77 - The Future of Mythic Mind

to YouTube. An actual video component will always be available whenever I have guests and sometimes when it's just me, but sometimes the shows that are just me will be audio only because that's a little bit easier for me to do well and officially, but for the sake of consistency, I'll be fraudening that as well over on YouTube, and so if you aren't already subscribed on both platforms, so you can find the YouTube link in the podcast show notes,

and you can subscribe to Mythic Mind wherever you get your podcast. Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind or Pursue Wisdom on the Path between Primary secondary worlds. I'm your host, Andrew Snyder, and I am always glad that you're here. As I often do, I've really been daydreaming a lot lately about what I would like the Mythic Mind Fellowship to look like if it were fully funded. I'd like to share some of that vision with you, But first,

let's start at the beginning. When I first started the Mythic Mind podcast back in twenty twenty one, I was making some generally short episodes related to the dissertation that I was writing on krekycard at the time. Now, before I got started, I had one patron and the thanks Joe if you're still out there, and I cannot imagine

at that time what this would become. I've since taken the show in a number of different directions, including with talkien Beowulf and the inclusion of the Mythic Mind Fellowship, chats on the poetic Ada and other topics. Also, we've established a really fun discord server for patrons. I've started to independently lead some courses on things that interest me and that I believe that I have some worthwhile things

to say about. And this started with the Fiction and Philosophy of C. S. Lewis course last year, which had about sixty participants initially and several more that have purchased the course since it finished. We then moved into Life, Death and Meaning with Beowolf and Boethius, and we're currently in the Wisdom of Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, and of course I've recently announced three more courses that are coming up this year. A Brief History of Ideas,

which is like a broad scale Survey of Philosophy. We've got a course on Plato Stoicism and C. S. Lewis's till we have Faces and the Elder Scrolls and philosophy. The truth is that I enjoy these courses more than I do my university work. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm really grateful for my university work. I'm really grateful

for those opportunities. But there's something special about building communities around significant topics that are entirely made out of people who truly want to be there outside of the institutional walls. And if I could put full time hours into this, then there would be so many of these courses going on on a regular basis. Now looking at the broader group dynamics here, the Mythic Mind Fellowship is now made of almost fifty active patrons, along with another one hundred

or so free patrons who are following along. We've established a community subseect page, we have monthly patron chats on some really good material, and we have our first member created courses starting to come together. Hannah gille More is teaching introductory Latin this year, and I'm in conversation with

a few more potential creators about their initial ideas. The current plan is have anyone who creates under the Mythic Mind banner to keep all the income that they earn as I do what I can to drive people their way, people who can really benefit from what they have to offer.

My goal is for Mythic Mind to become a robust humanities fellowship that operates outside of institutional academia, to provide high quality content to the public without the high tuition in ideological baggage as often associated with the modern university, while also being as financially rewarding as possible to creators.

If you would like to discuss this opportunity further, if you want to lead a course with Mythic Mind, then you can reach out to me on discord if you are a patron, or you can email me at Mythic Mind podcast at gmail dot com or reach out to me on x at andrew In Snyder. Well, that's a bit about where we've been. Now let's return to my initial idea of discussing what I would like to do

if I were fully funded. If you've been following me for a while, you likely know that I have a great many interests, including Polkien and Lewis, of course, but also myths and legends, classical and medieval philosophy and theology, various components of history, and media like shows and movies and video games, and so with that in mind, I would love to get a few different podcasts running simultaneously.

The already established Mythic Mind podcast would be the flagship show, a place for patron chats and interviews and sort of generalist kind of wherever I want to go with that type of show as it is right now. But I would also like to have separate shows specifically devoted to things like philosophy, history, missing legends, media discussion, so again like shows, movies, video games and such, and potentially more.

