Creating our own myths

[Ragnar (BenSpiritbear)]

Do you incorporate myth, stories of nature and rituals? There’s no right or wrong answer here and I realize there are many beliefs and points of view on this. Being a father it is easier and seeming more important to me to create our own stories and meanings for the children to understand and pass on. Indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures were deeply grounded in ritual, myth and the spiritualness of nature. The modern world we live in makes it difficult to connect with a mythos from our ancestors because we have become so disconnected from them.
This statue of armor is the center of one of ours. I discovered it on our property shortly after moving here. He peers out over a valley were an old road appears to have been. I met and spoke to an old modern day mountain man that’s lived here all his life and he told me what he knew about the armor. Our property was once part of a small mountain settlement from the late 1800’s that has been gone for nearly a century. There were a few mines around the area and he said the story goes that there were some deaths because of the mining and the locals errected the statue to protect themselves from the lost souls of the dead. He said no one really knows when the statue showed up but that’s the story that has been told for years. I find this kind of folklore fascinating and we look at the armor as a protector. I am sure as the years go by we will create more myth and ritual around our protector. While some may argue doing this is purely ridiculous it does help build our own stories, family connectedness and a culture that we can relate to and pass on. Like any myth I am sure it will grow and change over the years to better reflect the people that are telling it. For me this is one more way to become more wild.

@samuelsycamore

[ladyfoxfeather (Michelle)]

Our family learned that our area was called “the Blackened Forest” prior to white settlement, so we tell the stories of how the old ones named our region (SE Kentucky down into the Smokies of TN). Beyond that we are working on our family stories and traditions. One we are working on is the story of the beaver colony thought to be close to 150 years old, for it created the swampland along the Sutters Branch Creek at the bottom of our holler.

@Ragnar The armor and its story is awesome!

[alexander (Alexander Meander)]

fascinating stories you two!

myth and story-telling are cultural aspects that fascinate me, and as my partner and i plan to bring a new human into this world soon, it is definitely something i want to elaborate upon as we grow in age as a family.

my partner and i are already creating a sort of mythology together around the great blue heron. through a series of synchronous and meaningful events it has become a sort of totem animal for our relationship and our land. the land where we dwell is called Ardea - this is the genus of the herons.

last winter we were so excited. we had a male heron overwinter at the pond here.

about 5 years ago, shortly after my partner and i began to form a deep bond but after the heron was very present in our lives (and before i moved to this land with her) i was inspired to write a short fable about a young heron and its rite of passage into adulthood. i will share that here. it is written in a language and story-telling manner that is more apt for children or story-telling around a fire with body language and involved dialogue.

there was once a heron who was ready to leave his mother & become wise. he would set out on a solitary hunt for one month. in that month, if he got lucky, he would grow as wise as he would ever be. as he set out for his journey his mother reminded him that he was to hunt fish. that fish were food for the seeker, as they swam in the watery realms of the unconscious & would give their wisdom upon being eaten. & so he left.

the first week the heron caught no fish. there was one fish he saw everyday swimming around his legs smiling. he did not want to eat the smiling fish because it was happy.

the second week was much the same. the smiling fish came & swam around his legs & smiled very big, looking right up to him. he could not think to eat such a happy fish, so he decided to wait longer.

the third week was even worse. the smiling fish was happier than ever & came right up to his legs & swam about, making splashes that hid the tears of the heron who was hungry & growing afraid that he would not grow wise. still, he could not eat the happy fish.

on the last week something was different. the fish was much slower & had stopped smiling. the fish was even frowning. slowly the fish came up & swam sluggishly about. just as the heron was about to eat the fish he thought that it might also be wrong to eat a sad fish. & that maybe he should try talking to the fish about what was bothering it.

“i have seen you everyday for a month now fish, & you are always happy. why are you sad today?”

“well, i keep coming up to you & swimming right under your beak waiting for you to eat me & you won’t! that’s why!”

“you mean, you want me to eat you?”

“of course! i have taught others & made children fish & had a good life & it is my way by the universe now to become food for you so you may grow wise. don’t you know?”

“well, i know i grow wise by eating you. my mother taught me. but i didn’t want to eat you because you looked so happy.”

“my happiness comes from within you, just as your happiness comes from within me.”

“well, you are a very wise fish, so i will eat you.”

“thank you!”

& so the heron lowered his opened beak & the fish swam in. the heron gulped & felt the wisdom in his belly begin to spread through his body & it formed a halo around his head that lasted the whole way home. when he got there his mother was gone.

the heron spoke aloud “i will teach others & make children heron & have good life. after that, & because i am wise & know the ways of the universe, i will smile & spread my wings when the alligator eats me.”

[ladyfoxfeather (Michelle)]

That is inspiring, I am working on stories for the fox, which is a special animal to me, and for the red tailed hawk which we replaced the mythical red hawk of our clan heraldry with. Thank you for your story.

[samuelsycamore (Sam Sycamore)]

I love your fable! I would like to try my hand at this kind of writing sooner or later.

Much of the mythology that I have been accumulating in my personal life over the last several years revolves around the plants that I have developed relationships with, or those who seem to “call” to me for whatever reason. I have a deep respect and reverence for the sycamores (duh), elderberries, hickories and oaks with whom I coexist on this land, and I try really really hard to listen to them and discover what they need or want out of our interactions.

In general I’ve been digging deeper and deeper into the realm of animism, and I’m finding such a wealth of beauty and wisdom there. I find myself thinking of “species” more like “spirits” – I am well acquainted with the cat spirit, the elderberry spirit, etc – and each individual I encounter is more like a representative of that spirit or Platonic form if you need a Western analogy

Metaphor is one of the most powerful tools that we humans can employ to make sense of the universe. Our more-than-human allies on the landscape offer us a bottomless well of knowledge and wisdom, in metaphorical terms, about how to carry out our lives, if only we can learn how to hear them and communicate with them on their terms.