Speaking of myth - old wisdom/everyday observations (post 6)

 

Hazel trees and salmon are still on my mind, as is the way the mythological crops up in the everyday.

In mythology, wisdom and beauty are the hallmarks of both beings and both speak to where we are now. I am intrigued by how the salmon – a creature of air and of water – swims upstream against the flow to spawn … this struggle for new life/rebirth a metaphor for the creative work needed in our time of turbulence and crisis.

I live in Gloucestershire near the Severn. In a story* that touches on this part of the world, Culhwch is carried up this mighty river  on the back of the salmon of Llyn Llyw  - the oldest and wisest of all the creatures - to find Mabon (the object of his quest, whose name means great son) who is imprisoned in Gloucester.

In Celtic belief hazelnuts bestowed distilled wisdom and poetic inspiration. When allowed to flourish, the hazel tree can live for 200 years and, if coppiced, up to 1000 years. That’s a lot of history to bear witness to. Today, there is concern that neglected hazel woods and the predations of the grey squirrel means that these trees of knowledge are struggling to fruit.

*How Culhwch won Olwen from the 14^th-century Welsh epic the Mabinogi.

Myth is inseparable from the land, it comes from the land and springs directly out of it. Myths are not an act of human creation but an act of co-creation between us and the dreaming soil of this animate earth.

Dr Sharon Blackie from her podcast, Mythlines