Reclaiming the Golden Calf is a creative work about a grieving son who stumbles upon his deceased mother’s virtual afterlife – the Golden Calf Elevator & Café. There he enrols in a therapeutic workshop, Ritual Design for Mythic Hygiene, during which he re-envisions personal, family and cultural myth. The thesis creatively explores a speculative condition called amythic death anxiety, whereby the absence of functional myth – amythia – exacerbates dysregulated death anxiety, leading to psychological dis-ease, including debilitating anxieties, compulsions and excessive guilt and shame. The thesis argues: If we are dissatisfied with our psychosocial outcomes, then we should consider, amongst other mitigating strategies, experimenting with our mythic narratives and related rituals. Reclaiming the Golden Calf demonstrates Ritual Design for Mythic Hygiene as an experimental method and genre of creative practice through which one seeks more personally meaningful myth. The thesis also demonstrates creative writing as a ritual behaviour for addressing amythia, dysregulated death anxiety, and the pursuit of symbolic immortality.
