''Parabola'', also known as ''Parabola: The Search for Meaning'', is a

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

-based quarterly magazine on the subjects of mythology and the world's religious and cultural traditions. Founder and editor Dorothea M. Dooling began publishing in 1976. It is published by The Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition, a not-for-profit organization.

Title etymology

The name of the magazine is explained by the editors as follows:

The parabola represents the epitome of a quest. It is the metaphorical journey to a particular point, and then back home, along a similar path perhaps, but in a different direction, after which the traveler is essentially, irrevocably changed.

Subtitle changes

The magazine's subtitle has changed over the years. In its first years, it was ''Parabola: Myth and the Quest for Meaning'', then ''Parabola: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition'', later ''Parabola: Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning'', ''Parabola: Myth, Tradition, and the Search for Meaning'', ''Parabola: Where Spiritual Traditions Meet'' and its current title as of October 2019, ''Parabola: The Search for Meaning''.

Issues and subjects

Each issue focuses on a particular subject, with each article related to the main subject. The subjects of the first five years' issues included creation, relationships, death, magic and hero mythology.

Featured authors

Authors contributing articles to Parabola are listed as contributing editors, and include Joseph Campbell,

Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...

Mircea Eliade Mircea Eliade (; – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religiou ...

Jacob Needleman Jacob Needleman (October 6, 1934 - November 28, 2022) was an American philosopher, author, and religious scholar. Needleman was Jewish and was educated at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Freiburg, Germany.Thomas Moore Thomas Moore (28 May 1779 – 25 February 1852) was an Irish writer, poet, and lyricist celebrated for his ''Irish Melodies''. Their setting of English-language verse to old Irish tunes marked the transition in popular Irish culture from Irish ...

Christmas Humphries Travers Christmas Humphreys, QC (15 February 1901 – 13 April 1983) was a British barrister who prosecuted several controversial cases in the 1940s and 1950s, and who later became a judge at the Old Bailey. He also wrote a number of works on M ...

William Irwin Thompson William Irwin Thompson (16 July 1938—8 November 2020) was an American social philosopher, cultural critic, and poet. He received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986. He described his writing and speaking style as "mind-jazz ...

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help ...

, David Rosenberg,

P. L. Travers Pamela Lyndon Travers (; born Helen Lyndon Goff; 9 August 1899 – 23 April 1996) was an Australian-British writer who spent most of her career in England. She is best known for the ''Mary Poppins'' series of books, which feature the eponymous ...

Jane Yolen Jane Hyatt Yolen (born February 11, 1939) is an American writer of fantasy, science fiction, and children's books. She is the author or editor of more than 350 books, of which the best known is ''The Devil's Arithmetic'', a Holocaust novella. He ...

, Robert Lawlor, Pablo Neruda,

Keith Critchlow Keith Barry Critchlow (16 March 1933 – 8 April 2020) was a British artist, lecturer, author, Sacred Geometer, professor of architecture, and a co-founder of the Temenos Academy in the UK. Biography Critchlow was educated at the Summerhill ...

Elaine Pagels Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey (born February 13, 1943), is an American historian of religion. She is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Pagels has conducted extensive research into early Christianity and Gnost ...

James Hillman James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private pract ...

Robert Bly Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ' ...

, Gary Snyder,

David Abram David Abram (born June 24, 1957) is an American ecologist and philosopher best known for his work bridging the philosophical tradition of phenomenology with environmental and ecological issues. He is the author of ''Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cos ...

Howard Schwartz Howard Schwartz (born April 21, 1945, in St. Louis, Missouri) is a widely regarded folklorist, author, poet, and editor of dozens of books. He has won the international Koret Jewish Book Award, for the book ''Before You Were Born'', and won a 20 ...

Italo Calvino Italo Calvino (, also , ;. RAI (circa 1970), retrieved 25 October 2012. 15 October 1923 – 19 September 1985) was an Italian writer and journalist. His best known works include the '' Our Ancestors'' trilogy (1952–1959), the ''Cosmicomi ...

David Rothenberg David Rothenberg (born 1962) is a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with a special interest in animal sounds as music. He is also a composer and jazz musician whose books and recordings reflect a long ...

John Anthony West John Anthony West (September 7, 1932 – February 6, 2018) was an American author and lecturer and a proponent of the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis. His early career was as a copywriter in Manhattan and science fiction writer. He received a ...

, and many others in the fields of

Jungian psychology Analytical psychology ( de , Analytische Psychologie, sometimes translated as analytic psychology and referred to as Jungian analysis) is a term coined by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, to describe research into his new "empirical science" ...

, spirituality,

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

and the aforementioned subjects. The journal also publishes interviews with many of the same figures, as well as reviews of books in these fields.

Related materials

In addition to the journal, ''Parabola'' at one time also produced books, recordings and videos, including ''And There Was Light'', by

Jacques Lusseyran Jacques Lusseyran (19 September 1924 – 27 July 1971) was a French author and political activist. Blinded at the age of 7, at 17 Lusseyran became a leader in the French resistance against Nazi Germany's occupation of France in 1941. He was e ...

; ''Sons of the Wind: the Sacred Stories of the Lakota''; ''I Become Part of It: the Sacred Dimensions in Native American Life'', edited by D. M. Dooling and Paul Jordan-Smith; ''The Bestiary of Christ'' by Louis Charbonneau-Lassay and D. M. Dooling; ''A Way of Working'', edited by D. M. Dooling; as well as the extended video ''

The Power of Myth ''The Power of Myth'' is a book based on the 1988 PBS documentary ''Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth''. The documentary was originally broadcast as six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) and journalist ...

'',

Bill Moyers Bill Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers, June 5, 1934) is an American journalist and political commentator. Under the Johnson administration he served from 1965 to 1967 as the eleventh White House Press Secretary. He was a director of the Counci ...

's interview with Joseph Campbell.

References

External links

{{Official website, https://parabola.org/ 1976 establishments in the United States Alternative magazines Quarterly magazines published in the United States Religious magazines published in the United States Independent magazines Magazines about spirituality Magazines established in 1976 Magazines published in New York City Mythology magazines