I began my first novel at ten years old. It was about a summer camp that was terrorised by a mysterious monster in the nearby forest. I have had a deep love for storytelling for my entire life.
I lived for 25 years before knowing that myths were important. I knew them; Rumplestiltskin, Rapunzel, King Arthur, and Hercules. But I didn’t comprehend their place within our cultural identity. I didn’t understand how the skeletons of these stories make us who we are.I hadn’t yet grasped the concept that myths and stories explain the complex universe within ourselves and all around us.
King Arthur by Charles Ernest Butler (1903)
Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung believed that myths are important because they express the universal and timeless truths of the human psyche. They are treasures from an ancient knowing of ourselves as they are part of our collective unconscious.
According to Jung, the collective unconscious is made up of a collection of knowledge and imagery that every person is born with and is shared by all human beings due to ancestral experience.
Myths can help us understand ourselves, other people and our place in the world. They can guide us through difficult times and learn from these experiences. I find comfort in recognising where I am in a story. Our lives are founded on thousands of years of wisdom that can be called upon at any moment.
Cinderella (1950)
Cinderella, or “The Little Glass Slipper,” is a folk tale told thousands of times, all with their own colourful versions, by different cultures throughout history. The story of Rhodopis (7 BC - 23 AD) about a Greek slave girl who marries the king of Egypt is considered to be the earliest known version of the Cinderella story.
Thousands of years ago, glass was a luxury item. To make glass, one must heat quartz sand until it melts into a clear liquid. A glass slipper that fits only Cinderella is special and rare, and also a matter of destiny.
In order to transform to the person you were destined to be, your individuality must be forged.
I use archetypes to provide clarity when I’m facing a challenge. For example, a difficult person is acting as a Threshold Guardian, like a troll forbidding me to cross the bridge. Crossing the bridge is our journey to individuation. By facing the troll, or the difficult person, we may learn the necessary lesson in order to evolve our consciousness and grow as a person. The threshold guardian is not necessarily an enemy. They are very rarely plotting your demise or trying to ruin your life. It helps me to view people and aspects of my life like characters in a story. I wrote the next line originally as “how can I cross this bridge as the person I want to be?” But that is not true. The question is:
“How can I cross this bridge as the person I know I truly am?”
The Fairy Bridge, Isle of Man
Myths and archetypes help us decipher our dreams. To become a dream analyst, they study fairytales. Jung said that it is the best way to study the anatomy of the psyche. Myths help us to make sense of our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. They can also connect us to our cultural heritage or ancient wisdom. We can draw from the pool of knowledge that is shared with our ancestors.
At times, life is hard and confusing and exhausting. It can be so inordinately complex that it hurts my brain. It comforts me to know we have blueprints all around us. Thousands and thousands of maps already at our fingertips:
The Holy Grail: The pursuit of wholeness (a full cup) and spiritual fufillment. One must undergo psychic integration in stages on the journey of self discovery.
Rapunzel: Her escape from the tower is her journey to greater self awareness, to go beyond the boundaries and limitations of what she knows in order to become more conscious.
Rumplestiltskin: The act of spinning straw into gold is the potential for transformation. When the daughter focuses on external rewards, it remains straw. When harnessing an inner creative power, it becomes gold.
When life gets a little too serious, when there is too much screen time or plastic containers or tragic news stories, read a fairytale. See the sacred in our everyday; how sweeping a broom also clears your mind or how a mirror is a portal to your unconscious.
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