Could You Put Romance First?
Celebrating Bealtaine with The Wooing of Etain
“First, romance is dismissed, then it's ridiculed, and then it's pathologized or straight out attacked.”
Our latest KnotWork Myth & Storytelling episode features
’s story of the Irish goddess Etain.This tale of magic and shapeshifting is a reclamation of romance in the fullest, most sensual, most life-affirming sense of the word.
At its roots, “romance” refers to vernacular languages or the everyday speech of the people, which was distinct from the Latin of the church. In the Middle Ages, this was the language of the troubadour and chivalric poetry. Over time, we’ve adopted the “knights and maidens” approach to the word and developed a love/hate relationship with the whole idea of romantic love.
But sometimes, words want to take us deeper than what might feel like shallow linguistic roots. A story like the Wooing of Etain, with its origins in the 8th century or earlier, gives us a sense of breadth and depth of all that “romance” has to offer.
What would it be like to let ourselves fall wildly, rapturously in love with life?
What if we set down both our knightly armor and our maiden’s blushes and came to romance with both receptivity and strength?
What if the entire point of being here on this earth was to love and be loved, to woo and be wooed?
Amanda came to tell this story in time for the festival of Bealtaine when the land and all her creatures celebrate the fertility and possibility of the spring.
Romance is pollination. It’s longing. Romance is what cause us to be most devoted. It invites us to become truly focused on what we love, to reunite with that love, and to stay close to that love throughout our lives.
I love the way that both Amanda’s story and the conversation that follows is one great invitation to put romance first.
We go on to talk about our oh-so-human experiences of love, and also our ongoing love affairs with the glorious more than human world.
As Amanda says, “True love is a huge threat to the patriarchy.”
Here’s to falling in love and finding a way into a more love-fueled, romance ready reality.
Want to dive deeper into this and other stories? Join us on May 4.
All paid subscribers are invited to the Myth Workers’ Salon.
The gathering will be held on Zoom at 11 AM ET.
Why join us?
We have the shared sense that mythology matters in this modern moment.
We know that there’s some sort of personal and collective healing to be found in exploring these old stories together.
Celebrate Bealtaine with other myth and story lovers from across the globe!
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