This episode opens with the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. At just one day old, Hermes wastes no time finding mischief and creating mayhem by stealing his older brother Apollo's 50 cattle and sacrificing two of them to the 12 gods of the Pantheon, including himself of course.

Come along for the ride as this 'delight maker' turns everything on its head and turns it into something else (such as the poor tortoise who becomes the world's first musical instrument). It's a playful journey, but a deep one in the end as we explore the place for the trickster in the world and in ourselves, and the energy that might be necessary as we more effectively challenge existing structures.

Astrologically, we'll be exploring Mercury, The Sun (Apollo) and Jupiter (Zeus) and their patterns in the sky both inner and outer.

References

Homer - The Homeric Hymns
Rafael López-Pedraza - Hermes and his Children
Karl Kerényi - Hermes: Guide of Souls
Lewis Hyde - Trickster Makes This World
Liz Greene & Howard Sasportas - The Inner Planets

What happens when we deny what's lurking in the shadows? What happens when we start denying the presence of Otherworldly, ancestral and non-rational ways of knowing? The old myths and stories tell us that something dangerous happens in those moments of chronic disavowal, which can eventually lead to a physical and mythological death of The Sacred.

In this week's episode, we begin with a telling of an old Scandanavian folktale, and rather chilling story, called "Erl-König (Erl-King)," that takes us into shadowy terrain where we begin to wonder about how, culturally speaking, we've found ourselves facing the current mythological monsters and trickster figures that deny The Sacred. We explore the loss of Soul within the modern psyche, the recurring theme of "the absent father" in our dominant modern culture, the missing medicine of healthy logos and masculinities, and the on-going conversation about the denial of femininities. 

Book, Poetry & Resource Mentions:
Erl-König Franz Schubert Orchestral/Visual Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JS91p-vmSf0
"A Ritual to Read to Each Other" by William Stafford
"Seeing in the Dark" by Clarissa Pinkola Estés (Audiobook available at SoundsTrue)
"Dispelling Wetiko" by Paul Levy (Reference to “Aparticipatory Delusional Syndrome” or ADS)

In order to find your prince, you have to kiss a lot of frogs, right?

WRONG!

Not in the original story of The Frog King. Always the first story in their collection, the protagonist has a much more action-oriented and forceful role to play.

Chris and Alexandre break down the impact of this 'kissing frogs' myth on our collective psyche, and imagine what the world might look like if we were encouraged to take a stand for our sovereignty the way the Princess does in our story.

What happens to our lives when wildness, beauty, and feminine ways of being are exiled from our personal and collective experience? How did it come to be that the God of the Wild became the first and only Greek God to die?

In this episode, Alexandre & Chris dive straight into the wild forest to converse with the Fox Woman. As they venture into this old tale's territory, they wonder about personal, collective and mythic stories that shed light on this grand exile that has become the new normal in our modern dominant culture. 

Book & Poetry Mentions: 
"Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace" by John O'Donohue
"Jitterbug Perfume" by Tom Robbins
"The Holy Longing" by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When modern day humans who aren't familiar with the depth and breadth of Astrology think of The Zodiac, we often picture 'horoscopes' in newspapers summarising what kind of day we’ll have depending on our 'sign'.

Astrology, in fact, is an ancient mystery tradition that spans back into our collective ancestry, in one form or another, beyond recorded history.

At the centre of the Western tradition is the story of the Zodiac. It begins, with a bang, in Aries: the initiatory fire. It ends, and dissolves, back into Pisces: the 12th sign symbolising oceanic awareness.

In this episode, Chris brings us The Story of the Zodiac from the 'start with no start' to the 'end with no end'. It's like an archetypal scaffolding onto which our stories build themselves into their endless permutations.

In this episode, the journey of Tending The Sun Fire begins with a creation myth from Africa told by Alexandre. In this story from Zambia, God creates the world and all creatures, as the earth thrives in harmony and natural balance. However, one particular creature appears on the scene and causes great trouble through its ignorance, destructive habits and lack of reverence for the sanctity of life: the first human (man).  

Through inhabiting this story and wandering into it’s ancient territory, Chris and Alexandre reflect on the link between the troubles of the world and human folly, the contrast between  creation myths from other cultures, the important but missing presence of Women & The Feminine, approaching myths as an ancient technology, and more. 

At the heart of this episode, Alexandre and Chris discuss how we can each tap into the storehouse of wisdom that lies in creation myths, and stories in general, to help us find clues to navigate our personal and collective destinies. 

In this introductory episode, Alexandre and Chris give us some backstory. They reflect on their individual paths, and how those paths converged in the Southern Highlands of the east coast of Australia at a mystery school called, Metavision.

As next week will be all about creation myths, the hosts decided to briefly share their own personal myth of how Tending the Sun Fire came to be, and what they hope it might become as it heads off into the world on its own sacred journey.