Latest / Mooney's Mythic Podcast / Mistletoe, turtle theory and Terry Pratchett

Transcript

Mistletoe, turtle theory and Terry Pratchett · Mooney's Mythic Podcast

0:07
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Mooney's Mythic Podcast.
0:12
SPEAKER_01: Mooney's Mythic Podcast.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Sponsored by Toadstools.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Sponsored by Flyer Garrick.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: Sponsored by Amanita.
0:25
SPEAKER_01: Oh yes, thank you.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Thank you,
0:28
SPEAKER_01: thank you to those gorgeous,
0:31
SPEAKER_01: red,
0:32
spotty mushrooms that spurt out from the ground and say winter
0:39
and say fairy tale
0:41
SPEAKER_01: and say look at me.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, more about those later.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Hi, hello guys.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: Hi.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm just going to put another log on the fire.
0:52
SPEAKER_01: Um...
0:59
to it's nice to be toasty by the fire and this is coming out it
1:07
was Boxing Day
1:08
yesterday so I'm wondering how all your different kinds of
1:15
Christmases were how
1:16
your different kinds of hunkering down and celebrating were and
1:23
I started my
1:27
celebrations on the solstice that was really when I gathered
1:31
with my people on the
1:33
solstice starting at the um at the chalice well which was
1:40
gorgeous to be at the
1:41
SPEAKER_01: chalice well and and singing there and
1:45
SPEAKER_01: And feeling,
1:46
SPEAKER_01: really feeling the chalice of the well and the sword,
1:52
SPEAKER_01: the,
1:53
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:53
SPEAKER_01: the tour,
1:55
SPEAKER_01: the balance,
1:56
the yin-yang of the chalice and the tour there and remembering
2:01
how sacred it is.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Or feeling,
2:03
SPEAKER_01: just somehow feeling deep in my body,
2:05
SPEAKER_01: looking at yew trees and thinking,
2:07
SPEAKER_01: wow,
2:07
SPEAKER_01: they're thousands of years old.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: People have pilgrimed here for thousands of years.
2:14
SPEAKER_01: This place is so sacred and so special.
2:18
SPEAKER_01: And I spent a winter, a Christmas at the Chalice Well.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: Before I had my son,
2:24
SPEAKER_01: my last winter,
2:26
SPEAKER_01: I must have known it,
2:27
SPEAKER_01: deep in my bones somewhere,
2:29
SPEAKER_01: I spent two nights there,
2:31
SPEAKER_01: Christmas night and Boxing Day night,
2:34
SPEAKER_01: completely alone.
2:36
SPEAKER_01: Completely alone at night in the gardens, dreaming,
2:42
telling listening writing dancing I remember at one point being
2:50
naked in the um it
2:53
with the water just pouring all over me it's really special and
2:58
it's been the it's
2:59
where I've seeded I suppose the retreats that I run there now
3:03
that was probably
3:05
where I've kind of I had such a profound experience for myself
3:09
that I want to share
3:10
SPEAKER_01: it with other people
3:15
I'm thinking about apples because there's so many apple trees
3:19
here in Somerset that
3:20
SPEAKER_01: are absolutely laden with mistletoe.
3:26
And the mistletoe is such a sacred plant for the druids and for
3:33
many because it
3:34
SPEAKER_01: doesn't touch the ground.
3:36
I mean I think mistletoe translates roughly to um branch spit
3:43
or something like
3:43
that so you know I don't want to be too magical about it but
3:47
but it never touches
3:47
the ground and and I was thinking when I was at the chalice
3:51
well it would be great
3:52
to make a tincture that never touched the ground so to pick the
3:56
mistletoe and then
3:57
SPEAKER_01: to um
4:00
suspend it in a bottle and pour something over it to make a
4:04
tincture so that it's
4:05
SPEAKER_01: always still in the air.
4:08
And I know that it's used as a cancer treatment and treatments
4:11
for a whole lot of other things.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: So people are starting to take the mistletoe seriously.
4:17
SPEAKER_01: I spent Christmas by myself.
