The Menstruality Podcast - 137. How Ancient Mythology Guides and Roots us on our Cyclical Heroine’s Journeys (Dr Sharon Blackie)

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

We’re thrilled to be welcoming mythologist and author, Dr Sharon Blackie back to the podcast today, to take another journey into the mythic imagination together. We explore how the ancient myths of our land weave us into connection with ourselves as natural, cyclical creatures, to our place in the world, and to the wisdom of our ancestral lineage. Many of you will have read and loved Sharon’s 2016 book, ‘If Women Rose Rooted’, and today we look at three of the ancient stories through a menstrual cycle awareness / conscious menopause lens, including; What the ‘Well Maiden’ shows us about how to act as a bridge to restore the Feminine in our world, particularly by cultivating the skill of listening to the wisdom of our dreams.  How the wild character of ‘Mis’ can guide us to find solace in the wilderness, particularly during the phases of our cycles and lives which can be full of grief and are often misunderstood by "civilisation", like the premenstruum and menopause. How the story of the ‘Selkie’ can inspire us to reclaim our wildness, our authenticity and our sense of belonging.---Receive our free video training: Love Your Cycle, Discover the Power of Menstrual Cycle Awareness to Revolutionise Your Life - www.redschool.net/love---The Menstruality Podcast is hosted by Red School. We love hearing from you. To contact us, email [e-mail]---Social media:Red School: @redschool - https://www.instagram.com/red.schoolSophie Jane Hardy: @sophie.jane.hardy - https://www.instagram.com/sophie.jane.hardySharon Blackie: @sharonblackiemythmakings - https://www.instagram.com/sharonblackiemythmakings

Welcome to the Menstruality Podcast, where we share inspiring conversations about the power of menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause. This podcast is brought to you by Red School, where we're training the menstruality leaders of the future. I'm your host, Sophie Jane Hardy, and I'll be joined often by Red School's founders, Alexandra and Sharni, as well as an inspiring group of pioneers, activists, changemakers and creatives to explore how you can unashamedly claim the power of the menstrual cycle to activate your unique form of leadership for yourself, your community and the world. Hi there, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you so much for being with us today. I'm so excited about this one. I'm speaking to one of our good friends at Red School and one of my personal

influences and inspirations, mythologist and author Dr. Sharon Blackie. We explore how ancient myths can weave us back into connection with ourselves as natural cyclical creatures, how they can build our sense of connection to our place in the world and to the wisdom of our ancestral lineage. I imagine that many of you will have read and loved Sharon's 2016 book, If Women Rose Rooted. And today we're looking at her Rooted Woman Oracle Deck that accompanies that book, especially at three of the stories that she shares in the book through a menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause lens, including the well maiden who can act as a bridge to restoring the feminine in our world mish and how she can guide us to find solace in the wilderness particularly during the phases

of our cycles and lives which can be full of grief or are often misunderstood by civilization like the premenstrual phase and menopause and and how the story of the selkie, this is one of my favorites, can inspire us to reclaim our wildness, our authenticity, and our sense of belonging in the world. So let's get started with the wonderful Dr. Sharon Blackie. Oh, Sharon, it's such a delight to be in conversation with you again. Thank you for making time for this. Thank you for inviting me again. It's lovely to see you again too. Last time we chatted for the podcast, which was about menopause, the metamorphosis of menopause and your Haggitude book, you were sharing that you feel very connected to your cyclical nature

through the moon, through the seasons and cycles of the year. And so I just wanted to start the conversation by asking what cycles are you feeling connected to in this post-menopause phase of your life at the moment? Very much that, because as we were talking about before, once that kind of cyclical menstruation vanishes from your life. It is, no matter how troublesome, and I had very troublesome menstruation, no matter how troublesome it is, nevertheless, it takes away a structure and a sense of being very in tune with your body, again, whether you like it or not. And that does vanish for a lot of women.

And I think it leaves a hole that a lot of women don't actually know how to name postmenopause. And so for me, it is very much about carefully, very carefully watching the cycles and the seasons, but also the constellations. And I'm a big watcher of the night sky and there are a couple of, or the early morning sky more often actually. And there are a couple of constellations that do mean a lot to me. And so, you know, I know for example, that at this time of year, very shortly, Sirius is going to be the dog, the dog star, the dog constellation, if you like, is going to be available again in the night sky to actually see. And Sirius is very important to me. So it's lovely to just find different things to connect to that don't necessarily take you out of your body either. You know, that really just you are an animal in the cosmos and all of this stuff is kind of

wheeling around you and i think that really keeps me very connected and very grounded to that cyclical wisdom really the fact that the elements up there are the same as the elements inside our bodies right here yeah yes and that that they you know that that sense that they're always following you around that the sky is always always there every year the same constellations come back in the same place and that's a bit different from physical seasons like winter and spring you know it's not so intrusive but it's just very comforting I think I've never thought of that how this how the stars are cycling around us. I'm often drawn to, is it the seven sisters, the cluster? Yes. Yeah. Beautiful. Before we get into what I would love to speak about, which is really three of the

mythical female characters that you speak about a lot. And they're featured in the Rooted Woman Oracle deck, which is, has come out fairly recently. and what I'd love to do is to sort of feel into these stories activate our mythic imagination to support our cycle awareness practice um and to support us to be more connected to be more rooted as the title suggests of the oracle um but just before we get in there I'm aware that there'll be people listening who haven't read If Women Rose Rooted. And right now I'll just say, read If Women Rose Rooted. It's a very important book for all of us to read, I think. But could you think back to 2016 and share a bit about what inspired you to write that book, you know, which has then led to this oracle?

