Welcome to a special episode of the Mythic Christ Podcast with your host, Matt Syrdal. Today, is an experiential introduction to the enchanting world of myth, story work, and deep nature connection. Inspired by the rich teachings of Julian of Norwich, we explore the profound significance of a tiny hazelnut, revealing the divine love in all creation. Embark on a personal journey where myths find you and stories from ancestral, sacred, or childhood ties surface, inviting you to engage with their mysteries.

Matt offers you an invitation to wander through semi-wild spaces and connect deeply with the more-than-human sounds of nature. Listen to the land and its inhabitants, past and present, and allow one particular being to tell you its story. Experience a sacred journey with that being, feeling, sensing, and opening yourself to profound wisdom.

Through a deep connection journaling exercise, Matt guides you to explore what this being might reveal about you, transforming your finding into a living poem. As you read it aloud, notice the shifts and emotions, and reflect on your newfound connection with the earth, the divine, and yourself. Let's embark together on this soulful journey of myth, wander, and deep connection.

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Here's a sequence of topics covered in the transcript from the podcast episode "Myth, Wander, Deep Connection":

Julian of Norwich's Vision

The hazelnut representation

Understanding of creation's endurance due to divine attention and holy imagination

An Introduction to Myth Work

Discovering or allowing a myth to find you

Connection to personal stories and ancestral stories from the land in which you live

Sourcing from various mythologies (e.g., Celtic, Hebrew, Norse) that have a resonance or charge for you

Sacred Story Wander Exercise

Choosing a semi-wild location for solitude

The logistical requirements for a wander

Emotional and sensory engagement during the process

Engagement with Nature

Connecting with the environment through senses and intuition

Encountering and communicating with a 'being' in nature

Bringing a natural object back with permission and gratitude

Deep Connection Journaling Exercise

Utilizing the found object from nature in journaling

Descriptive writing and poetic creation using sensory detail

Transitioning the description from 'This is' to 'I am'

Reflection and Sharing

Reading the poem aloud with the new 'I am' perspective

Journaling the experience and its impact on self and divine connection

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If you like what you heard and experienced, find out more about the upcoming "Awakening Mythic Imagination: Eco-Depth Yearlong Program" beginning August 1st. The Yearlong Program is filling up, so register soon, or schedule a 30 minute call with Matt for more questions.

Or, visit our website: Mythic Christ Mystery School to learn more.

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CREDITS:

The Deep Connection Journaling exercise was adapted from Michael Cohen, in "Reconnecting with Nature".

Musical credit:

Istvan Sky, "Love of Mauritius" from Voice of Avatar, 2016

"Tibetan Chant" from Pulse of the Planet Audio Journeys: Extraordinary Sounds from the Natural World, 1994

Friends, It is my pleasure to introduce our next Awakening Mythic Imagination: Eco-Depth Yearlong program coming August 1st, 2025. This worldview shifting and life-changing certificate course is back with some new changes to content platform and practices rooted in my upcoming book. 

The introductory online intensive that begins the yearlong is August 1st thru 3rd, 2025. Registration will close in June of 2025, and there are limited spots available. This short episode is a brief introduction to the yearlong course. Enjoy!

For more information visit: www.mythicchrist.com/yearlong

There is a 15% off Earth Day promotion now thru April 22nd. If you are interested in payment options, scholarships, or have logistic questions schedule a 30 minute conversation with Matt.

To register you simply fill out the yearlong application and pay a $350 deposit to reserve your spot. 

A Mythic Meditation - The Water of Life

It is possible that the next story that finds you might just be more than a story. The emergent edge of myth touches the creative powers of the cosmos, for mythtelling at its root is about world-making. We have been story-tellers for hundreds of thousands of years. In the Awakening Mythic Imagination Eco-Depth Yearlong program we inhabit the world of dreaming, while cultivating our capacity for perception and attention to archetypes and mythic themes as they arise in the field. This mythic meditation is a kind of introductory invitation to consider ways you might grow your own capacity to perceive the world around you, and the stories that weave you into the world. I invite you to listen from a relaxed posture in place of stillness and quiet.