4:26
Maybe that's why I've got this enormous grin on my face now to
4:30
be talking to you,
4:32
SPEAKER_01: to be just reaching out from all different places in my heart,
4:36
SPEAKER_01: body and soul to you all.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I spent the morning I went to Bridesmound and I sobbed.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my God.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: I wept and I wept and I wept and I wept.
4:50
And it felt righteous to be out on the land and just emptying,
4:55
emptying,
4:55
emptying.
4:58
Then my son scooped up and opened all his presents and then
5:03
went off to his girlfriend's house.
5:07
SPEAKER_01: And the peace that is available on Christmas Day surrounded me.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: It felt infinite and deep and totally right.
5:31
And I know that more people are spending their time alone over
5:36
Christmas time.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was a kind of example of isolation and disconnection.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: But wow, I really enjoyed being alone on Christmas Day.
5:55
SPEAKER_01: I made a wreath of flowers,
5:57
SPEAKER_01: like a little garland,
5:59
to take to Bride's Mound to say thank you to the earth and
6:03
thank you to the spirits,
6:06
SPEAKER_01: to all the unseen people.
6:09
To the angels and the archangels and the goddesses and the gods
6:13
and the gnomes and
6:14
SPEAKER_01: the sprites and the wisps and the mystery,
6:19
SPEAKER_01: really.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: The great, great mystery of it all.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
6:25
Thank you for coming into my life,
6:26
coming into my stories,
6:29
coming in and playing.
6:31
SPEAKER_01: And that's the great thing about being a storyteller.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: It's like I'm creating a landscape.
6:37
for all this kind of um mysterious playful mystical occult to
6:43
come in and maybe be
6:46
a bit more seen have a bit more color added to them and i
6:52
really felt that when i
6:54
was doing the snow queen when i was telling the snow queen it's
6:59
such a massive
7:00
SPEAKER_01: story the um
7:02
the group of story winterers who I'm meeting once a month over
7:08
the winter and
7:09
working with kept flagging up the Snow Queen so I've been
7:14
learning it and told it
7:16
SPEAKER_01: at the goddess house with the sublime Sarah Curtis.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: She played the harp and she played the piano and she sang
7:27
And the story's split into seven parts,
7:29
so it's easy to have songs there and in other places.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: And I really needed them for myself.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: The place where Sarah's music took me to this utterly icicle,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: frost-filled landscape was extraordinary.
7:51
And I know it was the same for the audience,
7:53
because when we had the interval,
7:55
nobody got up.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: It was like we were inside a snow dome altogether.
8:06
So that was so precious that we've decided to do it again in
8:08
the daytime because
8:10
it's a reflection that we've had that some people that love
8:16
stories don't like
8:17
SPEAKER_01: going out late at night.
8:19
So we're going to do it on the 3rd of January at a place called
8:22
The White Rabbit in Glastonbury.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: I think we've got a show at half one and a show at three.
8:28
So if you know anyone around who wants to come for some real
8:32
midwinter magic,
8:34
come.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: And obviously it's a good one for kids to come to as well.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: So that's going on.
8:43
And what I did with my day was to read a kind of guilty
8:49
pleasure that I've got
8:50
SPEAKER_01: beside my bed that I bought a big stack of Terry Pratchett books.
8:56
SPEAKER_01: Now,
8:56
SPEAKER_01: Terry Pratchett,
8:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm very late to the party with because the boys,
9:03
SPEAKER_01: the nerdy boys in my class,
9:06
SPEAKER_01: in my school,
9:07
SPEAKER_01: were really into Terry Pratchett.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: And I just found them odious, completely odious.
9:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean, to be fair, they were really not into girls either.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: They made that very clear.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: And they were always sniggering and quoting Terry Pratchett.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: And I did have a read of,
9:26
SPEAKER_01: I remember looking at this and I'm reading,
9:29
SPEAKER_01: this one is Witches Abroad.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: And it says,
9:33
SPEAKER_01: this is Discworld,
9:35
SPEAKER_01: which travels through space on the back of four elephants,
9:38
SPEAKER_01: which themselves stand on the shell of Great Atuin,
9:41
SPEAKER_01: the Sky Turtle.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was just everything I hated about those boys.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: It was just utter ridiculousness, stupidity, hated it.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: And even when I was telling Hindu stories, which were incredible,
9:55
marvelous for kind of bringing in cosmic magic you know if you
10:01
if you tell those
10:02
amazing stories about um vishnu the the i could feel the cosmos
10:08
kind of moving
10:09
around me and in those stories the mythologies uh i think that
10:13
there's turtles
10:15
there's elephants at each direction and the there's many
10:19
mythologies where the
10:21
SPEAKER_01: earth is represented as a turtle and
10:24
SPEAKER_01: And even though I could see the roots many years later of these images,
10:30
SPEAKER_01: I never was that interested in reading any Terry Pratchett.