I think really there were lots of things that inspired me to write it, but I think the thing that was most important was my own relationship with place and my own very strong kind of awakening to the spirit of place and the stories that are held in specific places. And I'd lived in a very vivid location, the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, and it kind of completely transformed my relationship with the world around me through the stories of certain characters that inhabited that place. You know, place names named after old women like the Kaliach, the old woman of Gallic mythology. And then I moved to Ireland, which of course is an incredibly storied place. And it was looking for the stories, if you like, looking for the archetype or characters as well from the stories in the place that really just transformed my way of being in the world,

my sense of belonging to it and my sense of connection and understanding how to make a relationship with place through stories and through those characters that are held in the land, if that makes sense. So I really wanted to write about that as much as anything else. And what were you seeing in the world that told you that women needed to hear that story? A lot of women spending too much time in their head rather than in their body and not only in their body but their body in the land and their head in the land you know the imagination um is a really strong part of our ability to connect to the land so that was really what worried me that there was a lot of talk about the environmental crisis and all of the things that were happening with climate change and a lot of solutions that

were about turning light bulbs off or using different ones and things that are very important. I don't mean to trivialise them, but really didn't get to the heart of our sense of responsibility for the land and belonging to the land. And it makes sense to me that if we have a very strong sense of belonging to the land, then we become responsible for it. We care about it and we act out of that sense of love and connection rather than just some intellectual statistics, you know, analysis of statistics that are presented to us. Yeah, because it's one thing to connect to the pain or the grief that we might feel in the face of what's happening on the planet. And it's another thing to root our feet into where we are and then

maybe cherish the nature around us and then allow that to inform how we tend to our earth exactly and i think that one of the ways of doing that very strongly is not just loving you know a particular tree or a particular species of bird or a river or whatever it is in its physical manifestation which of course is really very important to do, but also to bring in that kind of imaginal layer, which is where that's what I mean when I talk about the mythic imagination, you know, that sense that the example I always use, forgive me if I used it last time we spoke, you know, a crow is a big black bird that is very funny and quite feisty and has very strong physical characteristics, you know, where it nests, what what it eats all of the rest of it but if you have a background in irish mythology the crow is also

the morrigan uh the you know the kind of crow goddess of um well of life and death basically and so that so when i look at a crow i i see that as well as the actual bird and that kind of it makes to be honest it makes the crow more interesting because i've kind of you know i've entered into an imaginal relationship with it um and it deepens it deepens what i see when i i go out into the land so that has always been really really important to me and that's why i and if women are as rooted as well as in the rooted woman oracle cards i brought those stories to the forefront so that people begin to know them and then can work with them. I'm having what always happens when I speak to you or when I

read your books, which is my body just suddenly feels very alive. Like I'm connected in to everything. And I also ping back to the most vivid memories I have of my connection with the natural world and right now I'm remembering being in Scotland in the Highlands by a lake and suddenly I think it was seven seal heads just popped out of the lake and they watched Aidan and I as we walked all the way around they just sat and watched and yes knowing about the Selkie does bring depth and meaning and fullness to that experience. And it's sort of woven a thread in me of connection to this world and of connection to myself through that memory. Yes, I find it hard to put language to it, which is why I appreciate you so much.

Well, I think it also gives us a connection not just to our places, but to our ancestry. Because these stories come from very, very long ago, when our ancestors had a much deeper relationship with the natural world and the birds and the trees and the animals than we do. So when we look at a seal and see the selkie, we're seeing the seal, we're seeing the story, and we're connecting back to an ancestral lineage that you know first created that relationship that imaginary relationship with the seal so for me stories work in every possible way they're just their life you know yeah and we've been doing it for so long we've been telling each other these stories for so long we needed them and we need them now yes and and unfortunately certainly over the last century probably more than the last century,

stories have become predominantly entertainment. You know, you tell fairy tales to kids to entertain them, and that's fine to be entertained. It's a very valuable resource, but that's not really what they were for. They were teaching stories, and not just in a moral sense, but in a kind of how-to-be-human sense. This is how you're human. You value the wisdom of a crow. You value a seal for all of these reasons that are in the story. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Well, let's get into some of these stories. I wondered if we could start with the well-maiden. Because of the way that you speak about the well-maiden as a bridge to restoring the feminine in our world which at red school you know we really see menstrual cycle awareness and conscious menopause connecting with menopause as a way of doing this of re-anchoring the feminine back into our lives and into our world so i'd like to read for people who don't know the story if this is all

right sharon just a little bit from the rooted woman book about the well maiden is that okay sure there's an old story among the grail legends which tells that once maidens would emerge from the wells throughout the land to offer food and drink to any traveler who came by and was in need of it the well maiden's power came from the other world and it was the source of life for the land. When a king who didn't respect the old ways raped a well maiden they withdrew back into the wells. As a consequence the land became a wasteland and the stories tell us the voices of the wells were lost. The link between our world and the other world was broken. The land lost its heart and we lost the bridge, the divine feminine, which connected us to it. And this term, there's so much in there, but this term wasteland, could you unpack that for us a

