Some questions for to think about:
What stories do you have within your own family ~ tales about relatives living or dead, major upheavals you may have lived through (wars, emigration etc)? How are these stories kept alive within the family, or does hardly anyone in your family know much about past generations?
We do not have any such stores in our family. There were not really any handed down traditions and because of my father, we were kept away from our extended family.
What do you regard the central and important stories of your culture to be? Are you more familiar with old Pagan myths than with the stories told by the wider culture in which you reside?
I do believe that these stories are important to ours and any culture and many are still used today to teach children many things. We use Red Riding Hood to teach our kids not to talk to strangers, The Lion and the Mouse to help others, and Rumplestilskin to not be hasty in making deals, read everything! There are many more still in use today. However, they are considered fairy tales, stories, not anything real or that was ever real. We do not think of symbols of the Gods, maybe the characters were magical fairies who helped the cobbler, or the Gods being seen as animal spirits. Thses are things that were lost through time and stories and beliefs forgotten.
Stories in our culture are used to teach manners, ettequette, good decision making skills, and especially in Native American Cultuer, histories of the ancenstors.
If a god has no surviving myths or stories, how might you go about learning their nature? Are stories actually necessary?
I belive that all we have to do to learn the old stories is ask the Gods about their stories. Are these stories the way they want to be remembered, what were the real stories? If we listen, they will answer us.
Practical exercise:
Write a poem in one of the above metres. Alternatively, tell a story at a festival, pub moot or other gathering.
The morning sun rise up high
Give the land a cheery sigh
As the clouds they do pass by
What stories do you have within your own family ~ tales about relatives living or dead, major upheavals you may have lived through (wars, emigration etc)? How are these stories kept alive within the family, or does hardly anyone in your family know much about past generations?
We do not have any such stores in our family. There were not really any handed down traditions and because of my father, we were kept away from our extended family.
What do you regard the central and important stories of your culture to be? Are you more familiar with old Pagan myths than with the stories told by the wider culture in which you reside?
I do believe that these stories are important to ours and any culture and many are still used today to teach children many things. We use Red Riding Hood to teach our kids not to talk to strangers, The Lion and the Mouse to help others, and Rumplestilskin to not be hasty in making deals, read everything! There are many more still in use today. However, they are considered fairy tales, stories, not anything real or that was ever real. We do not think of symbols of the Gods, maybe the characters were magical fairies who helped the cobbler, or the Gods being seen as animal spirits. Thses are things that were lost through time and stories and beliefs forgotten.
Stories in our culture are used to teach manners, ettequette, good decision making skills, and especially in Native American Cultuer, histories of the ancenstors.
If a god has no surviving myths or stories, how might you go about learning their nature? Are stories actually necessary?
I belive that all we have to do to learn the old stories is ask the Gods about their stories. Are these stories the way they want to be remembered, what were the real stories? If we listen, they will answer us.
Practical exercise:
Write a poem in one of the above metres. Alternatively, tell a story at a festival, pub moot or other gathering.
The Englyn Milwr... A moral poem which consists of three rhyming lines, each of 7 syllables. The 1st and 2nd lines describe the topic, and the 3rd line gives the moral or spiritual message. Before aiming for the division of meaning, just try writing three line verses with 7 syllables in each line (each syllable is represented by the symbol #.)Here is my poem written in the styles as above. It's not great but happy I think!!!
# # # # # # A
# # # # # # A
# # # # # # A
An example of this (rhyming syllables in bold print) is:
Forgotten lies the old god,
Deep beneath the useless sod,
No grave this, but sleeping pod.
The morning sun rise up high
Give the land a cheery sigh
As the clouds they do pass by
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