Enchantment is resistance

Monthly newsletter, March 2024

Read on for course and event news and this month’s reading recommendations. This message is likely to be truncated by your email provider, so please think of clicking through to Substack and reading it in your browser. And while you’re there, do join the conversation and leave a comment!

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Dear friends,

February always feels to me like such a strange time of year. Out on the land, a lot of things are preparing to happen, but very few have actually come to the point of happening – apart from snowdrops and one or two tentative crocuses. Everything else is still in a state of expectant stasis.

I feel rather like that myself. Partly it’s because so much preparation is happening for the launch of my next new book from Virago, Wise Women: A New Mythology of Older Women, but the actual publication event doesn’t occur till October. (US publication news coming soon!) Partly it’s because I’m very slowly working on the book after that, Hearth. This one is taking a little longer than usual – on the one hand, because I’m less inclined these days to push myself to a state of exhaustion, and on the other hand, just because it’s slightly new territory for me and I’m taking all the time I need to properly explore it. So, many things are incubating, and that state of expectancy, combined with an impatience for the births to actually happen, always makes me feel restless and a wee bit dislocated. And I’m also restless and dislocated because even at 63 years of age, the suddenness of the return of the light at this time of year still surprises me. It’s still light at 6 pm and I’m outraged. Although I’m looking forward to spring, I hate to see the dark so rapidly slipping away; it feels as if my winter cloak of invisibility and creative intensity is leaving along with it. I always hold on to my darkening days for far too long.

All of this insistent spring in the air reminds me of a quote from Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: ‘You can cut all the flowers, but you cannot keep Spring from coming.’ Neruda was a poet of resistance, whose experience of the Spanish Civil War and the fight against fascism profoundly shaped him. He believed that writing, not just fighting, was fuel for the resistance, and that’s the form that his own resistance took. Because writing captures the imagination and so can inspire change, and inspiration to live differently is so necessary as we face an era of climate disruption and increasing social and political polarisation. Writing can’t stop atrocities, but it can certainly wake us up to new ways of being.

So don’t ever think that writers like me aren’t part of the resistance. We are. But what is it exactly that we’re resisting with our words and our stories? What difference do we imagine they can possibly make? Well, my own form of resistance is to challenge the way the world has become, and the ways we’ve become that allow the ongoing catastrophes and atrocities to continue, by challenging the myths we live by and encouraging the development and adoption of better ones. Yes – my form of resistance absolutely involves stories that help us imagine new, healthier ways of being. Because history (as well as psychology) demonstrates the same simple fact again and again: you can’t change the world for the better unless people change their way of perceiving that world and their relationship to it, and so change their way of being in it. Unless people question what they’ve been told they should want by the overculture, and begin to want something better. Enduring and meaningful change comes from the grassroots, from the bottom up. People have to believe in it, and to want to live with it. That begins with their ability to imagine it. And that’s where I come in.

This last week marks the sixth anniversary of the publication of my book The Enchanted Life – the book that gave name to this Substack (and to the blog which for many years preceded it).* Back then, not everyone was entirely enamoured with my proclivity for the word enchantment; one prominent storyteller soon began to declare that stories ‘weren’t about enchantment, they were about waking up’. This amused me, because ‘waking up’ was precisely my definition of enchantment, which went on a bit but ended with this: ‘Above all, to live an enchanted life is to fall in love with the world all over again. This is an active choice, a leap of faith which is necessary not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of the wide, wild Earth in whose being and becoming we are so profoundly and beautifully entangled.’ At the end of the book, I wrote a ten-point ‘Manifesto for the enchanted life’ which was precisely about waking up. And I mean waking up to our power to move beyond the rage and despair and imagine the world and our place in it differently, above all.

So if you were to ask me today how I’m resisting those catastrophes and the atrocities, I’d tell you this: I’m trying to change the world one word, one story, one image at a time. By offering ways of falling in love with the world all over again, and falling in love with ourselves and so with each other all over again. And I’d note, as an important aside, that there is no definitive, correct, single way to resist, just as there is no definitive, correct, single way for the world to unfold, or for a person to become who they were always meant to become. There are many paths of resistance, and each of us must choose the path we are best fitted for. The path that speaks to our calling, to our own unique path with heart. The path that recognises who we are, and the gifts that we bring to the world.

Back in 2017, another shrill, desperate year, I read and wrote down a quote from a Guardian article on the work of Hannah Arendt, the political theorist who wrote about the Nazis and coined the term ‘the banality of evil’. An expert on Arendt’s work made this point in the article, in response to a question about what Arendt would have made of Donald Trump and what was happening amidst the aftershocks of his election as president of the United States:

‘I think there is a lot to be gained from people gathering together to show solidarity. But in a world where the institutions that we’re protesting in front of are losing their legitimacy and their power, I’m not sure that this has the impact that it once did. If we think of evil as this one person, this one big event, then we tend to want to match that with one big display of resistance. But actually, if evil is banal – a set of ordinary, mundane decisions day by day – then maybe we have to start living differently day by day.’