bit, what you see out there in the world as a wasteland? Well, if we go back to those old stories and the original stories, there are several stories in the British, Irish, and to some extent, Western European tradition, which provide consequences for bad behavior. And I love a good consequence in a story. But in this one, it's fairly radical. When people fall out of balance, when they stop respecting the natural world and the other world that is entangled with it in our tradition, it's part of it. It's not a different place. It's kind of a different layer, if you like, on the natural world. And when they disrespect the feminine, because the other world messengers are always women in our traditions, then the land becomes a wasteland. And we see this in several stories. Interestingly, when it's not a wasteland, it's flooded. So,

you have inundations or you have just devastation and aridity. And so, to me, the wasteland is that sense of all that we have lost when we have stopped acknowledging the importance of the imaginal in our world as well as stopped recognizing the importance of living in balance and harmony with the natural world the imaginal really is the other world you know that that that um sensibility that our ancestors had of the other world in In Ireland, I always used to talk about it as everybody walked with one foot in the other world. And they did. You know, there was the physical world, but a hawthorn tree was always, you know, a fairy tree. You mustn't take a stick from it. A crow was always a goddess as well as a bird. So I think apart from in the west of Ireland, I think we've lost that sense of a different kind of layer of reality. There's an old, old Sufi tradition. So clearly not from our native traditions, but there's an old Sufi tradition that between the physical world of our senses and the kind of intellectual world, if you like, of our mind, there is a third world called the imaginal world. And the imaginal world is where the stories live.

It's where the archetypes live and the characters that we call gods or angels. It's where dreams come from and synchronicities come from. And it's absolutely real. And if we're very lucky, it happens to us every now and again. And I always think that our tradition has exactly the same concept with the other world that's where in the old stories you know that's where the otherworldly women came from and invited the heroes to adventure or as in this story offered nourishment and life-giving food and drink yes it is so nourishing I'm thinking how I'm so grateful right now for the probably 12 or 13 years of cycle awareness that I've had, because every time when I menstruate, it's in those, well, few days running up to the bleed and then in the bleed that I am most in touch with the imaginal or the patriarchy in me, the part of me that is so wedded really to the wasteland and to the super rational sits back and then my wild self comes forward more. I'm more prone to sit by the fire and dream and let the imaginal kind of take me and have me. Yes. And I think if you look back to indigenous cultures, traditional cultures that had those situations where women went together kind of away, if you like, to menstruate, then

those are the stories that you hear coming from those places. Dreams and the imagination and stories being shared between them. So for those of us who want to be a bridge for the divine feminine or want to contribute to this movement of the feminine being more vividly alive in our world what what can the well maidens teach us or what does this story about the well maidens teach us about how we can do that i don't know it necessarily teaches us about how i think i think you know very old stories don't always have direct teachings for such a very, very different world. But I do think they give us the confidence that back in the day and really not so very long ago in the scheme of human history, women were seen as the bridges. Women were the grail messengers, for example, you know, as well as being the well maidens who brought the

wisdom and the gifts of the other world out. So that sense that women are a bridge to the other world, to the imaginal, chimes with what I observe in women, as opposed to the many men friends that I have, that women are just more interested in dreams and stories. And I don't think this is cultural conditioning. There is just a greater sensitivity to dreams. There's a greater sensitivity to stories and to seeing story in the landscape and to kind of like making things up, if you like, as we were told we were doing when we were kids. So to me, what all of these stories urge us to do is to nourish that because in a patriarchal culture we have we have devalued those feminine energies intuition creativity imagination and the story teaches me that it's

time it's time to bring it back in whatever way that we can i mean you know sharing stories is as good a way as any to begin and really fairly simple and and also listening to the wisdom of our dreams and listening to the wisdom when it happens i mean some dreams are just plain mad you know everyday madness like we all have but every now and again a character crops up in a dream or something happens in a dream that's really important and we've kind of lost again the skill of of seeing that as a message from the other world as well so I think for me it's really just it's about cultivating those sensibilities and passing it on how important it is and togetherness is so key for that the sharing of the stories they're having spaces that are safe and welcoming to come and

bring the madness as it comes through or you know the strange intuitions I often say I have to say to aid oh I had a really interesting dream last night and then I watch his eyes glaze over my god this one isn't for you I need to talk to my women about this when most dream circles are filled with women exactly in most story circles as well curiously although that's shifting a little bit yeah yeah I'd love to speak about Mish next how she can guide us to find solace in the wild and particularly when we're experiencing things that are misunderstood in our overculture or by civilization and I'm thinking here really of the pre-medistrum that there's a lot that happens in that we also running up to the bleed where we feel like we're losing it we can feel mad

mad bad and wrong and Mish is a great ally for us here. Yes and certainly for me Mish is a great ally for us here. Yes, and certainly for me, Mish is absolutely the character that we need to look at during menopause as well, because that accusation that menopausal women are mad and also that sense of rage that we do genuinely feel during menopause. So the story of Mish, for those who aren't familiar with her, it's an old Irish story. To cut a long story short about the daughter of the king of Spain who comes he comes invading Ireland and there's a great bloody battle in County Kerry and she is on the boat while this battle is going on and nothing happens and so she goes off the boat looking for her father and comes across just the usual battlefield slaughter she comes across her father's body with his head off and, you know,