10:37
SPEAKER_01: If only I'd known.
10:40
If only I had known that the Discworld stories begin with a
10:46
girl who's supposed to
10:48
be a wizard but isn't allowed to be a wizard and it's her
10:52
journey to claim her
10:53
SPEAKER_01: magical power
10:54
SPEAKER_01: And the person who supports her is a witch, Granny Weatherwax.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: A wonderful witch.
11:01
If only I'd known there were so many female,
11:04
positive,
11:05
magical characters in these books.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: I think my life would have been very different.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: But I'm here now.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: I've bought them 20p each.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: I've bought a stack.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: I think I've got a dozen.
11:19
of them and I lay um on the famous podcast sofa and um read
11:28
Terry Pratchett um I
11:30
think The Colour of Magic was the first one I read and I only
11:34
stopped to eat or um
11:37
have a quick foot spa at one point and of course um at nine
11:42
o'clock I stopped to um
11:47
SPEAKER_01: to receive the magnificent final episode of Gavin and Stacey,
11:54
SPEAKER_01: which I thought was supreme,
11:56
SPEAKER_01: absolutely supreme.
11:57
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that, guys.
12:01
So I want to read this to you about a little bit about stories
12:06
that I read in this
12:08
SPEAKER_01: Terry Pratchett book.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: This one is Witches Abroad.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm only a few pages in.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: I thought, oh, I can't dive straight into another one, but here I am.
12:19
And I've been thinking about the moment when I was telling the
12:25
Snow Queen.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm telling the Snow Queen and there's a moment where Gerda,
12:30
SPEAKER_01: who's the young girl in it,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: she wants to offer something to the spirits.
12:36
SPEAKER_01: She wants to offer something special.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: She wants to trade something.
12:39
SPEAKER_01: The thing she's got to trade is a pair of red shoes.
12:43
And of course,
12:43
whenever I say red shoes,
12:45
I think about the story of the red shoes.
12:48
It's like that story,
12:49
like a kind of sad violin sound comes echoing in to this story.
12:57
And that happens to me a lot these days where a story tells a
13:03
story about a story
13:04
that reminds me of a story that resonates with a story that's
13:07
an echo of a story.
13:09
You know,
13:09
I've been storytelling for 25 years and they're all in there somewhere.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking about that,
13:17
SPEAKER_01: thinking about Christmas Day and about eating and about,
13:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
13:21
people saying they've got a dessert stomach and and how that's
13:26
certainly true for
13:27
SPEAKER_01: me and how that is actually a thing,
13:30
SPEAKER_01: you know.
13:31
Like when you back in the day when you got hunting and you
13:34
would get like a like
13:36
kill a deer or something and it and it would take maybe it took
13:39
2000 calories to to
13:41
SPEAKER_01: kill that deer.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Then you need to eat 2000 calories to get that back.
13:46
But then you're feeling quite full,
13:47
but you don't know when you're going to eat again.
13:50
So you're looking for something that's high in fat and high in
13:54
sugar that you can
13:55
SPEAKER_01: store on your body so that you can feed off of it later.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And that is the definition of a pudding.
14:03
So when I think about pudding now,
14:07
I think,
14:09
do I really want to store it on my body?
14:11
SPEAKER_01: I think I've got a
14:13
SPEAKER_01: A Christmas pudding and a few gatos,
14:15
a couple of chocolate eclairs and a jam donut already neatly
14:19
tucked away about my person.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: So that's just what I've been thinking about.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: Where was I?
14:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I was going to read this to you.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: But before I do read this,
14:31
I'll tell you the other thing that I found charming of late
14:37
about Terry Pratchett,
14:38
SPEAKER_01: about this Discworld thing,
14:39
SPEAKER_01: about the whole four elephants,
14:41
SPEAKER_01: about the turtle.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: He's basically saying normal rules don't apply.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: Things are different here.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: And it's just the same as platform nine and three quarters.
14:55
SPEAKER_01: It's just the same as going through the back of the wardrobe.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: It's just the same as going through the looking glass.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: And we all want to switch from the mundane into the magical.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: And it's a quick switch.
15:19
SPEAKER_01: the girl who navigated fairyland in a boat of her own making.
15:23
SPEAKER_01: She's just doing the washing up and a wind blows.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: I think the wind is there.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: He's dressed in green, I seem to remember, very dapper.
15:31
And the wind blows and she puts her hand out of a window and
15:35
she holds onto a stem
15:36
SPEAKER_01: of ragwort and off she's into fairy world.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing that does that very nicely is once upon a time.
15:46
SPEAKER_01: Can you feel the switch?
15:48
SPEAKER_01: Once upon a time.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like the word version of this.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:05
SPEAKER_01: You feel yourself settling,
16:10
SPEAKER_01: softening,
16:11
SPEAKER_01: opening into a place where magic is possible,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: where you can
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Receive, dispel your disbelief and receive.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: So in this part of the story,
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Terry's talking about Discworld,
16:32
SPEAKER_01: which is this place which is on top of the turtle,
16:36
SPEAKER_01: on top of the elephants.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: He says that it's very close to the edge of reality.
16:47
SPEAKER_01: And that the least little things can break through to the other side.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: So on Discworld, people take things seriously.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe that's what's so magical about Glastonbury.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: That somehow it's so very close to a different reality.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: That has to be honoured and anchored.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, let me carry on reading.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Like stories.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: Because stories are important.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: People think that stories are shaped by people.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: In fact, it's the other way around.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Stories exist independently of their players.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: If you know that, the knowledge is power.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: Stories,
17:36
SPEAKER_01: great flapping ribbons of shaped space-time,
17:39
have been blowing and uncoiling around the universe since the
17:42
beginning of time and
17:43
SPEAKER_01: they have evolved.
17:45
The weakest have died and the strongest have survived and
17:48
they've grown fat on the retelling.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Stories twisting and blowing through the darkness.
17:54
In their very existence overlays a faint but insistent pattern
17:58
on the chaos that is history.
18:00
Stories etch grooves deep enough for people to follow in the
18:03
same way that water
18:05
SPEAKER_01: follows certain paths down a mountainside.
18:08
And every time fresh actors tread the path of the story,
18:12
the groove runs deeper.
18:15
This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means
18:19
that a story once
18:21
SPEAKER_01: started takes a shape.
18:23
It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of
18:26
that story that I've ever been.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm really starting to feel that when I tell stories.
18:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm really starting to feel all the stories that I have ever told.
18:39
resonate like like they're still in me and they're just
18:41
beginning to like come
18:43
alive when they hear once upon a time or when they feel me go
18:49
into my story state.
18:54
And Terry carries on to say,
18:57
this is why history keeps on repeating all the time.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: So a thousand heroes have stolen fire from the gods.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: A thousand wolves have eaten grandmother.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: A thousand princesses have been kissed.
19:08
A million unknowing actors have moved unknowing through the
19:11
pathways of story.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Now I got a bit
19:16
cross when I read this a kind of tension built up inside me
19:21
because these stories
19:23
our stories have been hijacked you know Little Red Riding Hood
19:27
if you go back to
19:27
the first episode of this podcast when I talk about Little Red
19:31
Riding Hood it's
19:34
been stolen it's a story about blooming about danger about
19:39
wildness about juiciness
19:42
SPEAKER_01: and it's been
19:44
SPEAKER_01: hijacked to make children,
19:47
SPEAKER_01: girls,
19:48
SPEAKER_01: frightened of going out into the woods,
19:50
SPEAKER_01: of being frightened of wildness,
19:51
SPEAKER_01: of staying away from it.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: You know,
19:53
SPEAKER_01: and it's our job to really tell these stories so that they can unfold,
20:00
SPEAKER_01: take them out of the books,
20:02
take them out of the people that want to oppress us away from
20:05
them and tell them so
20:07
SPEAKER_01: they can.
