Snowy Tower is the second book in Martin Shaw's Mythteller trilogy, recently self-republished by Cista Mystica press. As the subtitle describes, it is a retelling of the medieval epic of Parzival.

A few years ago I read Wolfram Von Eschenbach's telling. It was quite slow going, and I can't say I got much out of it. The one scene that sticks in my mind is the scene with Gawain in the castle with the chair, arrows, and lion—although Shaw condenses these many chapters down into a couple paragraphs of recounting from Gawain (to me a surprising abridgment).

This book is as much about the practice of telling and working with myths as it is about the specific myth Parzival. It covers many themes—from the nature of metaphor, to the masculine and the feminine, to the purpose of myth.

In the following I'll recount quotes that stood out to me.

In the introduction, Shaw provides the following, “It’s a great shame that we live in a time when we have to make distinctions between the metaphorical and the literal—this really isn’t mythological thinking, and the truth is far more porous than this distinction” (XXI). The way I would describe this is that the idea of reality isn't useful to humans. At least from a human perspective, something really can be two things at once, even if it creates a paradox. Paradox is an artifact of trying to shove everything into one paradigm, and metaphor can help to soften these boundaries so that we can get deeper into the essence of something.

“This points to something in the masculine; a struggle to be constant with the daily pattern of things, an eye for some big event far away” (14). This seems to be a sentiment that David Deida would agree with (maybe Deida influenced Shaw in this regard). I certainly see this in the friend of my male friends sometimes. That said, in this era of gender non-binary explorations, I wonder how such binaries will age. Maybe there's something essential about the energies entirely independent of gender?

“It is the role of myth to flood the ritually delivered wound; it offers a kind of salve that helps the scar tissue grow even stronger than the original skin” (19). Through Animas Valley Institute I've become aware of Sacred Wound work. Bill Plotkin would say that none of us can escape sacred wounds. Shaw's addition is that it is myth that can help us make something out of them. This is an idea I can get behind. An injury on its own is painful and inconvenient, but when combined with a good enough story about transformation, it can be a boon.

“Myth is full of disinformation as a ritual tool” (40). Carol Sanford might say something here about semantic language. That if you try to relay knowledge to someone, it may actually harm them, as they won't necessarily have gone through the appropriate maturation to integrate that knowledge. By making readers (or listeners) work for the meaning behind something, it increases the chances that they will go through some kind of process and growth to arrive at understanding. On the other hand, it also means you'll end up with a bunch of fundamentalists that have built their cosmologies around this disinformation.

“The sexual wound, to the medieval mind, alerts immediately to a falling out of relationship to the land" 109. This reminds me of Ta-Nehisi Coates' inquiries into the black body and the physicality of things. Or David Abram's sentiment that there is only one world, with spiritual and physical fully one. Or of the herb lore that a landscape grows the plants that our bodies need, and that damage to the land will be replicated in our bodies.

“You can’t keep finding the Otherworldly through the back of the wardrobe, so keep your eyes open for other doorways. Stay curious” (126). Mystery and magic have an element of spontaneity to them. Once something becomes habitual, it often loses that freshness that enables some kind of conscious shock. Things are the same until they're different.

“Maybe we have no soul separate from our body: maybe it delights in things crafted slowly by hand, witnessing our shape and influence in this world” (137). This gets back to the theme of reintegration. By allowing ourselves to think there are other worlds, other lives, we devalue the present.

“When we withdraw the earthy metaphors that need to be wrapped around us like a cloak, the thin air of the literal feeds us many untruths” (152). This is essentially a restatement of two of the quotes above.

“A bard, in the way many people use the word, is a man or woman poetically alive to the mysteries—and having the facility to translate that into some expression of art” (156). I like this definition.

In conclusion, "Snowy Tower" is an excellent mythtelling exposition, and if this is an art that interests you, I can recommend this book. ( )