Mythology
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Audio: The Guardian Trees
Another in my series of Sonoma Stories: mythology for a sacred landscape of meaning. Text version here.
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Mythology: The Guardian Trees
This is another in my series of mythological stories about Sonoma County (see “Storytelling and the Mythic Landscape”.) What if this happened, long ago? Now, everyone knows that the Sacred Earth gives birth to all of us, and takes us back into itself and makes new creatures when we die. This is the way of Life: those whose time has come are eaten to sustain the living, and when our time comes, we get eaten, too. But what some people don’t know is that the Earth does the same thing with the very lands themselves, like our Sonoma. When their time is done, they, too, go back into the ocean, the source…
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Audio: Storytelling and the Mythic Landscape
Another in my series of Sonoma Stories: mythology for a sacred landscape of meaning. Text version here.
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Storytelling and the Mythic Landscape
Throughout human history, religions have communicated their values and moral codes through storytelling. Both oral traditions and literate societies passed their metaphorical teaching stories from generation to generation. These stories illustrated the values of their cultures, gave explanations for how they had come to exist as distinct groups, and often populated the home landscapes of these cultures with mythological beings and histories. As a whole, such myths had the effect not only of passing along the beliefs of their peoples, but of enchanting their landscapes. Major features of the lands where these people lived—rivers, mountains, geological features— became associated with stories of heroism, discovery, innovation, and lessons learned. Where I live—North America—the vast…
