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?
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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.
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The Birch Goddess: Baba Yaga & The Wisdom of Fall
Inspired by the Slavic Folktale Katrina and the Bright Falcon, featuring Baba Yaga, the enduring powerful female wilderness creatrix from Russian folklore, beautifully described and redefined by Natalia Clarke in her book Baba Yaga: Slavic Earth Goddess which she writes from her own Siberian heritage. The wisdom this folktale offers is how a deep relationship with a wild Falcon and an unconventional wild elder woman who lives in the deep forest, can be a pathway to birth our True Authentic Selves.
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Caribou Sky, inspired by a folktale about the caribou and their connection to the seasonal cycle of the sun which draws loosely from several ancient stories from Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia, including many elements from indigenous Sami folklore. Here photographed in the process of being carved.
Summer 2023 Newsletter
Sharing several new handmade prints in my shop! Each print contains a precious folktale from the past, a mythos, reminding us of our ancient and intimate kinship with the wild, expressed with a multitude of endearing voices of the earth. Whether it is the sound of clanking antlers, or the mischievous pecking of a black crow, or the whisper of a tiger’s whiskers these heartwarming stories lyrically weave us into the circle of life and remind us of our extraordinary human imagination.
Read MoreThe Owl Lover: When the Wild Courts Us
An endearing love story about a rare white Great Horned Owl who falls in love with a human woman, retold by Joseph Bruchac in his book Wabi: A Hero’s Journey. This Abenaki folktale suggests that nature is courting us, that there is a a romance taking place. . .a precious mythos from ancient times about the intimate and tender relationship between humans and the wild.
Read MoreThe Old Woman Who Weaves the World
Like the concept of Yin and Yang, the folkloric archetype of opposing forces that create the cosmos, weaves its way into so many different landscapes and cultural traditions secretly behind a veil of different stories and visual motifs . . yet here it is hidden in plain sight, in the White Mountain Apache folktale of The Old Woman Who Weaves Together the World and the Black Crow who pecks at the loose ends and unravels it again. What wisdom might this folktale offer us in rethinking our relationship with the wild?
Read MoreWoodcutter & Tiger Brother
This Korean folktale about a woodcutter who discovers that a tiger is his long lost brother is a story about a relationship transformation: from one of hunter and prey, to one of intimacy and kinship characterized by interdependence, reciprocity and mutual respect. It is about recognizing and embracing the other within, the wild within the Self.
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