by Martin Shaw
Table of Contents
Praise
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Introduction
PART 1 - LEAVING THE VILLAGE, FINDING THE FOREST
CHAPTER 1 - NOMADS, PIRATES, BANDIT QUEENS
CAER IDRIS IS A BUSH OF GHOSTS
INITIATION: THE THREE FOLD AWAKENING
THE DANGER OF THE RETURN
MYTH: A COLLISION OF RUPTURES
WHAT IS WILD?
SITTING WITH THE DEEP EARTH
WAVES NOT CAUGHT
WRESTLING DEATH
A MYTHOGRAPHY OF THE CROSSROADS
THE BIRTH OF TALIESIN: DISCIPLINE AS THE DANCE PARTNER OF WILDNESS
SAVAGE MAGICIANS AND THE THIRST FOR POTION
MORDA
THE ABILITY TO CHANGE SHAPE
WORDS WERE LIKE MAGIC
CHAPTER 2 - THE NORTHERN WITCH AND THE LUMINOUS BRIDE
SNOWDONIA: PREPARING TO FAST
EMPTYING THE BAG
THE UNCANNY FRESHNESS OF DISORIENTATION
IVAN THE BEAR’S SON
WHO IS IVAN?
THE WILD AND HOLY MOMENT
UNOWNED LIGHTNING
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH THE EYES OF GIANTS
YAGA AS HOLY TERROR, THE INITIATE’S GUIDE
THROWING DOWN THE ANCHOR
REFUSING THE CALL
SNOWDONIA
A CROW FLIES FROM YOUR CHEST
THE MAIDEN OF THE FLOWERS
THE SWITCHING OF THE GOBLETS
THE THREE FALSE BROTHERS
DESCENT WITHOUT BOUNDARIES
WE COME BACK CHANGED
SNOWDONIA
CHAPTER 3 - THE PASTORAL AND THE PROPHETIC
AFTER THE MOUNTAIN: FOUR YEARS IN THE BLACK TENT
NOMADIC VOICES
THE LAND IS A HUGE, DREAMING ANIMAL
STAYING PUT
ELDERS, BOUNDARIES, AND COMMUNITY
COMMUNITY AND RECLAIMING TIME
THE OLD BONES OF STORY
THE CULTURE OF WILDNESS
THE PASTORAL AND THE PROPHETIC
RIVERS OF SILVER, LEAVES OF GOLD
CHAPTER 4 - GAMBLING WITH THE KNUCKLE-BONES OF WOLVES
THE SERPENT AND THE BEAR
THE FATHERLESS TENT
LEAVING THE MOTHER TO SAVE THE MOTHER
THE RITUAL CUT OR A PERILOUS WOUND
THE WAILERS, THE SHAMAN, AND THE LOVE OF HOPELESS CAUSES
THE POT OF RESIN AND THE BODY OF MOSS
AN ECOLOGY OF BONES
WORLD TREES, HOLY TREES, SOUL TREES
ARCHAIC BEINGS
THE ALCHEMY OF SERPENTS
CLEAN STEPS AND MUDDY CLAWS
INFLATED ANGELS
THE INNER KINGDOM
BEAR MAGIC, KING MAGIC, FATHER MAGIC
AWAKE, AWAKE!
