Mythology is political.
How does that feel in your belly? In your bones? In your myth-loving heart?
Does it rattle the parts of you that look to ancient stories as an escape from the noise and the news of the day?
Does it feel like a regressive statement because you, like me, have come to understand that mythology is about so much more than heroes, battles, and the origin stories of the powers that be? (Or, should I say, the powers that were.)
Maybe it feels better to leave it at “mythology is magical” and keep dreaming into the mystery.
Maybe it feels better to dwell in “mythology is metaphorical” and ask these stories to explain everything from the depth of the psyche to the breadth of the human condition.
For a while now, thanks to
and others, I have been finding expansive comfort, as well as gorgeous uncertainty, in “mythology is ecological.” When we’re so mired in the anthropocene age, we can begin to find our place in the cosmos when we see the oldest stories as maps for living in relationship with the more-than-human world.But I am coming to understand that mythology is magical, metaphorical, ecological… and still, political.
I risk contradicting myself in this piece. I have invested a great deal of energy and words describing how mythology is meant to be more than a he said/she said costume drama or a quintessentially human endeavor.
It’s my intention to hold these stories with a sort of grounded reverence that is rooted in the land, the rivers, the stars, and the Spirit, not just the plot.
And yet…
“There is always the danger of coloring mythtelling with our own inclinations about the way we want to hear the stories now.”
- Sean Kane, Wisdom of the Mythtellers
I must admit, I am almost always in that danger zone. And for me, I think that needs to be ok. I consider myself a myth worker, not a mythteller, after all. My KnotWork Storytelling project is specifically devoted to the retelling of a myth and then seeking out “all the ways it still matters.”
This week’s KnotWork Storytelling conversation got “political”
In Ireland’s Forgotten Goddess Queen-Queen-Witch (S4 Ep7), you met Mongfind. She’s best known from her “wicked stepmother” role in the story of Niall of the Nine Hostages.
With The Last Sovereignty Goddess (S4 Ep8), I imagine Mongfind’s divine origins and tell a story about power, sacred union, and the disruption of the balance between spirit, nature, and so-called civilization.
As you’ll hear, I am joined by my soul sister and three-times KnotWork Storyteller, the poet, activist, and healer Laura Murphy. It was the first time I had invited an Irish guest to discuss one of my own re-mythologized tales, and I was a bit nervous about turning the tables and daring to tell Laura a story of her own land. As it turns out, that was the easy part.
Through the conversation that follows, Laura and I explore the intersection between the divine and the human and the frailties that are at the core of this story of goddesses and kings.
We also discuss the last month’s events in Israel and Gaza.
If you follow Irish media or history, you may know that the people of Ireland feel a deep connection with the Palestinian people. If you have Irish friends, whether you’d consider them to be overtly “political” or not, their social feeds have probably been filled with Palestinian flags for the last few weeks.
Ireland is Palestine’s most staunch European supporter. A Guardian article that seeks to answer the question of “why” describes it this way:
The brief answer is Ireland’s experience of colonialism, sectarian violence and peace. Yet that short answer hides complexities. Ireland’s solidarity with Palestinian people is not a “like for like” reflex (although it is sometimes expressed simply as such, particularly in Northern Ireland), nor merely a kind of political sentimentalism. It is articulated through government policy, protest and activism, and a historically informed sense of empathy for those whose lives are curtailed by occupation and violence.
When Laura and I explored a story about sovereignty and about the balance of power in early Ireland on a podcast that exists to find the contemporary resonances of age-old stories, the current war was destined to be part of the conversation.
Laura embodies the great tradition of the Irish poets who speak to mystical as well as the political. She is an impassioned advocate for the Palestinian people, and has fully devoted both her public poetry and her activism to the cause in recent weeks. And Laura is far from alone. As I said, the vast majority of the Irish artists, healers, organizations, I follow have devoted their social media feeds to support for Palestine.
Listeners and readers from America and elsewhere are likely to be much more accustomed to hearing both the government and the media relay something close to unequivocal support of the state of Israel.
