Golden Thread

Amy Dyer

Description

In The Golden Thread, there are 14 unique tales: from Raven the Lightbringer to Odin, and The Lindworm Prince to The Sun Maiden. Each chapter braids the visible with the invisible, a diverse tapestry of folklore, symbolism, alchemy, psychology and shamanism. The Golden Thread traverses the landscape of imagination and the borderlands of our own lives; those threshold moments of love and loss. It aims to show us in a time of great upheaval, how cosmic, seasonal, and ancestral patterns can help root and connect us. While myth, a vital and steadfast guide, weaves its way throughout.

Informations

• Publié par: Brown Dog Books
• Date de parution: 09 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781839520839
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

THE
GOLDEN THREAD
THE
GOLDEN THREAD
Myth and the Labyrinth of Life
AMY DYER
First published 2019
Copyright © Amy Dyer 2019
The right of Amy Dyer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the copyright holder.
Published under licence by Brown Dog Books and The Self-Publishing Partnership, 7 Green Park Station, Bath BA1 1JB
www.selfpublishingpartnership.co.uk
ISBN printed book: 978-1-83952-082-2
ISBN e-book: 978-1-83952-083-9
Cover design by Niall Grant
Internal design by Andrew Easton
Illustrations by Niall Grant
Printed and bound in the UK
This book is printed on FSC certified paper
“Inward goes the secret path…”
Novalis 1
CONTENTS
Introduction
I. Awakening
Raven the Lightbringer
The Hanged Man: Odin and his Quest for the Runes
The Arcana of Nature: Creation and wisdom
II. Leaving Childhood
The Mermaid
Beauty and the Swan
Metamorphosis: Love and Transformation
III. Crossing the Threshold
The Lindworm Prince
Persephone
The Night Sea Voyage: Shadow and the Dark Night of the Soul
IV. Into the Unknown
Father of Sickness
The Bear Man
Throwing the Bones: Worlds within Worlds
V. Separation, Ordeal and acceptance
Ariadne and the Labyrinth
One-Handed Girl
The Serpent and the Labyrinth: Trials and Suffering
VI. Death
Godmother Death
Raven and the Flood
A Time of Ashes: Grief and Longing
VII. Rebirth
The Sun Maiden
Orpheus
Ouroboros: “In My End is My Beginning.”
Glossary
Story Sources
Works Cited
INTRODUCTION
Stars etched by forgotten hands emerge from the darkness, as animals swarm in red ochre and charcoal birds appear in feathered flight. Slowly, lamplight ripples over the curves and contours of the cave, illuminating a dreamtime within of tangled herds of auroch, bison and bear. A hunting ground of eternity lingering on in pigment and bone marrow. A world within a world, a celestial mirror where animals leap and arrows rain down in fire and blood. Enigmatic and strange, they are the dreams, visions and memories of those who have gone before, but as the wick is crushed the images fade into darkness, and the mind sinks back into primordial night, to the vast expanse of the dawning of the world.
To our ancestors the cave was not only a place of shelter, but also a symbol of the womb of the earth. An entrance to the chthonic realm that receives all things, where seeds germinate, and new life flickers into being. Although a place of origin to the Aztec, Pueblo and Hopi peoples, for most other cultures it was a place of illusion, of ritual offerings of shells, carved ivory and whitened bone. While in the mouth of the cave, the liminal line between the worlds, stones were often left, “symbolising the souls of the dead who would be reborn from the womb of the goddess, of the ancient earth mother”. 2
The cave was also a place of initiation into the mysteries of life and death. The great 20 th -century mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote of this when he said: “ rites …together with the mythologies that support them, constitute the second womb…mythology being the womb of mankind’s initiation into life and death”. 3 In the primeval wild of the cave, initiates would have crawled through cramped and suffocating passageways where, amid swarming spirits, they would have received visions in states of trance and ecstasy, before returning reborn, and bathed in the brilliant white light of the sun. This motif is found the world over, from the solar deity, or King, who is born in a cave in the depths of the bleak midwinter, to the Greek god Zeus, sheltered in a cave on the island of Crete, nursed by nanny goats, and fed with honey from the wild hive. As the sun emerges from the underworld and from the cave, it, too, is reborn. Once accompanied by the goddess, bringer of spring, beauty and fertility, together these ancient symbols – earth and sky, light and dark, masculine and feminine – are united, and from their sacred marriage balance and harmony are realised, both within and without.
Wholeness may then be seen as the goal of the great work, of the journey of life, whose allegorical symbol has long been compared to a labyrinth. With roots stretching back to the spiral carvings of the Neolithic age, the labyrinth symbolises the torturous path of life where, at the centre, we meet our darkest fears. It is at this darkest point where we face ourselves, and all that we have repressed up to that point. Our shadow filled with all the hurt, trauma and shame, but as Carl Jung said, “the shadow is ninety percent pure gold,” and so the realisation that life is worth living is so often born in that heart of darkness.
