Wolf Milk: a Counsel of Resistance and Delight

A New Intensive Weekend with Dr Martin Shaw

Myth, Rites of Passage, The Times We Are In

Due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the School of Myth is hoping to run what had been organised as a 3-weekend intensive programme (see below for the original details) as a one weekend intensive in August. Here is a message from Martin:

Back at the end of last year I wrote this:

For the first time in history an initiation is coming that will involve everyone on the planet. Not a rite-of-passage for a few but all of us, human and non-human alike.

The plan at that moment was to create a three weekend program that directly related the worlds of myth and rites-of-passage, something that has been a core value in my work for twenty years.

And then the initiation turned up. And here we are.

It goes without saying that we’ve had to alter our plans a little, appropriately so. We can’t run a three weekend intensive when we have no idea when or how we will be able to travel again. And not many will have the stomach to book without that clarification.

So what we’ve done is this: combined much of what the wider program was offering into a long weekend intensive. I will teach stories that speak exactly to this moment in time, there will be opportunity to actually learn some of them yourselves and take back to your communities and practice, there will be time set aside for deep reflection in the stunning beauty of the West Country. At night we will gather by the fire in the old way and ask: what is the kind of culture we would wish to make?

If you enjoy my books or wider teaching, then this really is for you. If you believe in story as a carrier of radical, beautiful dynamic agency, then this is for you. This will not be a passive experience.

We have provisionally booked the gathering from mid afternoon of Friday August 7^th to Sunday August 9^th.

We don’t expect a flurry of bookings until we all know more regarding travel, but we wanted to you to know well in advance.

 

In my whole teaching life, there has never been a more urgent need for something like this. 

 

PRACTICAL DETAILS:

DATE: August 7^th to 9^th 2020

FEE: £384 (including VAT).

ACCOMODATION: sharing with one or two others in a luxury yurt or bell tent.

Fee to include accommodation, meals and all teaching.

There may be some single accommodation available, please ask for details if you are interested.

 

You can register your interest by emailing and we will let you know when we are ready for bookings.

 

 

Original details below:

These are uncertain times that sometimes feel hopeless. This three-weekend programme has been designed to give us a language – a way of thinking – that meets such a moment. Not with soundbites or hashtags, but a joyful labour of the imagination.

For the first time in history an initiation is coming that will involve everyone on the planet. Not a rite-of-passage for a few but all of us, human and non-human alike. This is what climate change will bring. In an initiatory time, we need an initiatory language. We need stories not just about the earth, but from the earth. We also need to re-hear some of the mythologies that have underpinned western culture. Could something new be trying to be heard through them?

Wolf Milk is an immersion into stories that tell us about who we are, the earth we live on and how we have best communicated with it. Alongside such myths there will also an introduction to wilderness rites-of-passage.

How does the earth speak to us everyday? What is it like to be claimed by a stretch of land? What is the etiquette required, the signals to look for? What are the emerging stories?

Martin’s fully trained wilderness vigil team will provide afternoon sessions on this vital work. To experience the mythology of a landscape and the landscape of a mythology. The final weekend will include a day fasting alone in nature, with full basecamp support.

Come join us by the fire: you will hear a master storyteller speak in myth whilst developing your own relationship to the stories, you will study how myths are culturally and often place embedded, and how you can best articulate the stories that want to be spoken through you. These are big encounters, and rarely experienced lightly.

Myths tell us we have been fed a lie: that we can be anything we want, whenever we want. The old stories say no, we are here to become tempered into something quite specific. Destiny is at play. Let’s dream on what that could be. And more. Let’s act on what that could be.

* Please note, this programme does not require you to be a storyteller, simply someone with a love of myth and the wider world.

Weekend One (June 26th to 28th): The Woman Who Married A Mountain
Trouble. From the fairy tale of The Bewitched Princess to Psyche and Eros to Inanna, we explore modes of challenge, betrayal, trance and blessing. What do the old stories say about the insistence of the descent in our lives? We learn more about the Blakian trade of innocence for experience.

Weekend Two (July 10th to 12th): The Hermitage of Star-Fire
Quest. The desire to set out, the hunger for mentors, failing to ask the redemptive question. In this highly original telling of the grail epic Parzival, Shaw emphasises the role of Cundrie, the tusked and ferocious defender of the grail as a bridge between humans, animals and the divine world.

Weekend Three (August 7th to 9th): The Deep Wild Song Of Everything
Return. The longing for home and the smarts to get there. When Odysseus hears the song of the sirens, what exactly is he hearing? Is this the terrible beauty of what Finn McColl calls ‘the music of what is’? Would this sound be the very thing we, as a people, need to hear at this moment in time. In this final weekend we travel through stories of return, and also participate in a day fast in nature. With the preparation built up over the previous weekends, a day fast can be quite extraordinary, a world within a world, replete with insight and magic if you have eyes to behold it.

This course is open to both those who have previously studied with Martin and to newcomers.

 

FEES: Standard (in yurt or bell tent) £1152 ; Budget (camping) £1056

Fee includes VAT at 20 per cent, accommodation, all teaching and meals across the three weekends. The standard yurts and bell tents include bedding and are single sex, shared mostly with one or two others. The budget camping option requires you to bring all of your own equipment.

The weekends begin on the Friday evenings and finish on Sunday afternoons.

A deposit (non-refundable) of £402 (including VAT) will secure a place.

Please contact to book.

See here for terms and conditions.