As I mentioned in a past Myth Is Medicine podcast, I was a young graduate student in Dublin in 2001 when I realized for the first time that support for the Palestinian cause was possible. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, the city’s pubs were full of political talk. Global events were viewed through a totally different lens than what I’d learned in school and through US media. I had never felt so far from home…
(NOTE: I’ve cut these next two paragraphs and pasted them back in a dozen times. I’m not sure it’s relevant to discuss my reflections on the crisis because I certainly can’t contribute anything new to the conversation on the Middle East. But, if I am editing it out over fear of saying the wrong thing, then I know I need to employ some of that courage we read about in our mythologies and include this next bit.)
Over the last month, I have been devastated by the death and suffering on both sides of the conflict. I have read too much news, and looked away, and spoken about how there is nothing to say. I have prayed for the hostages and cursed every bomb. I have mourned the increase in both anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic rhetoric and crime. I have looked to Naomi Klein (both her recent interviews and the chapter about visiting Gaza in her brilliant new book Doppleganger) and the Jewish Voices for Peace organization. I written my congressional members, asking them to sign on to Rep. Cori Bush’s Ceasefire Now Resolution. I have tried to make sense of Rashida Tlaib’s censure on the floor of the House of Representatives because, to my ears, I hear her speaking for the lives of innocent people who have been murdered, assaulted, and kidnapped on both sides of the border.1
But isn’t this story (and my “real” work) about Irish mythology?
It is. And it’s always destined to be more than that.
I do after all, take my contemporary Americanness into every story and conversation, and that will always mean the work weaves a lot more than “just” Irish myth.
For me, the Irish/US cultural divide generally feels easy enough to understand and navigate. I always seek grace and pray that I’m not stomping on nuance with my American oblivion. Right now, however, our countries have never seemed so different, and there seems too much space for misunderstanding.
What I can tell you is that my creative space—and this episode in particular—is devoted to the quest for peace. The mission is to tell stories and share opinions that achieve nuance beyond the hackneyed narratives of good and evil, “their” team and “ours.”
Though this is story is, I believe, the best I have ever told and includes one of the most important podcast conversations I have ever had, this episode is also the most challenging to release.
When you hear The Last Sovereignty Goddess, you’ll realize the vast majority of my conversation with Laura is rooted in the Irish landscape, as well as the personal and spiritual resonance of this story. Ultimately, however, this entire episode is built around the idea that a myth with deep, divine origins was co-opted and reshaped in order to suit the politics of the day.2
And so, when I say mythology is political I don’t think I am contradicting myself. I am following the sources and the scholarship. And, when I invite the conversation to expand to encompass today’s political issues–and deeply real contemporary humanitarian crises–I think I am being true to my mission as a Myth Worker and a someone dedicated to untangling the knots of existence.
I was called to mythology because I yearned for magic and for divine beings that embodied my soul stories.
I dove deeper into mythology because I found the archetypes and the themes that helped me understand my own life.
I returned to mythology because I needed an anchor in the cascade of environmental catastrophes.
And now, I realize I’ll continue working with these oh-so-relevant mythologies because they require us to keep examining questions of power, of peace, of territory, of the full spectrum of response and reaction as the these unspeakably tragic events continue to unfold.
In this moment when we tend to feel so helpless, and we’re left wondering what is our work to do, perhaps working the myths and risking the nuanced conversation is an answer.
Rep. Tlaib was criticized for the use of the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which is interpreted in radically different ways. According to NPR: “To some, it's a rallying cry for the liberation of Palestinian people across the region, from Gaza to the West Bank and within Israel. To others, it is a violent call to erase Israel from existence invoked by militant groups such as Hamas.”
Again, I credit Gearóid Ó Crualaoich’s analysis in The Book of the Cailleach: Stories of the Wise-Woman Healer in which he explores how the Mongfind the Sovereignty Goddess was suppressed as an act of “political propaganda that serves the interests of historical male succession.” (p. 47)