Latest / Mooney's Mythic Podcast / Human sacrifice and teenagers

Transcript

Human sacrifice and teenagers · Mooney's Mythic Podcast

0:02
SPEAKER_00: Mooney's Mythic Podcast, sponsored by holidays.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Holy days.
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SPEAKER_00: Holiday!
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SPEAKER_00: All the things.
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SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you went on holiday?
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SPEAKER_00: When was the last time that you took time out of the pattern,
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SPEAKER_00: of the rigour,
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SPEAKER_00: of the mundanity of ordinary life and did something special?
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SPEAKER_00: Went somewhere completely different.
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SPEAKER_00: Feasted your eyes on a different landscape.
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SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you looked out at the horizon and allowed it to feed you?
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SPEAKER_00: Gazed up at the stars.
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SPEAKER_00: Sat long enough for your breath to deepen.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Mooney's Mythic Podcast.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Sponsored by holidays, holy days, sacred days.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you put everything down and just went out there to give
1:06
SPEAKER_00: thanks for this life that we have,
1:08
SPEAKER_00: for this moment?
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Gazed at a wet leaf.
1:17
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've really missed you.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh my, my.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: I've missed you so much.
1:23
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for being here.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just breathing in this moment of being
1:33
SPEAKER_00: back in touch with you feeling my consciousness drifting I was going to say
1:41
SPEAKER_00: dribbling it might dribbling might be more to the point dribbling out to yeah to
1:50
SPEAKER_00: access the place of my curiosity and wonder about where you all are and what you're
1:54
SPEAKER_00: doing and how this podcast finds you and um
2:01
SPEAKER_00: It's wet but the skies are blue every now and again and I hope that you're allowing
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SPEAKER_00: the blue of the sky to lift you and I hope that you're feeling the wet as moist and
2:15
SPEAKER_00: not damp because they're kind of the same thing but really different.
2:22
SPEAKER_00: Thank you to the person who put some money in my PayPal account.
2:28
SPEAKER_00: What a gift.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: Like sometimes,
2:30
SPEAKER_00: you know,
2:31
SPEAKER_00: just me and my microphone,
2:32
SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling like in a very isolated place,
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SPEAKER_00: trusting that this podcast touches people,
2:42
SPEAKER_00: knowing that it's my life's pathway.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and so someone gave me some money and said how much they were nourished by the podcast.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: So I'm really, really grateful for that.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: And don't feel like you have to do that.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: But if you want to support this pod in any way,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: you know that you can like it,
3:06
SPEAKER_00: subscribe,
3:06
SPEAKER_00: tell a friend about it,
3:09
SPEAKER_00: share it on social media,
3:11
SPEAKER_00: something like that.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Anything to help me get it out there would be so appreciated.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: But for now, right now, it's just me and you.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Just me and you.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: And I'm recording this in the long room in Wales,
3:30
SPEAKER_00: which is in a centre called the Pencoit Centre,
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SPEAKER_00: where we ran the retreat six weeks ago.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: So I'm here by myself,
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SPEAKER_00: but I'm also in the memory of the work that we did in this room,
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SPEAKER_00: the dreaming and the celebrating and the magic that was created in this room,
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SPEAKER_00: kind of echoing and ghosting around me,
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SPEAKER_00: and that feels really good.
3:58
SPEAKER_00: Here I am, not even starting on what I wanted to talk about.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: So this is a scrapbook pod.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to share with you my dreaming into a story that I'm going to tell next week.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: But I just thought it would be useful to share my working out.
4:16
SPEAKER_00: So for those of you who don't like the ambling about and around and underneath and through a story,
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Just turn this off right now and wait till next week and I'll tell a story.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: But this dreaming of this story began when I decided to go to Greece.
4:42
SPEAKER_00: And I thought, I'm going to take a myth with me to work on.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take a myth with me and I'm going to walk that myth in Greece,
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SPEAKER_00: in Athens,
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SPEAKER_00: in Aegina and see how it unfolds.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: And the myth that I chose or that chose me, that's how it works.
5:03
SPEAKER_00: It's possibly ill-advised or unconscious.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: movement was the story of the Minotaur.
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SPEAKER_00: So I know I just said I wasn't going to tell you a story,
5:18
SPEAKER_00: but I'm going to tell you the basic narrative of the story of the Minotaur,
5:23
SPEAKER_00: just in case you don't know it.
