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Metamodern Spirituality | The Animate Everything (w/ Sophie Strand) 6,362

• connection with with myth with with uh archetypal language with poetry with metaphor and
• becoming ossified when you deracinate myths from their ecology and you try and disseminate them over wide groups of
• gonna because i've written a lot about masculinity in the myths of masculinity people always like how do you get rid of
• you know you write a lot about myth and and explore mythology a lot um and one of my
• passions and interests is uh yeah what is the role of myth today what myths if any do we need
• uh yeah what is the role of myth today what myths if any do we need and i'm wondering if sort of what you're
• and i'm wondering if sort of what you're talking about is if not a narrative myth it's at least a mythic framing which is
• bringhurst when he says that you know myth personifies the elements to describe what's happening in the
• world well science just quantifies it but equations and myths are pretty much the same thing and so i'm kind of i'm
• increase it and um so i think myth can teach us how to be more ecologically awake actually and i
• more ecologically awake actually and i think myth has always you know i think of addis and
• teaches us how to think like an ecosystem and i think that myths as being ecosystems as being composites
• and how how wha what do you think it is about myth that that like you mentioned personification but is there something
• personification but is there something in the way that myth frames things that that is more um conducive to
• living of it um but yeah i mean how do you think myth offers
• and for the thing i am focusing on is less myth as this kind of idea of creating these important stories
• storytelling which is how do we compost older ideas of myth with this new scientific information
• archetypal lovers that predate arthurian myths and probably inspire them and what if you put them inside a non-human
• characters and putting them in more than human narratives is the kind of new myth that i'm interested in creating
• that is precisely what i feel is what we need these myths for now yeah and and then then you're kind of in a
• uh sense of meaninglessness and in my view the myths that we've inherited uh largely aren't up to that task
• question is well what what's to be done about that do we reimagine old myths do we do we create new ones um
• and i think that for that reason it's important to take some of these myths to reroute them and their real ecology take
• real ecosystem and then to ask the question not to say how does this myth work for me but what is it teaching me
• species outside your door so that's the new myth-making i'm very interested in the local and i think that there's a
• kind of a myth that can provide um if not solace but at least a an orientation that's
• telling a kind of thanatological mythology or a myth of what it means to to be alive and to pass like what does

Myth, Mycelium, and Rewilding Masculinities 1,416

• discussion tonight um myth mycelium and rewiring masculinity
• uh but besides the idea of mixing and weaving myth the mycelium our little friends
• touching point spirituality and ecology you mean or myth and masculinity spirituality and ecology
• written culture our myths ossify they no longer change who are we to think that two years of a
• what we like to think of with these legends and with myths is that if we really look at them
• below ground so what i was thinking about as i began to explore myths of the masculine is how do we think about all
• saying how can we actually root this we're rooting the myth we're taking it away from the co-opted patriarchal
• its original ecology but then we're learning from that rerouted myth how to root back into our own landscape and our
• um so how does stories and myths have a place in that age we are in or
• and what is the place of storytelling what is the place of myth because when i go to south dakota
• with my work lately is there's an idea that science is antagonistic to um myth to storytelling but the truth is you
• science is trying to explain nature with quantities and myth is trying to do it by personifying the elements so they're
• our idea of individuality and in fact science and myth are increasingly proving each other
• so is it something that in the myth and the story and in ecology
• what's the role of ecology or how can myth let's bring it back to myth how can myth help us to reconnect first with
• myth let's bring it back to myth how can myth help us to reconnect first with each other
• do we get those hearts to open and what's the story in the myth part what the pot story of the myth to really
• what's the story in the myth part what the pot story of the myth to really help that those greater stories in the
• time has been tristan um from the story of tristan predates the arthurian myth that's probably celtic and irish in
• other there's also healing right outside our door and i think myths can show us just tristan was always trying to i
• to be king you have that's a great story that's a great myth that teaches us about ecology which is you have to
• which says you know i was growing up i grew up with these myths that's why i'm going to rewild them but
• this is a conversation please rewild your own myths so you know i never want a monologue it
• should always be a collaboration of us all rewilding our specific myths for me a figure who i love is tom bombadil from
• like this imperative to basically bring ecology myth and basically that's my question what is
• the steps how do we do that how do we bring myth and ecology into it i think we have to realize that we don't
• bring a lot of different voices in a lot of different myths both both past both new
• is for to connect to more stories here to more myths and when i see more stories i mean
• to maybe two species to enlarge or to change my story or my myth to reframe it to really get that counsel from other

