In a distant Russian kingdom, a Tsar ordered his three sons to shoot arrows to determine their brides. The eldest’s arrow landed at a nobleman’s house, the second at a merchant’s, but the youngest, Ivan Tsarevitch, saw his arrow fall into a swamp, where a frog caught it. Bound by fate, he reluctantly married the frog.

To understand the new, emerging myth, one must begin with Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883–1885). Upon publication, Zarathustra gripped some of the brightest minds in the Western world, leaving a deep imprint on intellectuals, artists, writers, musicians, political leaders, as well as the pioneers of depth psychology. Both poetic and visionary, it remains his most widely read and celebrated work. Nietzsche considered it his masterpiece.

Once upon a time there were two brothers: one rich, a goldsmith with a hard and envious heart, and the other poor, an honest broom-maker with twin sons. One day, while gathering brushwood in the fores