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References:

Genesis chs. 1, 2; Ezekiel; Revelation; The Gospel of John; the Gospel of Thomas; The Hindu myth of Ganga

Special Credits for this podcast episode:

“Down the River”, Tibetan Singing Bowl Meditation (feat. Sounds of Nature)

“Impossible Shamanic Voice”, Voice of Avatar by Istvan Sky

“Tibetan Chant” Extraordinary Sounds from the Natural World: Pulse of the Planet Audio Journeys (1994)

In this episode I interview Ben Katt about his new book "The Way Home" tracing his own "hero's journey" to wholeness at midlife, including stories of change and personal transformation. I hope you enjoy! You can find him at:

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Ben Katt is a meditation teacher, spiritual coach, and writer. He is the author of The Way Home: Discovering the Hero’s Journey to Wholeness at Midlife, a book that helps people wake up to their fullest lives. As the founder of MIND MKE, Ben teaches meditation and facilitates wellbeing experiences for teams, organizations, and companies. He is a certified advanced meditation teacher with 1 Giant Mind, holds a Master of Divinity degree, was an ordained minister for over a decade, and previously led The On Being Project’s work in supporting religious and spiritual leaders in the work of social healing. He lives in Milwaukee, WI with his wife, three children, and a bunny.

• I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and A Grander View of Life, by Ed Yong

• Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa, Johan Anders Baer, Esa Kotilainen & Seppo Paakkunainen, "Nils Juhan" from Dalveleaikkat - Wintergames

On this episode of Mythic Christ Podcast, join host Matt Syrdal as he reflects on the transformative and intimate experiences of the Awakening Mythic Imagination year-long program. Spanning nine months and following the seasonal cycles, this program invites participants to tune into the Earth's rhythms and engage with world mythologies, great mythic stories, and the Judeo-Christian scriptures from an archetypal lens. In this episode, Matt will be interviewing five participants who will share their unique experiences. They will discuss what surprised them about the program, the central practices that shaped them, and any numinous experiences they had. The participants will also delve into how the program has influenced their vocation, sense of purpose, and the ways in which their lives have changed and shifted. Stories include encounters with dreams and the deep imagination, reconnecting with the feminine aspect of the Mystery, and profound symbols that have become a wellspring of new life for the participants. This interview explores how integrating different parts of oneself and embracing the trickster archetype can lead to personal integration and a celebration of the whole self. Throughout the episode, Matt emphasizes the importance of poetic imagery and the language of the soul, as well as the power and symbolism of scriptures in guiding one's journey. Join Matt as he dives into questions of shared mysticism, participatory consciousness, and magical experiences with the participants, exploring the ongoing conversation and attention required by living into one's calling. Through these conversations, Matt and his guests invite listeners to reimagine the world, pay attention to all aspects of their calling, and find a sense of belonging and connection with others who have similar longings and experiences of the Mythic Christ. Don't miss this captivating episode of the Mythic Christ Podcast, where Matt and his guests share their profound and transformative experiences from the Awakening Mythic Imagination year-long program.

The listening podcast community can claim a special discount shared in the episode for upcoming online intensive "Green Christ: Wild Sacrament & Mycelial Imagination" this September 6, 8, and 10th. For more information visit www.mythicchrist.com/intensives

If you would like to support the work of this community and the Mythic Christ Podcast, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter at: https://www.patreon.com/mythicchrist

Across cultures through time, the Tree is the mythic image of the cosmos, one of the oldest and most deeply rooted of the archetypes. The Tree is a mythic map of whole imaginal realms of visionary and psychic experience holding the mysteries of creation, renewal, life and death, secret knowledge, and initiatory memory. The Great Tree. Our ancestors have hung the bodies of their dead in trees, like a cradle in boughs awaiting rebirth, curled up like embryo ornaments hung in the hollowed-out trunks, for the tree was believed to be a vehicle to the gods, a vessel of regeneration, that could pierce the eternal realms of the heavens and the underworld. 

Mircea Eliade, in his seminal work Shamanism, explores the Tree as an archetypal image of shamanic states of consciousness, found across indigenous peoples from Siberia to Sapmi in Northern Scandinavia, to North American indigenous peoples. And that this archetypal image of the tree, is not only one of the oldest archetypes across the world, but is a map of the trance-states, of those masters of techniques of ecstasy, we refer to as shamans.

Jesus of Nazareth, a personage enshrouded in mystery, one of the few great figures who continues to stir controversy, fascinate deep discourse, and allure spiritual seekers and mystics, even from different faiths, perhaps even more today than ever before. Scholarship has opened new doorways and possibilities into understanding the life of this mysterious holy man. A whole new paradigm of exploration is departing dramatically from modern scholarship, rewilding the ground of Christianity and returning religion to its most ancient numinous grounds of animate experience.

