From a lives his devise and lead the oral tradition course at Stanford University and is a visiting fellow at Schumacher college and the director of West Country School of myth a learning community and dark more in the far west of the United Kingdom. Is the author of many books including a branch from the lightning tree. Snowy tower gather names and the night wages. Join us for the next hours we take a deep dive into our mythic imagination with our guest Dr Martin Shaw I'm just being well as times I'll be your host Welcome to New Dimensions MARTIN Well thank you very much just been I'm delighted to be it's a delight to have you thank you for coming and I'd like to begin 1st of all talking about myths fairy tales folk tales you are immersed in them and why are they significant to us right now in this time I would say the way our ancestors tried to told the truth. And my introduction to that world came in the house that I grew up in so I grew up in the early seventy's in a house that seemingly lacked a lot of things it didn't have a phone it didn't have a television didn't have a car but we had a lot of books and I had a moment of dad who I still have. Language is a form of wealth and story was one of the highest expressions of that wealth. And. I learned to think in images from the beginning I think in images and. I remember as a kid is a little boy I realized that within the space of a day. It was quite hard for me to maintain the shape of a little boy all the time sometimes I would feel that I was about to become a bear or a famine or a hawk and I was I was a little kind of shapely pear shape shifter and even at that age stories would talk about that part of the human psyche that we were more porous than our little schools would have us believe and it just made immediate profound sense to me when I heard this story I would feel like I've been fed like some essential nutrition had moved into me. So. Stories fairy tales folk tales legends arriving from the oral tradition I think they are more than human beings fitting in then you Roches this wondering about the world I think there's the possibility that some of these stories actually have the earth speaking through them. So in other words there's more than just human intelligence at play. And as I got older that became really captivating to me so if someone were to say why do we need those stories now we only have to look for a 2nd you know what's happening with our climate to realize it's one thing to talk about climate change it's one thing to talk about the earth but could it be that secreted in these ancient stories the earth is talking back to us in that case what stories these are ancient stories and we're talking about things that are coming to us seemingly from a long time ago but you're saying that it has reference to where we are right now. Yet from the very basic idea that most stories begin with a hopeless course. If you would say you know until there's some bold new thing you invisible forces in this universe will not rise to meet you so actually when I see this kind of moribund timeline predicted for us I think Oh it's perfect it's time for the mythical magination stories aloud little pinpricks of the miraculous into them and whilst I have a clear and sober sense of how late the hour is for us ecologically. I want to close the door to that miraculous possibility just yet because even in my own few years on this planet again and again and again I've witnessed the impossible manifest. And. I don't think and I'm kind of echoing Wendell Berry here I don't think the. Big question can be solved by a big so I don't really believe it. I think many deals in specificity a lot of meat is very localized So we're very keen these days I'm wedded of bread to come from where did our land come from where did I come from where did your story come from Wouldn't it be an amazing thing and I'm mentioning some of my great heroes today to do what Gary Schneider always advised which is be famous for 5 miles draw a little chalk circle around where you live and dig in and that doesn't have to be a rural situation that could you know Blake found a lot of what he needed in London you know likes walking along and you and I see a fistful like sees a little glowing grain man waving at you it's how I think I think me right now could move us from seeing the ecological predicament into beholding the logical predicament now how do you behold the predicament. You stop telling it what it is you stop telling 200-9000 you talk telling the times that we're in what they are and you just bear witness to the unfolding that doesn't mean passivity it means manners Actually it means behaving in a certain way if myths have to repeat more than Shimon intelligence at play. And indigenous stories have a lot to offer in this regard as well as the sort of propelling heroic narrative of the West there are many other rhythms to stories that we need to know about and we could talk about that in a while maybe. Campbell used to say about that we all gag on true doctrine. Of old myth generally have something in them that do not fit the polemic survive times or our personal lives and that is the bit we need to pay attention to the problem with the idea that you can just create a base add of the it's very unlikely that it's going to have any ancestral roughage in it so that that has to do with a we need to create a new thing Dorry that conversation that's happening oh let's we've got to create a new story or banner story yes I mean on the on a on an immediate level speaking as a feminist I absolutely think we need a new story when it comes to how men and women have treat each other so I get it but when you're talking about something as profound not just as a story but and Miss itself which is which is to do with the passage of time and space. Tolkien didn't write a mesh with Lord of the Rings' Jeanette Winterson did doesn't write Miss J.K. Rowling doesn't measure what they do write is incredible beautiful sophisticated mythic stories the mythic and a myth are not quite the same thing. Meth in the way I understand them in certainly the oral tradition storytelling understands that they don't have a distinct off. Because they could have come from a weather pattern they could have come from a crow they could have come from that secretive little bend in the river where the salmon used to gather. We would not be so naive to claim or ship of the story we're just passing it on the actions of our minds me I sing in a gospel choir and the songs we refer to mostly are those that are authored unsigned is the always that came over from. Sung by dark