A Branch from the Lightning Tree

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.