Myth Matters

This is the last episode in a 4-part series on the Sumerian myth of Inanna: Dumuzi’s Dream and The Return. After Inanna ascends from the underworld, she chooses her lover-king Dumuzi as her replacement in the Great Below. 

What happens to him? What meanings can we find in this action? Did the goddess betray her husband? Is this cruelty or compassion?

I hope you find value in Dumuzi's story and welcome your thoughts and comments-- feel free to share them with me.

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Special episode with guest singer-composer Kelli Scarr!

Scarr released her new album Greater Mysteries, a musical journey through the spiraling cycle of transformation, last month. The Sumerian myth of Inanna is one of the touchstones in this beautiful work, and I'm grateful to Kelli for taking the time to talk with me about the making of the album, her engagement with Inanna, and our collective transformation.

"What I hope that this album does is brings solace and inspiration, and holds people's hands through their ears to say it's worth the risk. It's worth the risk of dying in all of its forms. Because even when what is on the other side isn't what you thought it was going to be, it's so much better."-- Kelli Scarr

Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive...

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She goes down
As we go down
We follow her underground
Hail to Inanna
Who died
To become born.
— Chant from the writer Starhawk and the Reclaiming Collective

This is episode #3 in a four-part series on the Sumerian myth of the goddess Inanna and the part of the story that contains her descent to the underworld. It's a fascinating story and a very old one, which tells us something important about this journey and the surrounding mysteries, and how they live in our imagination and psyche.

Inanna's story is a story of transformation, transformation as an inevitable part of life. She can help us navigate the chaos and find the gifts. 

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― Eduardo Galeano, from Walking Words 

In this episode I tell the second part of Inanna's story, the courtship and marriage between Inanna and her honey man, the shepherd Dumuzi. 

Ripe in every sense, Inanna engages in a passionate and symbolic union that celebrates physical desire, renews the life cycles of nature, and expresses the creativity  and eros of the cosmos. Her myth illuminates the sacredness of embodied experience and the transformative power of creative union, and challenges traditional dichotomies between spirit and matter.  

Inanna invites us to reconsider the sacred through the lens of wholeness, integration, and reverence for life in all its forms.

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In the first days, in the very first days, everything needed was brought into being and the goddess Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, took her place in the center of the Sumerian pantheon. This myth was recorded at the beginning of history and describes a pivotal time in human civilization. 

We're reckoning with the developments of this time, today. Inanna's myth can help us find a place-- as individuals, communities, and countries-- in the transformation that's currently underway. This is the first in a four-part series.

Thanks for listening!

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"We need joy as we need air." Maya Angelou

Joy. Joy is my motivation, my desire and object in sharing some poetry with you in this episode. Joy---gladness, pleasure, delight, and rejoicing. Joy, a very precious freedom.

How can you, how can we, build our capacity for joy? The belief that suffering alone lends you depth and nobility seems pretty common, and I wonder about this. Is familiarity with hardship sufficient to grow in compassion and resilience? Or does joy expand our humanity and understanding of life as well as lift us up? 

There are valuable clues to these questions in poems, the fruits of a poet's devoted attention. I have 13 poems for you, a baker's dozen of poems that speak about or gesture toward, joy.

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The final episode in a three-part exploration of the mysterious Baba Yaga, a scary crone in Russian and Slavic fairy tales. Who or what is she? 

The fairy tale "Finist the Bright Falcon" opens up some interesting possibilities.

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The Baba Yaga is a complex and scary crone in East Slavic and Russian fairy tales. She's a face of the earth goddesses and the fierce wildness of nature.

Are some of us meeting the Baba Yaga right now?  

There's a lot of chaos right now as institutions, laws, and norms of behavior that order our societies are attacked. Chaos that has a parallel in escalating natural disasters and other earth events. 

Is this a collective initiation? What might we see if we understood this time as an initiation through forces much greater than the actions of a cabal of greedy sociopaths?

These are scary times and they are ripe with opportunity. There's no avoiding it. Let's make something beautiful.

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Welcome to episode one of the new (7th) season of Myth Matters! 

A new year and a time of change. Is this, as some say, the time of the wise, elder woman, the time of the crone? The Baba Yaga is one face of this archetypal energy.

This episode is the first of two about the Baba Yaga. Baba Yaga is a complex and multifaceted figure in Russian and East Slavic fairy tales. She's a scary crone with roots in the pre-Christian pagan goddesses that we now call "mother earth," and expresses the warmly maternal dimension of nature and the fierce wildness. She seems to be full of contradictions. She holds the key to the mysteries of life.

Here we explore some of her complexity through the three of her many stories: "Baba Yaga and the Kid," "The Step Daughter and the Step Mother's Daughter," and "The Geese and the Swans." 

Thanks for listening and keep the mystery in your life alive...

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“These lofty words are an antidote for anyone sickened by extremism’s poison.” Farid ud Din Attar, translation by Sholeh Wolpé

The Conference of the Birds is an epic poem from the 12th century written by Sufi poet Farid ud Din Attar. The poem tells the story of a group of birds and an arduous journey to find a mysterious king. Renowned for its depth and beauty, the Conference of the Birds is an allegorical teaching about the spiritual path to self-realization that offers insight into the communal nature of a solitary quest. 

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