In Medias Res
Welcome! This newsletter comes to you direct from Salt Spring Island in Canada.
June’s sweet tune
Summer’s becoming sweeter by the day, with cool mornings and crystalline afternoons. All the grasses are in bloom, and the path is filled with daisies and foxgloves. Ongoing contemplative writing, along with pulling together the Wunderkabinett Project has taken up much of my focus time, and I hope to have more to share with you on both of these fronts soon. Meanwhile, here’s a note on my main doings last month.
M is for May, Martin, Mythopoetics, Mystery, Meaning, and Miraculous.
It was rainy and chilly mid-May camping at Cedar Song Centre for Wild Belonging for the Wild Mountain immersion in the myth of Parzival with master storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw. We gathered over 4 days in the wood-heated yurt for a long telling. Parzival took us on a journey through time and consciousness, connecting ancient lore with literature, psychology, alchemy, nature, and the great quest for the real questions. Romance, Fisher King, the Grail - when I write these words they seem pale and bloodless compared with the old tale so masterfully told it is now mapped into my own heart. The transcendent ending was the real deal, the sacred stuff of mystery, rites, and initiation.
I was so grateful to be able to be there, and to share this potent experience with my daughter Rosie. Back from the Parzival immersion, I’ve been letting the story do its work in the background as I reintegrate with the pattern of the daily routine again. As with all major shifts, I am opening to another language of living, as more is revealed and other aspects fall away. It is natural to be in another state of mind and heart for a time, as scenes and aspects of the story declare themselves as part of my own proceeding along the path. Such parallels reformat my thinking. No point in waiting until things resolve more before writing to you. This path is ongoing, so here goes anyway, I jump in to the programming already in progress. In medias res.
The arrival of the new
I’m hesitant to name what all these things are, because if I name it, that means it IS real and IS happening, not just in the background but here as figures in the foreground. Just like the knights that appear suddenly in the road, before young Parzival even knew his own true name. They didn’t come from nowhere, but from Arthur’s camp that was nearby the entire time, but unseen and unknown to Parzival. They came from a world that was his, yet had been hidden from him, until they suddenly appeared, penetrating the seeming veil between them. With that moment of recognition came the call to court. The possibility of a wider, richer life of purpose.
So I ask for myself, now: What are those figures that are my knights that emerge through the everyday path, coming in from seeming nowhere, to penetrate the established patterns with a call and an offering? What is the wonderful camp of Arthur’s court that is just nearby over that hill, and how do I find it?
After they are first seen and make contact, the knights ride away on their own mission. They burst through, opened the new reality. I am reminded of Rilke saying upon seeing the statue of Apollo: “I must change my life.”
A short video for you with a little breeze on the grasses and the weathering colours on the wood at Wise Logs.
For Your Interest
The other night I was up doing the night watch. Reading Bruno’s Thirty Statues was slow going, so I left text and went visual. Soon I found myself checking out fascinating links around his memory wheels.
And of course, Parzival is an active memory device where points in the story are set to invoke states and stages of ritual experience.
Ian Mackenzie’s overview of Martin Shaw’s tour is HERE. Scroll down to see the yurt! Martin’s Substack: House of Beasts and Vines, all his books and more are at drmartinshaw.com.
Catch up with my ongoing series of Platonic reflections, Riffing on Eternity. I added these since my last email posting:
Here’s what I was thinking about last year around this time:
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Thank you, Carol. This is beautiful and truly appreciated. Let your friend Jim know, Arthur, was my Grandfather's name, and is in use throughout my family. He is blessed with this ....not pretentious....blessed. Thank you both!
Love, Roberta.
My middle name is Arthur. James Arthur Van Wyck.
I have always been uncomfortable with this pretentious name.
When I was ten, I was in love with the stories of King Arthur.
I read them over and over—the sword, the stone, the knights, the round table. I felt proud but ambigious to have the same name. It felt like the stories were part of me.
Undeserved but still good to that child of long ago.
Now, many years later, my friend Carol came back from a Parcival retreat. She wrote about it on here on Substack. Substack?
Malory wrote about Arthur while in prison, but I think he would have liked using Substack to tell stories....
Reading her words, these words above... something lstirred in me.
The old stories were still alive, still speaking.
It felt like a thread between us—across time, across friendship. The myths hadn’t ended. They were just waiting to be heard again.
I love stories... always have.
Thanks Carol... time for me to go tell some stories myself.
I'm telling storie.s of myth and magic myself these days...
of brave women and powerful spirits
Not Yurt-worthy to say the least, but in my own small way
constinuing in the tradition of many greater men and women
who told stories before we did, and who will tell storeies when we are long gone
from this world... and ... perhaps... telling stories in the next.
==>James Arthur