Autumn gifts us with the beauty of dying leaves, or, in the words of Rebecca Solnit, the reminder that beauty and bereavement can sometimes intertwine. What the autumn reminds us of is how feelings of grief and loss (and the dying of the leaves) can be felt at the same times as we experience something beautiful and joyful (the vibrant golden colors of the leaves) and how this complex combination of opposites is often at the heart of our human experience and weaves its way into many ancient folktales.
Read MoreThe Reindeer Goddess Who Returns The Sun: A folktale of Reindeer, the Sacred Feminine & the Rhythms of the Wild
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
In Finnish folk astronomy the Milky Way is known as the Linnunraata - a migratory path of white swans, also known as Sielulintu, or “Soul Birds”, 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.Sometimes the Sielulintu find us in our sleep and carry us into the dreamworld, and before waking, return us home again. A beautiful story that folds us back into the feathered wings of a universe that mothers us.
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