Seasons change (or do they?), and Celtic myths
I review If Women Rose Rooted, and discuss indigeneity
Well hello sunshine! After the last few days of rain (not complaining about it - I think it broke the terrible drought many inland areas have been having), I was grateful to see the light today. It’s one of those bright Sydney days I’ve talked about before - big skies, vivid colours. We ticked over into autumn last weekend, according to the Western calendar. But for First Nations people, it’s still the season called Burran, which is hot and dry, with occasional heavy showers (as I can attest - yesterday I kept dashing out between downpours to try to clear the drain in the front yard of fallen leaves. Yep, it’s all glamour round here). I did like autumn in England, but it always felt tinged with gloom because it heralded the downward slide into the dark and cold of winter. Besides, that word just doesn’t fit here in Sydney - so I choose to still enjoy the warmth of Burran.
News
The Creative Women event at North Sydney Community Centre was super fun! I listened to some hugely inspiring conversations and enjoyed my own (with artist Karen Black) immensely. I’ll let you know when the podcast they recorded of the event goes up.
I was also dodging the rain dashing round Sydney on Tuesday from shoot location to shoot location, having conversations with still more inspiring women. All will be revealed in the May issue of ELLE.
What I’m reading
This is a bit of a departure from the books I’ve talked about previously here. It’s by Sharon Blackie, a psychologist and mythologist, and it’s called If Women Rose Rooted: the Power of the Celtic Woman (obviously the word ‘rooted’ has an unfortunate resonance in Australia).
This book was largely ignored by mainstream reviewers, as far as I can see, and it’s not hard to see why: Blackie takes mythologist Joseph Campbell’s famed Hero’s Journey, which breaks down the narrative structure of most myths, and turns it on its head, creating instead an Eco-Heroine’s Journey. So far, so hippy dippy, right?
Well, I can’t deny that if you’re uncomfortable with reading about Riverwitches and Well Maidens and Creative Rainbow Mothers that this might not be the book for you. But the occasional tweeness and Idiosyncratic Capitalisation pale into insignificance next to the enormous wealth of knowledge and thought that has gone into this book. Blackie takes the often female-centric Celtic myths as the foundation stone for her mission to help women reconnect with and heal the land, reclaim their power, find their path and then share their wisdom. And she does this by cramming a lot in - she retells some of those Celtic myths (very beautifully); interviews inspiring women; interweaves the story of her own Eco-Heroine’s Journey; and issues a stirring call to arms to help heal the world.
It’s not the first time I’ve come across the idea that our current state of climate crisis is linked to our cultural dismissal of female knowledge, power and connection to the land, but it’s certainly the most detailed expression of it I’ve read. Pre-Christian cultures, Blackie points out, centred women, revering them for their ability to give life in various ways - but Christianity’s attitude to women is summed up in the Eden story: Eve was created from Adam’s rib, a spare part, an afterthought solely existing to please him. When she had the temerity to seek wisdom, she introduced suffering to the world - and humanity has suffered ever since. Hardly a healthy paradigm for male-female relations, and one that set the tone for the next 2000 years of patriarchy. It’s not a huge step to liken the oppression of women to the destruction of the Earth that gives us life. “Our patriarchal, war-mongering, growth-and-domination-based culture has caused runaway climate change, the mass extinction of species, and the ongoing destruction of wild and natural landscapes in the unstoppable pursuit of progress,” says Blackie. But, “Before there was the Word, there was the land, and it was made and watched over by women. Stories from almost every culture around the world tell us that once upon a time it was so.”
We need to find a new way, she says, one that re-centres women and their care for the earth. That way, she believes, is laid out for us in Celtic myths, which “arise out of a common landscape and environment which brought about a highly distinctive pan-Celtic culture that is rooted in intense feelings of belonging to place.” These are stories in which women “are portrayed not only as deeply connected to the natural world, but as playing a unique and critical role in the wellbeing of the Earth and survival of its inhabitants… The major preoccupation of their heroes is with service to and stewardship of the land. And once upon a time women were the guardians of the natural world, the heart of the land. The Celtic woman who appears in these old tales is active in a different way from their heroes and warriors: she is the one who determines who is fit to rule, she is the guardian and protector of the land, the bearer of wisdom, the root of spiritual and moral authority for the tribe. Celtic creation stories tell us that the land was shaped by a woman; Celtic history offers us examples of women who were the inspirational leaders of their tribes. … What if we could reclaim those stories, and become those women again?”