THE SHAGGY MAINED OTHER
TEARS ON THE HEROES’ WINGTIPS
CHAPTER 5 - CROSSROADS, TEMPLES, AND WILD INTELLIGENCE
HATCHLINGS TO HAWKS
SHRINKING VISTAS
PROUD, OPEN-EYED, AND LAUGHING
SKY WALKING AND THE RUPTURED MYSTIC
CRAFTING A TEMPLE
TRUST AND LARGESSE
ROAD OF VOICE
METAPHOR: GOLDEN BEARS LEAP FROM THE JAWS OF CHILDREN
THE OLD GODS AREN’T FED BY STATISTICS
ROAD OF SOLITUDE
CROSSROADS
TRICKSTER LANGUAGE
HERO IS A GRIEF MAN
THE ELDER FROM THE BEREFT
CHAPTER 6 - WOMAN THAT MOVES IN THE DARK GROVES OF SOUL
VALEMON AND THE WILD THIRD DAUGHTER
QUESTING BEASTS
THE DEAL BEYOND THE THINGS OF THIS WORLD
THE CURLY LEAVES OF MEMORY
THE FALSE BRIDES AND THE RITUAL QUESTION
BEAR CATCHERS AND HAIR CUTTERS
BLOCKING THE SPIRIT BEAR
THE ANSWER FREELY GIVEN
ANOTHER KIND OF ROYALTY
THE RAISING OF THE CANDLE
THE GIFTING OF THE WYRD ROAD
PEBBLES DISGUISED AS APPLES
IRON TIPS AND THE GNASHING QUEEN
HAG POWER
THE SOBBING
THE LISTENER BY THE DOOR
THE NEEDLE
THE DANCE THEN THE MARRIAGE(S)
PART 2 - THE IMPOSSIBLE RETURN
CHAPTER 7 - DEER WOMAN AND THE VELVET ANTLERED MOON
RIDING AN ANIMAL POWER
MOON COMES GLIDING
HIDING
THE GREAT THIEF
THREE ENERGIES, A WILD BODY
COLLAPSING IMAGINATION
DEVOTIONS TO THE COURT OF LONGING
CHAPTER 8 - THE BIRTH OF OSSIAN
THE LEGACY OF ABSENCE
THE OLD, WYLD HUNT
THE LOVERS’ CHAMBER
THE STRICKEN KINGDOM: LOVE AS TRICKSTER
HOLY WANDERER
THE CURRENCY OF LONGING, THE MALIGNANCY OF DISAPPOINTMENT
CHAPTER 9 - THE RED KING AND THE WITCH
UP THERE IN THE MYTH-WORLD
HOARDING THE TREASURE, STARVING THE KINGDOM
FAR OFF CHAMBERS
THE GREAT REFUSALS
TIME COMES GLIDING: THE RETURN
EPILOGUE
ENDNOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Copyright Page
Praise for A Branch from the Lightning Tree
Eloquent and elegant, Shaw offers an irresistible invitation into realms that hold the wisdom of, not only survival, but expanding into one’s sense of purpose, maturing into the gift of service to the collective.
—MALIDOMA P. SOME, DAGARA ELDER AND AUTHOR OF OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT
A master storyteller. I was lucky enough to see this man live—he sat before us with just a drum. No special effects. No 3D glasses. I was nine years old again—I listened with wide eyed fascination as he held every scene and emotion with a simplicity that taps the Divine imagination within us all. A Branch From The Lightning Tree recaptures the joy of that experience, reading Shaw’s interpretations of other classic myths with the same insightful detail. It’s a rare gift to be able to tell a great story by allowing the power of the story itself to do it’s work. And Martin Shaw has the gift.
—RICHARD LA GRAVENESE, DIRECTOR AND SCREEN WRITER OF THE FISHER KING, THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
Visceral and highly imaginative, Shaw finds wildness in both language and landscape, using myth, philosophy and poetic leaps as a crossroads between the two. The whole book is a web of wild intelligence. This needs to be read!
—ROSIE BOYCOTT, THE INDEPENDENT
This is an astonishing book—part memoir, part retelling of old tales, and part courageous delving into the psyche’s trek from the civilised to the wild. When I finished reading it, I felt I had been given a gift.
—GIOIA TIMPANELLI, STORYTELLER AND WOMEN’S NATIONAL BOOK ASSOCIATION AWARD WINNING AUTHOR OF WHAT MAKES A CHILD LUCKY
This extraordinary book, woven with magic and insight, reveals the rich alchemy between myth and rites-of-passage. How I love the intelligent, poetic, and wild way of his voice.
—MERIDITH LITTLE, CO-AUTHOR OF THE BOOK OF THE VISION QUEST AND DIRECTOR OF THE PRACTICE OF LIVING AND DYING
Shaw has so much knowledge and wisdom about the old stories it emanates from his pores. He knows about the mythic trap of eternal youth that is the shadow of rock’n’ roll. He knows why Jim Morrison went down. His prose is voracious—it will gobble up the reader’s psyche and challenge it to change.
—JOHN DENSMORE, ESSAYIST, AUTHOR, AND FOUNDING MEMBER OF THE DOORS
Shaw invokes
Robert Graves work on the White Goddess, and the Crow poems of Ted Hughes—it is a combination of practical knowledge, Imaginative insight and passionate storytelling that give Shaw’s book its persuasiveness and power. He writes as someone who has been to these places, undergone these trials and tested himself at the extremes of lived experience.
