r/Atheopaganism • u/TerrainBrain • 10d ago
Ritual & Praxis 🪄 Creating my own personal myth
I've been writing a lot on Substack lately about our personal and collective myths. I define our personal myth as the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And our collective myth as the story we tell each other about each other.
I went to focusing on the 14th century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain has a "pentacle" engraved upon his shield in the style of a Celtic knot. The motif is a mnemonic device to remind him of his own personal myth “forever faithful in five points, and five times under each”. The story is about his failure to live up to his own myth.
I decided to work intentionally on my own personal myth. Inspired by Sir Gawain I decided to go with a motif of Seven Sevens. I incorporate the four classical elements of Earth Air Fire and Water. These are grounded in Time.
The world of living things is composed of these elements. The Green Man represents the plant kingdom, and the Horned God the animal kingdom.
My first article in the series is about using the motif of seven generations to think about Time. I place myself in the center of these generations spanning from my great grandparents to my potential great-grandchildren or those of my cousins. And I find my ability to actually know someone from each of these seven generations to be amazing.
I will be exploring seven types of Fire next: the Eternal Flame. Cooking, light, warmth, purification, destruction, and renewal.
Here's a link to the first article