Myth As Meditation: Red Bead Woman & The Crow King

helps us understand ourselves as part of the human story. It puts us directly in touch with our deepest self, speaking to us in the language of the soul. Meditating on these ancient stories allows us to turn inward, make meaning, and come home to our wild truth. It is the yoga of imagination.

Transcript

So I want you to take yourself to a vast,

Old growth forest.

This place exists in the middle of your chest.

And this story and these characters,

It's all happening right now.

It also all happened a long time ago.

And it will happen many years from now.

It's dusk.

There's a beautiful fading golden light.

And there's a small clearing in the middle of this vast ancient forest.

At the corner of this clearing,

There is a raggedy little hut.

And in front of that hut,

Sitting on a stool and milking her cows,

Of which she only has two or three,

Is an ancient woman.

Perhaps as old as the forest itself.

And her name is Byberakan.

And she sits alone in the vastness of this forest at dusk.

Just sitting,

Milking her cows as she's always done.

Maybe for thousands of years.

And suddenly,

For no apparent reason,

An old lingering longing comes up in her mind.

Faint,

Distant,

But there.

It's this desire for a child.

Another voice immediately castigates herself for having such thoughts as an old woman.

But it can't be denied.

And maybe she's even unaware of it.

But her old hand reaches down to the earth.

And she plucks out of the dark soil a five-jointed mare's tail plant.

And standing from her stool,

She takes it lovingly inside her hut.

And she places it on her pillow.

She stands over it.

And she speaks some strange words.

A language that you and I will never understand.

Almost a whisper.

She turns and she leaves the hut and goes back to her tasks.

Eating the cows.

And suddenly,

From inside the hut,

She hears a tiny sound of what sounds like a bell.

A little tinkling.

And startled,

She spills some milk into the soil.

And in some tellings of the story,

They say that she even lapped it up herself.

But she went back inside the hut to see where this ring had come from.

And she saw that a small thimble had fallen on the ground.

Just a thimble,

Nothing more.

She stepped back outside and went back to her tasks.

Twice more.

A needle.

And then her scissors.

But as she was there collecting her scissors from the ground,

She was startled to find a wild young woman sitting up in her bed.

A true daughter of the soil.

And so the story says that by Berrakan,

And the wild daughter of the soil,

The wild daughter of the mare's tail plant,

Lived in harmony for many years.

Maybe a very long time,

We don't know.

But they lived in beauty and they lived in peace.

But the young one never spoke.

Not a single word.

And so it was the time passed this way.

Until a young hunter came nearby.

He was the son of a king.

Some might say he shouldn't have even been near there.

He was searching for bear and elk.

But was disappointed and ended up frustratingly chasing a wily little squirrel which had taken him way away from his normal hunting grounds.

But he became obsessed with catching the squirrel,

Didn't he?

He found himself in unfamiliar territory on the edge of this little meadow.

And as he loosened his last arrow in a vain attempt to catch this squirrel,

The arrow actually disappeared down the flue,

Down the chimney of this little hut.

And what to do now?

And so the young hunter,

He stood at the door.

But no one came to open it.

And eventually he thought to himself,

Well I am the son of a king.

And so he creaked the door open.

He creaked the door open,

My friends.

And immediately cast his gaze on this young,

Wild daughter of the soil.

Immediately his tongue vacated his jaw.

Such was her energy.

Such was her beauty.

He stumbled backwards out of the hut without saying a word.

Immediately mounted his horse and charged back to the kingdom,

Charged back to his mum and his dad,

The king and the queen.

He burst into their chamber and like a young man possibly would,

Began gushing about how he had fallen in love and how he wanted this woman to be his bride and gushing he was.

Gushing.

And the parents,

They took this information in and the king simply said,

Indeed.

Is this so?

And he mentioned a prophecy that said at some time the wild would be wed back to the village and that he was in favour of such a union.

And so it was the next day that the young man and his nine older brothers,

All on blood red steeds,

They set out to find the young woman.

And find her they did.

They all found themselves inside the hut of Byberakan.

All of them staring in awe at this young woman,

Speechless.

Except for the youngest who somehow managed to squeak out some form of wedding proposal.

The young lady was calm,

Gazing.

She too had felt something when the young hunter had first opened that door.

That can't be denied.

She was impeccably cool in the situation.

It was Byberakan who sparked up.

She became the hustler.

I want cows and I want horses,

She said.

It is done,

Said the young son.

And he and his brothers were off.

But days later the young man returned on his own to meet with his bride-to-be and to bring her back to the castle.

And he made her a great gift.

He gave her a piebald mare,

The very last of the speaking horses,

Along with a silver saddle,

Bridle and whip.

And so it was they set off together.

Back through this vast ancient forest,

Each on horseback,

Her on the piebald,

Back to the castle.

And despite the silence and no words being exchanged between them,

Everything went fine.

And as they reached the edge of the forest,

The young man turned to her and he said,

There's just this one thing.

There's just this one thing.

This part of the forest is where I keep a lot of my fox traps.

And I have no idea when I'll be back this way again.

And I'd love to go and check on them.

I need to go and check on them.

You'll be fine.

You'll be fine.

Go on.

Go on without me.

You'll come to this fork in the road and high in the branches in one direction,

You'll see a splayed sable skin.

And on the other path,

A bear skin.

You must take the way of the sable.

And I'll catch up later.

And he was gone.

He was gone,

Friends.

Off checking on his fox traps.

And so she rode on.

And of course,

She reached the fork in the road.

And we all know what happens.

She goes the way of the bear.