The current paradigm of the Hero’s Journey isn’t appropriate for these times, she argues, with its focus on individual transformation instead of community action, so instead Blackie lays out her new Eco-Heroine’s Journey, which “is a journey to understanding how deeply enmeshed we are in the web of life on this planet. It is a journey which leads us firmly back to our own sense of belonging on this earth - but after that, it is a journey which requires us to step into our own power and take back our ancient, native role as its guardians and protectors.”
The journey begins in the Wasteland, requiring us to understand how bad things are (“Our severance from nature leaves us feeling as if we do not belong in the world, and that can be a source of anxiety and deep despair”); continues with a Call we can choose to heed - or not; and takes us into the Cauldron of Transformation, where trials are overcome and grief is deeply felt. The path, or the Pilgrim’s Way, gradually becomes apparent, and the Heroine must find allies along it to assist her. She must restore the balance between masculine and feminine, enact her Heroine’s Return, and finally become an Elder, sharing her wisdom.
That’s a very compressed version and the book is worth reading as a valid and important paradigm for assessing not just our own life’s journeys but our path to healing all the damage we have done to the earth.
What particularly interests me is her focus on indigeneity. Blackie says of her time living in America, “I foundered on this continent in which I had no history or ancestral connection, and I couldn’t find a way to transplant my own native Celtic traditions there along with me. I for sure had no connection with, let alone right to, the traditions of the people who were native to this land.” This gave me pause because, according to this logic, any Australian who is not Indigenous has no right to call on First Nations myth in order to understand this country - something I don’t disagree with, but which does mean we need to create our own myths in order to connect with the land. She quotes Sylvia Linsteadt, who lives in California but has Celtic roots: “‘I do feel deeply rooted in this land, yes,’ she says. ‘But I wish that the heritage of my immediate ancestors in this place wasn't predicated directly upon violence, slaughter and the oppression of a people and a way of life that had been grounded here for at least 9000 years. The old stories of this land, the old native traditions of its people, are not mine to touch. My own people have done enough meddling, enough ruining, enough destroying, and I have no right now, a white girl made up of almost every imaginable European culture, regardless of my longing for rootedness, my longing to belong to the land into which I was born, to go adapting and adopting sacred stories of a people who my direct ancestors probably discriminated against, probably even killed.’” Any non-Indigenous Australian can relate to this deep discomfort with our own recent history.
Sylvia feels she has no right to the old stories, which “were stories gathered and earned over millennia. Those of us who came later need to work for our own wild myths.” So she writes her own, doing what Blackie felt she could not, bringing European fairy stories to her own environment. “You cannot transport the Cailleach Bhéarra [the Celtic female creator goddess] to the deserts of New Mexico,” says Blackie, “her place is here, in the wild, wet, stony land she created and personifies. But you can carry the ancestral memory with you; a memory that will help you to find the Old Woman of the World in whatever shape and form she manifests in the place where you live. You can carry with you our native ways of looking at the world, a knowledge that the Earth is animate, a sense of life as sacred, a need to live in harmony with the cycles and seasons of the year. These are the native traditions of your people; they belong to you. The old stories will teach you, wherever you take them. They will show you how to become the bean feasa, the Wise Woman.”
I appreciate that attempt to adapt her nativist philosophy for the millions of people (like me) who no longer live on their ancestral lands, or even know where they are. But I think Blackie’s rejection of the value of living by any culture’s myths but your own is rather limiting. This is something I think about a lot, as a Brit in Australia who is acutely aware that I don’t have the right to claim First Nations stories. So then, how to live on these lands? I don’t think, for me, rewriting European fairy stories and incorporating echidnas and platypuses into them is the way to go. And I do miss that sense I had when I lived in the UK of a deeply layered claim to the stories - the Green Man, Boudicca, the Mabinogion, these were my stories and they wove me into the fabric and history of the place where I lived. I don’t have that any more. So where do I find my stories? How do I connect to this country? I’m still working that out…
I’m shifting this to a fortnightly newsletter, so I’ll see you in two weeks!
(And a bonus pic of me with Karen Black at the Creative Women event. Note my massive watch to keep track of time while conducting an interview onstage!)