New roofs and holy moles

Monthly newsletter, June 2023

Dear friends,

Suddenly, it feels as if summer has come early to Cumbria, and we really could do with a drop of rain. Just over a couple of months since we moved in, this old house now has a brand new hat of stone slates, and the birds are celebrating the removal of roofers and scaffolding. Blackbirds and chaffinches are nesting in the thick, ancient ivy which clings to one side of the house (the blackbirds are on their second brood), house martens are eyeing up the eaves, a pair of swallows have taken over the back lean-to porch, and coal-tits are nesting behind an inspection plate in the chimney stack. I do love the feeling that a house isn’t just for humans: that we can also provide housing for our animal kin. From spiders to beetles to cats and dogs, there’s something real and earthy about sharing your house with others. I like a house to be clean, but you have to have a few cobwebby corners; we all need, I think, to be able to channel our inner Morticia Addams.

The other-than-human dominates the wider landscape here, as well as in the house and the garden (where the red squirrels are still very much in residence, and a baby hare has fashioned its own right-of-way). The night is a cacophony of owl calls, as tawny owls take a break from their incessant calls for a mate to harass the local barn owls, whose response is for sure the spookiest of all animal sounds. Sometimes, the cat joins in, and I’m roused out of sleep and into some fantastical waking dream. The Holy Moles have taken over the meadows. There are two lots of new Mallard ducklings on the river, one at each end of our stretch of it. The ever-raucous jackdaws who rule the castle across the river drop twig-bombs on my head every morning when I have the audacity to clamber down the bank and into their territory, to sit on the pebbly riverbed revealed now by too little rain. Curlew, cuckoo, oystercatcher, lapwing – it’s a heady mix of morning music, better than any human hymn. Though every now and again, I find myself singing ‘Morning Has Broken’ very quietly there, by the river. My own song of praise, joining my voice with theirs.

I’ll struggle to leave this place, even for just four days, but I’m just embarking on the seven-hour drive southwest to Cornwall, where I’m delighted to be giving the opening lecture at a celebration of Carl Jung’s work. ‘Jung by the Sea’ marks the centenary of Jung’s seminars in Cornwall at Sennen Cove (1920) and Polzeath (1923). Other presenters are Sonu Shamdasani, Christian Roesler, Becca Tarnas, Tom Cheetham and Liz Greene, each of us reflecting themes from Jung’s Cornwall seminars one hundred years on. I’m talking about fairy tales and the archetypes which lurk within them, of course. It promises to be a rich event, and although I seem to find it ever more of a grind to be away from home as I grow older, I’m very much looking forward to it. But I’ll be looking forward, even more, to coming back home.

There’s a good bit of news this month, as well as the usual reading recommendations. And as always, I wish you all a season full of richness and restfulness, wherever in the world you might be.

Sharon

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‘If Women Rose Rooted’ audiobook

Earlier this year, I recorded a new version of the audiobook of If Women Rose Rooted. The original narrator wasn’t much loved, and so the publishers, Tantor Audio, suggested that it was time finally for me to do it myself. Here’s the link to the book on Audible UK, but you’ll find it for sale throughout the world via all the usual providers.

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NEW – Enchanted Journeys: a series of guided imagination journeys

‘Enchanted Journeys’ is a collection of thirteen audio files, each of which offers a guided imagination journey around 25 – 30 minutes long, narrated by me. All of these meditations are designed to help you to work with your deep imagination, engage with the imaginal world and develop resources for activating your mythic imagination. You can purchase the set of recordings here. The price for the collection is £18; you’ll find a list of the contents below.

Please note that if you are a member of my ‘This Mythic Life’ online course, you already have access to these journeys and do not need to purchase them again.

‘DREAMWEAVING’ DEEP IMAGINATION JOURNEY
This journey offers you a core practice for working with your deep imagination and engaging with the imaginal world. In this journey, you’re encouraged to enter a safe space in order to present yourself to the imaginal world and see what would like to come to you. You can also use this technique to engage with images and characters from your nightdreams, and from myths and stories which move you deeply, as well as from other forms of art.

