Watery Cave's and Fiery Tongues

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Permalink Reply by martin shaw on April 2, 2009 at 1:31pm

It reminds me somehow of the debates concerning comminality of images in myth-whether diffusion or collective unconcious-it's good to push the latter when with the anthropologists and the former with the Jungians.Both are neccesary avenues to broadening our relationship with the whole area of story.
I think this last sentence is important; " is the meaning that the stories have for us now". I would slightly re-phase that as 'what are the stories trying to say to us now?' I'm looking for that pinprick of the eternal which allows that otherwordly intelligence into our living rooms.
Defining orginal positions has an aspiration of purity about it, and myth, the promiscious little bugger, is nothing if not a cultural bed-hopper.However, just like you, i love to trace living lines back through the mist-its all in the manner of the enquiry. Robin Williamson thinks there arehints at creation stories in the Gaelic pantheon, but like most of the Celtic world it's 'made of the quality of mist and starlight, and every intangible thing'-his words.
I think what is hugely important is to get back in touch with some call 'Wild Land Dreaming'-the mythic imprint in terra firma-as our most visceral clue towards the real psychic impulses of these stories. To collectively hold an ear to the ground. We then take a step towards The Soul Of The World-some place notcaught up in a geographical location or point in history, but the ever possible AWEN.

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Permalink Reply by Daniel Deardorff on April 2, 2009 at 1:48pm

Tim, I think there are two different questions here: on one hand we are trying to do a kind of restoration process to stories that have been willfully altered by the people that recorded them—the "impositions of history"; on the other hand we have a longing to discern the story in its oldest, purest, "original" form. In my thinking the longing `for the pure original is the more easily answered—as Albert Lord said: "we are brought up in a society in which writing has fixed the norm of a stable first creation in art… we feel there must be an 'original'”, but then we add Robert Bly saying: "it takes roughly 10,000 years to invent a new myth." The implication of these two statements is that there is no original version of any myth or mythic story, because the first time an individual tells a tale is something like an impregnation. Now the story has to gestate for a looooooooong time, not in the mind of one person, but in the mind of human culture, so that one day the story becomes itself, and every version along the way is THE original—except that they are so dissimilar they hardly seem related. The gestation is mysterious and blessedly so because Mystery what keep the stories alive and efficacious.

Now the first problem of digging through the "impositions of history"—e.g., the Christian overlay on many Celtic tales—can be taken up without the distraction of looking for originals. I look forward to others ideas on how we as tellers approach such a perilous task.
DD

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Permalink Reply by Tembo Chinook on April 2, 2009 at 11:58pm

Perhaps I'm oversimplifiying, but I like Meade's comment that "most adults have been through most points in most of the stories in some way at some point in their lives." But what appears relavent TODAY is the one tiny detail that makes your gut turn. So Meade says he has learned to trust the stories so much that if there is a detail he doesn't seem to "get", he's more likely to think that it is something he has personally missed rather than the story having a "wrong detail." But I suppose all this applies AFTER some work has been done to cull through and get some of the stuff which has not had so much "impositions of history."

One thing about the "digging through" that strikes me though, is the idea that an academic endavor will not suffice as a reliable investigative method to determine the "veracity" of a story: The situation is a bit akin to when the ethnobotanists take back samples to the laboratory . . . this will never lead to the kind of consciousness that originally was active in an indigenous context: "The plant told us directly how to make a healing compound." And isn't it this way with stories? We are going to be telling stories which "grow corn," that is to say, which have some practical value today; even if the "practical" is not utilitarian in a modern understanding of what is practical, it IS practical in terms of the mythological outlook - which values the mysterious dialogue with the dream time which occurs in the ritual telling of a myth or mythological story.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying I would trust the actual storyteller to pick something out of his or her pocket on a given day working in the shamanic tradition than I would some officially approved cannon. Isn't it the Jewish tradition which has this wonderful tension between the Torah, the text, and on the other hand the living and oral tradition of the Hassidic stories? This doesn't answer the question of "impositions of history" other than in an oblique way to say that the living oral tradition has its own parrallel, independent, but differently structured system of authorization and authority.

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Permalink Reply by Tim Russell on April 3, 2009 at 7:46am

Many thanks guys ....it is a real delight to have this sort of exchange ..

I'm starting to get a strong sense now of what is meant by the Bridge of Breath and its centrality to all these discussions . The idea that ".... one day the story eventually becomes itself " seems particularly relevant . We seem to have an inherited/inbuilt tendency to want a definitive article , whether it be a final solution or an original . Viewing the world , ourselves or a tale as existing in a state of becoming rather than wanting , trying to force it into a fixed state is a powerful and far reaching idea .

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Permalink Reply by Ronnie Conboy on April 3, 2009 at 12:23pm

I still find trying to deal with these questions a bit mind-blowing. I had to go away and write this down to try and make some sense before explaining it, so I hope it's comprehensible.
It has to do with stories, originality (like Tim I've been doing a bit of research) and the passage of time. It reminds me of my own belief in what Martin calles a rhizomic reality, and I tend to think of as mycelial, same sort of difference...the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, as Douglas Adams put it....I reckon that humanity (and interlinked, Gaia), is mycelial, but in four dimensions: three dimensions today, and the fourth stretching back and also forwards through time. Thinking about stories then I lose the sense of mycelia and think of it as a four-dimensional tapestry. From the bit you are in you can see some things-here and there a shining gold thread passes, and can be repeated throughout the pattern in slightly different shades of gold, as good and similar but not identical stories arise in different cultures. As the thread stretches back into the past it might get broken or you cannot see its length....this analogy works for the human race as well as stories and the threads could be people. All part of the tapestry, all connected, all holding together the overall piece, and no-one can see where it begins or ends.
Researching stories, looking for the "original" is interesting, it gives us different viewpoints on a tale and its meanings, but inevitably the story looks different in different parts of this magical cloth as it interweaves with the other threads of people, time and places around it....so as it passes through the warp and weft it changes, and yet is always the same, one continuous thread.....

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Permalink Reply by Geoff Berry on April 27, 2009 at 8:32pm

Hmm, i am cautious about this question; perhaps because i indulge the extent to which i can remain conflicted within even as i sense deep repose - the artist's fount - or perhaps because i have always sought to resist king ego's hold on my personality. The best material certainly seems most often to arise from the primal cauldron; but what are we before we are placed in the life of the communal story by the Fiery Horse of Tongue? Self-awareness comes with individuation and these matters become known to us through language ~ symbolic vehicles for the ride. Stitched back, woven into the loom of life on earth ~ then they become beautiful songs. There, my itch is found: dreadful when they attempt to overcome earth, too many stories of light-filled transcendence; and dreadful when they bring home the great sarificial rite of mortality, not enough stories that recognise our embodiment here as living earth. Grow the emergent story against the dominant paradigm! Thanks Martin.

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