“The material of myth is the material of our life, the material of our body, and the material of our environment, and a living, vital mythology deals with these in terms that are appropriate to the nature of knowledge of the time.” Joseph Campbell

I am recording a thought here, and I will most likely come back and add to it, this is just a seed.

We need to tell stories.

More specifically, we need to tell stories of what will be, not just about what was.

Now, before I jump in here, I want to say a few things. One, our mythology (in my case Norse and Irish) is valuable, applicable, worthy of study, and provides immense wisdom and guidance. It is also fixed in the past, stories meant to relate the experiences of and guide people 700 or more years removed from us. And, two, gnosis is not a dirty word. We experience our gods daily and need to start telling those stories.

To retain vitality and relevance, our beliefs, practices, and Gods must be allowed to evolve. I have always said I don’t want to just believe, I want to know. I don’t know if I will ever fully come to that place, but I think that to reach that state of knowing, we have to tell stories about our own experiences as often as we tell stories of the ancients and theirs. We can’t only tell the stories of Sigurd, Helgi, Egil, and all the other kings and heroes of the past and how they were challenged, blessed, and tricked by the gods. We must tell the stories of Josh, Catherine, Daniella, Ursa, Lonnie, Kellene and all the people of today, how they live their lives and what the gods have done for them.

We need to tell stories of “what would happen if…?” What if the old stories had a different outcome. What if a particular action had not been taken and what can we learn from it now. How can we do it differently this time around?

We need to tell stories of what the world can become. We need to speak, sing, recite, share the stories of a hael world full of frith. We need to tell stories of community and kinship, of the time when the axe will hang by the shield, and the wind will still, a time when the sword will be sheathed and the wolf will return to the forest.

Stories were the first magic, and they are magic still. Saga, friend of Odin, hear our stories. We tell them because they are true, make them true. Make them true.