Restoring the Wisdom of Myth to Culture & Community
Watery Cave's and Fiery Tongues
I would be curious for any thoughts on the interior life of storytelling/teller. The primary cauldron of incubation before exterior 'techniques' come into play. Also, why is it that it can be the most mesmeric and dreadful of art forms? At the school in the UK we pay attention to solitude and our sensing nature before that travels down the Fiery Horse of the Tongue-i wonder what other ideas we have around this re-emerging tradition. Can stories be spells? Does the potency depend on the storycarrier or does the story do the work regardless? What happens to language in the performative moment? what happens to the air? I'm thinking of Black Elk i suppose (living the Vision..), and the triadic nature of the ritual-the performer/the participants/the myth-world. I'm just murmuring in the wind here, but am all ears.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Andreas Kornevall on -
On language - I love the words of Gary Snyder:
"Language is like some kind of infinitely interfertile family of species spreading or mysteriously declining over time, shamelessly and endlessly hybridizing, changing its own rules as it goes...."
Is it that stories when they reach ancestral lineages and depths are word-archetypes? If yes, perhaps the storyteller carries this compost of our past psychology and meanings....the heavy rich soil being far more archetypical as the ages pass.
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Permalink Reply by Tembo Chinook on
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Well I certainly hope that at least here we can keep the language to the standards of mud swamp and cave lion growling - if not a place to practice our elocution, then at least our elucidation. I would ALWAYS say that a story is a spell.To me it is a way of dropping the meme or the virus of change into the town square in which the ancestors are automatically able to work with each person in their dreams subsequently. Of course, if there is a chance to work with the story (like find one's location in it or what Daniel calls feeding the story), open with a prayer, or even better, do a ritual with a story, or art, all the better . . . but even suggesting - see if your dreams tell you anything tonight I believe is at least a little crack of opening into the mandorla. I have had people come up even a couple of years later saying they still remember a particular story.
For my part, not really being in the mineral clan, I like to have a couple of rocks under my toes to bring the memory of the story forth . . . I always feel that the story is given afresh each time.
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Permalink Reply by martin shaw on -
Interesting. i think that the story can be well or badly served, or even abused by the storyteller. i think a certain sensitivity is developed (often by the kind of feeding techniques you mentioned) that alerts you to the story that has arrived to be told through you, rather than a wholesale ransaking of old stories simply 'by effort of will' to tell a story. i do agree that usually some energy comes through, although that can malfunction when the story has been cut-and pasted purely from the tellers imagination rather than having roots in a story passed through community and time. That's not entirely without value, but it seems to become something else.
I like the associations of stories as spirit beings, some humourous, some monumental. It's that element of sacrality that can seem a little thin on the ground, the understanding that story and the feeding of it actually can hold a religious function-not dogmatic but in the sense of 'linking back' to see a way forward.
It would be great to get some kind of thoughts on what a storytellers function is ( many functions perhaps?)
I
Tembo Chinook said:Well I certainly hope that at least here we can keep the language to the standards of mud swamp and cave lion growling - if not a place to practice our elocution, then at least our elucidation. I would ALWAYS say that a story is a spell.To me it is a way of dropping the meme or the virus of change into the town square in which the ancestors are automatically able to work with each person in their dreams subsequently. Of course, if there is a chance to work with the story (like find one's location in it or what Daniel calls feeding the story), open with a prayer, or even better, do a ritual with a story, or art, all the better . . . but even suggesting - see if your dreams tell you anything tonight I believe is at least a little crack of opening into the mandorla. I have had people come up even a couple of years later saying they still remember a particular story.
For my part, not really being in the mineral clan, I like to have a couple of rocks under my toes to bring the memory of the story forth . . . I always feel that the story is given afresh each time.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Deardorff on -
It might be true to say, as Tembo does, that "a story is always a spell," but that begs the question is it generative and generous or manipulative and malignant. There's something crucial here regarding the interior life of the teller. Of course there is inadequate, naive, and even sloppy story telling, but that is mostly harmless. What concerns us here, I think, is "why storytelling can be the most dreadful of art forms." I would say it is because the bridge of breath is real, and travelers pass back and forth across the opening held by the teller. Michael Meade once warned me, "the beings in the story are real!" When I am working with a story, those archegestic powers show up, at times gently, other times abruptly, in my real everyday life. For me this can be the most difficult and challenging part, when the wolverine shaman and the murdering mother-in-law, and the bones of the sacrificed child decide to follow me from the hut into the kitchen. Then it's time to pour a bowl of goat's milk (with a dose of vodka in it) and set it outside the house. Campbell described something he called "exploitative mythology." And again we're back to the interior life, the lived intention of the teller: are we in service to the story? or are we throwing halter and bridle on it and bringing it in service to us? Both roads cast a spell: the first road is to remain true to the story, the second road is to head the story into what we want to be true. Staying true to the story is the harder road, it informs our life as we carry the stories that choose us, not just in the hut but all the time, we don't get to throw a switch and send them away.