—JOHN DANVERS, AUTHOR OF PICTURING MIND: PARADOX, INDETERMINANCY AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN ART AND POETRY
Shaw is a writer of rare and fierce beauty, and a great enemy of mediocrity, wherever it may hide. A Branch From The Lightning Tree is an oceanic dive into the mythic fire—on myth’s own terms. The whole book conjures a tale of who we are and where we might be going.
—DANIEL DEARDORFF, AUTHOR OF THE OTHER WITHIN: THE GENIUS OF DEFORMITY IN MYTH, CULTURE, AND PSYCHE
Every generation needs to retain, regain, retell, and reabsorb the important understandings of culture for itself. Our age is thick with a furious, insidious and epidemic of forgetting of the past, and the bewilderment that most of us feel, as creatures and citizens, is a symptom and consequence. We are on the brink of losing it. Martin Shaw is a teacher of profound cultural knowledge; he has done his own work thoroughly, and is a master artist at interpreting and transmitting it to us through story and discourse. His transmissions are subtle and profound. He is a shamanic teacher for Now, and we desperately need his work. A Branch from The Lightning Tree is it.
—TONY HOAGLAND, AWARD WINNING POET AND AUTHOR OF REAL SOFISTIKASHUN: ESSAYS ON POETRY AND CRAFT
This book is for the Seanchai tradition of the roving Celts.
Let it always be dusk, lanterns lit,
peat fire stoked, heavy weather, with the
storyteller opening a door to the myth-world.
Let the brightening beings come and
make wine from our leaping tears.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is dedicated to Cara and Dulcie, for weathering all the storms of its creation. You are where my luck lives.
I also thank White Cloud Press—Gary, Christy, and especially Steve Scholl for being a constant source of encouragement since the very beginning of this process. He took a bundle of prose handed over after a gathering in Oregon, and has stayed true to its strange, emerging shape these last few years. With gratitude, Amigo.
Mum and Dad—for a hundred thousand blessings. For placing the seeds of a rich and bountiful life into my young hands. Amen. Love to all my family (Shaws, Pattersons, Allens, Nicholls, and beyond) and beautiful pile of nephews and nieces.
As a travelling storyteller and teacher, I have been lucky enough to make many nourishing friendships—too many to name here I’m afraid, but you know who you are. Special fondness for those involved with the Westcountry Storytelling Festival, The Minnesota Men’s conference, The Great Mother Conference, and the Block Island Poetry Project. Also to The Desmond Tutu and Strategic Leadership programs at Templeton College Oxford, all at Ashridge, and my great ally the director Matthew Burton. Big love to the Mythsinger foundation.
Much love to the Westcountry Schools of Myth—both on Dartmoor in the U.K., and Point Reyes’s, California. So much fiery magic. The very best of times. Thank you for the long haul—to the musical maverick Jonny Bloor, Chris Salisbury (the teller of Devonian ghost stories), the swift-minded David Stevenson, the hedge magician Tina Burchill, the good dragonish Sue Charman, the mystic arrow that is Tim Russell, deer-eyed Reba Furze, the man of the old growth forest Mr. Del, and over in California, the lion-hearted Lisa Doron. A great privilege to know you—that goes out to all the cunning hounds that rock up to our fireside. For anyone that ever cleaned a dish, lit a hurricane lamp, told a bawdy story, wept with grief, rescued a yurt roof descending down the moorside in a blizzard, jumped off a cliff into a freezing January sea clutching nothing but chocolate, flowers and a love letter to the old Irish Gods, I remember.
Gavin and Dave—shaggy old friends—thank you for the many miles we have staggered; through scrapes, opportunity, and now the gateway into our forties. Thank you Thomas R. Smith for a keen eye on this manuscript at a crucial stage.
Some interesting moments in the writing of the book: Being stranded by the side of New Hampshire road at dusk and being suddenly picked up by an enormous limousine and driven 150 miles to my destination—the unknown driver buying me tacos and cold beer before turning round and driving home again, no questions asked; the old Indian that emerged out of nowhere with a smudge bowl, eagle feather, and shades, then sang “Amazing Grace” in its entirety in my ear before disappearing down a side alley in New Mexico—just two of dozens of such intrigues; thanks to all the animals that seem to show up when travelling—especially the Coyote chorus under my window at Tim and Carrie Frantzich’s.
