An invitation from Dr Martin Shaw

Dartmoor, England

July 11th to 15th 2022

To become a true human being, the old stories tell us we have to walk through seven doors. Not six, not eight, seven. We invite you to walk through them with us.

As a culture that barely understands the word culture

As a maiden growing her hands back

As a sailor longing for Ithaca

As a yew with a singing kid in its branches

As a condor glimpsing Byzantium

Let these doors make of us a Yggdrasil.   

***

In deeply troubled times, this is a moment to enter the magic of place, story, language; to study with a master storyteller in the landscape he lives and creates in.

This is not nostalgia but a kind of activism of the soul.

Suffused with story, buffeted by weather, our enquiry will be deep: how do we, as modern women and men, respond to both land and legend? What could we do with such a thing? Come find out.

As wandering scholars, we will start the day deep in story and poetry, brooding together for the morning sessions. We explore tales from pocket sized to epic scale, more than a few that you may learn yourself.

In the afternoons, you will be equipped with a bardic task, to explore the move from seeing to beholding in both the living world and in our own innate natures. There will be one day fully on the moor. In the evenings there will be good local food, music and story. Up to 60 people together, getting cooked in the mysteries, learning of kindness, grace, grief and rapture. Just like something from the old stories.

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