Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald,

currents and trends through a mythic lens.

The podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it

through the lens of myth, story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. Those who know me know that my love for the writings and visionings of J.R. Tolkien runs deep.

And that may be the biggest understatement I've made yet on this podcast.

I also am deeply interested, as you may have gathered, in exploring

the mythic mind, the truths and the myths, and how through the myths we can start to get a sense

of something long buried in the human psyche, something that used to perhaps be more at the forefront,

the state of vision, wonder, and imagination, the vision of a numinous interconnected world that the myths transport us into,

that perhaps was a state humans used to be able to traverse with a lot more facility and regularity,

and that perhaps has increasing relevance for us in the world today. I had never exactly thought of Tolkien in terms of this

shamanistic worldview. I had never really thought of Homer's The Odyssey in that way either.

So I was surprised to find Robert Tyndall's book, The Shamanic Odyssey, Homer, Tolkien, and the visionary

experience. When I opened it and began reading,

I found a whole lot of connecting threads.

Threads I think my listeners will love,

even if they are not necessarily Tolkien or Homer fans,

because the connecting thread has to do with the visionary experience,

what it is, how it has been lost or sidelined, and how to reclaim it again.

Robert Tyndall is a professor of English, a writer, and a classical guitarist. He has studied

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