Interestingly, in the folk maze-games of old Europe the virgin who was rescued from the centre of a labyrinth or maze, is an echo of the Sun Goddess, source of illumination and life, who the old myths tell us was liberated from her imprisonment in a labyrinth, here symbolic for the depths of winter.
Later on, we will see how the Greek hero Theseus is “spun into darkness by Ariadne’s ball of silver thread, in the way that skeins of light unwind from the ball of the moon until it’s all gone”. 4 Here Ariadne receives the thread from the ancient Greek Moirai, or Fates who, in triple aspect, spin the thread of life, measure, allot it, and ultimately cut it. From Laima, the Baltic goddess of Fate, to the Norns of Norse mythology, and the Pueblo Sussistanako, or Spider Woman, women have long been associated with the web, or net of life, which symbolises the interconnectedness of all things. P.L. Travers wrote of how in Hindu mythology, “the high god Indra, it is said, once made a net to enclose the world, and at each knot or intersection, he fastened a little bell…Nothing could move, not a man, not the wind, not a thought in the mind, without setting one bell ringing; and that one bell would set all the other things going.” 5 This may be seen as an analogy of the law of cause and effect, or perhaps an early explanation of what cosmologist Yannic Mellier wrote of, how “the universe is a sort of net – essentially, visible matter is localised in the long filaments that join together these knots.” 6 To the philosopher Plato, the universe itself was the spindle of necessity, while still older tales tell us that the Arc of Heaven symbolised the loom on which all life is woven.
Sometimes we may feel as if we are hanging on by a single thread. A single thread that has been knotted and tangled with others. It is these invisible threads that are often the strongest ties, as the artist Edvard Munch wrote about a failed love affair: “I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us – I felt invisible strands of her hair still winding around me – and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea – I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding – because the threads could not be severed.” 7
Not so long ago, I hung onto life by a single thread. As usual, bad luck came all at once, family cancers and death, while I was depressed and severely anorexic. I am an only child and have always been very close to my mum and dad, so almost losing them and seeing them unwell among other things meant I struggled to function, although I knew I had to get better. The day after my 27th birthday I fell backwards down a flight of stairs in a cave. I was rushed to hospital, questioned if I was a heroin addict (I wasn’t) before, with collapsed veins punctured by needles, I was able to leave with only a few stitches in my head and a cut on my shoulder. On reflection, aside from being incredibly lucky, it was an ironic initiation that became a turning point for me, because in the months and years that followed, I began to read fairy tales and myths once more, as well as anything by Joseph Campbell I could get my hands on! At this time a whole other world opened up to me, and I found them incredibly comforting and illuminating. I realised how “archetypal patterns embody primordial images and symbols, occurring the world over and constituting man’s potential to understand himself and the world around him. There is a cosmic significance running through these patterns of myth, saga, legend and fairy tale, rooted deeply in human nature, continually striking chords and evoking responses. Solzhenitsyn, in his Nobel Prize speech, said: ‘Some things lead into the realm beyond words… it is like that small mirror in fairy tales – you glance in it and what you see is not yourself; for an instant you glimpse the Inaccessible…and the soul cries out for it.’” 8
Our ancestors developed a rich oral tradition of myths and stories, which still stir something deep within us. To gather in the woods around a fire and hear a story on the night air is magical, and some feel strongly that committing such stories to paper traps and limits them, but the written word has its own subtle magic. It weaves a world into which the reader slips. A realm, both far away and close at hand.
Reading myths may also help us to understand the archetypes, as well as bringing about a deeper understanding of the cyclical nature of life. This in turn can invoke compassion and help us on our own path. Even in modern books and films like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Star Wars , the mythopoetic elements may be seen as an echo of ancient patterns which help us to delve into the deeper levels of what is seen and unseen.
I really hope that some of the stories will resonate with you, but if not, then that is understandable, because although I have offered all that I can, it is only informed by my life experience, thoughts and research. As Jane Yolen wrote “the world