Prose is always assisted by food, music, and dancing. I remember an evening drinking Grail-sized margaritas and eating lamb shank whilst on the road in Oregon with the mighty Daniel Deardorff—down on our luck but having the time of our lives; a night with Robert Bly traversing the ancient pubs of my home town Ashburton whilst he quoted endless, beautiful stanzas of Yeats to an empty high street at midnight; collaborating with my man John Densmore and Mr. Deardorff on fairy tales and percussion in a Hollywood club; Robin Williamson carting his exquisite Harp into my homestead, Tregonning House, to regail us with tales of the Tuatha De Dannann; opening a battered copy of Ted Hughes’s Moortown brought on a snowy Christmas eve to find its previous owner was the storyteller Hugh Lupton, where together four months before and three hundred miles away we had enthused on that very man’s work; Champagne in a Manhattan bar on the autumn solstice with Caroline Casey, Nick Adamski, and Erin Molitor; a frosty midnight on Dartmoor with brother Coleman Barks, Lisa Starr, and David Darling, wolfing down steak and ale pie, piles of vinegary chips, red beer, good shiraz, and a selection of Islay malts, courtesy of the Rugglestone Inn, outside Widdicombe. They kept the bar open as we debated the “greatest living poet.” All I can say is that Galway Kinnell almost won.
To David Wendl-Berry, keeper of the flame. For putting me out on the mountain. This is all your fault. To Nicholas Twilley—you are not entirely innocent either. Gratitude.
Thank you, Joe Strummer, for telling me to write a book.
Finally, to my stomping ground—Devon—the place of the deep valley. I am in love with the raw-boned granite tors, the freezing streams that curl round dark stones of memory, the uncertain mists, the fierce hawk drunk on clean air, the bruise-coloured ocean licking the red ochre cliffs—my totem ground. Whatever Richard Dawkins may bray about in his oddly evangelical tone, I believe some strange energy has sewn this world together, so I humbly hand this book—with its rash opinions and wild stories—into the great paw of the holy maker of all things.
The only calibration that counts is how much heart people
invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught
out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is they didn’t
invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really
counts at all. It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish
poems—he would give his hawk away to any man that asked
for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love
their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more
grief than men today mourn their fathers.
TED HUGHES
FOREWORD
TO DIE AND SO TO GROW AN INTRODUCTION BY DANIEL DEARDORFF
We are coming to a new understanding of what myth is, of why we need it, and why we can’t really live without it. Far from the study of long gone cultures and dead religions, this new approach says that “myth is happening now.” For most of us the power and drama of the mythic realms remain just outside the corner of our eye’s reach.
The pastoral approaches to myth—as historical evidence, as a window into the psyche, or as a way of thinking—have typically labored to be seen as legitimately scientific, and hence been limited by the h
arness of social approval. So the mythworld requires advocates, human voices with prophetic resonance to open the hidden pathways.
The wider and wilder idea, then, is myth as praxis—myth as act, as embodiment, as something we do. In this understanding, the tired categories and classifications of folktale, legend, history, or myth hold no applicable relevance. What really matters in myth is the associative disclosure of presence.
The word presence is used here in the sense of “a person or thing that exists or is present in a place but is not seen.” As Shaw relates: “I have begun to suspect that underneath the ancient caves, buried arrow heads, and mineral deposits, the continents of this world are huge, dreaming animals.” So we may declare that the body of myth is a tremendous, yet unseen, presence.
Something happens to us when we allow ourselves to enter into the presence of living myth—certain images come home to us, and cherished beliefs fall away. Each encounter leaves us a bit more sure of our relation and location in the living world. The linguistically constructed, virtual and abstracted worlds of ordinary civilization lose their sense. In Shaw’s words: “Poetry is the natural result of any mythic experience.”
But as Hölderlin asked1: “in the lean years who needs poets?” So, if you the reader are satisfied with the whole of your life, if everything seems well appointed and steadily on course, if you remain untroubled by the state of world affairs, the vanishing forests, and the rise of psychic and environmental pollution, then you might want to set this book aside. However, if you, like me, desire a life filled with breathtaking and inexplicable meaning, then I implore you, read on.
It can happen to anyone: in silent midnight a migratory moth brushes a velvet wing across our skin and the soul is called out of the house into the wide and starlit unknown. Alone, then, we trace that nocturnal flight toward the burning “life not yet lived.” Else we capture the moth, place it aside in ajar for later study, and the soul recedes back into its former slumber.