Parabola (magazine)

Parabola

Woman Vol. V, No. 4
Publisher and editor	Jeff Zaleski
Categories	Religious and cultural traditions
Frequency	Quarterly
Publisher	Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition
Founder	D.M. Dooling
Year founded	1976
Country	U.S.
Based in	New York City
Language	English
Website	www.parabola.org
ISSN	0362-1596

Parabola: Where Spiritual Traditions Meet, whose founder and editor was D.M. Dooling, began publishing in 1976 as a quarterly magazine on the subjects of mythology and the world's religious and cultural traditions. It is published by The Society for the Study of Myth and Tradition, a not-for-profit organization. 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.

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, and now its current form.

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 are listed here. Issues prior to Vol. III No. 4 do not indicate the subject on the cover; later issues do.^[1]

• The Hero. Vol. I, No. 1 (1976)
• Magic. Vol. I, No. 2
• Initiation. Vol. I, No. 3
• Rites of Passage. Vol. I, No. 4
• Death. Vol. II, No. 1
• Creation. Vol. II, No. 2
• Cosmology. Vol. II, No. 3
• Relationships. Vol. II, No. 4
• Sacred Space. Vol. III, No. 1
• Sacrifice and Transformation. Vol. II. I, No. 2
• Inner Alchemy. Vol. III, No. 3
• Androgyny. Vol. III, No. 4
• The Trickster. Vol. IV, No. 1
• Sacred Dance. Vol. IV, No. 2
• The Child. Vol. IV, No. 3
• Storytelling and Education. Vol. IV, No. 4 (November 1979)
• The Old Ones. Vol. V, No. 1
• Music Sound Silence. Vol. V, No. 2
• Obstacles. Vol. V, No. 3
• Woman. Vol. V, No. 4 (November 1980)

Featured authors

Authors contributing articles to Parabola are listed as contributing editors, and include Joseph Campbell,^[2] Ursula K. Le Guin, Mircea Eliade, Jacob Needleman, Thomas Moore, Christmas Humphries, William Irwin Thompson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, David Rosenberg, P. L. Travers, Jane Yolen, Robert Lawlor, Pablo Neruda, Keith Critchlow, Elaine Pagels, James Hillman, Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, Howard Schwartz, Italo Calvino,^[3] David Rothenberg,^[4] John Anthony West,^[5] and many others in the fields of Jungian psychology, spirituality, ecology and the aforementioned subjects. The journal also publishes interviews with many of the same figures, as well as reviews of books in these fields.^[6]

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;^[7] 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, Bill Moyers's interview with Joseph Campbell.

References