Night comes.

The path becomes difficult and treacherous.

There are odd smells,

Sounds.

Her sight is not clear in the murky gloom.

She's tired.

She's hungry.

The prince is nowhere to be seen.

And in the distance,

She sees a hut.

It's nothing like the hut she knows,

The only home she knows.

It's iron-sided,

Iron-clad.

But still,

It's shelter.

And as she reaches the edge of this hut,

She begins to dismount.

But barely have her feet touched the ground,

Friends.

When she is violently accosted by a giant of a woman,

A sorceress with a mangled face twisted arms,

Twisted legs,

One bloody bleeding eye in the center of her forehead,

The story says she has 13 breasts lactating deadly nightshade.

In a swift movement,

She drags our girl into the mud,

Snaps her neck,

And in one more smooth movement,

She rips her face clean from her skull,

Leaving our wild woman limp,

Lifeless,

Crumpled in the mud.

That's where I'm going to leave this story for now.

Let it shake your bones.

Let it stir your waters.

So let's feel into her predicament for a moment.

And I want to tell you that this beastly woman,

She took a bone needle and some black wire,

And she sewed the face onto her own.

And as she stepped towards the last of the talking horses,

She said,

Not a word,

Pieball.

Not a word from you.

She mounted the horse.

She set off to her wedding,

Leaving our girl a heap,

A bloody mess in the mud.

Let me tell you,

Friends,

There's a moment when this ogre arrives in the village.

The nine older brothers look at one another for a moment,

But they're assuaged when their youngest says,

There she is,

There's my bride.

And so a wedding takes place.

Remember the prophecy,

My friends,

The union of the village back to the land?

That prophecy said that rubies would flow from the mouth of such a woman,

That the sacred sisters would gather together and turn those beads into a sacred necklace.

And that that would cause this cultural shift,

This consecration between the civilized and the uncivilized,

The domestic and the wild.

But when this one opened her great maw,

It is said that great belches of toads hot splattered the floor.

Maybe somewhere someone hadn't got this prophecy quite right,

You know,

Because nonetheless the wedding took place.

And the piebald horse said nothing.

And the ancient one,

The great mother,

The earth mother,

By Berakan,

What of her?

Of course,

She deeply missed her daughter of the D'ur.

The life went on.

The sun set,

The sun rose.

She sat out milking her cows.

But there was one evening,

Friends,

One evening,

Perhaps out of sheer nostalgia,

Her hand reached down and she plucked a mare's tail plant out of the ground,

Placed it on a pillow.

Ting,

Ting,

Ting,

Thimble,

Needle,

Scissors.

And sitting up in bed was another wild one.

But this one had a voice.

This one had a story.

She had a story of a young woman that was left for dead in the mud.

She had a story of animals tearing at her flesh in the darkness until just a shred of her hard flesh remained.

Too small for even a snake to find.

She had a story of a little dog,

A little ragged mangy little mutt who carefully placed this little tiny piece of hard flesh in his mouth and carried it through thunder and sleet-filled nights.

Who never absentmindedly chewed it or spat it out was disciplined to the task in every way possible.

Faithfully carrying this little piece of heart all the way back to the very spot,

The very spot in the soil beneath by Berakan's hand.

And he placed that little ember of heart into the soil.

And the little heart would have stayed there for maybe thousands of years if not for the longing of the old crone.

And now she's alive once more but this time,

This time with a life that you and I,

That we can all recognize.

And as the red-beaded woman spoke,

Over in the kingdom,

The piebald mare's ears pricked up.

He rose from the hay,

Demanded an audience with the king,

And told him the whole grizzly tale.

The piebald spoke and said that the ogre must be taken away and torn in quarters by the great horses,

The great horse spirits.

But our attention now turns to the sun.

Friends,

I have to tell you,

The sun is not in a good way.

The sun has gone to a very dark place,

Married to this ogre for so long,

He is a shell of the young man we first met.

He is poisoned.

The king went and spoke to the shamans to see if anything could be done.

And there was.

But as these things are in our life,

Friends,

The cure is sometimes by no measure better.

It said he was told he must spend forty nights tied to a pole in the middle of a freezing river.

Then another forty nights,

Bent like a broken crow tied to the tallest pine tree,

To be lashed clean by water and wind.

King wept for his son.

But the beastly ogre was courted by the horses,

I have to tell you that.

And as that event took place,

She erupted into many forms,

Many shapes,

Owls and bats and slithery things,

And she took off into the forest.

And the sun submitted to his disciplines.

Eighty nights.

I can tell you he stood on the threshold of death,

Maybe he even crossed over it a little and came back.

And he emerged thin and drawn.

A pilgrim to life.

But there was something inside him which had changed.

There was now an inner strength.

And despite his weakness,

He made his way back to the hut of Biberakan.

But I have to tell you that the young wild woman did not receive him well.

She who now has a voice used it.

And the row began.

It increased and it intensified.

Until finally it was the earth goddess,

The great mother,

Biberakan who intervened.

Enough!

She yelled.

You too.

You have died in the middle of your life in order to reach this moment together.

Enough!

And those words broke the last of the spell.

And a proper wedding ensued.

And when this one walked into the village,

Red beads fell from her mouth.

And it was a wedding like no other.

I was there.

Uma was there.

All of you were there.

And we celebrated life.

And some say that in some secret part of the earth,

They are still clearing up after such an occasion.

Thank you friends.

Let that story bless us.

I thank you for listening.

Reviews

I dozed and was in and out of the story. It was very unexpected and told at a pace that engaged me. Thank you