Bryn Athyn College Alumni Magazine Spring/Summer 2017 | Page 18

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT
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In early 2017, Dylan returned to Bryn Athyn College to give a colloquium titled
Batman/Dionysus | Apollo/Superman: Nietzsche’s Dichotomy in Modern Media.
He compared batman and superman, showing their respective relations to
Dionysus and Apollo. To view his presentation, visit www.bit.ly.Dylan.Odhner.
To the delight of many
and the dismay of his competi-
tors, Dylan has an impressive
record of award-winning Hal-
loween costumes, also generally
based on characters from myth
or legend. His countenance has
oft been compared to that of
Jon Snow from the popular se-
ries Game of Thrones, and he
once used this to his advantage
and achieved high Halloween
honors for his convincing garb
and demeanor. Dylan’s abil-
ity to throw himself into that
character and to put himself
in the shoes of countless other
personas from a wide variety
of stories, myths, and legends
the world over, shows his spe-
cial love for an ancient and ever
evolving human folklore that we
all reflect and create every day.
Dylan’s paternal grand-
mother, Aubrey Cole Odhner
(BA ’47), shared, or perhaps
passed down, this deep love of
mythology. Many of her essays
and beloved books are now in
his possession. He describes
18 | S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 7
his recent commitment to the
study as having a rather rapid
onset following her passing
in 2011. After many years of
hobby-like interest in the field,
he says he experienced “a very
sudden calling to study mythol-
ogy.” At first, he was under the
false impression that the type of
program he was looking for did
not exist. So, when he found Pa-
cifica it felt like it was not only
the right fit, but that his atten-
dance there was an obvious and
unquestioned next step. To hear
him talk about his studies is
stimulating and inspiring. He
refers to mythology as “the pub-
lic domain of the study of corre-
spondence.” He asserts that the
New Church education at Bryn
Athyn College gave him “a leg
up on thinking beyond the met-
aphor.” He says he doesn’t have
to reinvent the wheel because
he’s learned about the Writings
and how they work – that the
basic groundwork found there
lets him have a faith in some-
thing that might seem to others
like an intuitive jump. He’s not
surprised by all the connections
one uncovers when studying
myth, because he has had train-
ing in recognizing and thinking
about parables, inner meanings,
and symbols from an early age.
Immersed in wisdom lit-
erature, including holy texts like
the Bible, Dylan also explores
the world of depth psychology,
which informs, illuminates, and
interacts with the story of so-
ciety and culture in a dynamic
way. Aptly named, this term re-
fers to psychologies that are con-
cerned with the idea or realm of
the unconscious. The program
description on Pacifica’s website
says, “By discerning the under-
lying similarities and threads
in the world’s myths and tradi-
tions, we better understand our
shared humanity, while honor-
ing the diverse ways human be-
ings live and make meaning of
their experience.” Dylan already
takes this idea into account ev-
ery day as a high school teacher,
understanding that every class-
room is filled with individuals
that are coming to learn from
different backgrounds and with
different experiences of the ma-
terial. He must meet them where
they are and identify the over-
laps and intersections where in-
roads can be built.
Dylan hopes to eventually
take his mythology expertise
into college classrooms while he
continues to research, develop
ideas, and publish. Until then,
he continues the superhero-
like double life: by day he edu-
cates our yout