Living differently day by day. Don’t ever let anyone tell you this isn’t resistance. It’s accepted that protests are resistance, raising awareness is resistance, and even sloganised memes on Instagram seem to be resistance. But writing is another form of resistance and boy, it’s a powerful one – and I don’t mean only the writing that informs us, that shows us all the hard truths about the mistakes we’ve made, but also the writing that shows us how we might start living differently day by day.

This kind of writing is about capturing the imagination and inspiring new ways to live. It’s a resistance based on mythopoetics: on acts of mythmaking, so that we come to understand and then to challenge the cultural mythology we are living by – that mythology which is destroying us and the planet. It’s a form of resistance that works – because change always begins with individuals, and it always begins with imagination. It begins with the dawning of a different story which succeeds in capturing our imagination more effectively than the now-crumbling old, life-destroying story. One which speaks to our longing for deeper connection, for deeper meaning.

That’s my job in this ever-more-challenged and challenging world: to facilitate the development of those stories. Stories need to be nurtured, especially when they’re newborn. And that’s how I see myself and my own unique path of resistance: as a story-nurturer. It took me a long time to understand that this is my job, this is my path of resistance, and nothing is going to derail me now.

One of my elder-woman heroines is environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy. Joanna said once that a question that has driven her, and one that must always be asked in the context of what she called ‘The Great Turning’ – the process by which we might find that new story to live by – is, ‘How can I be fully present to my world – present enough to rejoice and be useful – when we as a species are destroying it?’ We might also now add, ‘when we as a species are destroying each other’. But each of us has a right to ask and to answer that question in our own way, according to our own calling. Without pressure, without judgement. Some things about ourselves only we ourselves can know.

Ours might be a quieter, less visible form of resistance, but this is the gift that writers, poets and storytellers bring to the world: when the battle is finished and the enemies are quietened but the placards are broken and the institutions that were to have saved us have burned to the ground – we are the ones who’ll bring the stories that will heal and inspire you. Who’ll help you to imagine how, stone by sharp-edged stone, they might be built again from new, more functional foundations. Who’ll remind you of the old stories, which long ago reminded us that it was necessary to live in balance and harmony with the world around us, to treat each other with compassion, and to long for community, not individual glory. We are the tenders of timeless wisdom, the incubators and nurturers of stories, the apprentices of lost knowledge. When the ravens gather, we might just know what they are trying to tell us. It’s what we do; it’s who we are. Because we carry the resistance forward in our hearts, as well as in our hands and our feet.

Sharon

* If you’d like to read an extract from The Enchanted Life, please head over to Jung and the World, here

What’s new at The Art of Enchantment

If you are low-wage or no-wage and are genuinely unable to afford a paid subscription, please email us at sharon@sharonblackie.org.

I’m delighted to say that ‘The Art of Enchantment’ has been in the Top Ten Literature Substacks for a good while now and is currently at no. 8; thank you all so much for the support and enthusiasm which has made this happen.

Because of this support, I’ve been able to reduce an annual subscription to just £52 – £1 for each of the exclusive offerings you’ll receive each week (and a £20 discount on a monthly subscription). Given that I’m not much on social media any more (I retain an occasionally used Instagram account but have now left Facebook) and given that I’m not offering new online courses through my website, Substack – a place which I love, which fosters community and excellence – is the only way of being in close touch with my work right now. I really hope you’ll think that this annual community membership offers good value, but if you’re not sure, you can try it out for just £6 per month.

Paid members of the community now receive, on top of this monthly newsletter, a weekly offering from among the following:

Monthly Fairy Tale Salons, in which you can join me in a live Zoom session to talk about these beautiful old stories in greater depth. In the last couple of sessions, we’ve been focusing on little-known stories of midlife, menopause and elderhood; this will always be a preoccupation of mine, but we’ll be working with other fairy tales too. In the next session, I plan to return to an old favourite of mine: ‘The Wild Swans’. Like so many fairy tales, the wisdom it carries seems to shapeshift and deepen as I grow older. How could it not, when it’s scattered with swan feathers and wild nettles, shapeshifters, the archetypal wise old woman in the woods, and a young woman who has her voice taken from her. As always, although we’ll focus on this story, we’ll look at similar stories in the European canon, too.

‘On the couch’, a new monthly ‘advice column’ in which I offer a detailed answer to one of your questions about an aspect of living the enchanted life that you’d like help with.

Long-form articles and opinion pieces in my specialist areas.

An exclusive occasional podcast in which I’m in conversation with a guest – predominantly writers – on one of the subjects I’m passionate about. (Previous guests have included Sophie Anderson, Angela Slatter, Matilda Leyser, Louisa Thomson Brits; you can also find here the archive of my Hagitude Sessions podcast, including conversations with Katherine May, Tanya Shadrick, Peggy Orenstein and many more.)

