Transformation Myths

Just been up in North Wales where Angharad Wynne used the great idea of telling the story of the rebirth of Taliesin as a paradigm for the process of transformation; then asking us to connect the shamanic journeying - or dreaming - we had just done to that story. And it drove home to me how personal transformation is central to this shamanic thing for me. I have for many years been using the Greek myth of Pluto's abduction of Persephone to describe it; and also the idea of the shamanic illness, where you have to answer the call from the Otherworld if you want to get well again.

And in one of the dreamings we did I was shown a fireplace in a cave where I needed to build and light a fire and people would gather round. And I'm thinking yes, I need to get on with this thing. And I know what's at the centre of it, it is this idea and myth of transformation. And when I think like that, I get glimpses of a high voltage cable within me, that has been gradually growing for decades, a kind of magic thread around which all else gathers.