We Won't Die Wondering

Delighted to meet Ryan James when he came to a storytelling event at Ruskin Mill recently. We fell into conversation afterwards and it was fascinating to hear about his great coaching business 'We Won't Die Wondering'  - specifically for those who want to change direction in midlife. That resonated!

Long story short and I found myself doing a podcast with Ryan looking at my own journey into storytelling ...

If you feel like listening ... here is the link

Speaking of myth - old wisdom/everyday observations (post 7)

Yesterday I came across yews of many different ages/sizes in the woods behind Hawkwood.

A native tree that was sacred to the Druids, yew is esteemed for its longevity (it can live for over 2000 years) and regeneration ( I saw the drooping branch of an old tree that had rooted and formed a new trunk which grew horizontal and parallel to the ground).

Yew is often found in churchyards but many will pre-date the church and perhaps have marked a sacred shrine or well. Near here, in Painswick churchyard, there are 99 yews, thought to have been planted on nodes or springs.

in Irish mythology, the yew is one of 5 sacred trees brought from the other world at the division of the land into five parts.

The oldest of the old follows behind us in our thinking and yet it comes to meet us.'

Martin Heidegger, The Thinker as Poet

Speaking of myth - old wisdom/everyday observations (post 6)

 

Hazel trees and salmon are still on my mind, as is the way the mythological crops up in the everyday.

In mythology, wisdom and beauty are the hallmarks of both beings and both speak to where we are now. I am intrigued by how the salmon – a creature of air and of water – swims upstream against the flow to spawn … this struggle for new life/rebirth a metaphor for the creative work needed in our time of turbulence and crisis.

I live in Gloucestershire near the Severn. In a story* that touches on this part of the world, Culhwch is carried up this mighty river  on the back of the salmon of Llyn Llyw  - the oldest and wisest of all the creatures - to find Mabon (the object of his quest, whose name means great son) who is imprisoned in Gloucester.

In Celtic belief hazelnuts bestowed distilled wisdom and poetic inspiration. When allowed to flourish, the hazel tree can live for 200 years and, if coppiced, up to 1000 years. That’s a lot of history to bear witness to. Today, there is concern that neglected hazel woods and the predations of the grey squirrel means that these trees of knowledge are struggling to fruit.

*How Culhwch won Olwen from the 14^th-century Welsh epic the Mabinogi.

Myth is inseparable from the land, it comes from the land and springs directly out of it. Myths are not an act of human creation but an act of co-creation between us and the dreaming soil of this animate earth.

Dr Sharon Blackie from her podcast, Mythlines

Speaking of myth - old wisdom/everyday observations (post 5)

I am particularly drawn to the hazel trees in the woods behind my home not only because of their connection with mythology but also because Hazel was my mother’s name.

In Irish mythology the hazel is associated with the Brighid, the goddess of wisdom and divine inspiration but it is also, of itself, the tree of wisdom and knowledge.  On the river Boyne, nine hazel trees grew around the Well of Wisdom and when the salmon, Bradán Feasa, ate nine hazel nuts that fell into the well, that fish gained all the world’s knowledge.

The poet Finegas spent years fishing for this salmon. Finally he caught it and gave it to Fionn mac Cumhail, his young servant, with instructions to cook it but on no account to eat any of it. Fionn cooked the salmon but when he touched the fish to see if it was cooked, he burnt his thumb on a drop of hot fish fat. Fionn sucked on his thumb to ease the pain … all of the salmon's wisdom had been concentrated into that one drop. Throughout the rest of his life, Fionn could draw upon this knowledge merely by biting his thumb. The deep knowledge and wisdom gained from the Salmon of Knowledge allowed Fionn to become the leader of the Fianna, the famed heroes of Irish myth.

We need that wisdom in these troubled and bewildering times. As Irish poet Seamus Heaney says so beautifully:

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Seamus Heaney, The Cure of Troy

Speaking of myth - old wisdom/everyday observations (post 4)

Walking in my local woods this morning, I came across this stunning collection of autumn leaves – wych-elm, beech and ash. The latter is deeply embedded in Norse myth as  Yggdrasil, the great Ash, the World Tree. Yggdrasil holds all of creation and links the three realms of Asgard (home of the gods), Midgard (where humans dwell) and icy Niflheim. That is how it will be until the end of the world (Ragnarok) is brought about by dark and malevolent forces.

Today, all around us, the ash trees are dying.

Ecologist and storyteller, Lisa Schneidau writes:

…Let’s return to the old stories. When two humans hid inside the trunk of Yggdrasil to suvive Ragnarok, they did not emerge afterwards, as from the ark, into a bright, shiny new world. They stepped out into a challenging place, wrecked by the egos and wars of the gods and the giants. They had no choice but to take it on. It won’t be only the loss of ash trees that is remembered from the mythlogy of our own times, but also our response.