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SPEAKER_00: So Pasiphaea is the mother of the Minotaur.
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SPEAKER_00: Now she's married to Apollo, I think, and Helios,
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SPEAKER_00: I know she's the daughter of Helios.
5:47
SPEAKER_00: And her husband, whose name I can't remember right now, her husband has this bull.
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SPEAKER_00: And now he's supposed to sacrifice this bull to Poseidon.
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SPEAKER_00: Now Greece is full of water, so many islands, so much water ruled by water.
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SPEAKER_00: And he's supposed to sacrifice this bull, which he's a bit proud of, a bit in love with.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know, maybe it's got real shiny horns.
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's got kind of red hot steam coming out of its nose.
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SPEAKER_00: Maybe its muscles and its physique are just so,
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SPEAKER_00: who knows what's so gracious and wonderful about this bull that...
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SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to sacrifice.
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SPEAKER_00: He's supposed to sacrifice his best bull.
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SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't.
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SPEAKER_00: He decides to keep this bull for himself and sacrifices his second best bull instead.
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SPEAKER_00: And so the story goes.
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SPEAKER_00: Can't trick a god.
6:47
SPEAKER_00: So the god knows,
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SPEAKER_00: and in order to punish him,
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SPEAKER_00: he says,
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SPEAKER_00: you like this bull so much,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm going to enchant your wife to fall in love with it.
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SPEAKER_00: So Pasiphaea
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SPEAKER_00: falls in love with a bull.
7:03
SPEAKER_00: And she really wants it.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: She wants it so badly,
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SPEAKER_00: the story goes,
7:08
SPEAKER_00: our version of the story goes,
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SPEAKER_00: that she gets Daedalus,
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SPEAKER_00: this great maker,
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SPEAKER_00: to make her this kind of cow shape that she can get inside of and thus enchant the
7:23
SPEAKER_00: bull and have sex with the bull.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: But before I left, I was reading Max Daschew's
7:30
SPEAKER_00: book um about greek women in greek mythography and she was saying that there are
7:37
SPEAKER_00: many reliefs where um it looks like a dance where a woman is merging into the
7:46
SPEAKER_00: energy of a bull and that this was a um a sacred act a right an initiate initiatory
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SPEAKER_00: act to um
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SPEAKER_00: to magically and imaginally draw down the energy of the bull,
8:05
SPEAKER_00: which kind of makes more sense to me than someone making this contraption of a sort
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SPEAKER_00: of fake cow.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
8:16
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I found with these Greek myths is that they work on so many levels
8:20
SPEAKER_00: and so many different ways.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: It can be... I felt myself quite lost in them, in the depth of them at times.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: But they are really,
8:33
SPEAKER_00: really,
8:34
SPEAKER_00: really deep and they're really profound and there's so many layers and there's so
8:39
SPEAKER_00: much of myself that I've been able to explore and access through
8:44
SPEAKER_00: in them that it feels a shame to um tell them as these kind of trite stories these
8:53
SPEAKER_00: children's stories and not work with them in a deeper way because i think they're
8:57
SPEAKER_00: working us so she has a child which is the minotaur and maybe it must be king minos
9:05
SPEAKER_00: is her husband
9:07
SPEAKER_00: And he's really ashamed that she's given birth to this beast.
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SPEAKER_00: And because he represents all that he tried to hide,
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SPEAKER_00: the fact that he tricked the God,
9:21
SPEAKER_00: the fact that the God was angry with him,
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SPEAKER_00: all of this stuff,
9:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
9:25
SPEAKER_00: is embodied in the Minotaur.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and what is it?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: in a child that we have they express all that's unexpressed in us they express or
9:35
SPEAKER_00: they evoke in us all that um that we haven't met in ourselves and in life in my
9:41
SPEAKER_00: experience with having a teenage son
9:48
SPEAKER_00: So he wants to hide this thing that he can't bear to look at.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: He wants to hide this aspect of his family, of his son.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: And so he gets the same guy Daedalus to make a labyrinth and hides the Minotaur in
10:07
SPEAKER_00: the centre of the labyrinth.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: And in the centre of that labyrinth he stays.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And this is on Crete, I think.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And then humans are brought over from Athens yearly as a sacrifice.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Human sacrifice was a thing in Greek myth,
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SPEAKER_00: which I've also been thinking about around what am I willing to sacrifice to give
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SPEAKER_00: thanks to something magical?
