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, and I would like to share some of that vision with you.
When I first started the Mythic Mind podcast back in 2021, I was making some generally short episodes related to my dissertation on Kierkegaard, which was in progress at the time. Before I got started, I had one patron, and thanks Joe if you’re still out there, and I could not yet imagine what this would become. I have since taken the show in a number of different directions, including with Tolkien, Beowulf, and the inclusion of the Mythic Mind Fellowship chats on the Poetic Edda and other topics. Also, I’ve started to independently lead courses on things that interest me, and that I believe I heave something worthwhile discuss. This started with The Fiction and Philosophy of C.s. Lewis, which had about 60 participants initially, and several more that have purchased the course since it finished. We then moved into Life, Death, and Meaning with Beowulf and Boethius, we’re currently in The Wisdom of Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings, and I’ve recently announced three more upcoming courses: A Brief History of Ideas, which is a broad-scale survey of philosophy, Plato, Stoicism, and 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 truly grateful for my university courses, but there is something special about building communities around significant topics that are entirely made of people who truly want to be there. If I could put full-time hours into this, there are so many of these courses that I would like to be leading on an ongoing basis.
The Mythic Mind Fellowship is now made of almost 50 active patrons, with another 100 or so free patrons who are following along. We have established a community Substack page, we have monthly patron chats on worthwhile material, and we have our first member-created courses starting to come together. Hannah Gilmore is teaching introductory Latin this year, and I am in conversation with a few more potential creators about their initial ideas. The current plan is to have anyone who creates under the Mythic Mind banner to keep all income 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 services to the public without the high tuition and ideological baggage often associated with modern universities, while also being as financially rewarding to creators as possible. If you would like to discuss this opportunity further, you can reach out to me on Discord if you are a patron, or you can e-mail me at mythicmindpodcast@gmail.com or reach out to me on X (@andrewnsnyder).
Well, that’s a bit about where we’ve been. Now let’s return to my initial idea of discussing what I would do if I were fully funded by Mythic Mind. First, if you have been following me for a while, you likely know that I have a great many interests, including Tolkien and Lewis, of course, but also myths and legends, classical and medieval philosophy and theology, history, and media, including shows, movies, and video games. 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, but I would also like to have separate shows specifically devoted to things like philosophy, history, myths and legends, media discussion (movies, shows, and video games), and potentially more. Whether I run all of these personally or play a leading role in helping others to do so, I believe these would all be worth doing. I would also like to lead more courses and to help Fellowship members to lead more courses. 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, as I am currently doing with tier 3 patrons so you can access all the material and particularly engage with the ones that most interest you. I would also like to write more, both shortform with the Substack and longform with books. I am currently writing a book tentatively titled “Divine Honor in the Lord of the Rings,” which is due to my publisher at the end of June. With the right funding, I would like 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, so I would like to have two different series going simultaneously to bring you at least a couple patron chats a month with whoever happens to be interested in whatever topic.
In the end, what this comes down to is a desire to provide an array 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 have been taking slow steps in the direction of doing this full-time. I don’t suppose this will happen overnight, but we are moving closer through incremental steps that are taking steeper and steeper climbs. During year one, I earned a few hundred dollars through somewhat irregular podcast posting. Last year 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.
If you like we do here, and you want to see more of it, I welcome your support to make that happens. There are two main ways you can do that. First, you can become a patron of Mythic Mind at any level. Any support 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.com/mythicmind. This includes courses past, present and future. I just dropped the Lewis course down to $50, as that was my first course, and while I believe the content is worthwhile, it does have the lowest production value regarding aesthetics, and I’ve started to release some of the videos to YouTube. However, purchasing the course gives you immediate access to all of the material, including what is otherwise 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 Beowulf and Boethius course, the current Lord of the Rings course, and you can enroll in the three upcoming courses. You can also get the best of both worlds by purchasing an annual tier 3 membership or higher. This gives you access to all Mythic Mind material, including all courses currently on the books, including the announced courses that are coming up this year. Mythic Mind patronage also gives you a half price discount for courses led by other Mythic Mind creators.
To take the leap and start working on Mythic Mind full-time, supplementing with my online institutional teaching, I really need to bring in another $1,000 a month or so on a consistent basis. Given the progress we’ve made over the last year, this is very doable, but I can’t do it without you.
So thank you, current patrons and those of you who have taken or are taking some of my courses. As for the rest of you, I welcome you to come aboard and help us to actualize this vision.
https://www.patreon.com/c/mythicmind