DAVID ABRAM & SOPHIE STRAND: Magic as Radical Embedding in our Web of Relations 1,080

• in the v timer merlini and all of the original myths he comes and he gives advice about how to run a kingdom but

UWP interviews 002 with Sophie Strand June 2021 1,074

• like that we deracinate all of these stories and myths from their ecology and so they don't

Sophie Strand: Myth & Mycelium 679

• dialogue with the earth be it spoken or drawn or sculpted myth telling we interact with our larger ecosystem
• becomes a type of communication we call myth prehistory is a term used to explain the
• culture all of human history is prehistory almost all of human myth predates the written word stretching
• i want to offer that what we are seeing is actually a profound type of myth making that is dialoguing not with
• poet and translator robert bringhurst proposes that myth can be seen as an alternative science both science and
• alternative science both science and myths seek to understand the natural world while scientists quantifies
• collaboration here we have the first underworld myth well before anana descended into the underworld
• just like fungi taught plants how to root into the soil so do myths teach us how to root into relation with our
• as poet robert bringhurst pointed out and i mentioned before myth is not antagonistic to science but rather an
• alternative science in and of itself myth aims like science perceiving and expressing ultimate truths
• while scientists quantifies reality a myth teller personifies it but we are living in a strange time now when most
• living in a strange time now when most of our myths are uprooted duracinated we think we have myths but really these
• of our myths are uprooted duracinated we think we have myths but really these stories are like house plants cut off
• ecosystem it becomes a map of relationships social your myths pour themselves into your web of kin becoming
• a map of your ecology of relationships fungi are maps of ecosystems and myths represent webs of relatedness rather
• environmentally responding to um you know in rewilding the myths we must understand that myths arise from
• um you know in rewilding the myths we must understand that myths arise from particular ecosystems just as mushrooms
• are the fruiting bodies of underground mycelia so our myths the above ground manifestation of specific ecologies
• manifestation of specific ecologies myths or momentary eruptions of beings that have been growing from millennia
• work happens underground um each myth is the mushroom of a certain place an eruption suited to a
• civilization the earliest mentions of the osiris myth are in the pyramid text first egyptian
• sky and earth animal implant in a version of the assyrian myth homologous to the current day the green
• unfortunately after osiris's initial vegetal celebration his myth turns tragic
• tragic the myth and this version of course is late so we always have to realize that
• when we receive the written methods usually been an oral myth for thousands of years before that and that it's been
• hierarchy and kings and so whenever we get a written myth it's a palimpsest which is a poem system that is in a
• and set it out to sea the myth has many variations the most complete of which are unreliable but the
• ground that holds you up so whenever i tell the osiris myth i always say like what is your box that fits you perfectly
• father in the greek olympic rewrite of older minoan myths may actually be a sterilized version of him there was an
• snake that was also called dionysus in early stratums of these myths the two were seen as interchangeable lightning
• firstborn he is various and the dionysian myths that survive accentuate the slipperiness you know just like
• see yourself branching into asian or mayan myths mayan this mayan myths mythology oh yeah
• mayan myths mayan this mayan myths mythology oh yeah well um i was raised by
• um so has your immersion in nature and myth has that helped you recover and overcome

Sophie Strand, Stephen Jenkinson & Charlotte Du Cann. Relational Imaginaries, Kinship Highlights 7 529