10:49
SPEAKER_00: And also that it kind of, it's how it is.
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SPEAKER_00: If you suppress a part of yourself and you're not looking at it,
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SPEAKER_00: it just eats and eats and eats and eats life.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: So we're not looking at it and we're not even noticing that it's eating life
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SPEAKER_00: because we're not even connected to these human sacrifices.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: We're just kind of in ourselves.
11:13
SPEAKER_00: We're just holding on to our own lives.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: That's what I've been thinking about
11:22
SPEAKER_00: And so I go to Greece with this story rolling around inside me and I'm in Athens
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SPEAKER_00: and I keep losing things,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: my earrings fall off,
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SPEAKER_00: my bracelet breaks,
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SPEAKER_00: my brooch falls off and I'm like,
11:38
SPEAKER_00: oh no.
11:40
SPEAKER_00: It's the story of Persephone,
11:42
SPEAKER_00: you know,
11:42
SPEAKER_00: because in the original Persephone story,
11:46
SPEAKER_00: it's Inanna in the Sumerian myth that goes into the underworld and she loses layer
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SPEAKER_00: by layer by layer until she's just hung dead on a hook on the back of the door of
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SPEAKER_00: the underworld.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was just like, I just really wanted a holiday.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted a holiday.
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SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to strip back every layer until I'm dead.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: But I did bring my son with me who, yeah, doesn't want to spend any time with his mum at all.
12:21
SPEAKER_00: And so it was kind of like I brought the mind at all with me or I had to face some things.
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SPEAKER_00: And I thought that probably in the centre of my labyrinth was shame.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Well,
12:35
SPEAKER_00: in the centre of labyrinth is shame,
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SPEAKER_00: because it's shame that kind of stops us from looking at ourselves,
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SPEAKER_00: kind of really,
12:46
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: that I want to hide from my shame.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: So I thought that might be what's in the middle of my labyrinth.
12:54
SPEAKER_00: And so all my stuff started cascading off here and there.
12:57
SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, no, no, this is not going to happen.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: And when I lost my shawl,
13:03
SPEAKER_00: I was like,
13:03
SPEAKER_00: I was on the island of Egana and I was like,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm going back to find it.
13:07
SPEAKER_00: And so I went around every tiny little street,
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SPEAKER_00: every little cobbled pathway around and around and around and around and around.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: there on the floor was my shawl it was black and I wrapped it around me and I was
13:19
SPEAKER_00: like protection for me this is it I'm not going into the underworld I'm having a
13:25
SPEAKER_00: holiday
13:27
SPEAKER_00: So then I saw there was a little charity shop, can't resist a charity shop.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm going to buy myself something new to mark that this is different.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm on holiday.
13:38
SPEAKER_00: And I saw this, it was kind of like harem pants.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: It was like dungarees, but it was harem pants at the bottom.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: and um and I put it on and I was like oh yeah I'm feeling kind of directional kind
13:50
SPEAKER_00: of funky this is like totally not me um but I'm looking really cool and so I popped
13:56
SPEAKER_00: it on and I went to the beach to meet Noah my son and uh and so I get there and I'm
14:02
SPEAKER_00: like hey what do you think of my new outfit and he looked at me and he said um you
14:06
SPEAKER_00: look like a minion in a nappy I don't know
14:16
SPEAKER_00: That was the sound of my ego deflating.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: So I tried to sort of, you know, brush it off.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: And then he looked at me really seriously, like, like out of like care, looked at me as if he cared.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: And he said, mom, really, I would really wouldn't wear that.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: So, um, yeah, I got changed after a while.
14:37
SPEAKER_00: I pretended I didn't care.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And then I got changed after a while.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: So we're there and we're with this story.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: And I'm still working this story in the evening when I go to this great bar, Proka.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
14:55
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being the music and the magic and the conversation that you are there.
15:02
SPEAKER_00: And I got chatting to this guy and he recommended that I listen to this story of,
15:09
SPEAKER_00: it's episodes about labyrinths on BBC Sounds,
15:13
SPEAKER_00: which I can recommend to you.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: And she talked about the labyrinth like a maze being all different dead ends and all this kind of thing.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: And the labyrinth being unilateral, meaning it's only got one way in and it's only got one way out.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: That was curious to me because Theseus,
15:38
SPEAKER_00: who at the end of the day does slay the Minotaur,
15:41
SPEAKER_00: he gets a ball of thread from Ariadne,
15:43
SPEAKER_00: who is Pasiphaea,
15:46
SPEAKER_00: the Minotaur's mum's daughter.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: So she's actually the Minotaur's sister.
15:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a bit like that in Greek myth.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: She gives him a ball of thread so that he can find his way in,
15:57
SPEAKER_00: slay the Minotaur and find his way out again.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: But if...
16:03
SPEAKER_00: The labyrinth is unilateral, meaning that there's one way in and one way out.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: That thread takes on a very different meaning for me.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about that thread anchoring him
16:26
SPEAKER_00: in the labyrinth i'm thinking about that thread you know like when you pull on a
16:32
SPEAKER_00: rope when you pull yourself out like giving him the strength to get back out again
16:38
SPEAKER_00: and i'm hoping that um my friend um anna davies is she's a homeopath and i'm hoping
16:46
SPEAKER_00: she's a bit shy but i'm hoping that next week she will come on the pod and she will
16:51
SPEAKER_00: talk about different
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And remedies,
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SPEAKER_00: different homeopathic remedies,
16:56
SPEAKER_00: spider energy remedies,
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SPEAKER_00: because I'm thinking about the thread and I'm thinking about spiders.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Ariadne,
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SPEAKER_00: I think at the end of her days,
17:07
SPEAKER_00: she had a competition with Athena and she was turned into a spider.
17:13
SPEAKER_00: She, yeah, you're so good at weaving.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: She outwove Athena and she was turned into a spider and Ted Hughes does a brilliant
17:24
SPEAKER_00: poem in his Metamorphoses,
17:26
SPEAKER_00: part of his Metamorphoses is about that and I'll read a bit of that next time
17:30
SPEAKER_00: because it is gorgeous.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: hmm yeah so i'm thinking about these things and i went to the acropolis um which is
17:42
SPEAKER_00: i mean i that word meant nothing to me until i went to greek because i'm greece
17:46
SPEAKER_00: because i'm totally ignorant about uh history really and uh the acropolis is a is a
17:52
SPEAKER_00: great monument on the top of the
18:00
SPEAKER_00: And it's very grand,
18:02
SPEAKER_00: and if you,
18:03
SPEAKER_00: you can pay for a tour,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: but also what you can do is stand really close to someone who's doing a tour and
18:10
SPEAKER_00: not pay for it,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: which is what I did for most of the time.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: But then I just found, like, I'd rather feel my way there because...
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SPEAKER_00: this kind of historical information,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: this fact,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: this stamp of fact that's put on things,
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SPEAKER_00: it's always got an agenda.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And I don't feel as a working class woman that that agenda ever really suits me.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: It's ever really celebrating my flourishing.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: So I drift off and I go and have a look.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: the place myself and I see that there's this mighty Acropolis you know big Greek
18:59
SPEAKER_00: pillars it's huge and then to the left almost toppling off the cliff is another
19:08
SPEAKER_00: temple and in my dreaming I see that this big temple is
19:17
SPEAKER_00: is protecting, it's in service of protection of this smaller temple, this tiny temple beside it.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And so just in this moment,
19:33
SPEAKER_00: let's feel the places in us that are ready to protect,
19:41
SPEAKER_00: that are standing strong.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that we've got a great citadel of protection around us.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: So that something much smaller, much softer can emerge, can feel safe.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: And that's what I'm feeling inside myself right now is this place that
20:12
SPEAKER_00: feel safe enough to be so, that was the wind, so, so, so sacred deep inside.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: And then another tour guide kind of walks past me and I hear that in this temple there is a well.
20:30
Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep well.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: And the words come to me.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: in my hidden well.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Which was some writing that I did with the brilliant Tegwyn on a Seven Arrows weekend,
20:52
SPEAKER_00: which is a women's weekend that she runs every year if you want to take some time out,
20:59
SPEAKER_00: some holiday for yourself.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: And so that was the writing prompt that I used for the week in my hidden well.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: I thought I'd just go down in words now and speak it.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: And maybe if you felt like it,
21:18
SPEAKER_00: you could do that too or grab a pen and paper and just write in my hidden well and
21:23
SPEAKER_00: see what comes out.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: In my hidden well are oceanic resources.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: In my hidden well is a light that has never met the sun.