THE WOLVES
A guided imagination journey designed to help you uncover and explore elements of the Wild Man or Woman archetype within.

THE ANCESTORS
A guided imagination journey designed to help you engage with your ancestors.

SANCTUARY IN THE FOREST
A guided imagination journey designed to help you find sanctuary in the dark forest.

THE INTERCONNECTED COSMOS
A guided imagination journey designed to help you find your steps in a dance with the cosmos.

EMBODIED IMAGINATION
A guided imagination journey designed to help you enter into an imaginal dialogue with your body.

PROTECTION IN DARK PLACES
A guided imagination journey designed to help you develop a sense of protection as you enter dark and difficult places.

THE SHAPE OF YOUR JOURNEY
A guided imagination journey designed to help you gain perspective on the nature of your own unique path through life, and the terrain through which you’ve passed.

ROOTINGS
A guided imagination journey designed to help you root and ground yourself in the world around you.

THE WITCH
A guided imagination journey which takes you on a journey to visit the Old Woman of the World, the Hag of the Ages, the Witch of all Witches.

PSYCHE AND EROS: THE SOUL’S JOURNEY HOME
A guided imagination journey which takes you on a journey to work through the tasks set by Venus for Psyche.

THE ALCHEMIST’S CAVE
A guided imagination journey which takes you on a journey to the Alchemist’s Cave.

DESCENT
A guided imagination journey which takes you on a journey to the Underworld.

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Last call for ‘Finding Ourselves in Fairy Tales’

My new short online course, ‘Finding Ourselves in Fairy Tales’, is due to begin on Sunday June 11, and is still available for registration up until then.

A SERIES OF THREE ONLINE GATHERINGS

We are storytelling animals, hard-wired for story. We begin to perceive, explain and make sense of the world through the stories we find in childhood – or the stories which find us. They are the stars we navigate by. Stories teach us everything we know, and their lessons are deep and rich. In fairy tales, for example, the tasks which must be undertaken are the stuff out of which souls, not just shirts, are forged. These stories help us to reimagine ourselves, because at the heart of them is transformation: they help us to believe in the possibility of change. We come to see that there are other ways of imagining the world and our place in it – and of living more intensely, and more richly, in a world that is often filled with challenge, and sorrow. I’ve worked in this way – as a psychologist, academic, writer and teacher – with fairy tales now for more than two decades. Join me to explore the ways in which, even as adults, we can find ourselves in fairy tales.

SESSION 1: SUNDAY JUNE 11, 16.00 TO 18.00 UK TIME

What are fairy tales, and how and why do they change over time?
How do they help us?
Where does their magic come from, and why are they so memorable?
Working with images and narrative elements in fairy tales
Reimagining fairy tales for our lives and the times
Homework: rewriting a fairy tale

SESSION 2: SUNDAY JUNE 18, 16.00 TO 18.00 UK TIME

Discussion and sharing: rewriting a fairy tale
Archetypal patterns in fairy tales – what are archetypes and why are they so important?
The fairy-tale heroine’s journey – how does it differ from other models?
Writing life as a fairy tale
Homework: rewrite your own life as a fairy tale

SESSION 3: SUNDAY JUNE 25, 16.00 TO 18.00 UK TIME

Discussion and sharing: writing our life as a fairy tale
Other ways to work with stories: dreamwork and active imagination work
Creating your own inner imaginarium

Fee: £90. Please register here.

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New online course at Pacifica Graduate Institute

I’m delighted to be partnering with Pacifica Graduate Institute to offer an online course: 'Hagitude: A Woman's Journey from Menopause Through Elderhood'. (6 weekly sessions, Thursdays at 5–6.30pm UK time, July 20 – August 24.)

