Monday, June 3, 2013

Taliesin: Stories and Shapeshifting


In Celtic lore, the best and most famous of bards is named Taliesin.  The name means "radiant brow" and I'll go into that concept a little further in my next post.  For now, it is important to know this great bard's humble origins, and the symbolism thereof.  As a boy he was called Gwion Bach, and served the Goddess Ceridwen by tending the fires under her cauldron, in which she was brewing a potion of wisdom so potent, that it required a year and a day to reduce to three perfect drops.  These were intended to be imbibed by her ugly son Mofran, so that people would revere him for his great wisdom, rather than revile him for his hideous outward appearance.  Just before the potion was complete, however, the three drops flew from it and landed on Gwion Bach's thumb.  The lad thrust his scalded thumb into his mouth, ingesting the potion, whereupon the cauldron, finally yielding to a year's worth of fire, promptly cracked in two.  Ceridwen was furious.

Gwion Bach fled the goddess, and found he could use his newfound wisdom to turn himself into a hare.  Ceridwen, however, turned herself into a hound and took off after him.  He jumped into a stream and changed into a fish, but she became an otter and the chase continued.  Then he leapt into the air and changed into a bird, but she turned into a hawk and still pursued him.  Finally, in desperation he turned himself into a kernel of grain and hid himself in a pile of grain on a threshing floor, but Ceridwen became a hen and ate him up.

At this point in the story we are introduced to the most important element in the making of a storyteller: wisdom - specifically, the deepest sort knowledge of the hidden machinations of nature and society that the Celts called "awen".  Upon acquiring awen, the first thing our hero learns is how to change his shape.  The forms he chooses - hare, fish, bird, and grain - are meant to embody the four elements: earth, water, air, and the fire of life that is inevitably consumed by the goddess.  As a storyteller, the first kind of wisdom we learn to employ is that of empathy as we mentally change our shapes in order to see the world through the eyes of our characters.

Thus Gwion Bach's fleeing of the Goddess Ceridwen could be seen as the artist's initial "flight" of fancy.  When our creative juices first start flowing, we deftly dodge and weave through our first drafts - character to character, scene to scene, world to world - with a peculiar thrill that is equal parts elation and terror.  Fear and self-doubt chase us, ready to pounce at the end of every paragraph.  Without the discipline, focus, and sense of direction of an experienced storyteller, our endeavors are eventually dragged down and devoured by the primordial forces from whence they came.  This inevitable "death" of our initial fight of fancy need not be the end of our endeavor however, for as the story Taliesin demonstrates, death is nothing more than a profound transformation.  But that will be the subject of my next posting (which will hopefully not take as long for me to get around to as this one).


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