Story and Practice (or, Tattered is a word nerd)

[TatteredAngel]

I've been thinking a lot recently (and sporadically throughout the past... some number of years) about the power of story. In my particular line of study, I've run into a great deal of Joseph Campbell's work, and while I don't agree with all of it, he's done some of the best distillation of story themes that I've seen. But I'm not here to talk about Campbell. I mention him because he's got solid work on the basis of what I'm curious about-- the heart of storytelling.

We talk about the power of story, but what I am particularly interested in is the Power, capital P for emphasis, I guess, of story, and of telling stories. I'd like to know, for one, how story integrates into not just the theology and myth of people's beliefs, but into their actual practice.

What kind of power do you think stories can carry?
What does storytelling do on a spiritual level?
How do you integrate stories or storytelling into practice?

Here's my take, and the reason I'm so curious about this (and apologies for lack of brevity here):

For me, storytelling may be the single most important part of what I do, spiritually. The spiritual aspect is there even when I am not telling stories that are spiritual in nature. I've always been a words person. I learned language early and had little in the way of baby talk, I began writing poems and stories as soon as I could scratch words out onto paper, I invented elaborate fantasies for myself and my friends as I grew up. And yup, I'm even an English major. Words are my life.

I've heard of all sorts of ways of raising energy, and I tried them, and found myself disappointed. The same way doing yoga totally failed to de-stress me, something about energy-raising through typical, generically pagany means just didn't click. It was only recently that I realized I did know how to raise energy, and that it is something I do all the time-- I tell stories. It is all at once very public, since I'm usually telling stories to someone, and intensely personal as well, because of what it does for me. I've always said, somewhat ruefully, that I love to talk people's ears off, and I'm starting to grasp why. When I tell a story, fictional or about my life, or what have you, something opens up inside of me, and at the best times, I feel like I'm glowing. I can't think of any better way to describe it.

I have to concentrate a little more to keep from getting distracted, but I can do it alone, too, without an audience. I can, as a for-example, go outside, and sit under a tree, in a beautiful place, ideal for some kind of meditation. Of course, if I try, meditatively, to clear my mind, I'm stuck getting distracted, unable to focus inwards, and the exercise is a bust. But if I start storytelling to myself, even simple little things, such as describing my surroundings in my head, I am focused, calm, and I feel a swell of power inside.

When I tell stories, I think there is magic in them. This is not to say I'm a fantastic storyteller or a wonderful writer, but that my will is there and that there is something in the telling that I'm pushing out into the world that goes beyond the words themselves. If I have any innate ability at all, it isn't for divination or spell casting, or any of the traditionally “magical” skills I read about. It's in being able to tell a story.

I've seen these ideas treated in many wonderful ways in fiction, but I have not yet run across anything substantial treating them in a practical pagan way. So I'm opening it up for the fantastic minds of the PFRC to play with! ^_^  

[TeaDidikai]

Within my tradition, there are four kinds of story.

My favorite are the "fairytales". The tales of the beings outside of our realm.

Storytelling is a form of communion- a way to give and recieve and join together on another level.  

[NMMoriaki]

I always have been a fan of Poems and Proverbs. One of my favorites is from the Ley of Lodfafnir

"Listen Lodfafnir and listen carefully, my words will help you if you heed them. If you should travel over mountians and Fyords, be sure to take enough food"


Sorry about the terrible spelling  

[maenad nuri]

Words inspire me, and help me express. I don't have the skill yet to express what changes and mysteries are happening yet, but other authors do.

Going Wodwo by Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite poems. I encountered it in a book I read for a class: The Green Man; Tales From the Mythic Forest (I readily endorse this book)

Here it is:
GOING WODWO

Shedding my shirt, my book, my coat, my life
Leaving them, empty husks and fallen leaves
Going in search of food and for a spring
Of sweet water.

I'll find a tree as wide as ten fat men
Clear water rilling over its gray roots
Berries I'll find, and crabapples and nuts,
And call it home.

I'll tell the wind my name, and no one else.
True madness takes or leaves us in the wood
halfway through all our lives. My skin will be
my face now.

I must be nuts. Sense left with shoes and house,
my guts are cramped. I'll stumble through the green
back to my roots, and leaves and thorns and buds,
and shiver.

I'll leave the way of words to walk the wood
I'll be the forest's man, and greet the sun,
And feel the silence blossom on my tongue
like language.  

[TatteredAngel]

I heart that poem. And that whole anthology. I got it as a present for my mum some time back and then stole it to read. ^_^

Tea -- So in any of your forms of storytelling, do you consider something that is actually magical to be happening?  

[TeaDidikai]

TatteredAngel

Tea -- So in any of your forms of storytelling, do you consider something that is actually magical to be happening?

In some cases, yes. But it is the situation and not the type of story that creates that kind of experience.