This book comes to us as the ripened fruit of forty years’ study, teaching and traveling. As a young Philosophy teacher, Betty Smith became enchanted by Greece and ancient Greek art and thought. Many trips to Greece and lengthy study of the classic writers and of Greek mythology followed, and then came together in an original method, which she calls Poesis, in which the classic myths become the jumping-off place for her imaginative dialogues. In them we find the gods and the heroes in discussion, argument and love-talk. Often the dialogue is between a confused human being and a particular god. In these settings, we find that the gods and heroes come alive; we can recognize their experiences and emotions as occurring in our own lives. This resonance--between what the Greek gods express in these dialogues and what we recognize from our own struggles—points to common patterns of human experience which have not changed much over the centuries. C.G. Jung called them archetypes. Betty Smith’s deep experience of Jung’s psychology is another important contributor to the work.

The book consists almost entirely of these dialogues between gods and heroes and the human beings in whose lives they appear. They have emerged from the author’s imagination over a long period, and have generally been heard only by the members of her many seminars, and by the small groups which have traveled with her on numerous mythology-centered trips to Greece. On these trips, the myths have been studied in their original Greek settings. Betty Smith’s long familiarity with the Greek islands and mainland lends a special flavor and charm to the dialogues. The landscapes come alive through particular details; we feel as if we are there too.

Happily, with this book, this long-awaited material becomes widely available.

It is a treasure.