The potency does not, I think, depend on the particular storycarrier, but on the manner in which the story is carried; not just in the telling, but in the living, and the weirdness of having an invisible caravan of mythworld denizens gathered round you when your trying in vain to appear sane and somewhat normal. This is my practice, to attend in solitude and society the gestures of the subtle beings who invite me to the dance, and always strive to remember that the dancing ground is something at once timeless and adamant, and yet as insubstantial as a breath of wind.
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Permalink Reply by martin shaw on
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Glad you picked up on my carefully double-sided use of the word 'dreadful' . So i'm thinking about the reality of story as a emerging conduit to all kind of psychic realities in the everyday, and the point where stories become 'decorations in their poems' or merely illustrations of an idea. Stories allways hold obtuse suggestions that we could never thrash out without them-something that is honestly wild emerges when we allow them the lead.It's a sure sign of a jaded author or storyteller when this reversal occurs.
The Goats-Milk is a great way to negotiate those incantational energies, and, as we know, deciding to 'only tell love stories' won't work either-any 'effort of will' is unlikely to engender the slow roads back and forth to the gloaming of the myth-world.It's healthy to get a sense of the personal rigour required, and as one night in faerie is seven years here, a commitment to an embodiedtelling that may take many moons to perculate. I think more has to fall away than be artificially added in the steps towards this. This all points towards a mystical current for us to swim in, like lunatic pirates in love with troublesome stars.
We can't choose our caravan of sacred miscreants but to allow them to roam the storytellers hut awhile is a greatly healing thing.
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Permalink Reply by Andreas Kornevall on
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your words are indeed shining like troubled stars - literary spellbinding. I even think the laptop is bleeping in a new way...
Do we have any help from the old Skalds? There is a saying in Scandinavia: when you speak of Trolls they stand in your hallway. I can imagine when the light dimmed in the mead hall and the wind howled louder, Sleipners eight hoves would be heard and the one-eyed himself would sit by the fireside. His sustenance in Valhalla is only poetry and wine....so it is told.
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Well, isn't it true to say that a storyteller is ALWAYS a "helper" even if not in ALL ways a "helper?" (What else are we tocall the shaman in the code side where we are being humble to the idea that the spirits are working through us, and that all our "education" amounts only to being an open vessel for the message). Yes, I agree, a story even can be savaged by dictatorial editorializing, but at least the function is to do this public pronouncement which holds something of the fool's license in a positive sense: Anything can be said, because it is "only a story." Having arrived at that mysterious juncture, it is not to far then to reach and point out that occasionally, a story can be an "artful arrangement of lies that tells a deep truth." In this capacity, a storyteller is in the land of the fool ipso facto.
But there can certainly be shamans that do boring rituals as easily as there can be storytellers that don't employ the emotional or imaginative presence in their delivery . . . I don't think this makes them bad people, just "good storytellers still developing their craft!" So there really should be a good general comraderie amoungst the bunch. If a stray clue leaks out here or there, or a rumour, about the tale of the storyteller who came into the village and told a story to a sick person that was healed the next day, fine, it's good for business, that kind of rumour. Of course, I'm not saying that really happened, it's just a bit of gossip I picked up back the road.
TC
martin shaw said:Interesting. i think that the story can be well or badly served, or even abused by the storyteller. i think a certain sensitivity is developed (often by the kind of feeding techniques you mentioned) that alerts you to the story that has arrived to be told through you, rather than a wholesale ransaking of old stories simply 'by effort of will' to tell a story. i do agree that usually some energy comes through, although that can malfunction when the story has been cut-and pasted purely from the tellers imagination rather than having roots in a story passed through community and time. That's not entirely without value, but it seems to become something else.
I like the associations of stories as spirit beings, some humourous, some monumental. It's that element of sacrality that can seem a little thin on the ground, the understanding that story and the feeding of it actually can hold a religious function-not dogmatic but in the sense of 'linking back' to see a way forward.
It would be great to get some kind of thoughts on what a storytellers function is ( many functions perhaps?)
I
Tembo Chinook said:Well I certainly hope that at least here we can keep the language to the standards of mud swamp and cave lion growling - if not a place to practice our elocution, then at least our elucidation. I would ALWAYS say that a story is a spell.To me it is a way of dropping the meme or the virus of change into the town square in which the ancestors are automatically able to work with each person in their dreams subsequently. Of course, if there is a chance to work with the story (like find one's location in it or what Daniel calls feeding the story), open with a prayer, or even better, do a ritual with a story, or art, all the better . . . but even suggesting - see if your dreams tell you anything tonight I believe is at least a little crack of opening into the mandorla. I have had people come up even a couple of years later saying they still remember a particular story.
For my part, not really being in the mineral clan, I like to have a couple of rocks under my toes to bring the memory of the story forth . . . I always feel that the story is given afresh each time.
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Reminds me of a stray thought I have been having that I could use a little fleshing out of the odd tidbits I have gleaned regarding the nature and function of trolls, dwarves, giants, serpicons, elves, fairies, little people, leprochauns, yes, I know they are little people, but you know leprochauns! and the like.
