ABSTRACT
“Mandamin ‘Food of Wonder’” is an examination of the Anishnaabe story from the standpoint of psychology as the discipline of interiority, the unique interpretive style which begins with the position that myths are to be read in terms of their internal relations, seen from within. In this story, a boy must prove his worth by killing Mandamin, a spirit figure who has searched far and wide for a good Anishnaabe. Each section of the story unfolds in the light of the one thought that all of its images are ultimately the simultaneous and mutually mediating expression of the soul’s desire to become real in this world. In an approach that sees every image in the story as being allegorical of a psychological reality, conventional everyday thinking slowly gives way to understanding the myth as the expression of this one archetypal idea. In the exploration of the psychological difference between “the soul” and Man, characters and events in this story that seem to be opposites are revealed to also share an identity, the logical process of which culminates in the death of Mandamin. In this way, the killing of the corn god is simultaneously the influx of soul into the consciousness of his challenger Zhowmin.