people who came against their well that worked under the sun for many hours and those don't have an author and those feel so often take they feel something deeply moving others struggle and. The need for freedom is all there and that's what you're saying about these ancient myths or something there that's deeper Yes they're not slick. Than not they don't encourage multitasking. They need real attention they need focus the word that I tend to use is they need fidelity so if you really want mission your life you have to show up for the myth as well as the myth sharing out for you which might mean that you say you know what for this winter or I'm going to do a. Really really study. It could be a Siberian photo but I'm going to turn up to this story so many times I make it blush. In the Irish tradition if you go to the other world if you go to the land of the 2 are today down and the people of life you go to the ferry there's a surprise waiting for you and it's this They're storytellers tell the fairy stories about us we of the We Are the dream of the other world to them when they gather by the fire it's our stories they hear so we need to live lives interesting enough to beguile Farish. I want to remind our listeners and I'm here with Dr Martin Shaw he's the author of the night wages and many other books. I'm just saying well as Tom said You're listening to I'm here with Dr Martin shy he's a. Speaker of myths and gatherer of myths and. He communicates and helps us to unpack them so to speak he's also the author of the night wages and other things if you want to know more about his work I'm going to give you a couple of websites 1st his website Dr Martin shot dot com Dr just the abbreviation D R Martin Shaw dot com or if you want to really access his books the many books you know he tower. The branch from the lightning tree and other books you can go to. It's called System Mystica dot com C I S T A M Y S T I ca sis Mystica dot com or you can get to both of those through the New Dimensions website New Dimensions dot org. So Martin you've started us off and there's so much I want I want to talk about that you've given these clues as we go along but one of the things that I'd like to talk about and I know that you have given some thought to this and it has to do with what I would call vertical intelligence and horizontal intelligence and I think this has something to do with the way we understand myth or Our have a relationship with myths so can you say something about those 2 kinds of intelligence you know certainly and this is these are old ideas and I'm just just moving them on into the world a bit. Yes you could say that a vertical intelligence is a moment where you as a simple human being are overtly reaching out to the Divine World. When you are entirely in gauged in the horizontal which absolutely has its merit it tends to be more practical concerns let's be clear of. There's 810-0000 ways those 2 worlds interact all the time and a point that I would want to make is what I'm referring to attention to the Divine world I'm not necessarily referring to something the other side of Pluto I'm not referring necessarily to what we might conceive of as heaven it could be a little Rowntree at the bottom of your garden it could be the little birds that gather the swish that gather at the bird feed it could be a mountain it can be secreted amongst us all the time it's really what to talk about him again Blake would call pinpricks of the eternal. Often if you notice and I'd say the smaller listeners actually if you notice that you are. Regularly falling into depression during your day the mythological Akido move to make is to question how often a day do I get pinpricks of eternity entering it how am I so hooked up in the time around I can't access the time left stories are a crossroads between the timeless and the time bound so they carry the essential eternal truths that we all recognize but at the same time you and I live in bodies and over time those bodies go their own perfect route and. Yes A as A and and it's also part of. You know the delicious sorrows of the world that that happens but if you are around stories regularly if you're around storytelling even if you read out loud you will find tremendous nourishment in it and it is Kat as Captain Beefheart used to say stories are a mood propellent I love that propeller and so you can shift from one place to the other. My old mentor Robert Bly would call this moving from the 1st castle to the 2nd castle. So another way of thinking about vertical and horizontal is actually on all the writers out there I think will relate to this I call it you know day in 1000 Teligent when I'm writing a book like the night wages. A lot of the a lot of the really succulent bits of it come from very late at night I realise years ago that I write in an entirely different fashion after 11 PM than I do in the early in the morning I even figured out that in the cottage that I write the book same I have different forms of thought in different parts of the cottage so I have several desks and the books and even the sentences you read my books are usually. Braided not of day and night intelligence and if I want to crank up my ideas and my sense of the conceptual I go to a particular part of the house if I really want to invoke the editor in May I will work early in the morning drink good coffee and another desk brings out the editor So in other words the house itself gets done by Schiller talks a lot about this is an organic soulful living interrupted presence. So in that sense the horizontal The man dying and the vertical the divine or whatever word you want to call for it. In this crossroads and the God of the storytellers is called Hermes away and you go to worship Hermes you go to the crossroads I love that I love it when it takes us a little bit to the premise of this most recent book and night wages callus for little bit about the premise of this book and the idea of it and what stimulated you to even sit down and write it well what stimulated me to write it was. Was just a series of very ordinary catastrophes that most people in midlife experience. But all of you know the gods will cure right that particular. That particular moment that we need maybe I don't want to say that all suffering is good I don't want to kind of wink at the listener and imply that for a 2nd there are things out there that we're never going to get over but as I hit my mid forty's I went through a period of proper. Profound for roof. And now that's one thing to cope with but if you are a parent as I am and you've got a child that you're raising in