Rewilding Mythology
For most of human history, myth was a durable mode of knowledge transmission, kept alive and resilient by the breath-laced web of communal storytelling. But the rise of empire depended on the deracination of mythologies. Just as landscapes were stolen and terraformed so were whole pantheons uprooted from their social and ecological contexts. How can we reroot, rewild, and retell?
hosted by Sophie Strand
Sophie is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, & ecology.
Module 1David Abram & Alnoor Ladha
From where does a story sprout? What specific land and soil did it grow from? What ecology is it seeking to tend to, respond to, root into? How do my stories “tell” me into greater intimacy with the kin outside my door? We can reclaim the ecological nature of myths coopted by patriarchal domination by repl...
Module 2Joshua Schrei, Tom Hirons & Ayana Jamieson
Ecosystems are constituted by constant cycles of decay and regrowth. We can replant myth in ecology by understanding that storytelling, too, remains healthy when it goes through cycles, decaying, regrowing, and adapting to suit shifting climatological and social pressures. We can examine oral storytelling,...
Module 3Michael Bauer & Minna Salami
Picture a classical hero. Chances are, you may have envisioned a knight or warrior slaying a dragon or a gorgon. The hero proves his valour by defeating the adversary. But who is the adversary? Is it really a monster? Or is it a culture that opposes hierarchy? What if there was a secret inside every dragon...
Module 4David Zilber & Chiara Baldini
For too long patriarchy has been conflated with the masculine. But before the sword-wielding heroes of legend readily cut down forests, slaughtered the old deities, and vanquished their enemies, there were thousands of years of vegetal gods associated with the underworld, fermentation, radical social movem...
Module 5Sam Lee & brontë velez
Human narratives have held centre stage for thousands of years. But there was a time when legendary bards knew it was their job to channel the stories of animals and plants and stones. We resurrect a long line of magician harpists that span all the way from Palestine to Greece to England. These prophetic f...
Module 6Andreas Weber & Patricia Kaishian
Using a lens of Queer Ecology, we can follow a line of love goddesses back to our symbiotic multicellular origins. Aphrodite, born of foam, reminds us of our oceanic ancestors. Inanna teaches us how to tie our roots together in the underworld, recalling the symbiotic origin of plant and fungal root systems...
Module 7Toko-Pa Turner
Our bodies are composed of more bacterial cells than human cells. There are miles of mycelial fungi in a teaspoon of dirt. Resilient ecosystems are resilient in that they are home to many different species. While monomyths like the hero’s journey have long been popular, they are no longer suited to the mor...
Module 8Bayo Akomolafe & Manchán Magan
Uprooted from the Galilean ecology from which he drew his nature metaphors and translated into the language of his oppressors, the teachings of Jesus have easily lapsed into dogma. How does a storytelling magician get coopted by imperialism and patriarchy? Let us replant Jesus in his original ecological an...
hosted by Sophie Strand
Sophie is a writer based in the Hudson Valley who focuses on the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, & ecology.
hosted by David Abram
David is the author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology, and The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. Described as “revolutionary” by the Los Angeles Times, as “daring” and “truly original” by the journal Science, David’s work has helped catalyze the emergence of several new disciplines, including the burgeoning field of ecopsychology.
hosted by Alnoor Ladha
Alnoor is a co-founder and executive director of The Rules (www.therules.org), founding partner of Purpose (www.purpose.com) and board member of Greenpeace USA (www.greenpeace.org). Alnoor’s work focuses on the intersection of political organizing, storytelling, and technology. As a founding member and the executive director of The Rules, he is part of a global network of activists, organizers, designers, coders, researchers, writers, and others dedicated to changing the rules that create inequality and poverty around the world.
hosted by Tom Hirons
Tom is a writer and storyteller whose particular interests are finding ways to speak and write with eloquence and power, and how those qualities might be cultivated through truth-telling, word-craft, paying keen attention to the world and knowing who we are in this life.
hosted by Josh Schrei
Joshua Michael Schrei is a writer, teacher, lifelong student of the mythologies of the world and the founder of The Emerald podcast.
hosted by Ayana Jamieson
Ayana Jamieson, PhD is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly Pomona, a mythologist, and depth psychologist. She is the founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, a global community founded in 2011, committed to highlighting Octavia Butler’s life and work while creating new works inspired by Butler’s legacy.
