s look into the mirror, shall we?

What this site is about…

Myths and legends hold power, reinforcing social structures, shaping religions, and defining what a person’s life ought to be. The echoes of these stories still shape our history, institutions, politics, and personal worldviews.

This site is my attempt to look at the zeitgeist we all live in: breakneck technology, social media reshaping our identities, misinformation, propaganda, and so on.

Sometimes, it feels like human experience has changed more in our lifetimes than it has in the last 1000 years, thanks to technology evolving faster than we can adapt to it.

Technology may always be changing, but human beings don’t.

From political myth-making in the 2024 presidential election to Hustle Culture worshiping exclusively at the altar of Chronos, it’s interesting to see how ancient thought still shapes our modern world.

In some ways, the ancient world having such an effect on us is good news, like how the Golden Rule of “treat others as you would treat yourself” from different world religions has stayed with us for hundreds of years.

In other ways, though, the ruling class has been able to weaponize ancient thought to consolidate more power or start wars.

Why Subscribe?

It’s worth taking a look at how those in power use myths and religion to further their own interests, or how pop culture repurposes ancient thought (whether it realizes it or not).

I think that part of being a responsible citizen of the world is to be willing to hold up a mirror to the culture I live in and take an honest look at what’s reflecting back.

If you do too, subscribe for free to Through the Mythic Glass to have the articles sent directly to your inbox and gaze into the mirror with me.

Or if you’re like me, and spend more time on social media apps than you’d like to admit, feel free to follow my Bluesky account, where I post quips and tidbits that don’t fit in the full articles, like:

Watch my livestreams of Research & Marginalia!

Writing these articles takes a lot of research, which is typically a solitary and pretty lonely experience. So I decided to start livestreaming my research and adding marginalia to sources!

Not to mention, I thought doing so would be a roundabout way to prove that my writing and ideas on this site are not generated by Artificial Intelligence. You can see more of my thought process in this Bluesky thread:

I host Coworking & Studying sessions every Monday and Wednesday on Twitch from 6 pm to 8:30 pm CST and every Saturday from 7 am to 11 am CST! So if you have a to-do list you’d like to knock out or have some studying or reading you’d like to get done, feel free to join us on Twitch for a few productivity hours!

Want to know more about me on a personal level? Here are a few rapid-fire bullets:

• My name is Monica, and I live in Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States.

• I’m married—my spouse and I have been together for more than ten years!

• I have two rescue dogs (a Staffordshire Terrier/German Shepherd mix and a Doberman/German Shepherd mix) and three rescue cats!

• Kindness is my #1 value. I don’t tolerate hate here.

• Equality/feminism/etc needs to be intersectional. Period.

• I’m a writer and a mythologist at heart. I spent many years in the corporate fashion world and the tech industry!
  
  
  
  Anything else I forgot to add? Feel free to ask!