To me, stories are bae. Hearing them, telling them... I like to think of myself as a great story teller. If you're anything like me, this = facts. This post is going to be about the spectrum of storytelling.
Not may people know or even study the "dead language" of Latin. If you do/ did then you know "story" comes from "history" (a little gender specific for my tastes, but I digressed). Before humans could write, we told stories through word of mouth (speech, song), gesture and dance. Storytelling recorded histories, gained knowledge and kept traditions. Basically, storytellers/ Lorekeepers/ Skalds/ Griots ("Gree-O") all were in charge of keeping their tribe lit.
To tell a story is to create a narrative. Hell, the word "narrative" means "to relate or tell" and it is a spoken/ written account of connected events: a story. Here are the ingredients to a story:
- Experiences
- Memories
- Thoughts
Rinse and repeat - boom, you have magick. Which came first, the original experience or the shape-shifting imagination that results? Better question, does it matter? Both are great on their own or with other things mixed in.
THE SPOKEN NARRATIVE
Okay, this one is pretty obvious. It's a word-of-mouth, part spilling tea, part facts situation. What kind of tea you're serving depends on your title:
- Tale-teller
- Ranconteurs
- Fabulists
- Jongleures
- Anecdotalists
- Disney
... lol okay so I snuck that last one in, but you get the picture. Literally every culture has story-tellers; Old German, Sanskrit, Latin, Chinese and even the Greek had "mythos". Btw, "mythos" means "truths". To the Greeks, truth was malleable - all perspective based and all perspectives were valid forms of the truth/ story/ mythos.
Storytelling is to teach and entertain, facts. For the spoken narrative, you need live and direct contact to do this or it's completely pointless. Yep, that means reading a book, listening to the radio, tv, NetFlix, YouTube, DTube, or going to the movie theaters just won't cut it in the traditional sense. The feel of the wind in the actions, sound, movement and breath of the storyteller is where the magick of the spoken narrative lives. It's why some prefer going to temple rather than listening to a chant on Spotify. Or some prefer front row seats at a game rather than watching it on the tube.
So, why should magick makers care about this tale-telling stuff? We consume enough stories in a day to fill Bell's largest of librarian wet dreams. Why? Bc! Through stories kids learn moral codes and accepted behaviors. Humans are communal beings. We have an innate requirement to share our experiences. Spiritual leaders are story tellers too.
For magickal folks, this is best exemplified by the bard. No, not Beetle the Bard. Irl bards come from the Celts, who have at least 5 main languages roots. Don't even get me started on how their names/ words are pronounced: basically to say it right in one form of Gaelic is to get it wrong in all the others. sigh A bard is basically a highly trained druid.
Here's a few of the tales you may have heard that you have Bards to thank for:
- Gilgamesh and Enkidu
- Iliad
- Odyssey
- Siegfried (no not the Vegas magick couple)
- Robin Hood
- Song of Roland
- Sundiata (the OG Lion King, looking at you Disney)
- Tain
- Ramayana
Pretty impressive aye? Bet you didn't know these were originally oral tradition stories, did ya'? All of these were eventually put in written form. That brings us to...
THE WRITTEN NARRATIVE
I'm leaving the written narrative portion of this talk for part 2 of this series. There's just waaay too much to go over, I want to give it it's due diligence and I believe it deserves it's own post bc = awesome. Your life is an occasion. Rise to it!