hosted by Peter Michael Bauer
Peter Michael Bauer is an anthropologist, experimental archaeologist, historian, and life-long community organizer.
hosted by Minna Salami
Minna Salami is a Nigerian, Finnish, and Swedish feminist author and social critic currently at The New Institute. Her research focuses on Black feminist theory, contemporary African thought, and the politics of knowledge production
hosted by Manda Scott
Born and raised in Scotland - and still a Scot at heart - Manda has been, variously, a veterinary surgeon, veterinary anaesthetist, acupuncturist (people and animals), crime writer, columnist, blogger, economist - and author. In between, she teaches shamanic dreaming, creative writing and concept-based dog training.
hosted by David Zilber
David Zilber is a professional chef, fermenter, photographer, and author of The Noma Guide to Fermentation, hailing from Toronto, Canada.
hosted by Chiara Baldini
Chiara Baldini is a raver, researcher and freelance curator from Florence, Italy. She investigates the evolution of the ecstatic cult in the West, particularly in Minoan Crete, ancient Greece and Rome, contributing to anthologies, psychedelic conferences and festivals.
hosted by Giuliana Furci
Giuliana Furci is founder and CEO of the Fungi Foundation, the first international non-profit dedicated to fungi and founded in Chile.
hosted by Sam Lee
Mercury Prize nominated folk singer, conservationist, song collector, award winning promoter, broadcaster and activist
hosted by Brontë Velez
Brontë is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). As a black-latinx trans-disciplinary artist, designer, trickster, and wake-worker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking and prophetic community traditions, environmental justice, and death doulaship.
hosted by Dr Andreas Weber
Dr. Andreas Weber is a biologist, philosopher, nature writer, and mystic. He focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living.
hosted by Dr Patricia Kaishian
Dr. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the Curator of Mycology at the New York State Museum, and a professor of biology with Bard Prison Initiative. Her research focuses on fungal taxonomy, diversity and evolution, as well as queer theory and philosophy of science.
hosted by Toko-pa Turner
Toko-pa Turner is an award-winning author, teacher, and dreamworker. Blending the mystical tradition of Sufism in which she was raised with a Jungian approach to dreamwork, she founded the Dream School in 2001 from which thousands of students have since graduated.
hosted by Bayo Akomolafe
Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) is Chief Curator and Executive Director of The Emergence Network.
hosted by Manchán Magan
Manchán Magan is a writer and documentary-maker. He has written books on his travels in Africa, India and South America and two novels.
Myths are alive and resilient. They have held practical information about survival and sustenance, nested within compelling narratives that prized the epic stories of multi-species communities over the monologues of human individuals. Surviving through most of human history, they were refreshed and adapted to new conditions each time they were retold. Most importantly, they were contextual. Just as mycorrhizal fungi map the relationships in a forest, so do myths map the specific relationships of a community rooted in place.
The rise of empire brought with it a violent uprooting of myths from their context, and from the renewing respiration of communal storytelling. These stories ossified into abstraction and reinforced the anthropocentric hyper-individuality and colonial capitalism of today.
It is time to reroot, revitalise, relate, rewild. Rejecting the antiseptic impulse of the dominant culture’s bent on exterminating alternative epistemologies, let us compost our favourite myths, folklore, and narratives with ecology, science, somatics, and poetry.
Let us glimpse into the inner worlds of lichen, fungi, rainforests, and songbirds.
About the course
How can we reroot these myths in their original environments to recover the ecological wisdom they were built to transmit? How can we understand that science and mythtelling stem from a similar impulse to cultivate understanding and intimacy with the natural world?
Rejecting the antiseptic impulse of the dominant culture’s bent on exterminating alternative epistemologies, let us compost our favorite myths, folklore, and narratives with ecology, science, somatics, and poetry. Hijacking the tools of material reductionism for our feral creations, we can glimpse into the inner worlds of lichen, fungi, rainforests, and songbirds, understanding that the most important stories right now are always more-than-human.
Finally, let us retell cultural myths and personal stories knowing that, like an ark, they may carry our most precious relationships and seeds of practical wisdom, through the floodwaters and tectonic shifts of tomorrow.