20:08
SPEAKER_01: Can you feel it?
20:08
Can you feel the way I'm speaking as we can unpack so that we
20:11
can be fuller and
20:12
fuller and fuller and really bloom in this beautiful world that
20:18
we live in?
20:19
SPEAKER_01: Not be frightful.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: And fearful.
20:21
And yes,
20:22
there's things that we need to learn and things that we need to
20:24
be aware of.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: And there are other stories that can tell us that in a really good way.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Carrying on.
20:34
with Terry now it's now impossible for the third and youngest
20:39
son of any king if he
20:41
should embark on a quest which has so far claimed his older
20:44
brothers not to succeed
20:46
because there are so many stories where the older one says I'm
20:48
the oldest I'll try
20:49
it I'll go and then he gets kind of distracted upon his way and
20:52
then the middle one
20:53
says I'm the um you know the second one I'll go and gets
20:56
distracted and then the
20:57
SPEAKER_01: third one or daughter um manages to do it
21:05
So let us think when we embark on any endeavour that we're the
21:09
youngest son.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm the youngest son, so of course I can do it, whether we are or not.
21:16
And I think it speaks to something as well about going back to
21:21
the innocence and
21:24
SPEAKER_01: allowing innocence to lead the way.
21:26
Going back to the purity of innocence and allowing that place
21:30
to lead the way.
21:36
It takes a special kind of person to fight back and become the
21:41
bicarbonate of history.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what bicarbonate means.
21:45
SPEAKER_01: I meant to look it up.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: Let's see if I can dream into what it means.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: Part, particle, particle of history.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, let us be those special kinds of people that are
22:06
fighting for our lives let's fight for our lives let's just
22:09
really bring all our
22:11
energy forth for our own selves and our own lives and and to be
22:18
in love with
22:21
ourselves and in love with life that's where i'm at right now
22:28
in a very beautiful
22:31
SPEAKER_01: open magical space
22:42
It's a lullaby that we sing in the choir and it's Alanita,
22:55
but I always sing it in my head.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: because Amanita,
23:03
SPEAKER_01: Amanita muscaria is the name for the toadstool,
23:12
SPEAKER_01: which fairy tale lovers would call it,
23:15
SPEAKER_01: the red and white polka dotted mushroom.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: Now I spent a winter gathering these.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: I think they're very special, wonderful things.
23:32
and I wanted to explore the medicine of them because they pop
23:36
up in so many fairy tales.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: Most famously the
23:44
SPEAKER_01: the creature.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: It's a caterpillar.
23:48
I'm making that noise because he's sucking on a hooker on top
23:53
of the toadstool in
23:55
SPEAKER_01: Alice in Wonderland.
23:58
And she eats a bit from here and a bit from there and she gets
24:03
larger and smaller.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: And I found out that
24:07
it's not evenly spread the medicine that is in the toads like
24:12
you could have a very
24:14
small fly goat you can't eat them you have to do a lot of
24:18
preparation before you
24:19
eat them I'm not advocating eating them I'm just saying I found
24:21
out in this story
24:23
that is true that you could have a bite from one side of it and
24:27
it could be very
24:28
very strong and a bite from the other side of it and it could
24:30
be it's not very
24:32
SPEAKER_01: strong and that features in the book of Alice in Wonderland
24:36
SPEAKER_01: So I wanted to get to know this mushroom.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: And it's completely, I'm not sure, I think illegal to take it.
24:47
So I'm going to tell you a story about a journey with this
24:52
mushroom that's completely not true.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: And that's just the way it goes.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: So once upon a time,
25:01
SPEAKER_01: there was a woman,
25:02
SPEAKER_01: a storyteller,
25:03
SPEAKER_01: who wanted to get to know the red and white mushrooms.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: She longed to see them.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: She longed to stumble upon them.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: And it was years before she did,
25:15
in a woodland full of what she could only ever describe as
25:20
Christmas trees.
