How to Work with Myth
in Your Circle of Eight
Working with myth in your Circle of Eight is a dynamic way to explore archetypes and mythic themes in your life as well as the synchronicities and patterns of story and the way they interact with the cycle of the eight directions. You might choose to explore one myth over a series of meetings or choose a different myth to work with each time or just work with one every so often, when it feels appropriate. We used all of these approaches in our Circle of Eight. Your myth working might be something you keep just within your Circle of Eight group or it might be something you extend out to your families and communities in the form of creating content for a Wheel of the Year celebration or other ritual.
There are thousands of myths recorded from every spiritual tradition. Books and online resources abound in the fields of myth. While it can be useful to read several different versions of a myth before or while working with it, the working is open-ended and most probably you will be straying off the page of the usual interpretations as you explore it. Some people like to work with fairy tales, as well as or instead of myth and it’s also possible to work with an epic poem or a novel which employs or creates archetypes.
There are Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Celtic, Norse, Christian, and Indian myths. You may like to work with myths or mythic cycles that reflect your heritage. Cultural appropriation is an issue, so if you are wanting to work with a myth from a living tradition that has been marginalized, colonized, or been a victim of genocide (for example, Aboriginal or Native American myth), possibly even when it is very broadly available and disseminated, it is respectful to seek permission first. It may take a long time and much persistence to find and connect with people carrying the threads of these living traditions. If you are deeply drawn to working with these stories, particularly if they belong to the land you live on or near, this time and energy may be worth it to you, not just in gaining a permission, if that is what occurs, but in developing your relationship to the land and its stories.
There are countless ways to work with a myth; what is described here is how to create an entry point for your exploration. The process can be used to access a deep discussion on the nature and themes of the myth itself, to relate those themes to people’s lives, to do personal or group work around those themes or archetypes, or to create dynamic mythic reenactments or explorations. Sometimes one or two people may plan the evening; other times each may bring one aspect of a working and fit them together on the night. One person may have brought a relevant chant, another a guided visualization, another a way to enact part of the story, and another a personal development process using some aspect of the myth. Then you can choose, at the time, which order they work best in.
How to Work with a Myth in the Circle of Eight
1. Choose a Myth
One way to choose a myth is to ask everyone for one or two myths they would love to explore. Write these down, putting a star next to those that are mentioned more than once. Then consider which myth correlates with the time of year, or consider the big themes playing out in people’s lives currently and choose a myth that resonates with them. Or—if you have been working with myth for a while—choose a myth from a different tradition than those you have already worked with or a myth related to one you already worked with and particularly loved.
2. Look at the Characters in the Myth
Choose which characters from the myth you will work with. This should have some relevance to how many people you have to work them; it’s no good choosing six characters if you have only four people. On the other hand, choosing four characters when you have eight people would be fine; two people could work with each character. Sometimes this process involves including quite minor characters and other times excluding characters who would normally be considered part of this story. They can still be involved when you do the working; it’s just that no one will have been paying them special attention beforehand. It is possible to group characters together—for example, “the rest of the gods on Olympus”—anything is possible. Use your intuition, your gut feeling, and experiment.
3. Lay the Characters Onto the Circle
This is where you assign characters to a certain direction in your Circle of Eight, usually irrespective of who is holding that direction. You might want to wait to do this until you have turned the wheel, so the people sitting in those positions can get a direct hit on whether or not they feel the character does correspond to the direction. You may be able to do this process just through talking or you might need to write down the names of the characters on slips of paper and move them round the circle. You may choose to make obvious correspondences; the Sumerian Inanna is a goddess of heaven and earth, so you may place her in your Summer Solstice position, with her sister, Ereshkigal, in the Winter Solstice direction. Inanna’s consort, Dumuzi, and his sister, Geshtinanna, mark the yearly cycle of descent and return, so they could be placed in the Spring and Autumn Equinox positions. Your assignments may also comment on more subtle characteristics of the direction or the mythic character.
We tended to assign male characters to men and females to women, although not always. Now I would not make it one of the deciding factors; I have seen too many powerful and amazing interpretations of gods by women and goddesses by men. Disregarding gender in assigning roles in a myth opens up the broadest interpretations of divinity and story, as well as allows people to explore many sides of themselves, not just ones that seem to match their human gender.
4. Individual Workings
Each person “takes away” their character or their part of the myth to work with in the time between circle meetings. This working may include research, meditation, inner journeying, creating an altar, art or journaling, and anything else that occurs to you.
5. Creating a Mythic Working
Next time the circle meets, include a round of mythic feedback after your usual openings of sacred space and checking in. Each person gets to share what they have discovered, felt, and understood about the character they’ve worked with and the myth as a whole.
Then begin your mythic working. Feel free to blend, alter, ignore, or adapt these suggestions:
• Sound. Create a soundscape for the story with each character contributing their own sounds, whether vocally or using musical instruments. Play with the soundscape, allowing different characters to be heard and engage with each other.
• Journeying. Create a guided journey through the story of the myth, possibly passing it from one voice to another as you go. Describe the setting and events of the myth rather than the feelings or motivations of the characters; this way each person can have their own experience of those, which can be shared later.
• Reenactment. This is most powerful when done wordlessly, either in silence with a drum beat in the background or while continuing or creating the soundscape. It can be repeated (also with different people playing the different parts) to explore many different angles and inferences of the myth. Afterwards, discuss your feelings, discoveries, and questions.
• Aspecting. Allow each person, in turn, to “draw down,” or lightly aspect, the character they have been working with and to speak from that place to the other characters. It is best if only one person does this at a time.
• Personal work. Explore where and how each character, or the story as a whole, touches on the life of each person in your circle.
• Creativity. Make something together from the mythic working you’ve undertaken: a group collage or other artwork, a song, masks, a ritual for a larger group, or an altar.