Menopause is a time between stories, when the old story fades and a new story is waiting to emerge. It’s a liminal time, when we hover on the brink of the profound transformation which ultimately leads to elderhood, and contemplate the work of gaining new perspectives on our life, of challenging and evolving our belief systems, of exploring our calling, of uncovering meaning, and ultimately finding healing for a lifetime’s accumulation of wounds. Nevertheless, the second half of women’s lives is often portrayed as a time of decline. How can we challenge this narrative, map the new territory, prepare ourselves for yet another searing transformation, and move into the second half of life with a sense of vitality, creativity and vision? Grounded in myth, narrative techniques and archetypal psychology, this course will focus on the following questions:

– How can we navigate the stormy waters of menopause and find continued growth, meaning and authenticity in the second half of life?
– How might we work with the stories of the little-known but powerful elder women in myth and folklore – both to inspire us to create new stories of our own, and to reimagine our journey to and through elderhood?
– How can we each uncover, and embrace, our own unique, archetypal Inner Hag?
– How, by working with and understanding our own stories, and our own mythopoetic journey through life, can we fully and finally embody the unique gift which each of us brings to this world, at this time?

Full details at this link, and if you sign up before June 8, you'll receive a 20% discount: https://retreat.pacifica.edu/hagitude/

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Reading recommendations

I’ve struggled recently with almost all of the reimaginings of Greek myth I’ve read. It’s actually incredibly hard to do it well – mainly because we all know the stories inside-out. If you’re going to do yet ANOTHER retelling of the Odyssey, or the Trojan War, you’d better have something really good to say. And mostly, I’ve been finding, people haven’t. So the last three such novels I’ve read, including by authors that I normally rate very highly, have been abandoned not very far in and have gone straight to the charity shop.

Until this one: Matilda Leyser’s remarkable No Season But the Summer. This novel did all of the things that I wish mythic reimaginings would do. It keeps to the heart – the key themes – of the story in question, but expands and deepens it in two really important ways: plot and voice. The story is that of Demeter and Persephone. Here is the publisher’s blurb:

Persephone spends six months of the year under the ground with her husband, king of the dead, and six months on earth with her mother, goddess of the harvest. It has been this way for nine thousand years, since the deal was struck. But when she resurfaces this spring, something is different. Rains lash the land, crops grow out of season or not at all, there are people trying to build a road through the woods, and her mother does not seem able to stop them. The natural world is changing rapidly and even the gods have lost control. While Demeter tries to regain her powers and fend off her daughter’s husband, who wants to drag his queen back underground for good, Persephone finally gets a taste of freedom, joining a group of protestors. Used to blinking up at the world from below, as she looks down on the earth for the very first time from the treetops with activist Snow, Persephone realises that there are choices she can make for herself. But what will these choices mean for her mother, her husband, and for the new shoots of life inside her? No Season but the Summer takes a classic myth and turns it on its head, asking what will happen when our oldest stories fail us, when all the rules have changed. It is, above all, a book about choice.

This one is heartily recommended. It’s masterfully constructed, moving and strange in all the right ways. It’s carefully and poetically written, and a beautiful turn of phrase and an elegant sentence structure are essential components of a good novel – well, of a good book of any kind – for me. (Sometimes, I feel as if that care with language is a dying art.) There are very few writers who have succeeded in bringing an ancient myth into the contemporary world with such profound resonance for the issues which concern us. Matilda Leyser is one of them, and I’m very much looking forward to what she might do next.

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Proserpine, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

This month’s poem

Persephone the Wanderer
Louise Glück

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we know of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:
we may call this
negative creation.

Persephone's initial
sojourn in hell continues to be
pawed over by scholars who dispute
the sensations of the virgin:

did she cooperate in her rape,
or was she drugged, violated against her will,
as happens so often now to modern girls.

As is well known, the return of the beloved
does not correct
the loss of the beloved: Persephone

returns home
stained with red juice like
a character in Hawthorne—

I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
"home" to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn't know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?

She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes
she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth

asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
as we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read

as an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs
about her mother's
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth,
song of the mythic vision of eternal life—

My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?

‘Persephone the Wanderer’, from Averno by Louise Glück.