21:44
SPEAKER_00: In my hidden well there are beasts gnashing and roaring.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: In my hidden well is a tiny grandmother knitting a thread that means that I will always be connected.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: It's all very lovely, isn't it?
22:06
SPEAKER_00: It's all very lovely because you're here, and I'm very grateful for that.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: But in my notepad that I took away with me, it was like, in my hidden well is terror.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: In my hidden well is raw fear, never-ending loneliness, and other stuff.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: But I just want to bring it all in,
22:24
SPEAKER_00: you know,
22:25
SPEAKER_00: bringing it all into my heart,
22:27
SPEAKER_00: bringing it all into our hearts.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: So I brought the Minotaur with me in the embodiment of my son.
22:50
SPEAKER_00: I spent a lot of time thinking about my lost teenage self and how to reclaim her
22:57
SPEAKER_00: and trying to express to Noah what my needs were.
23:02
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we would walk home at night and I'd be like,
23:06
SPEAKER_00: I can't walk this fast, you know, my joints are stiff.
23:09
SPEAKER_00: And he'd be like, oh, you're rolling them too tight, mum.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wish, I wish we had that kind of joyful, jokey banter.
23:17
SPEAKER_00: We didn't.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: But I'm inviting it in for the future.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: So then I got chatting with my friend Felix.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: Felix Bedell, he's written this great book called Sacrificing People.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And it's about how we are using the land and using the land in other countries and
23:47
SPEAKER_00: not considering the people that live upon it and have connection with it.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's the amazing thing about Greek myths, you know, in Homer's Iliad.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: Zeus calls a council of the gods.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: And in the Iliad, Homer says, there was no river that was not there.
24:08
SPEAKER_00: There was no river that was not there.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: That understanding that it's all, everything in nature is a god.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: And so this very little distinction between natural phenomena and the gods
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Everything in nature is animated by...
24:31
SPEAKER_00: The trees are animated by the dryads,
24:35
SPEAKER_00: kind of like the anathusa,
24:37
SPEAKER_00: which is like flower fairies and the flowers.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: It's like this inner life of nature.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: And I think we've lost that.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: And it would help us to...
24:51
SPEAKER_00: You know,
24:51
SPEAKER_00: you can argue all day about whether it's true or not,
24:54
SPEAKER_00: or real or not,
24:55
SPEAKER_00: but if you just say that a cow had a rich inner life,
25:05
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
25:06
SPEAKER_00: that a cow had a rich inner life,
25:09
SPEAKER_00: how we treated it,
25:11
SPEAKER_00: how we farmed it,
25:13
SPEAKER_00: how we chose or not to eat it would be very different.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, where was I?
25:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, Felix.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Legend has it that Felix is related to Darwin.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: I went to ask him about that, but I forgot.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: Anyway,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: I know Felix because when dawn breaks at a festival at a camp that I go to,
25:36
SPEAKER_00: festivals kind of makes you sound like you're up late at night,
25:39
SPEAKER_00: but it's not really one of those things.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: It's a camp.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: He plays...
25:46
SPEAKER_00: haunting, sweet violin in the morning to wake us up.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: She's lovely.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: And he talked about the rich Minoan culture.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: He studied classics at Oxford 30 years ago.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: So when I said I'd been on Aegina and I'd been in Athens, he was like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:07
SPEAKER_00: And he had lots to say.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: And he talked about them being ruled by the sea, which is so true.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, on Aegina, I lay in bed one night and I could feel the water all around me.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: So precious.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: And now I'm here now in...
26:27
SPEAKER_00: and I'm using that same listening or feeling or whatever to feel the earth around me now.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: It's really nice.
26:40
SPEAKER_00: And he talked about these frescoes in Crete of bull dancing where it wouldn't be
26:48
SPEAKER_00: bull fighting but that a person would be taunting the bull or dancing with the bull
26:54
SPEAKER_00: to the point where they
26:56
SPEAKER_00: would get up on the horns and be upside down on the horns.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, wow, can you imagine that?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Doing a handstand, yeah, made me think about grabbing the bull by the horns.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: When I think about grabbing the bull by the horns,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: I think about,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: just kind of grabbing it front on and sort of,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: you know,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: kind of fighting with it.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: But what if grabbing the bull by the horns...