25:23
SPEAKER_01: And if they weren't such bright red little friends,
25:28
SPEAKER_01: she would not have seen them because she was busy looking up,
25:33
SPEAKER_01: up,
25:33
SPEAKER_01: up at the vastness of the fir trees all around her.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: But they would not be ignored.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: They were flame red.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: They were lip red.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: They were bright, bright red.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: And they startled her when she saw them at first.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: Beautiful they were.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful they were.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: Magical they were.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: And she learnt.
26:03
to pick them when they were ready and to rest them in the
26:07
branches of the Christmas
26:09
SPEAKER_01: tree so that they could dry.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: And when she looked at them,
26:15
SPEAKER_01: resting in the branches of that Christmas tree,
26:19
SPEAKER_01: little gifts under the tree,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: little garlands drying on the tree,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: she felt certain that she'd been tricked somehow,
26:29
SPEAKER_01: that the origins of Christmas must have come from here.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: But it's never mentioned.
26:34
But the toadstalls,
26:35
they do find their way on all the Christmas cards and all the ornaments.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: But it's never mentioned.
26:45
And so when she'd finished her gathering for the day and she
26:49
took them off of the
26:50
tree and put them in her basket and took them home and
26:53
threadled them with a needle
26:55
SPEAKER_01: and hung them like a garland over the fire to dry.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: she saw another Christmas tradition.
27:06
And long ago she remembered that she'd been told that the way
27:15
that some people take
27:18
SPEAKER_01: this medicine,
27:19
SPEAKER_01: because it's poisonous and it can make you very,
27:21
SPEAKER_01: very unwell,
27:22
SPEAKER_01: is to feed it to the reindeers in those snowy lands
27:31
And so the reindeer would eat the fly agaric and the people
27:36
would catch the urine
27:39
SPEAKER_01: and they would drink the urine that had been processed through the deer.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: Thank you dear, thank you sacred dear for all the work that you do.
27:49
And then they would fly with the red and white mushroom and
27:54
with the deer they would fly.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: And they told us that those images were advertising.
28:04
And it didn't feel right.
28:06
And then deep in our bodies,
28:08
we knew,
28:09
we knew,
28:09
we knew all along there was something to it.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: The red and white, the ho, ho, ho, the reindeers flying through the air.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: And it's one of those
28:31
SPEAKER_01: that can be a hard pill to swallow,
28:32
SPEAKER_01: that can really show you the places you don't want to look at,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: the places that you've tucked away.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: But do you know if us adults,
28:46
SPEAKER_01: if we can do that work,
28:49
SPEAKER_01: if we can really clear and clear and clear ourselves deep on the inside,
28:56
SPEAKER_01: What a gift we're giving our children.
29:01
SPEAKER_01: What beautiful gifts we're giving our children.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: The end.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: That's my little story for you today.
29:17
If you are free to come on the 3rd of January and you just want
29:23
to absorb and be in
29:28
SPEAKER_01: the magic of Avalon,
29:29
then do come to Glastonbury at either half one or three o'clock
29:33
and see the Snow Queen.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'll record some of it and play it on the pod.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: Maybe not.
29:41
I did intend to last time,
29:42
but to be honest,
29:43
I forgot to turn the recorder on.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: And I'm running this retreat at the Chalice Well at the end of February,
29:54
SPEAKER_01: beginning of March for three nights.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: So if that speaks to you,
29:59
SPEAKER_01: to be in the magic of the Chalice Well,
30:04
SPEAKER_01: working through story,
30:06
SPEAKER_01: we're doing initiations,
30:08
SPEAKER_01: rites of passage,
30:08
SPEAKER_01: that kind of thing.
30:10
thing um i'll on my sub stack i will uh put a post out so that
30:16
you can find out a
30:18
little bit more but just put that into your dreaming pot for
30:21
now because we're so
30:22
close to christmas um you know uh there's this dreaming we're
30:27
just dreaming aren't
30:28
we we're just dreaming and i really hope you're resting and i
30:32
really hope you're
30:32
SPEAKER_01: dreaming
30:34
And I hope somehow this podcast is a balm for you,
30:39
a way marker in your dreaming realms.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Blessings and peace.