hands and what have you cut off. And she is so overwhelmed by the grief and the horror of the battlefield that she grows feathers and wings and fur. And she flies off into the mountains. And there is actually a mountain called, after her, Sleevmish Mountain near Dingle in County Kerry. And she lives as a wild woman. She just wants to be away from civilization. And eventually she is kind of brought back

to herself by a man, by a young man who goes in there and sings her songs and makes love to her and gently washes the feather and fur off her skin and she comes back to herself again so it's a fascinating story in all kinds of ways but i think that to me she's the archetypal wild woman you know that that that archetype that rises up in us when we just can't tolerate what is going on in the world when we can't tolerate what's going on in our personal lives you know whatever it might be mish kind of gives us permission in a sense to not to indulge because that's a loaded word, but to go with the emotion and not to suppress it as we've been taught we must and be good girls. Whether that's, you know, premenstrually during our menstrual cycle or whether it's during menopause, and I think

particularly during menopause because it's such an extended period, then she reminds us that we can come back to ourselves after those periods. And in coming back to ourselves, I don't mean kind of going back to where we started. I think that if you've spent time in the wild kind of embracing that rage and allowing it to come out of you, you're changed in a good way. It's an alchemical process, grief and rage. It really is. And if you recognize that and can go with it and understand that it has purpose, then I think you transform yourself in the process. Yeah.

And in a world that doesn't embrace grief or know how to hold grief really collectively anymore, I mean, in some circles it can, I was just, yeah, it just overtook me this morning. And I was able to just go, okay, I need to cry. I need space to cry. I need to sit by the fire and cry. And there isn't much out there in the world to remind us to do that. There's a lot of messaging around, just push through, get on with it you know the wasteland tells us these things and some a story of like the story of mish yeah shows us the meaning of going with it allowing it allowing the the wildness because it doesn't feel comfortable it doesn't but i think there are times in our lives where that wild woman archetype, however it may show itself, really rises up in us. And if it does that, it's doing it for a reason. You know, I mean, it might sound like a silly thing to say, but archetypes know what they're doing. You know, they're there to guide us at particular periods. They are guides and they reflect not only who we are, but who we might be wanting to become next. And so I think when that story really appeals to you and draws you, or when you, you know, you have images of what

it might be to be fully wild, that's what we're being called to look at, that whole idea of whether we are honouring our emotions and allowing them to be expressed in our body rather than being held in. And that's the beautiful thing about Mish, her body changes, you know, it's expressed in her body. It's expressed in a physical change. Well, clearly that's not going to happen to us, but nevertheless, it's a reminder to kind of look at what is happening in our bodies and what we feel where and when. It's another way of marrying the imaginal and the embodied life, I think.

And giving ourselves permission to shapeshift. Yes, exactly. I mean, she shapeshifts into a creature who by her very nature is allowed to be wild and bite and grieveieve and clearly as women today we've got to be careful on how you know in how we express that so that we don't hurt either ourselves or others but but on the other hand yeah that there is that sense that it that it's really really necessary i'm wondering in your communities communities that have gathered particularly around the

Haggitude book there's been a year-long course that you've been guiding people through how has Mish shown up in that community of women going through or you know coming through menopause? Actually curiously she didn't very much I think the characters that did show up were the Furies, you know, the three Greek old women, because Misha's a very young character. You know, she's a young daughter. And although she, yes, she archetypally, she expresses the wild woman energy in all of us.

Because she's so young, I think it didn't quite relate as much as the story of the Furies did, where they were old women who were supposed to get mad. You know, that was their job and i remember we talked about the furies in our in our podcast so to recommend people back to episode 51 the the myth magic and metamorphosis of menopause with sharon yes i remember the furies wonderful charactersass, scourges, the lot, you know. For those listening who feel that Mish is wanting to get out inside them and don't know the way to their fur and feathers, is there something in the story that can guide us to let this wild woman out? There really isn't because they weren't, I don't think they were designed for that, the stories at the time, you know, but I think what it shows me, the story for, you know,

in a contemporary world is that she finds her solace in nature and she finds her solace alone. And it's almost like the old fairy tale of the handless maiden, who when her hands are cut off, she can only grow new hands back, proper new hands back by going into the forest and being alone in it for a while, just with herself and nature and actually a baby. But that's beside the point for this point. And so I think it's not about the solace necessarily of the natural world although that is part of it i think it's that the natural world is honest and authentic you know if i can put human characteristics on it in a way that that we often are not in our society

and in our culture and our relationships with others so it's really about just the the clarity and the space and the honesty of what's happening outside that that can that can heal I think yeah the undeniable flow of life yeah I'm thinking of when I was in many years of infertility and there was a lot of grief and I felt a lot of mish in me and I I remember one time specifically when it was pouring down with rain and the river was raging and it was so good just to be with this raging river and I just sat next to it for a long time let the tears come through let the water rush around me and it was the only thing that made sense in that I felt so disconnected from all other people by this grief I just I

didn't want to be near humans but the river made sense of me in that moment and in our culture you know again for better or for worse we have I think for a lot of us it's more comfortable to grieve alone we're not we don't have the kind of culture that has the kind of keening circles at the graves and what have you and so that that allows us again to to think that that's normal it's not bizarre to kind of lock yourself away with grief or to lock yourself outside with grief it's perfectly normal process and um yeah you can only go through it by going through it. I'm getting from a couple of questions I've asked you now that these stories, they're really not about being instructive.

