Acclaimed for her groundbreaking United Nations and UNICEF leadership training as well as for her pioneering role in the Human Potential Movement, Jean Houston has guided thousands of people on a transformative journey in search of their “essential selves.” Now, in this new edition of The Hero and the Goddess, Houston invites you to embark with her on a provocative exploration of antiquity’s greatest epic, Homer’s Odyssey. All great stories can change our lives, and practically none is more transformational than The Odyssey, which had a power so great that it launched Greek civilization and has influenced the West ever since.

In her uniquely fresh approach, Jean Houston provides empowering experiential exercises at every key stage of Homer’s epic to make The Odyssey our own journey. With Odysseus, we search for the Beloved, endure setbacks, and finally know the joy of homecoming. We also learn to link our mortal selves with immortal realities, creating an opening through which grace can enter. By becoming the cunning warrior, the goddess protector, a faithful mother, and endearing son, we meet with the honest reflections of our deepest yearnings and betrayals, our subconscious feelings of loss and grief.

This movement into the greater life is what awaits us as we grow our partnership with the mythic hero Odysseus and with his Great Friend, the goddess Athena. By participating in their experience, and that of everyone else we shall meet in The Odyssey, human and divine, we will be expanding our perceptions, our understandings, our creativity—the very limits of our being. And we shall return from our journeys in the depth realms to our own Ithacas, renewed, reborn, re-dedicated to the full potentialities of life.

Tailored for the individual as well as for group study, The Hero and the Goddess connects the seeker to the ageless wisdom embodied in archetypal figures. This is a book, then, to be done, not just read. It leads us on a journey of the soul in which we awaken to a larger, nobler life.

Jean Houston is the author of over fifteen books, including The Possible Human and A Mythic Life.