This episode introduces the underlying issues of modern historiography undergirding the Jesus of history and faith, tracking the origins of the shamanic archetype emerging into our collective consciousness, and reimagining an Earth-based spirituality that might rediscover the journey of descent to soul for the greater healing of the Earth community.

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Mythic Christ Podcast operates because of the generosity of its growing Patreon community. As a Patreon supporter of the Apprentice Tier or higher you will receive access to the full "Shaman Christ" series and other bonus episodes, downloadable practices to support your own journey, special offerings and program discounts. To become a patron supporter of this podcast, in service to this emerging vision and the possibility of cultural transformation, please visit patreon.com/mythicchrist 

To join our online community visit: www.mythicchrist.com

To learn more about our Awakening Mythic Imagination: Eco-Depth Yearlong Program visit: www.mythicchrist.com/programs

Special Bonus Episode: Poetic Journey - "Sky Kiva" by Matt Syrdal.

This month I wanted to offer a special bonus episode, a poetic journey based on a poem I wrote years ago in Sage Canyon, Colorado called "Sky Kiva." I hope you enjoy! Patreon supporters receive special bonus episodes like this one, guided downloadable spiritual practices, and discounts on programs and immersions. Please consider supporting this vision by becoming a Patreon supporter today.

Wildly and with wonder, 

Matt

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We operate only by the generosity of listeners like you supporting our commitment to the value of personal transformation for social renewal. This monthly podcast offers bonus material and guided practices offered for our Patreon supporters at patreon.com/mythicchrist.

To join our online community and learn more about our Awakening Mythic Imagination Eco-Depth Yearlong Program visit: www.mythicchrist.com.

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mythicchrist

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mythic_christ/

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Mythic Christ Podcast | An experiential bridge between imagination, archetype, and sacred story to summon spiritual renewal and action in these times.

Mythic Christ Podcast offers members online community for exploring the mythic nature of story, archetype, dream, and the deep imaginal realm within and beyond the Christ tradition, in response to a growing collective longing to rewild spirituality and support the reemergence of the perennial wisdom tradition of Earth and the soul. 

Over countless millennia, humans have longed for freedom from bondage to the limits of the physical realm of suffering and death… Longed for a portal to the stars, cold, distant, keepers of ancestral wisdom and ancient secrets into the mysteries of the cosmos itself. Behind the primal Mother Goddess stood a void that could not be breached, a holy darkness that was the origin and source of all. Light ineffable, a radiance pure, virginal. A quest for a cosmic innocence, a primeval dawn, that held light and darkness in balance, that both included and transcended masculine and feminine yet birthed both energies into the world of form and time. 

Most origin myths are stories of the cosmos. In the first century these stories were shaped by a belief in an intelligence, a wisdom behind and within the universe. A soul within the world itself, that gave rise to our human capacities for knowledge and  culture and devotion.

This episode "Unitive Christ: The Dissolver" Is part one of a series that explores the paradox of Wisdom Christ, and the ancient counterpart Sophia, the union of opposites, as well as the Sacred Fool and Trickster archetypes.

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Mythic Christ offers online community for exploring mythic structures of story, archetype, dream, and the deep imaginal realm awakening within individuals who are sensing a collective longing a desire to rewild the divine image and re-root our religious institutions in the sacred Spirit-breathed ground of the natural world.

Mythic Christ Podcast operates because of the generosity of its growing Patreon community. To become a patron supporter of this podcast, in service to this emerging vision and the possibility of cultural transformation, please visit  patreon.com/mythicchrist 

To join our online community or learn more about our Awakening Mythic Imagination: Eco-Depth Yearlong Program visit: www.mythicchrist.com

"When I lean over the chasm of myself— / it seems / my God is dark / and like a web: a hundred roots / silently drinking.” - Rilke trans. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

When we move from the monologue of modern theology and patriarchal cultural values to the myco-logue of mythic consciousness and entangled identity, we discover a whole living root-system of ecstatic participation. Deep in the primordial ground beneath the temple stones of power, priesthood and doctrine, something mycelial is silently drinking. In the dark soil can you feel something fruiting up around you? In mythic memory vegetation goddesses and gods who thundered through animistic traditions, once watered particular visionary ways that gave birth to religion and culture. These roots still live, they still weave through the hollow ruins of our empty religious symbols and institutional structures even today.

