The folktale of the Selkie combines the bitter and the sweet - a hauntingly relevant message for modern souls. To journey through this myth is to witness the whole of us: the one who leaves; the one who betrays herself for safety, love and belonging; and the one who remembers and returns. Who among us sees the whole — the wild, the wounded, and the wonder within? The quiet work of soul-tending and wild becoming is rarely honored in a world that fears what it cannot tame - yet it is the truest kind of magic.
Read MoreThe Bird Woman Inside Us
Whether it is winged deities like the Hindu apsaras; airborne Christian mystics; Islamic Sufis; or the Greek Goddess Athena with her Little Owl, there is a consistent association between birds and a sense of fierce and powerful womanhood and femininity across cultures and geographies. In what small ways can we reclaim our power, rebel like these bird heroines, and embody the energy and spirit of wild birds?
Read MoreJade Rabbit and Moon Goddess: A Love Story Between Worlds
What stirs the soul more deeply than the quintessential pairing of rabbits and the moon? Reflecting on the ancient Chinese Jade Rabbit on the Moon folktale, we discover the timeless enduring medicine the Jade Rabbit is entrusted to safeguard on the moon and how it serves as a timeless healing salve in a contemporary world fraught with divisiveness and tension.
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.
Read MoreCrow Challenges Hobomock: A Nipmuc Folktale of Self Transformation
“Crow Challenges Hobomock” is an ancient Nipmuc folktale retold by Larry Spotted Crow Mann in his book Drumming and Dreaming (2016). I love this tale for its timeless wisdom: that real change has nothing to do with outward appearance, but happens from within.
Read MoreRabbits and the Moon Goddess: Traveling the Silk Road
Growing up in Asia, I always believed there was a rabbit on the moon assisting the Goddess who passed the time grinding dried medicinal herbs into an elixir of immortality. However, only recently did I discover that this trio of associations (rabbits, the moon and divine feminine) is an ancient archetype, stretching across a diverse array of cultures, landscapes and centuries by way of the Silk Road.
Read MoreBear Mother's Arms: Where Elder Hands Cradle Cubs & Kinship Blossoms
The story of a wise old woman caring for a bear is not just Inuit, it is far more ancient and universal, and weaves its way into all of our heritages, seeps through all of our bones. . . . Sometimes the old woman cares for a polar bear, other times, a black bear, or simply a wild creature. Whatever it is she is cradling, the act is one of defiance, a selfless transgression that contains within it timeless wisdom. . . .where a relationship of hunter and prey transforms into one of reciprocity and interdependence. A relic of our humanity captured in story, the retelling of which is a sacred ritual of continuity of mothering the wild and in turn being mothered too, in a world that has long forgotten such values.
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