AT THE ROBERT MOSS BLOG:
Living the Epic

"That's the end of it, my story. May the next who tells it tell it better."  This is the way I once heard a traditional Irish storyteller conclude a spoken tale. What a lovely encouragement for us to improvise and claim the power of a story that calls us by making it our own. Great stories are like this. They are more than twice-told tales; they may be never-ending in their variants. Over the past two weeks, I've been recalled by dreams, bursting through in synchronicity, reincidence and mythic irruptions in daily life, to revisit the world of the epic poems beloved of the Greeks and of many who have heard them since. I dreamed I discovered an epic poem, in a neat typescript of maybe 200 pages, that I had started composing in 1987.  Read more

AT ROBERT'S DREAMGATES BLOG:
Causing a Bear: A Belated Response to Tolkien

I once dreamed I met C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien in the New York Public Library. Tolkien told me, “You must study Scandinavian mythology.” Years later, when I was writing my Dreamer’s Book of the Dead, Lewis appeared in a kind of visitation. I asked him, “Where’s Tolkien.” Lewis said, “Tolkien won’t talk to you because you did not do what he told you to do.” I am no deep student of Scandinavian mythology, but here is my version of a wildly shamanic story from the Icelandic sagas. …His name is Bödvar Bjarki, which means “Warlike Little-Bear”. He has a typical Scandinavian genealogy: his father Bjorn was a were-bear (as a result of a witch’s curse); his mother’s name, Bera, means “She-Bear”. He casts a long shadow through the sagas of the North. He is the perfect warrior, stronger and fiercer than the berserkers (“bear-shirts”) who are the champions and bodyguards of kings but must yield pride of place to Bodvar at the royal tables when he makes his entrance, often by knocking the door or wall down.  Read more