They're not about a how to, they're about walking us into something that they're revealing something that we don't normally see in our mundane lives. Yeah, I think they're really showing us ways of being in the world in the kind of macro level. So they're all teaching us, all of them are teaching us about how important our place in the natural world is. In one way or another, it all comes back to living in balance and harmony with the natural world or accepting that we are a part of it, you know, by shape-shifting into a crow or by shape-shifting into a mush kind of character. And they teach us also, a lot of the old stories teach us about compassion and generosity to each other within community. But the beauty of them is that they express these values in different ways. And the stories where women are the main protagonists, I think, particularly show us both the relationship with the other world

and the relationship with the natural world in combination. So that's what they're teaching me. They're never how to, you know, how may I do this? It's always, no, you need to do this. You go figure it out for yourself in your own particular set of circumstances. And it shows you the beauty of doing that work, I think. When you do that work, the land doesn't become a wasteland and you become yourself again grown and changed by whatever it is that you've endured

I'm just going to pause the conversation with Sharon for a moment to share a couple of invitations with you for going deeper with your menstrual cycle awareness or conscious menopause practice if you feel called to. So if you still have a menstrual cycle our Love Your Cycle course will guide you to connect to the wisdom of the inner seasons of your cycle and you can join it for free at redschool.net forward slash love. It's a great companion to our Wild Power book. And if you're in or post menopause, our menopause remedies and resources course goes hand in hand with our Wise Power book.

You can register for free also for this course at redschool.net forward slash menopause. And lastly, I want to share a final invitation to our menstruality leadership program because the doors for this year's program are closing tonight we begin our journey on March the 22nd we've got an amazing circle gathered ready to begin this adventure into embodying our full authority and leadership through the power of menstruality so you can find out more at menstrualityleadership.com can we speak about the selkie always yes always reclaiming our wildness our authenticity and

belonging in the world i've put here in my notes would you like to just walk us into the description of what the Selkie story is for those who haven't heard it yeah so it's a very common story in Scotland particularly and in the Faroe Islands and it is a story about a seal woman who or seal women who are able one night a month usually the night of the full moon to shed their seal skins and to dance as human women on the beach. And the story goes that a fisherman one day is down by the beach and he sees these beautiful creatures and he steals the skin of one of the seal women so that she can't change back into a seal and she has to stay with him. He says he'll give her her skin back after seven years if she wants to go. He doesn't. In

most of the stories, her daughter finds her skin as the mother is dying. She's becoming desiccated. She is unhappy. She's not in her element anymore. And the daughter finds the skin and then the seal woman goes back into the water. And that's that. So it's a curious kind of a story. A lot of people get very hung up on the fact that she leaves her daughter. I think, but to me, the most important part of the story is this sense that she is dying because she's not in her element. You know, her natural element, who she really is at heart, is a seal. She'd be a woman occasionally, but she's a seal. And she's prevented from being who she is. So everything that defines her is taken away from her by her husband. And in finding that again, really, she has no choice. It's not about choosing to leave her daughter.

She has no choice to be anything other than who she really is, her authentic self, because otherwise she's going to die. So it's a very, very strong story, I think, that tells us about the importance of knowing who we are. And yes, it has that seal skin, who we are, that element of the animal, which we're very poor at expressing safely and comfortably. And, you you know all pretty much throughout britain and ireland women shape shift all the time it's just a natural process they're as much animal as they are human um and it's a very very beautiful thing that sense that no you just you put on your your wild skin you know whatever it might be and and off you go. And the other interesting thing is that when a woman shapeshifts, it's seen as quite natural. So the husband that she marries

isn't always entirely comfortable with it, but it's natural. When it's a man who is shapeshifting to animal form, it's always because he's been cursed. He's almost, in our culture, he's almost never a natural shapeshifter perhaps it's that discomfort of the masculine with a natural world you know um but but yeah interesting stuff so does that speak to how in the past women were more animal like what does that tell us about the women of the past compared to us now it It tells us that they were very much associated with the natural world because of menstruation, because of pregnancy, because that sense that we were, whether we wanted to be or not, we were very much in our bodies, at least at certain times of our lives.

And back to Plato, for heaven's sake, there was this sense that the natural world was inferior to the world of the intellect. And so women were inferior to men because women were associated with the natural world and men were associated with the intellect. So that whole, even though that's nonsense and verifiably so, it's a situation that's been reflected in some of the stories, particularly as they've passed into medieval times. Yes, because I'm imagining there were stories that were told before any of Plato thinking got anywhere near these lands that we're on right now. But yes, there's been a changing of the stories to reflect that. Like, I guess Mish in her story, just to go back to Mish she's that it's scary her madness there's something wrong with it and then the man needs to come and soothe her and calm her whereas what I enjoy about your work Sharon is that you it's like you reclaim the essence

of the story from before Descartes came in with his thinking. Sure, well, some of the stories, you can trace their development and the trivialization of the feminine, you know, so all of a sudden, the great goddess becomes a ridiculous queen and then ultimately like a fairy who only appears in the man's dreams

to inspire him to write beautiful poetry, you know, so you can actually trace this. But I think in Ireland particularly, a lot of the old stories persist and the message in them persists that sense that we're so much part of the natural world that one day we could just wake up and become a crow, you know, and then we might become a human again. It's just seen as a kind of natural thing. But it also tells us, I think, very much about how women, particularly our ancestors, valued the wisdom of the animal world, that a crow knows things that we don't. And it might be useful sometimes. So treat it with respect.

