Bard Mythologies grew out of a recovered practice of telling the traditional stories to the people, in oral form by a skilled storyteller, the Bard. We have now done this in Ireland for some twenty five years.
Bard Mythologies revives the Bardic Tradition, a wisdom of the people, which helps us to view life beneath the surface and make sense of the world around us through story, folklore, symbols and archetypal characters.
Exploring the Myths we Live By
Bard Mythologies starts with the traditional myths, folklore, archetypes, symbols and stories of culture because they are the wisdom of the people, encoded in story and passed on from generation to generation in an oral tradition.
Because of the communal nature of these stories, they have to be seen as very special. The myths are of the people and for the people, and only those stories that met this collective “consensus” entered the tradition.
Who is the Bard for?
Basically Bard is for anyone with an inquisitive mind who loves stories and myths and just has a sense that there might be something in this ‘stuff’ of culture, in no small part because it has lasted such a long time and is, essentially, of the people, the wisdom of the people.
Once immersed, the Bard has relevance across many fields. Why? Because the myths can be seen as the operating system of a culture so it would have application to teachers, journalists, marketer, writers, politicians, judges, lawyers, business people etc. Once the Bard was the most revered of professions, with a status equal to a King. This was not without good reason.
So the Bard is essentially for anyone who feels the answers to what they seek does not be at the level of all the ‘noise’, the news, the array of media, advertising channels but at a deeper level. The Bard offers a skill once very precious to the Irish people – the gift of Manannan MacLir to Bran – ‘silver branch perception’ – a way of seeing deeply.