the middle of a non-trivial loss. You really start to coal on whatever your nutrition is to get you through this how do you and the child stay in the story when the story seems to be. Disintegrating in your very hands so the book began actually when I wrote a letter. To my my kid my daughter and in it I just started to write about the things I utterly stood for something that she may be able to look at when she was older this is what your dad loved this is what he defended this is what he cared about this is what he lost this is what he gained and I started to realize that this might be a book it would be useful or thing actually I didn't think of it as a book at the time it could be something that's useful for other folks as well. I would have loved it if one of my. Literary heroes at a certain point and actually one of them one of them did do it C.S. Lewis wrote a book could a Grief Observed and that was a very useful book for me when I was going through this period so it's a love letter. The thing that I love most in the world my daughter so and I and I know that you say in the book that you give a phrase I don't know if she actually said this but she said I just imagine you in your depression your new grief whatever you're going through and we all do this that we get so walled off in our own deep sorrow and yet there is this kid out here again and they're wondering am I still in your story and she asked the question am I still in your story. And then what I gathered from this particular book is you. Get to a deep deep sense of authenticity that you can't you can't lie about it you can't just smooth it over and say Oh I'm feeling fine Oh I back up in you put on the smile but you you take as deep deep into what it means to be human and yet still survive yeah. Yes thank you. I think it was that this is a phrase in the book that I come back to and fish heartbreak is not our kids' business the kid is not your shrink it is not your therapist don't do that cut that out. And so I realized quick I didn't need to be Superman to my child I just thought I needed to be able to function in the world I needed to be able to speak of it with a degree of elegance a degree of truth and as little malice as possible. And so that was what I I did. I statements are one thing you know and I thought that meant but when you bring in a meth than meth or the fairy tale of the folk tale takes the tribute tree of your experience to the great river it is the old method story and so these stories supported me through this period of time and they did more than that they deepened me. An image in one of it's actually it's a thing I talk about in the book Becoming crocodile where there is an African village where a certain point I think it was amongst the men I don't know if they did it to the women as well as kind of brutal you would be taken out into the bush and for a period of time your back would be beaten with sticks so severely that the skin itself when it hailed was ridged like a crocodile. When you would come back to the village if people had really deep questions about the business of suffering the business of living the business of trying to become a human being you would go to ask those questions someone that everybody knew had become crocodile So he went back to the shapeshifting of means a little kid when I thought all I'm kind of a boy but I'm also kind of a bear and I'm also kind of a salmon and I'm a little bit of a fox as you get older we do change shape. And the night wages is an acknowledgment I suppose to myself that I have changed that I am fundamentally a different man to who I was half a decade ago I am profoundly changed in Greek many. Think of the Odyssey. The old Greek word the describes the Odyssey is not Star nor star says the longing for home remember a decision is trying to get back to if a this rather nondescript island filled with goats and Rocky crags but it is easy ending to get. That propels him through the story in the winding route it takes from leaving Troy and. No stores I think is culture getting us into a lot of trouble at the moment I think nonstop is behind bricks it I think knocked off in a while the Walked Why has to do with some of the political things that are happening in America at the moment as well we all we all remember we all have an image of being in the garden we have an image of being in the garden and you can manipulate that in people you can colonize people's imagination when you revoke your stuff we've got to go deeper with all of that in just one moment thank you so much I want to remind our listeners send I'm here with Dr Martin Sawyer and he's the author of the night wages I'm just staying well as you're listening to new dimensions. I'm here with Dr Martin shy and he is the author of many books including the night wages also a branch from the light in tree snowy tower other folks. And we're talking about going home and then you really you said something very provocative You said that this is also and there is a danger in this right now that how are we skewing that in a way that that isn't serving the higher good or serving the earth or is serving a life itself well. As I was saying in Greek myth that word for. This year ending is not the homeward journey. In the Welsh some of them call it hard virus which again is it is slightly more intangible but it's really a feeling of longing and the desire to state that longing longing is an interesting thing because you probably remember that runs from Rumi. My dead pal Coleman who says something along the lines of the feeling of Lonnie in your heart is God speaking back to you it is the return journey so longing itself is already a divine accomplishment God is already nurturing you and talking to you if you have the. Ears to hear it I just remember for myself when some one confronted me with the idea of longing the end that being a really powerful place to be and I can remember rejecting that entirely because it was so how to be in longing is to never have resolve then so how do you know don't don't you think that what makes a grown up is living with incompleteness. It's not say shit to desire no culture worth it soul accomplishes itself by what it got it's what what it learned not to live with for the sake of other people that's when I see a mature person when I see a real human being it's actually that there's a lovely Anglo-Saxon phrase and touring the bone house and power getting older part of this rather mystical proposition that eventually maybe towards the end of our life we could become a human being. Is that you're going to have to do well in appropriate tens