How to Find Your Myth
Transition is initiation. In times of change myths empower our understanding and support our growth.
Transition is initiation.
When we are in times of challenge, we are being asked to transform.
All the old stories tell us this true. At the edge of the wood, in the sleeping castle, the wild hag ride through the winter nights, a brave soul slogs through. We know their names: Vasalisa, Rose Red, Tom Thumb, Demeter. They who descend into the otherworld, the unknown. The journey can feel interminable, like this moment, right now, no end in sight, all the familiar footholds dissolved and little left but a crumble of stone in the vast expanse of universe.
:
Yet, intrepid students know the foothold is myth, the ceremony of practice.
The second our lives become a ritual story — honing us, annealing us, moving us outside of the known and into the unknown — we have again agency, choice. This is where working with myth can support our journey, and understanding the ancient form of the most human stories can give our own strange, underworld travels a comprehensive shape.
Because the small tasks of the fairy tale are no joke: we call on our helping spirits — bee messengers sing of ancestors, mice sort the peas from the poppy in the wild hag’s hut. Yes, danger lurks everywhere, but it is a purposeful stretching, a challenge of gift. When we embrace the lessons of the liminal, the small sacred ways, we become — enlivened, this moment — more real. Here is a promise, offered by the teller of every tale: Someday in a crackling evening you will look back and see it is done. The initiation over, the foothold won. When writing the story of your initiation, this sacred transformation of which we are all a part, do you surrender, offer willingly, plod on, take heart?
To work with myth is to develop relationship. These are not static tales, but living entities — recorded, yes, but still vital and whole in the telling. I choose to believe in my ancestral animist practice that myths call to us — we are made of stories, and some of these ancient bones exist within us. When we hear them there is a prickling of goosebumps on the skin, or a sense of longing for something we have maybe in this life never known. When we meet them we can honor them, learn their words and ways, discover the pattern of language and symbol imprinted within. We may learn them, and share them, feeling our place in the story, the wholness of transition navigated unalone.
I believe that everyone has stories that call, stories that we belong to.
To find your myth, seek out the stories you loved as a child.
Search up as many versions as you can, read them, listen to them. Begin to commit the story to memory, see where it wants to have its way with you. Remember — it is alive, and will change with your telling, become made new with your unique voice.
When I work with a myth I like to make it a part of my altar, find the symbols it shares and make them part of my daily work, food or dress. I place its words beneath my pillow at night and invite it to give me dreams. I write out the story, letting it come through me, then recite it as I wander. The poet Dorianne Laux once said in a craft talk that we honor what we love through making it a part of us — she was speaking about memorizing poetry, but I love this implication for all story, myth, sacred art.
When working deeply with a myth I listen for its remembering — those “coincidences” that appear — feeling into its wisdom. I map its rhythm and draw its characters. I develop rituals and practices — inquiry writing, ceremonial meals — that take me deeper into its knowing. Eventually there is no separation, I don’t have to work to remember the story any longer because it is woven with me. We are of a kind. Which is essential, because when life takes me into the underworld of chronic illness, yet again, I have resources in the dark of transformation. I can invoke Demeter seeking her daughter, call Vasalisa’s wisdom in the wild witch’s hut, and remember how they approached their tasks, what actions sustained them. Instead of wheeling unanchored through the pain of my initiation, I have a model of support, and the gift of companionship.
There is no wrong way to live your story. I share this only because myth supports me, gives me hope, and sings me spirit songs when I become lost in grief. What roots are the small sacred ways, and the knowing that ending is a cycle, too. By embracing the liminal, we may live the myth true.
ᚨᛚᚢ
Sacred Art, Myth, Ritual and Story| Lara Vesta
Lara Vesta, MFA, is an artist, author, storyteller and educator transforming chronic illness into a path of healing and…www.laravesta.co
DARK GODDESS PROJECT | Lara Vesta
The Dark Goddess Project: A Self-Initiation Journey The journey to the Dark Goddess is a natural part of any death…www.laravesta.co
The Wild Soul School Community
Since 2014 the Wild Soul School has offered empowering, inquiry-based education for life transformation: ritual…the-wild-soul-school-community.mn.co