• unfolding memory the hypothesis of myths are framed as stories not equations
• a scientist quantifies reality while a myth teller personifies it and you know it's really interesting that both
• and this information to explain something and a myth teller is attempting
• the aliveness of what they're studying could be a myth teller that stories give you a
• i'll start then we live in a moment where our myths are deracinated
• deracinated we think we have myths but they are like uprooted house plants cut off from soil
• both laps into dogma when this revision stops so a lot of our myths and our stories and our religions
• and as i've written and attempted to revitalize the myths that underpin human exceptionalism exceptionalism and
• anthropocentric narratives so when we think of myths they're often these syncretically layered
• culture comes in and dominates an older culture and their myths get melded so it's really interesting sometimes to
• it's really interesting sometimes to look at myths as being like lichen like lichen is a composite
• of fungi and algae and yeast and bacteria and when you look at myths it's sometimes helpful to think of them as
• retold and they need to be retold in a way that says well how could this myth be addressing climate change and ecocide

IAN MACKENZIE & SOPHIE STRAND: Composting the Mycelial Masculine 528

• um a landscape of conversation rather than a mono myth so you know i see you as really acting like a michael rival
• context from childhood to adult and like here's the myths that are are given to me at this time for example that i
• how where what intersection you see between myth making and then self-identification and gender
• um influenced him uh and and essentially the use of story in this case a myth of iron john iron hans i believe in the
• um place based understanding and that he used that myth to illuminate the the experience of men at the time largely
• early 90s and reading that myth there's something that many men i think experience and i
• a certain context can recognize or find value in a myth then there's something beyond
• and so uh just just having an overt relationship to a myth and to my story again was was it profound uh sense of
• do as well is i think again a conscious application of myth haven't read the book yet but i'm very much looking
• conversations if i didn't involve men in them and start to look at those myths and have empathy and so i'm kind of been
• anything you would like to end with is there a myth or a story would you like to tell us about your school of myth of
• there a myth or a story would you like to tell us about your school of myth of poetics
• more of a ceremony it's a ceremony of story and myth and magic that they're just really special and so if folks are

EP 227, Sophie Strand: Mushrooms and Mind 513

• when i graduated college i wrote i'd written a short book about myth and rhizome and and michael reisel systems
• for a book and i started posting all of my myth and mycelium stuff online and all of a sudden within

Myco, Eco, Mytho: An Ecology of Stories, with David Abram & Alnoor Ladha 441

• block out the much more subtle register in which everything else is speaking. sophie strand: that's beautiful. it brings to mind... i'm very interested in the simplistic understanding of the narcissus myth, and i was thinking that you can very easily think that writing has become a kind of narcissus, which  
• and we are stepping out of line with evolution and resilience as we have this monologic conversation.   but i was also thinking about how narcissus is actually, if we look at the myth,   because this is rewilding mythology, seeing himself reflected in the water, included in,  
• it that way, but what a big shift that is. but hey, i want to just jump back and say i love this   tweak or twist on the narcissus myth because there is a kind of healthy narcissus, a   healthy narcissism, that just as you were saying so beautifully, sees ourselves a bit in everything  
• yeah. sophie strand: you know it's so interesting, so i've heard you speak about neoliberalism and capitalism, and i oftentimes say that myths are very alive, they're   the air that we breathe, that we can't see, as david said, but unfortunately, it decides  
• the air that we breathe, that we can't see, as david said, but unfortunately, it decides   who lives and who dies. one of those myths is neoliberalism and capitalism, is this kind   of very particular type of colonial take on the alphabetic abstraction made possible  
• it's the chapter of the story we're now in, is the dominant mythology. and so when   we are crafting, recalibrating, remembering new, ancient, emerging stories and myths, we also have   to understand the mythological environment, the mimetic landscape in which we are  

SOPHIE STRAND On the Texas Shooting, Masculinity and Healthy Culture /01 337

• talking and um you know i think a lot that myth and storytelling and human behavior
• there are so many i look at myths and i look at mythic structures and i've been spending
• building community in really practical not very sexy ways and the myths will come you know stories always arrive as
• i don't know if you you have a deep understanding of myth through your conversations with many