27:24
SPEAKER_00: as a metaphor,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: really meant dancing elegantly with it,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: using our beauty and majesty,
27:35
SPEAKER_00: grace and dignity as a human being to balance ourselves delicately on the horns of
27:45
SPEAKER_00: a bull.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: So he said a few things that were interesting to me.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: He talked about there being not so much fortressing of the great compounds in Greece,
28:09
SPEAKER_00: but that they were ruled by the sea.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, life really went on as much on the sea as it did on land.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: quite like that image maybe think of pirates hmm so that's that's my um dreaming and musing about the um
28:37
SPEAKER_00: the Minotaur,
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm still on the,
28:40
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell it to you properly next week,
28:43
SPEAKER_00: but I'm still on the motion of the labyrinth,
28:46
SPEAKER_00: of the unilateral labyrinth.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: And so I went to St.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: Mary's Chapel in Glastonbury because there's a finger labyrinth there.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: And I've drawn a few finger labyrinths and I've been practicing them.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: And what I've noticed about
29:04
SPEAKER_00: labyrinths are that when I do them with my finger that I'm very precise going in
29:11
SPEAKER_00: it's all very technical and precise and I go in and then when I turn it's that
29:16
SPEAKER_00: moment of turning that moment of change it's a good thing to do if you're thinking
29:22
SPEAKER_00: about something or you're lost in something to sort of go deep into the centre of
29:27
SPEAKER_00: it just using your finger and then deciding to turn
29:32
SPEAKER_00: To make a change.
29:34
SPEAKER_00: To turn out again.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: I noticed when I turned out with my finger,
29:37
SPEAKER_00: it became much more...
29:38
SPEAKER_00: I made a much bigger labyrinth on the way out.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: Which reminded me that in the BBC series, as wonderful as it was, I was so amazed.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: She got to the centre of the labyrinth and she talked about it being like a rose.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: She talked about it being like a lotus.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: And I was waiting for her to talk about it being like...
30:01
SPEAKER_00: labyrinth,
30:01
SPEAKER_00: like a labia,
30:03
SPEAKER_00: like a woman's body,
30:06
SPEAKER_00: but she didn't,
30:07
SPEAKER_00: and it might have been because she was religious,
30:09
SPEAKER_00: she didn't go there,
30:10
SPEAKER_00: but I just thought,
30:11
SPEAKER_00: wow,
30:11
SPEAKER_00: labia,
30:11
SPEAKER_00: labyrinth,
30:12
SPEAKER_00: it's got to be the same,
30:13
SPEAKER_00: and which one came first,
30:14
SPEAKER_00: and that's what it really brought to me,
30:18
SPEAKER_00: and I think until we can really,
30:23
SPEAKER_00: really celebrate the deep opening that
30:28
SPEAKER_00: absolute wonder of woman on the inside.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how far we're going to get, really, in our sort of thrival in this life.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: And the same goes with genitalia, penises.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: We've got to bring the genitalia to the table.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: LAUGHTER
30:58
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how we do that, but there's something there.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: There's something I want to connect with in my body, in my own honoring.
31:10
SPEAKER_00: I don't feel or I'm sort of feeling like I get to and then I've come in and out of.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's like that.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I feel like,
31:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm going around in circles.
31:27
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that is actually the nature of a labyrinth.
31:29
SPEAKER_00: You do go around in circles.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: And so when my friend Tess said,
31:33
SPEAKER_00: well,
31:34
SPEAKER_00: maybe you're getting a bit closer every time,
31:38
SPEAKER_00: that felt important to me.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that we can sort of, going around in circles is a thing.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: We're allowed to do that.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing I thought was about the labyrinth,
31:50
SPEAKER_00: about when we get lost,
31:51
SPEAKER_00: when we're just like totally lost,
31:53
SPEAKER_00: we're in the whole washing machine of it all,
31:57
SPEAKER_00: just going round and round and round.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And all we've got to look forward to actually is to get to the centre and find the
32:04
SPEAKER_00: beast which we then need to slay.
32:06
SPEAKER_00: It's like going around in the washing machine, round and round and round the labyrinth.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: It's almost, you know, kind of preferable to meeting the beast in the centre.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's what we're doing.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we're avoiding meeting the beast.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: But what's useful is if you just imagine Frodo just going like stuck in the labyrinth,
32:26
SPEAKER_00: stuck inside it,
32:27
SPEAKER_00: stuck inside it,
32:28
SPEAKER_00: stuck inside it.
