Myth in the Anthropocene

It has always been a radical act to share stories during dark times. They are regenerative spaces of creation and renewal. As we experience a loss of sacred connection to the earth, we share stories that explore the timeless connections between ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Is it naïve to say that the world as we know it won’t end if we keep telling stories? Maybe not, if we reconsider the kinds of stories we tell. Ancient stories, myths, old tales - these kinds of stories hold something powerful. Call it bone memory, call it the deep, primordial part of ourselves, call it the voice that gossips with the wild, across species and across time.

There's that old idea that on the night you were born, your twin was thrown out the window. And it is the business of an adult to find, against a world that wishes you forget, that wild twin. It's the wild twin that has the bone memory. It's this ancient, deep, primordial part of ourselves that seems to have a memory that is deeper than the heartbreaks that we've been through. It's something that connects us both to death and to life and to deepening. It's the descent experience of the underworld that seems to connect us somehow, most mysteriously, to the earth itself. That's the place where the great stories come from.

We, as simple human beings, are meant to be wedded to the wild. We wedded the wild out on a hill or in the desert or out on the tundra. But we also wedded the wild through stories and poems and dances. And the stories are reminding ourselves to wake up from this great forgetting. Loss will come for us; diminishment comes for us; it's actually a part of the narrative of life; it's not really to be avoided. Our stories, our myths, our ceremonies do us a disservice if they do not prepare us for that.

With bone memory the genius comes through the images. It's the old image of the wild twin growing your hands back, of riding the back of a wolf, of courting a firebird. These are all images of bone memory. These are all images of navigating the mysteries in a very unsettled time. If we listen, we hear it calling. If we listen, we find ourselves deep in the forest, where a large white bear holds something we all desire. What journey lies ahead if we follow our deepest longing?

Every myth begins with the day everything changes. Every myth sets us on a journey. In this moment of ecological crisis, when everything is changing every day, will we say yes to the journey that lies ahead?

The Earth itself thinks in myth. There is an aliveness in it. It speaks across species, a form of ecological communication that invites us into the unknown forest.

To undertake a perilous journey requires courage and service to something bigger than us. Stories that place only ourselves at the center are doomed to fail us. In myth, our souls can fall deeper. Myths tenderize us to make different decisions about how we live.

Adapted from feature by Martin Shaw at emergencemagazine in 2023