In the heart of the Mongolian grasslands wolves and sheep herders once lived in harmony with each other. Though wolves were regarded as an "enemy" and often killed and ate the sheep these nomadic herders depended on for their livelihood, wolves also modeled strategies of survival that herders adopted enabling them to live for generations in the harsh landscape. Like the Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang, the story of Mongolian wolves is a spiritual one about living in harmony with our greatest fear, learning from our greatest enemy, and ultimately developing enough consciousness to recognize the divine-enemy-teacher residing within each of us.
Read MorePlants, Magic and Power: Folklore's Storied Plants Wield Their Quiet Power
Whether it is a giant beanstalk, benevolent flowers, wise herbs, sacred birch goddesses or mossy coats, many ancient folktales remind us how our ancestors lived in harmony with plants, relying on them not only for sustenance but also for healing, protection, wisdom, empowerment and inspiration. Ancient plant folktales encapsulate wisdom and teachings passed down through generations, reflecting the roles that flora and fauna have played for our survival, cultural identity and in the mythic imagination, often intersecting all three.
Read MoreFox Woman: The Shapeshifting Woman at the Threshold Between Worlds
Fox Woman, also known as Kitsune in Japanese folklore, is a shapeshifting trickster character who resembles the elusive, clever fox from the wild. Although this folktale comes in many different variations and her story is told in many tongues, what they all have in common is a trickster character who shifts between human and fox, sometimes androgynous, living in multiple worlds, questioning the order of things through her mischief, playfulness, wit, deception, magic and defiance of authority. The tale of Fox Woman is almost always makes visible the tension between the need for order, and its reinvention.
Read MoreThe Goddess Isis: Shedding and Becoming
In the beloved Egyptian myth of Isis, Isis searches for the scattered parts of her murdered husband’s body, resembles him, and breathes life back into him, and makes love to him, which then gives birth to Horus who becomes the next Pharaoh of Egypt. Isis shows us that taking the aerial point of view, or birds-eye-view, gives us the power to hold the tension between what is dissolving and what is emerging, to see the whole instead of only the parts, and to recognize our own agency in the potential for transformation.
Read MoreReassembling Rites: Piecing Together the Ancestral Bones
There is an archetype that weaves its way through many ancient myths and folktales that centers around the sacred work of recovering and reassembling what has been disassembled. This ritual of singing over the ancestral bones, honoring, mourning over, and reclaiming what has been buried or lost, is a devotional act. In these stories, grieving takes center stage and plays a transformative role allowing the folk-heroine or mythological heroine to reach a place of wholeness, aliveness, and joy again.
Read MoreBetween the Dragon and the Crane: Hatching the Vital Bothness into Being
There is a heartwarming folktale indigenous to Vietnam involving an unexpected romantic coupling between a dragon and a crane that is one of many endearing folktales that make up Vietnam’s rich heritage of maritime folklore. Since the beginning of time storied landscapes have included in-between, magical places like coastlines or intertidal areas between land and sea, and these are often sites of transformation, thresholds between worlds, and are infused with magic. The enduring wisdom of this story is about finding the hidden treasure that is birthed from unexpected connections, and when we choose to come together despite our differences.
Read MoreThe Mitten: the undercurrent of synchronicities that connects us all together
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.
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