There is a folktale about the importance of generosity when faced with a scarcity of resources that can be found in both Ukrainian folklore and in Abenaki folklore. In the Ukrainian version, woodland animals try to fit into a mitten to stay warm even though it is too small, and in the Abenaki version they are all coerced into a bag to feed a hunter and his grandmother even though taking all of them exceeds the hunter’s needs for the winter. Myths and stories that reveal shared values and themes despite having originated from two distinct cultures and landscapes reveals a collective consciousness: an undercurrent of synchronicities that connects us all together.
Read MoreYuletide: The Vital and Soulful Wisdom of Bothness
These twelve days between the Winter Solstice and the beginning of the next solar year are referred to as Yule or Yuletide in ancient Medieval Nordic folklore. What gifts does this sacred time belonging neither to the old year nor the new year offer us? How can we harness the transformative power of this bothness? Ancient folktales reveal that the past is not set-in-stone, but is continuously being reinvented, reimagined, and reweaved back into the upcycled tapestry of the present tense. This sacred time gives rise to the beautiful question: how can we cultivate new ways of relating to the past so we can move with wisdom into the future?
Read MoreMother Goose: A Folktale of Feathers and Snow
The first flakes of snow usher in the beginning of winter, and according to old Germanic folklore, they are the feathers from the featherbeds of Old Mother Goose. According to the Brothers Grimm, she may have been a goose herself, or shapeshifting between an elderly woman and a snow goose, because in some versions of the story she has a one large foot, like that of a goose, perhaps a splayed foot from pressing the treadle of her spinning wheel. Due to her shapeshifting nature between a white goose and an elderly woman, she represents both maiden and crone, as well as the transition between life and death, lightness and darkness, representing this transitional time of the year: the Winter Solstice.
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Although I did not take this photo, this is what the landscape looks like where I live around this time of year. It is such a familiar scene, the colors, the trees, the gray sky. . .it reminds me of an opening in the forest where there are birches and reeds at the Hapgood Wright Forest Trail in Concord where I sometimes walk. Mikhail Luchin has captured it brilliantly here with his photo (available on Pexels) so much better than I ever could.
Waking up to the Dark: The Rich Gifts of Winter
Though the darker, colder season of winter is often associated with death and stagnation, folktales that feature winter and death reveal that darkness can offer a potential for spiritual enrichment and be the dark womb within which the seeds of new life incubate and begin to germinate. The darkness of winter and death is rich with meaning, and ripe with transformative potential if we choose to harness it, fearlessly welcome it, and recognize how it connects us to the great mystery of this wild and precious planet.
Read MoreSkye's Feathered Weavers of Worlds: Dream Carriers, Winged Messengers, and the Liminal Magic of Migrating Birds
The old Scottish folktale of the Dreammakers from the Isle of Skye whispers a quiet knowing: that beneath our feet and beyond our sight, migrating birds carry more than wings. As they journey across shifting skies and ushering in the seasons, they bring us our dreams, weaving the outer world with the inner landscape of vision. Resting on the edge of worlds, they remind us that our true belonging rests at the meeting point between here and there. . . from the threshold loom of the open sky where feathers and wings thread landscapes together.
Read MoreCaribou Sky: Bringing in the Light
Reflecting on the gift of a folktale that draws loosely from several stories from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, and indigenous Sami folklore: the Goddess of the Sun is pulled by a herd of caribou that transforms into a bear, as she makes her way across the horizon and brightens the sky.
Read MoreThe Linnunraata: Our Kinship with Swans
The Linnunraata, a Finnish folktale, describes the Milky Way as the migratory path of white swans, also known as “Soul Carriers” who bring a human soul to the body at the moment of birth, and carry the soul away at the moment of death towards Lintukoto, the home of the birds. A beautiful story that folds us back into the feathered wings of a universe that mothers us.
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