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At its core, myth is meaning-making through storytelling, a way of understanding people, places, natural phenomena.
From the Greek word “mythos,” meaning “speech, thought, or story,” myth is a way of making sense of things through narrative. Myth was storytelling of significance, meant to impart wisdom of the world, the secret workings of the universe, life itself.
Myth provides the basis for systems of belief, for truths literal or symbolic, for fields of study, for understanding. It is narrative with power.
racism. Myths help make meaning of the world—but the world changes. And so myths change in their retelling. Sometimes in subtle ways, other times drastically. One generation’s hero can be another’s villain.
Madeleine L’Engle once wrote, “When we lose our myths we lose our place in the universe.”
Some things were so much a part of the way the world was that they never stood out until someone pointed out that it wasn’t always, hadn’t always, couldn’t always be that way.
She thought, sometimes, that she was uncomfortable, and then realized if she started dwelling on that, she would never do anything ever again, because the impossibility of living her life without doing harm would be too much for her narrow shoulders to carry.
but she thought maybe freedom was one of those things that looked different depending on which side of the cage door you were standing on.
From your end, what you’ve said sounds like a sweeping love story. A great romance, a tale for the ages. Told from another perspective, however, it sounds like the tale of kidnapping and imprisonment, with the victim having to pay the highest price. How do I know what the truth is?”
“I’ve told you what I believe is the truth.” “Yet one’s belief and the truth are rarely the same thing, not even for immortals like you. Especially not for immortals like you.”
“See,” the witch said, leaning forward, “sometimes it’s not enough to right the single injustice, if that injustice is the least thing that is wrong with the situation. Sometimes, to undo all the wrongs you have to undo the entire system.”
Some things, I now know, you can’t hear enough. Some things you have to hear over and over.
I don’t bite holes in the world because I dislike the world, I bite holes in it because I have these teeth.
But war is a story that is always told, and the more times a story is told, the more power it has.
Souls can be very quiet, sometimes. That’s why we need to raise our voices in prayer.
“One’s deeds are the only thing heavier than one’s heart in the underworld.”
Someone’s perfect body shouldn’t come at the cost of someone else’s unending toil. She decided she’d rather suffer with imperfection instead.
She continued to talk about expectations of convention and how they caused profound discomfort. Existing ways of making people comfortable in their bodies were difficult and expensive. Any option people couldn’t afford might as well not exist for them.
You cannot fill true emptiness with substance,
Ideas do not exhaust like horses. They do not set like the sun. It is possible to chase an idea forever; it will consume you even as it outruns you.
“What do you know of the language of flowers?” “I know,” she says, holding her gaze, “that they hunger for depth and height, for sun and rain, for the touch of insects, and that all men see of them are their pretty colors and sweet smells.”
“I like to think I see you as you are,” she says, “and they see what they want to see. What flatters their vanity.” “Or am I the one thing when they look at me, the other when you do?” She chews her lip.
“You gathered flowers and read woman. You read woman and gleaned docile, pretty, fragrant, weak. But you misread me, Lleu. I have in me the hearts of great ships, the bones of cathedrals. I have in me the sharpness of claws. And you, Lleu, what do you have? You cling like ivy. You smother like mistletoe. But what are you, besides wizard’s work?”