You know, all of these messages about how to be in the world, to repeat what I was saying a little bit earlier. And a lot of them very much associated with women and women's interesting ways of being in the world, where the men are off swashbuckling. The hero is very boring most of the time, but the women, wow, they have some things to say. What I always connect to in the Selkie story is the yearning, really, the longing for that which is above below and around the

super rational way that our world largely exists in and that that longing that so many of us feel I love to connect with that story so that I can remember that that yearning is valid and it's taking me somewhere. Exactly. And that there is an authentic self to grow into, to uncover and to grow into, and also that it shifts over time. And there's a story in a book, my next book, which is going to be called Wise Women. And it's a collection of stories about women in the second half of their lives, actually bringing the old stories together in a collection, retelling them with a bit of a psychological commentary. And it's out in October from Virago. And there's a story in that which actually opens it, which is in some ways, a very similar to the Selkie story. But it's very much a story of kind of midlife and menopausal

change. And it's about, it's a beautiful Siberian story. It's about a woman who lives with a one-eyed man. And every morning he gets up and he goes away for the day. And she has no idea where he is, what he's doing. And then he comes back again in the evening. This carries on forever and forever and forever. And one day she just can't bear it anymore. She's got to follow him. And she follows him into a forest where he's just sitting there. He just sits all day, just looking into space. And she looks at him and she thinks, I don't want to live with this man anymore. This makes no sense. And so she leaves and she just walked out of the door.

When she's picked up, she runs into a stony faced giant. The giant looks at her, slings her over his shoulder as a giant would, runs with her up to the top of the mountain, dumps her in a cave and then buggers off again and she's desperate absolutely distraught she has no idea what's happened to her you know it's just like why why did i do this why did i leave my house why did i leave my husband and then um she hears a voice saying to her look up look up look up stop crying and you'll see the skin of land birds above you so she looks up and she finds a cloak that is made of crow feathers. And she thinks this is beautiful. So she puts it on. Too small. Doesn't fit her. Absolutely distraught. Then she hears the voice again. Look up, look up and you'll find the skins of land

animals above you. So she looks up and there's a beautiful coat made of fox skins. So she puts this coat around her. It's warm. She feels happy again. So she decides to escape, trots off down the mountainside, stops at a pool to drink, sees something very strange behind her, looks around. She's grown a foxtail. By the time she gets down to her village again, where her father is at the shore about to go fishing, she's become a vixen. And her father throws her some meat and off he goes. And then she tries to go into her father's house. She tries to go through the door of his tent, of his yurt. But every time she pokes her nose through it, her body turns her away. That wild body of hers turns her away. And so in the end of the story, she just goes off into the fields to the new life that's awaiting her and that's such a really that i think it's it has the same impression on me i think as a selkie story did even though it's not from my culture quite still eastern european but that sense of the wild part of herself that she's

now grown into at midlife it won't let her go back to the father so she leaves her husband she escapes from the giant she can't go back to her father's house but she can be this wild fox with this beautiful skin so that sense again of the skin representing something authentic wild physical in tune with the elements and with the natural world, I think is such a strong message in so many stories from so many cultures. So there must be something in it that was, you know, really important to our ancestors, I think, as well as useful for us. Wow, so beautiful. I'm curious for you personally, if you'd be willing to share what it's feeling like for you in this post-menopause period of life. How's your foxtail? Well, I don't think I think I've had my foxtail for a while now, not that you're not sometimes at risk of losing it or taking it for granted. But what's been interesting for me, actually, is the character that keeps coming up for me that I have found it very, very difficult to grow into is Baba Yaga.

And that sense of just not taking crap anymore. And the people that try to manipulate you or undermine you, it's just, you're not going to have it anymore. And it's actually for someone like me who grew up, you know, always be quiet be quiet always be nice don't ever let anybody see that you're angry or all of the rest of it that sense of it's okay to stop people exploiting you and in the end when all else has failed to just kind of rear up like Baba Yaga and she's not a comfortable archetype to inhabit. You certainly wouldn't want her around constantly. But I think that comes from,