TC
Andreas Kornevall said:your words are indeed shining like troubled stars - literary spellbinding. I even think the laptop is bleeping in a new way...
Do we have any help from the old Skalds? There is a saying in Scandinavia: when you speak of Trolls they stand in your hallway. I can imagine when the light dimmed in the mead hall and the wind howled louder, Sleipners eight hoves would be heard and the one-eyed himself would sit by the fireside. His sustenance in Valhalla is only poetry and wine....so it is told.
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Permalink Reply by Andreas Kornevall on
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Hi Tembo,
In the Swedish language (I am Swedish by the way), the word for "place, plot, garden" is "Tomte" it means exactly "gnome" (in english). So Gnome and place are one. In the ancient days, you always had to serve the "tomte" good porridge from time to time to keep him happy - especially at Yule time! The tomte was the guardian of the "place". A tree would also be in the garden as a "tending tree" which you were forbidden to cut down. In the Norse cosmology, there are mainly Gods, Gnomes, Elves, Elementals, Trolls and Giants - Elves are the similar kind seen in Tolkien's middle earth - the bewinged fairies are more in the Celtic tradition I believe. Blessings to the Gnomes and Elves were made frequently and to the Gods usually during main solstice events. In fact a great blessing to the old Gods was revived in the ancient hills of Uppsala only a few years ago.
All this varied from valley to valley - the Tomte was an unpredictable chap and full of temper. If you really had troubles with the Tomte you would have to bury some "hammers" under the house. Thor's hammer brought rain and life to the land and always pleased the little people...or so it has been said...
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Permalink Reply by Benjamin Dennis on -
I am chewing on this thread. There are musings and ideas floating around and rather than just lurk, I am "bumping" so that it stays alive. More later...
Ben
P.S. a "bump" is a short note that lets everyone know that the thread is alive and being contemplated. It is to be used sparingly and carefully--definitely not to be abused.
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Permalink Reply by Benjamin Dennis on
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I have given this subject a great deal of thought over the years. My fascination with story has been with me since I was a small boy being read to by my grandmother. The way the imagination takes the story and builds an entire world in an instant is a never ending wonder!
My thought is that stories are alive. They are living beings in every sense of the word, only they live on in the imaginations of the people. Their food is the voice and ear, and their terrain is the liminal space that exists between each of us as we navigate that strange world. In essence, we are the fields that the stories graze in. If we have a rich imagination, full of soulful vitality, then the stories live on, healthy and alive. If we lack imagination and creativity, then it is thin gruel that sustains the stories of the world.
Stories are not powerless, however, they have agency and primacy. They are cunning in ways that surprise us, as well. One only need look at a vapid soap opera or the front page of a news rag with a touch of Odin's eye to see Story laying in wait. The archetypal images are there in the plots and themes that engage the mind. Since the beginning, Stories continually find themselves rediscovered and retold over the literal and metaphorical evening fires. Even in the most supercilious novel there is a living, breathing spirit of story hiding, waiting to excite the soul.
What is story if not an image that has life--is alive?
Within the storyteller, then, there is a special kind of marriage. Anyone who has lent his voice or pen to story will tell you that something profound takes over. A hand reaches out from the mist, like the hand that takes King Arthur into the other world, transporting us into a different place than this one. The storyteller and listener join the soldier as he tends the fires of hell, or mounts the hide-bare horse in Baba Yaga's stable and brings the gold tailings back, riding that magnificent horse of power.
The interior life of the storyteller is the same as Odysseus as he regales the Phaecean's with his adventures. Blood and tears are near, the ache of the wound in the thigh puts a hitch in the step, and the loss of innocence brings a sob to the voice.
The cauldron and the spell, the living vision that informs the ritual of telling, the rapt or napping participant, are all part of this concoction of the soul of the world. Where technique fails, the imagination strives to rise to the challenge, and in the end it falls on each of us as tellers and participants to till the soil of the heart so that these stories might live again. Because, I think, stories are like honey--the only food that will not rot. If it lays in the dark for thousands of year, it remains ready to nourish us if we only bring a little warmth and breath.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Deardorff on
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Just a quick note in response to one aspect of Ben's beautifully articulated thinking. The statement: "stories are alive. They are living beings in every sense of the word, only they live on in the imaginations of the people." This is of course correct and yet incomplete. The image of "the bridge of breath" is intended to emphasize the dialectic exchange taking place in storytelling between this world and the Otherworld. Bly says: "We need to understand the [mythic figure] is not ‘inside’ us. The story suggests that [She/He] is actually a being who can exist and thrive for centuries outside the human psyche.” This idea has been very helpful to me as a teller working in the oral tradition. I love the idea that stories and perhaps mythic beings, like Grendel, Enkidu, Tiamat, are like dark honey underground never losing their vitality, and ready to rise up unexpectedly in our lives. As Hölderlin put it: "They keep on going there, and, apparently, don’t bother if Humans live or not... that is a heavenly mercy."
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