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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in myth

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

I invite you to write your own myths, and to write your own versions of the ancient myths. Interpet them how you wish, in the way the resonates with you. Write completely new mythology that speaks to your experience in your real life the way that myths about grain harvest spoke to ancient farmers. But also make new translations of the old myths, and new personal versions of them, and opposite versions like fractured fairytales. 

If you speak other languages, make translations of untranslated works. Instead of translating a work in Old Norse that has been translated a dozen times, how about a work in Old Saxon other than Beowulf? Any other work in Old West Germanic? How about works in modern German which are new academic papers? Works in Latin? Works in obscure dialects? 

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
A Text is Like a Textile

Stories, whether oral tradition myths, written fiction, or written nonfiction, change over time. Each generation changes its heroes to suit them. Storytellers tell the same myth a dozen different ways to suit different audiences, occasions, and lessons. Nonfiction writers revise their books and make new editions (like I did.) Every printed or recorded version of a book is a snapshot in time.

It occurred to me as I sat in the morning sunshine mending a quilt that I had made that I was in a way making a new version of my quilt. It started as a way to use up silk test strips from when I operated a custom fabric dyeing business, and every piece in it was a silk fabric I had hand dyed. As I used darning, a type of needle weaving, to mend parts of the fabric that had worn, aged, or cat-clawed away, I kept the same log cabin design and every fiber I put in it was also hand dyed, and yet, the more I mended the more it became a completely different textile.

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A Micropantheon Does Not Contain Small Gods (with apologies to Sir Terry Pratchett)

What is a micropantheon, you ask? (Of course you do, because you're the inquisitive type!)

Sorry, but it has nothing to do with small gods, of the Terry Pratchett variety or otherwise.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Minoan Trickle-Down Archaeology

Sir Arthur Evans believed that the huge building at Knossos was the legendary King Minos' palace and the big buildings in the other Minoan cities were the palaces of Minos' brothers and rivals. A century later, the signs at most of the Minoan sites still identify these buildings as palaces despite the fact that Evans' theories have been discredited and archaeologists now agree that the structures were temple complexes, not palaces.

A few archaeologists are notorious for taking their students through museums and pointing out the inaccuracies on the placards that describe Minoan artifacts (museum curators are not usually archaeologists and don't always communicate with archaeologists about the artifacts on display). So people visit the museums and come away with some incorrect notions.

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Potok and the Hundred-Thousand-Year Fire

There was a night—long, long ago—when we had captured fire.

This was many years before we knew how to make it. We found it in a tree which had been struck by lightning, carried it in a gourd to where we made a camp.

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Once upon a time, in a land much like yours and mine, people said their princess was so neurotic and fussy that she complained about a pea under her mattress. 

 

Her father, the king, had explained to her that there couldn’t be more than a tiny pea or pebble under the mattress. 

 

But her back hurt badly and, raised to believe she could not overcome obstacles herself and must rely on a man instead, she vowed to marry the first fellow to solve her problem.

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Posted by on in SageWoman Blogs
Dragon Magic and the New Year

The affirmation in this post is not only well-suited for dealing with the specific problem described in the post, it is also a good all-around affirmation for starting the new year. Toward the end of the post, I discuss why.

 

As 2020 is about to begin, here is one of the things I’m thinking about. 

 

Some of the most powerful magicians I know appear to have very little power.

 

There’s a Chinese myth that dragons, underwater, appear to be carp to those of us who are looking down at the water.

 

When the dragon emerges from the water, its draconian nature is revealed.

 

In case you don’t know, goldfish are wee carp. Innocuous little creatures. If the myth that koi are dragons in disguise is true, then the carp’s small, gorgeous fluid fins must be massive, gorgeous, thrusting dragon wings.  (Koi is another term for carp.)

 

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