And whether I end up running all of these personally or if I just play a leading role in helping others to do so, I believe that these would all

be things worth doing. I would also like to lead more courses and to help Bellowship members lead more courses, and in addition to purchasing individual courses, I like the idea of giving all patrons of a certain tier access to all courses with a yearly membership, like I'm currently doing with Tier three patrons, So that way you can access all the material, but then you can particularly engage

with the ones that most interest you. I would also like to write more, both short form with the substack and long form with books. I'm currently writing a book tentatively titled Divine Honor in the Lord of the Rings, which is due to my publisher the end of June, and with the right funding, I would love to write one or two books every year. Also, I would like

to increase the frequency of patron chats. We have a large number of members with various interests, and so I'd like to have two different series going simultaneously, maybe something like on one hand, we've got something that's like heavy literature focus, but then we also have something a little bit lighter, maybe something media focused, And so overall you have at least a couple of patron chats going on every month with whoever happens to be interested in whatever topic. Now.

In the end, what this comes down to is a desire to provide in a ray of entry points for dealing with the humanities through a broadly Christian lens that takes seriously the idea of myth of true myth as an entry point into reality from the beginning. We've been taking slow steps in the direction of doing this full time, and I don't suppose that this is going to happen overnight, but we are moving closer through incremental steps that are

becoming steeper and steeper over time. During year one, I earned probably like a couple hundred dollars through somewhat irregular podcast posting. Last year, however, I made well considerably more than that, but still not nearly enough to even consider supporting my family on it alone, especially as we're adding one more to the mix any day now. And so if you like what we do here and you want to see more of it, I welcome your support to make that happen. And there are two main ways that

you can do that. First, you can become a patron of Mythic Mind at any level. Any support at all is helpful, although of course higher levels help me to reach these goals faster. Next, you can purchase a course through the shop at patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind.

This includes courses, past, present, and future. I just dropped the Lewis course down to fifty as that was my first course and while I believe that the content is certainly Worthwhile I stand by the content, it does have the lowest production value regarding esthetics, since I'm sort of getting things figured out, and also I've started to release

some of those videos to YouTube. However, purchasing the course gives you immediate access to all the material, including what is otherwise always going to be unavailable, such as recordings of the zoom chats from the live run and PDFs of many of the secondary readings. You can also find the completed Life, Death and Meaning with Bewolf and Boethis course, the current Lord of the Rings course, and you can

enroll in any of the three upcoming courses. And you can also get the best of both worlds here by

purchasing an annual Tier three membership or higher. This gives you access to all Mythic Mind material, including all courses that are currently on the books, including those that have already happened, the one that is happening, and those that are already scheduled to happen for this year, and Mythic Mind Patronage also gives you half priced discount for courses led by other Mythic Mind creators, such as Hannah's introductory

Latin course. Now to take the leap to really start working on mythic mind full time, supplementing with my online university teaching. I really need to bring in another like thousand dollars a month or so on a consistent basis, and given the progress we've made over the last year, this is very doable. But of course I can't do it without you, And so thank you current patrons and those of you who have taken or are taking some of my courses, and ask for the rest of you.

I welcome you to come aboard and to help us actualize this vision. Next time I'm going to have another good conversation for you, but until then, godspeed. When you go to the roots of the word philosophy, you find the love of wisdom, which unfortunately is not what you find at the root of all who call themselves philosophers. Now, how do we get here? What are the ideas that shape our world? And what can the old world tell us in response to the perennial questions of what it

means to be human, what is our purpose? And what, if anything, ought we aspire to? In a brief history of ideas, we will navigate major epics of thought and survey some of the most important figures in the Western canon, including Plato, Aristotle, Boethius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Nietzsche, Sart and Carekegard. And of course we will consider even more names. But these are the thinkers that will supply our primary readings.

Each week will include primary sources that will be provided as PDFs. Although these are all texts that do belong in your personal library. You will be recommended some secondary texts. You'll be provided with some recorded presentations for you to watch at your leisure, ongoing discord chats, and weekly life

meetings to discuss their readings. I've been teaching philosophy for many years, and I can say with confidence that you will leave this six weeks course with a better understanding of the foundation to Western thought than most contemporary philosophy majors enrolled today. By going to patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind and checking out the shop, or you can gain access to all courses past present in any course that begins during the term of your subscription by purchasing

a Tier three annual subscription. So again, purchase a Tier three annual subscription, and I will give you a special code that gives you access to all courses that either have taken place or do start in this term, and I sincerely hope to see you there