A New Direction
The Skin-Boat & The Star, programme beginning September 2024
With special guests: former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Iain McGilchrist, Paul Kingsnorth, Malcolm Guite, Jonathan Pageau, Vesper Stamper, Rev Helen Orr, Richard Rohlin.
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There’s a star that’s started to appear.
It’s been seen before, you may remember.
If we dare to put down our screens and walk out into the night, we will find that it’s leading us somewhere. Past tired ideas and weary polemics. The star is leading us to something we may have completely forgotten about. To the one some First Nations people call Creator-Sets-Free.
The star is leading us to a cave where a strange one is being perpetually born, surrounded by the warmth of animals and adored by magicians. A baby that is already a fugitive, and in only a few short decades will be taken to Skull Hill and slaughtered for the troubling, beautiful things that he says. The fundamental poetic event of our time. A storyteller and a healer who then has the audacity to return from the Underworld with a message of love so extraordinary it has caused half the world to swoon.
Here's the thing.
The star is back.
It’s appearing to many of us, making our life far more inconvenient and infinitely more exciting.
I have wondered at this star for several years now, and its light means the land around me now appears entirely different. For thirty years I have described the earth around me as best I can – through myth and poetry – but this is new and startling.
Bringing, I hope, the very best of what I’ve learnt over the years, I’m going to be teaching from the place I find myself in now. That’s a vulnerable but vital thing to do. Anything else is cowardice and dereliction of duty. Please note – there’ll be many myths, fairy tales and ideas I have loved for decades alongside the developing landscape this star is helping me behold. It’s a happy jostle where everyone is making friends with everyone else.
It’s the wildest, most wonderful place I’ve ever been.
So I start all over again, from September.
After two decades at the helm of the Westcountry School of Myth, this is the trail we are setting out on. Most of my team aren’t Christians, so don’t worry, you won’t get swamped in some kind of endless altar-call.
Maybe no one will come, I can’t be worrying about that. Some things we just have to do.
There’s more detail on the course below. Much more will become clear in the doing of the thing. Everyone is most welcome, from whatever background or persuasion. All weekends held on Dartmoor in the UK.
Listen to the audio of this post, A New Direction: The Skin-Boat & The Star:
For more details and to book your place:
THE SKIN-BOAT & THE STAR
A Christian Mythopoetics
The Five Weekend Programme
with Dr Martin Shaw
& special guests
BABEL, BEGINNINGS & CAEDMON’S SONG
September 6th-8th
Creation stories, myths of pre-history, Babel now and then, developing a red-bead speech. The Voyage of Brendan, to a woman who grows from a mare’s tale plant. Lives of the early desert mothers and fathers, new translations from the Carmina Gadelica and tales of the saints. Special online guests Iain McGilchrist and Jonathan Pageau.
HONEY FROM THE LION
October 18th-20th
The wrestles of both Enkidu and Jacob, the trouble of Samson, what happens when you fall in love with a Bear. Myths from Greece and Sumeria, Siberian folk tales for you to learn by heart. Beowulf as a Christian story. Special online guests Rev Helen Orr and Richard Rohlin.
THE VINEYARD IS IN BLOOM
December 6th-8th
Tristan & Isolde, and The Song of Songs: from the Near East to Tintagel, exploring dimensions of love from eros to amor and beyond. C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves will be worked into. Special online guest Vesper Stamper.
THE GRAIL OF MARY’S WOMB
January 24th-26th
Parzival, Gallantry, the Life and Deeds of the Outlaw Yeshua. There will be attention to Sophia and feminine wisdoms, also the poetry of the Troubadours. Special in-house guest Malcolm Guite. Special online guest Frederica Mathewes-Green.
UN-SEALING THE TENT OF WORDS
March 14th-16th
Disclosure of what you stand for, earning your name in crazy times, fairy tales and prayers to walk you further into the life bequeathed to you. The Heavenly Banquet and the Green Knight. Special in-house guests Paul Kingsnorth and Rev Rowan Williams.
HQ
The weekends are held in a big old house on the edge of the Dartmoor. It’s comfortable and the food is great and wild weather often looms. In the mornings Martin teaches from 9am to approaching 1pm. This is a combination of story, ideas, poetry and back and forth conversation. The afternoons are spent in small groups and actually on the land exploring writing tasks Martin has suggested. Later we will often gather for a talk from one of the faculty, have a slap-up feed and enjoy an evening of entertainment. Alongside the course are audio recordings exclusive to the school, not least Martin’s tellings of The Odyssey, Inanna and many others. There’s also a book group, a brand new reading list and information on the wilderness rites of passage events long established at the School. The size of the group will likely be between forty to seventy.
What would you hope to get? New stories to wrestle with, old ones to see-a-new. A community. Each weekend is not a slow systematic evolvement from the previous, but some kind of happening all of its own. There is a subtle procession from pre-history through Sumeria, Jerusalem and Greece onto Irish and Arthurian mysteries. You will receive an audio recording of the weekend in the weeks afterwards, which is a very helpful way of deepening connections between the gatherings. There won’t be much in the way of powerpoint or handouts. There’ll be woodsmoke, hip flasks and lively conversation. You also get to join our wonderful bookclub, the legendary Cinderbiters.
Dr Martin Shaw is a writer, storyteller and mythologist. An Eastern Orthodox Christian, he has spent many years as a wilderness rites of passage guide. Author of seventeen books, his latest, Bardskull, was book of the day in the Guardian and described as “rich and transgressive” by Erica Wagner in the Sunday Times.
The Skin-Boat & The Star is a homage to the early Christians, especially the Celts who would have travelled in such boats with this dangerous and wonderful story tucked under the breastbone of their hearts.
Please spread the word!
GUEST TEACHERS: Rev Rowan Williams, Iain McGilchrist, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Malcolm Guite, Vesper Stamper, Paul Kingsnorth, Richard Rohlin, Rev Helen Orr.
Are you coming?
For more details and to book your place:
Westcountry School of Myth, The Skin-Boat & The Star
Enquire to book: tina@schoolofmyth.com
I find the location deeply problematic. Almost selfish. I would prefer Maine.My backyard makes the most sense to me. Dirty dog, flaunting this so.
I'm trying to organize my thoughts, but they defy easy organization. So instead I'll say this: many years ago now, I went back to school, to study theology, because I was interested in story. Because these seemed, to me, to be the myths that told us who we are that have lasted and been carried along with us for so long. No one understood, at the time, my insistence that theology is story.
As I went back, I was also gifted a piece of advice by Rev. William Swing, Episcopal Bishop of California: don't go to school just to read and think. You have to put it in practice. Doing, not just reading. Surround yourself with a community of people putting the stories into action. And so I became baptized as an adult in the Episcopalian Church (Anglican - I'm revealing my American roots).
This offering feels like someone read my bones and is calling.