"It is not literal past, the 'facts' of history,
that shape us, but images of the past embodied
in language..... We must never cease renewing
those images; because once we do, we fossilise."
___ Brian Freil, "Translations"
For contemporary society, history has become factual and finite, man index of deeds done and words spoken. The literal past grips our imagination, disabling our vision from ranging wider and seeing the infinite variety of possibility, shape, and pattern that could be revealed.
Finding the living context and eternal resonance of the past can deliver us from the bondage of history. This means allowing the silt of history to fall and the living metaphors and images to rise up buoyantly to the surface so that we can understand the mythic present. True myth is a living entity that clothes the present in wonderful ways. It comprises both the received awareness of popular consciousness and the archetypal metaphor of history, being a collection of symbols, images, and metaphors that abide beyond the context of history.
The mythic present is continually reshaping events, whereas history alone merely chronicles the tides of time. History deprived of its mythic context becomes petrified into sound-bites of the timeline; but when myth inspirits history, we hear the voices of the past with our own ears, see the images with our own eyes.
"Remember an incident in your past in which you were actively involved. Now retell that incident as if it were a folk story or myth, putting it in the third person and allowing the parallel story to unfold
in its own way. Draw upon the metaphors, symbols, and images that the incident evokes for you. Note the differences between your myth and your history. What is changed by this process of narration? What is made clear, and what new insights do you have?"
[From: "The Celtic Spirit" by Caitlin Matthews]
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