Western culture was traumatically uprooted long ago from sacred land and place, from storied landscapes that once shimmered with mystery. These once healthy ecosystems of oral stories connected the deep imagination and sacred place, were eventually torn up. Before the living Powers of the cosmos were abstracted and locked away into distant heavens, before the wild goddesses were domesticated and absorbed into monotheism, the sacred Powers were once tasted in plants, experienced in Earth and elements, felt in the ecstasy of lightening and the voice of storm, moved through bodies in dance, held by ritual and story and known intimately in trance states. Many of the Greek gods were vegetal in nature, intimate and embodied they could be touched, handled, experienced—focalized in something alive through myth and story into the practical needs, longings, and mysteries of daily life. As a society of consumers we can no longer touch and taste the Mysteries, or feel the world that is our only home.

In this episode “Green Christ” we will explore an ancient archetype of the divine that takes us “out of the mind” so that we can return to the body, deep in the somatic, erotic, and the instinctual polyphonous flesh of the world, a wilder incarnation. Jesus appearing like a vegetation god, the true Vine of experience cstasy and invasive Life who was seen as a new Dionysus, offering true Bread in the dismemberment and scattering of his mystic body for harvest like the grain cycle of Demeter. One in whom activated something in the deep, unseen mythic mycelia across Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt, and Persia alike. An elemental Christ archetype of stone, and fire, Earth and water weaving through Hebraic myth and mystic experience, that grew through the peaty soils and loamy memory of the ancient Celts, and other Earth-based and animistic traditions in which Mystery was truly alive and intimate to daily life and place, livelihood and culture. Human, Animal, Vegetal, Mineral—Green Christ.

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Mythic Christ offers online community for exploring mythic structures of story, archetype, dream, and the deep imaginal realm awakening within individuals who are sensing a collective longing a desire to rewild the divine image and re-root our religious institutions in the sacred Spirit-breathed ground of the natural world.

Mythic Christ Podcast operates because of the generosity of its growing Patreon community. To become a patron supporter of this podcast, in service to this emerging vision and the possibility of cultural transformation, please visit  patreon.com/mythicchrist 

To join our online community or learn more about our Awakening Mythic Imagination: Eco-Depth Yearlong Program visit: www.mythicchrist.com

Our greatest ability and gift as a species is the imagination. We imagine new possibilities. We imagine ourselves into new futures. Human imagination is uniquely forward reaching, and world creating. The imagination is an inner mirror upon the world itself, reflecting back to us who we really are what the world really is. We are homo poeta, human meaning makers. We bear the burden and gift of this capacity for mythic imagination.

Myth is not a ‘persistent lie’ or a fantasy, it is the “wildest way of telling the truth”, in the words of mythologist Martin Shaw. Myth is not just old stories that held the morals, beliefs, and identity of peoples past. But it is a living speech, an infinitely creative and deep pattern, a root system of the imagination of the world of which we are intimately a part.

Today, mythic imagination has been all but lost to us. Our collective imagination today has become unmoored from these ancient mythic root systems, it has become paralyzed and pathological. Religion has abstracted and disembodied what was once intimate knowledge and rapport with the animate forces of a mysterious world. Our exile today is a loss of consciousness with catastrophic results on our ecosystems and biosphere, alienation from a living and dreaming Earth. Only mythic imagination can help us navigate this dangerous and initiatory moment. 

To awaken mythic imagination is to return to the headwaters of meaning and purpose latent in Earth for us as a species. The mythic wellspring of religion and culture.

In this episode “Awakening Mythic Imagination” we will explore the nature of myth as a conversation between the Earth, humanity and the divine. Myth is the only language large enough to contain the initiatory energies that alone can reforge human consciousness. Mythic imagination is what gives life meaning and depth, it is the heart of community, offers a path of individuation and growth. And truly represents what Jung called the “religious function” re-connecting the mundane with the sacred.

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If you are new to this space and it resonates with you, and you want to support the podcast, the works that goes into it and promoting the vision. Please consider becoming a Patron, it only costs as little as 6$ a month. If you appreciate the vision and want to support find out more at, patreon.com/mythicchrist. All patrons get access to early release of episodes and a complementary downloadable guided meditation practice, at other levels patrons get new content and bonus episodes, advanced downloadable practices, complementary mentoring session with me in dreamwork, deep imagery, coaching, and discounts on upcoming online immersions and our Awakening Mythic Imagination Eco-Depth Yearlong program. The program is currently full but there is a waiting list for next September 2023. If you would like more information email me at [email protected].