‘Drops of enchantment’: prompts to encourage you to reflect on the enchanted life.

‘Mythopoetic moments’: another new regular offering for those who are interested in some of the ideas behind my work, including mythology, archetypal psychology and the mythic imagination.

Chat: an ability to engage with me informally in the ‘Chat’ section of Substack and to begin your own (relevant) threads there and enjoy the conversation with the rest of the community.

Event: The Oxford Literary Festival, March 20

I’ll be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on Wednesday March 20 at 2pm, talking about reimagining the second half of life. It’s a brilliant, busy festival and I’d love to see you there; book your tickets at this link.

Greening the Self, London, April 20

I’m delighted to be speaking at this one-day Jungian conference in London on Saturday April 20, organised by Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of Warwick. Places are limited, so if you’d like to come, do book now. Here’s the description:

Join us for a transformative and thought-provoking day of ideas surrounding our relationship with nature and to consider how we might navigate growth through turbulent times; exploring perspectives on mental health, personal development and individual responsibility to help us deepen our connections with the natural environment in the face of climate change.

Further information and booking details can be found at:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/greening-the-self-a-conference-jungian-and-other-perspectives-registration-793186681717?aff=oddtdtcreator

Mind Body Spirit Festival, London Olympia, May 27, 12.30–14.00

It seems like a thousand years since I last did an event in London, so I’d love to see you at this Bank Holiday Monday workshop around reclaiming the second half of life. You’ll also have the chance to come and find me at the Hay House exhibition stand after the workshop, signing The Rooted Woman Oracle Deck. Sign up here.

Online fairy tale psychology training program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, May – December 2024

A reminder about this program, which is open to all and is due to begin in May; it’s the only teaching program/ online course I’ll be offering for the rest of this year. Pacifica Graduate Institute (California) is the world’s preeminent academic institute for psychological and mythological studies within in the framework of depth psychology. This Graduate Certificate program is called ‘Finding ourselves in fairy tales: a narrative psychological approach’.

This program will be based on the unique practice I founded two decades ago, when I was teaching clinical psychologists and other mental health professionals how to work with techniques from myths and fairy tales – creative imagination work, personal mythmaking and much more – in a therapeutic setting. It’ll be brought up to date with all my work on myth, folklore and archetypes in the intervening years. It will be suitable for anyone who would like to bring narrative techniques into their therapy practice (for adults and children) and it will offer 8 hours of Continuing Education Credits.

But it will also be open to and useful for anyone who would like to work with these techniques for personal development. Those of you who loved my self-study ‘Finding Ourselves in Fairy Tales’ program will find this offers a much deeper dive into some of the areas we worked through, along with much more that’s quite new.

I’m very excited about this program! Please find the full outline, and registration information, at this link. If you have any content questions, please ask them below; for all other questions – format, registration, CECs etc – please contact Pacifica using the email address at the link.

Reading recommendations

A few months ago now I shared a brilliant poem, ‘A Hymn to All Restless Girls’, which had been published in the Irish Times, by Annemarie Ní Churreáin, a poet from the Donegal Gaeltacht. I first heard Annemarie read her work around a decade ago now, when I was living in Donegal, and was delighted when she sent me a copy of her recent limited edition poetry pamphlet, Ghostgirl, where that poem comes from. It’s dedicated to the women and children of Stranorlar Workhouse and County Home, also known as Stranorlar Mother and Baby Home. Find out more about Annemarie’s poetry here. Her collection Bloodroot, about the lived experiences of women, is especially recommended.

As spring thinks about arriving and my attention turns to the garden, I finally got around to reading a book I’ve had in my reading pile for far too long now: Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival, by

Alice Vincent

. I think that those of you who loved If Women Rose Rooted will enjoy this very different but very lovely book. As a grower now for more than two decades, I thoroughly recommend it. As she says:

Women grow because it makes something of nothing, because they see that broader changes can come from those they make in the small patch beneath their feet. Women grow because they are heavy with sadness, or solitude, or grief. Women grow because it is in their bones. ... Women grow to pass on power, to honour the knowledge their foremothers have gathered for centuries.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

Women have always gardened, but our stories have been buried with our work. Alice Vincent is on a quest to change that. To understand what encourages women to go out, work the soil, plant seeds and nurture them, even when so many other responsibilities sit upon their shoulders. To recover the histories that have been lost among the soil. Why Women Grow is a much-needed exploration of why women turn to the earth, as gardeners, growers and custodians. This book emerged from a deeply rooted desire to share the stories of women who are silenced and overlooked. In doing so, Alice fosters connections with gardeners that unfurl into a tender exploration of women's lives, their gardens and what the ground has offered them, with conversations spanning creation and loss, celebration and grief, power, protest, identity and renaissance. Wise, curious and sensitive, Why Women Grow follows Alice in her search for answers, with inquisitive fronds reaching and curling around the intimate anecdotes of others.