A trailer for the 2017 documentary American Jedi, which is available to stream via various platforms.
Here’s an in-depth interview with Jedi Knight and Deacon Alex Bird, explaining his devotion to the philosophy/quasi-religion of Jediism:
But your myth doesn’t reach back to any time that’s actually real.
That’s true. I mean that it has to speak my language. It has to be relatable. And there are elements of classical religion that of course are relatable because we’re human beings and we haven’t evolved really that much over 2,000 years. But at the same time, there’s a way to look at that type of religion and say, “elements of what I might find sacred are kept in certain rooms and certain days of the week.” All of a sudden, for many of us, it becomes a foreign language. It doesn’t mean anything. Or at least it lacks personal resonance.
So what happens? We kind of made a funny leap. We said, “That’s our myth,” and everybody said, “That’s silly.” And some of us said, “That is a myth that speaks our language.” Is it true? No, of course not. Yoda’s a puppet, we all know he’s a puppet. But we’ve come to another conclusion and it is this: that myths are true, all myths are true. Not literally true; they’re truths about us, they’re stories about us, they’re always stories about people. The analogue must come back to the practical conduct of the individual, but the myth must be stated in a way that means something to you, or it’s just another story.