I think it's only possible to do that well when, I don't really know how to put it, when you're kind of comfortable in your body, when your body has in a sense stopped changing, you know, apart from growing old. Clearly that's a change. But when you are are just when you've got through all of the rage and the wildness of menopause and when you've stopped the cyclicity and so you know your body isn't really kind of um top of mind anymore that it just allows a kind of different clarity and a kind of a moral clarity if that's not too ridiculous you know just that sense of what it's okay to allow to happen and what it's not so that

that's been a real a really interesting thing for me but i don't see her as a very embodied character in what way because she's i think i think i see a lot of these older women as you know they've gone past that that cycles of the body i see yeah and they've gone through you know so that so the the cycles and the the menopause and hormones have have drifted away from us and so it just brings i'm clearly we are embodied i'm not suggesting that but it just brings, and clearly we are embodied, I'm not suggesting that, but it just brings a clarity. There are no swings, there are fewer swings, there are fewer things that take up mental space and fewer things that fog you. the ideas of menstruality where the cycle each month if we're leaning into it as an initiatory process or something that's helping us to evolve that each cycle every month is preparing us well we're shape-shifting each cycle and that's preparing us for the great shape shift of menopause where the cycles fall away and then I wish Alexandra were

here because she'd describe it herself but what I see in her is she she has one foot and one arm and maybe half of her head in the other world all the time now she's like you said the body isn't so relevant she just needs to tend to it take care of it so she can do what she's here to do yeah I think that does happen and it's not again it's not to suggest that the body isn't so relevant she just needs to tend to it take care of it so she can do what she's here to do yeah I think that does happen and it's not again it's not to suggest that the body isn't important and that we're not that we're less embodied I think the embodiment just comes a little bit different it just feels a little bit different it feels like it feels like your body has kind of done a lot of its work and it's just a question of hanging on, hanging on to it, you know, still taking care of it, still listening to all of the wisdom that,

that it has, but it's not your focus. The body isn't your focus anymore. How has the process been? I'm just asking this because I'm personally curious of writing this book. How has it been for you with the did you say the wise women oh the wise women book that was a fascinating thing because that was a book that began with um with haggartude and in haggartude you know I was talking about a lot of the mythical old and folkloric older women in European myth and folklore but it wasn't a book where I had time to dwell on the actual stories you know I was just using them as kind of archetypal characters to give us a clue as to who

we might think of becoming when we grow older but there were so many stories so many amazing stories that are so little known that have women in them from midlife onwards it's not all old old women and um it's a research project that i've probably been doing now for five years. I've been looking through books, through internet collections of European folklore, and I keep finding new stories about really great, feisty, funny, dangerous older women. So it was bringing them together and checking it out, not reimagining them, keeping them fairly strictly to what the original story was, but just wiping out some of the archaic language and trying to bring them to life a little bit more and then commenting on what it is that each of these stories can teach us. So the fox woman, as I say, that story opens it and

the commentary is very much about midlife and menopause and all of the ways in which we need to let that wise woman archetype rise up in us. So it feels like a continuation of haggardtude, but I think I've kind of done older women now. I'm not, I think, I think that's it. I need to move on maybe. I wonder what's next. I'm very excited to hear about this because as every woman I interview and my friends who are in midlife and beyond, there's this invisibility cloak, which seems to descend, which is is can be quite useful and quite exciting actually and liberating but it feels like you're pulling off the invisibility cloak of the women in midlife and beyond from the stories so that we can yeah reclaim them and hear them and honor them yeah because they're so diverse there's no one

way of being a good older woman you know there's all kinds of them out there in different in different countries throughout europe it's absolutely wonderful yeah I really enjoyed doing that great okay well coming back to the the rooted woman you speak about the heroine's journey and I think a lot of women in our community would resonate with that term but might have different ways of seeing it. So I'd just love to hear how you understand the heroine's journey that you invite us into with If Women Rose Rooted and the Rooted Women Oracle. Yes. And this is something actually that I'm still working on, the whole heroine's journey idea and how we make it relevant for as many women as

possible today. There's a whole project on my sub stack going on where we're delving into the details of the heroine's journey because it can mean many things to many people. I mean, really, the heroine's journey is originally an antidote to the hero's journey, Joseph Campbell's well-known and very influential hero's journey, which is very much a journey of its time. I think the time of the hero is over. You know, it's a very individualistic journey.

It's a journey that leads to glory and saving the world. And I don't know that all of us are fit for that. Not all of us are, not all men are heroes. I think very few women are. And back in the day, a woman called Maureen Murdoch, who was a student of Joseph Campbell's, asked him, where are the women in these journeys? You know, you're only right about men. And Campbell said to her, women don't need to make the journey. They're just the place that the hero is trying to get to well go figure um so she had her own version of the the hero heroine's journey which is very focused it was wonderful book but but it was very focused on a kind of woman that i can only call the father's daughter you know the woman who takes the masculine path and is very uncomfortable with her mother and uh you know basically takes the hero's

journey and then has a breakdown kind of me i did that that's what i wrote about and if women are as you do but a lot of women don't and it didn't really deal with anything for them and i was looking at this when i was writing everyone i was rooted and thinking what is the journey then that as women we need to make today and one of the journeys we need to make it's not the only journey i think but one of the journeys we need to make is a journey back to that sense of belonging to the world and particularly to our places to wherever it is that our feet are planted and so i wrote in a woman i was rooted what i called the eco heroines journey i know that that's really the best title but it was just to try and indicate that that whatever else we do in our lives,

at some point, we all have to come back to this sense of who we are in relationship to the world and remind ourselves and acknowledge that in these old stories that I was writing about, women were the guardians and protectors of the land. Women, you know, nobody else was going to do it for us. Women are the guardians and protectors of the land so it was kind of a bit of a call to action really for women to do that and that's the the journey that I picked up again in the rooted woman oracle and the great thing about working with these cards I mean it was something that I just you know I haven't even contemplated doing such a thing but Michelle Pilly the publisher at hay house just contacted me out of the blue and