32:28
SPEAKER_00: But then, look, have a bird's eye view down.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: then everything becomes clear.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: You can see the entrances and exits and way around very easily.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: And so what is there in your life that you're not able to see the
32:54
SPEAKER_00: wood for the trees I mean it's more like not being able to see the trees for the
32:58
SPEAKER_00: wood it's just wood everywhere wood wood wood just brown brown brown brown brown
33:03
SPEAKER_00: brown it's like just wanting to see the trees what is there in your life that
33:14
SPEAKER_00: you're feeling like you're going around in circles in and can you switch a
33:20
SPEAKER_00: different perspective so that you can see it from a
33:25
SPEAKER_00: A different angle, a broader angle.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: Can you hear that little noise?
33:31
SPEAKER_00: I think that's a bird in a nest above me, just having a little scratch about.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: I mean a bird's eye view and then it just makes itself known, hello.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
33:41
SPEAKER_00: so let's fly above whatever that is in our life and look down on it and see if we
33:49
SPEAKER_00: can just see it differently.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: I realized then,
33:55
SPEAKER_00: when I started doing that,
33:57
SPEAKER_00: that when I'd gone back around Aegina for my scarf,
34:02
SPEAKER_00: that maybe I was retracing my steps out of the labyrinth all the time I was in the labyrinth.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's like Theseus, he's the human
34:22
SPEAKER_00: sacrifice going into the labyrinth and will he, how will he slay the Minotaur?
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And what he goes in with is Ariadne's thread, the weaver, the spider,
34:50
SPEAKER_00: the occult yin energy and he's got his own warrior self there so yeah a bit of a dreaming
35:07
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you stayed with me for it.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: And for those of you that want a formal story, I'll be telling this story more formally, if I dare.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
35:20
SPEAKER_00: maybe I'm just like going around and around and around and around this story
35:24
SPEAKER_00: because I'm too scared to tell it.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: And at the center of this story is all my fear around telling stories.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
35:33
SPEAKER_00: We'll both find out next week, I'm sure.
35:37
SPEAKER_00: Sorry that this pod was a bit late.
35:40
SPEAKER_00: I've just been looking after my friend who has got dementia.
35:44
SPEAKER_00: And I've always felt like these pods are OK because I sort of go off at tangents
35:49
SPEAKER_00: and repeat myself and tell stories in different ways.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: But actually,
35:56
SPEAKER_00: after spending a few days with someone with dementia,
35:59
SPEAKER_00: I'm feeling less confident about that being.
36:02
SPEAKER_00: that being an enjoyable thing so and i've had a blessed time here with a really
36:08
SPEAKER_00: incredible friend who's um yeah whose life i really want to honor in this moment
36:17
SPEAKER_00: So I'm rapidly dappling up now.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: And please,
36:22
SPEAKER_00: if you feel like,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: oh,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: my God,
36:24
SPEAKER_00: she really needs more time to think about her podcasts,
36:29
SPEAKER_00: consider supporting me on Patreon so that I can spend more time.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: sorting out my podcast if anyone was um niggled by me not putting a podcast out on
36:39
SPEAKER_00: friday and it now being monday waiting for your podcast then consider supporting me
36:45
SPEAKER_00: on patreon so that you can um uh yeah support that happening i am doing a winter
36:54
SPEAKER_00: online group poddle um which i was going to start yesterday but i've postponed it
37:01
SPEAKER_00: for one reason or another so if you were thinking about
37:04
SPEAKER_00: Jumping onto that, please do.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: It's called the fairy tale session.
37:09
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to take stories,
37:11
SPEAKER_00: kind of lady book classics that I know are woven in our psyche and we are going to
37:18
SPEAKER_00: use them.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: We're going to kind of activate them so that they are working in a positive,
37:25
SPEAKER_00: vital and lively way inside us this winter.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: That was exciting.
37:30
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
37:34
SPEAKER_00: what else do i usually say at the end of a podcast i've forgotten but um i'm here
37:38
SPEAKER_00: um i don't want to say goodbye that's what it is i'll just take in a moment more to
37:47
SPEAKER_00: drink you all in
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: Nectar, nectar to my heart.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: Honey to my soul.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: May we all thrive this winter.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: May we go with and not without this winter.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: This is our winter.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: This is our time to really, really mend, tend and love ourselves.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: Mwah.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: See you later.