said have you thought of doing that and when i realized that it would enable me to deepen that work in if women rose rooted because i could use i could talk about more women more of the kind of celtic women the kind of allies in our journey i could talk about more places and the archetypal way of the archetypal nature of places and the way that they reflect aspect of ourselves and also deepen that discussion of the journey and put different stages in so that again it makes it more relevant for more women and how do you imagine us being with the cards or working with with the cards in that way like is there a way that you would imagine people using them women using them I don't mind specifically or I don't

have any clear ideas specifically on what people should do with them although I do offer some some ways of working with them but but I think what what I really wanted to do with that deck is move out of the usual kind of tarot card, oracle card way of working, which is just to look at the cards, to do a spread, and to read the messages and, you know, kind of apply them to your life. I really wanted to come back to this practice of the mythic imagination, which is the basis of all of my work, which involves paying attention to images, paying attention to stories, paying attention to dreams and to the things that keep recurring, the characters that we love, the characters that we love, even if we don't understand why we're so

drawn to them. And so I really wanted to offer in the booklet that comes with the cards, ways of working with the images. So not just looking at the working with the images so not just looking at the meaning of the card but just if you pull a card and you're not quite sure particularly if you're not quite sure how this relates to you why have you pulled this particular woman why have you pulled old crane woman for example from the deck what is she to you then to just sit with the image you know there's in in the depth psychology that kind of post-union depth psychology that I espouse, it's, you're not encouraged to interpret images all the time. But to let the image have its say, to just sit with the image, don't try to say, oh, that's a symbol of my ex, but just to let the image reveal itself to you. And it's based on that assumption that you know

this imaginary world where the images live they have a life of their own we don't make them up so it's kind of treating the image with respect and you know incubating a dream um doing a kind of guided or active imagination journey where you just close your eyes and you picture yourself in that card in that scene and kind of walk around and see what it has to say to you there are all kinds of different ways of working with these cards and working with these images and kind of letting them letting them happen to us rather than just kind of you know blundering in a bit and trying to use them as interpretations of our lives and ourselves so I like that way of working and I was very grateful that Hay House thought that was a good a good way of of doing it yeah not to let the patriarchy seep in and try and make sense of

something quick and tangible five-step process to this that and the other it's actually to allow ourselves to be in a relationship I think so and particularly when we're looking or working with stories and with images that are very old you know and the way that our ancestors saw these images might have been very different from the ways that we do so although i do offer some interpretations and meanings they're really only ever intended to be the beginning of of a journey and again if you draw a card and what i think it um reflects't work for you, then work with the image and then it reveals itself to you. You know, I've had dreams that didn't make sense for five years. And then one day, five years later, it's like, oh, that's what that was about.

So we tend to be very eager. And of course, when you've got a particular issue that you're trying to deal with, you have to be a little bit eager. But there is also this ability to work longer term with an image, particularly if it's one that keeps recurring. You know, we have an old woman in the card that we pick. We dream about old women. We, you know, all the movies that we love all of a sudden have got old women in them. All of that is the imaginal world talking to us and trying to get our attention that maybe we need to pay attention to this particular image. Thank you, Sharon. our attention that maybe we need to pay attention to to this particular image thank you Sharon if people are loving hearing you what's the best way for them to be in touch with you or connect with

your work other than going out and buying it from in rose rooted and the rooted from an oracle well I think the thing that's been transformational for me over the past year has been substack and so I have a substack publication the art of enchantment which is in the top 10 literature Substacks. And we work very deeply there with myths and fairy tales. So for example, you know, I have a live monthly fairy tale salon where we look at a particular story and we kind of pull it apart on Zoom and in comments. So that really is pretty much where I'm, apart from writing books, where I'm focusing all of my writing and all of my kind of teaching and other work at the moment. So that's lots of fun. And there's plenty, plenty of stuff to find there. Beautiful. I'm so glad that Substack is working for you. It's an exciting platform, isn't it?

There's lots of possibility there. Yeah, there's some really, really interesting writers on there. Yeah. And in a recent Instagram post, you said it's just more, it's less cluttered than the other ways of connecting on the internet yeah yeah and because it just allows you to it's better than blogging you know people just keep saying well it's just like a you know a tarted up version of blogging it's not really because there is a community there and you know a lot of interplay between different writers and between different readers and it allows people like me when I have got something I really want to say about a story or something I really want to offer about the mythic imagination but it's not going to go into a book then you know

there's a whole audience for it on on Substack so it's really lovely very flexible and a great community. I'll drop the link in our show notes for that. Thank you Sharon, thank you so much for giving us your time today and your wisdom and good luck with the release of your next your next book thank you so much a real pleasure as always thanks for being with us all the way through to the end today I'd love to hear how this episode landed for you and I'm excited as I've just been doing another wave of outreach for the podcast. And we have an amazing group of guests coming up now. If there's a topic or a guest that you'd love us to include on the podcast, please, please let me know about it.

You can email me at sophie at red school.net. And that's it for now. Please subscribe to the podcast. It'd be amazing if you could take a minute to give us a review, especially on Apple podcasts. It helps more people to find us. So'd be amazing if you could take a minute to give us a review, especially on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people to find us. So we'd really appreciate that. And I'll be with you again next week.

And until then, keep living life according to your own brilliant rhythm.