Books

Where to Find Stories

There are many amazing collections of stories out there. Yet a written story is more like a seed than a flower; it's best to read such renditions not as you would a short story but as you would a hoof-print pressed into sand, imagining the deer that went leaping away into the trees. The collections below are the ones that have inspired me the most.

Zipes, Jack, (translator) The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
Ganz, Jeffrey, (translator) The Mabinogion
Haddawy, Husain (translator) The Arabian Nights
Crossley-Holland, Kevin, The Norse Myths
Heaney, Marie, Over Nine Waves: a Book of Irish Legends
Any title in the Pantheon Folktale Library​

All of these books can be purchased
​through the independent bookseller Powells at www.powells.com
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Storytelling Inspirations

STEALING BENEFACIO'S ROSES, by Martín Prechtel


Jaguars and flowers, a goddess of growth and a raggedy boy playing a harp made from an old woman's hair: this book is a marvelous example of the power of myth to exist in the world and in our own lives, an exploration of a single story as lived by an individual and by the Tzutzuil village of Santiago Atitlan. 

IRON JOHN, by Robert Bly

This book takes a deep look at a single fairy tale, seeking in it a vision of healthy masculinity in a world that all too often encourages both men and women only to be aggressive and to dominate others. The poet Robert Bly spent years exploring these questions both alone and in community, and the result is a book crammed with poetry, insights, and forgotten paths.

THE INTERPRETATION OF FAIRY TALES, by Marie-Louise von Franz

This book makes the night bigger and the sky taller, and will help you hear the rivers running beneath the ground on which you walk. A terrific introduction to the Jungian way of looking at story, and to the wisdom available to us once we nourish the seed of a story with the water of our deep attention. 

WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
​by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Call this book a deep listening to all the wild songs of the feminine spirit, a field guide to landscapes found within and without. Clarissa Pinkola Estés explores what it means to be a woman through stories drawn from all over the world, taking an unflinching look at their heights and depths.

WISDOM OF THE MYTHTELLERS by Sean Kane
Broadview Press, 1998

To read this book is to climb into the earth-based stories overheard by humans and look out from within them, seeing human life as one pattern in a landscape of relationships between human and bear, salmon and glacier, hummingbird and stone. This book will transform your vision of the world and of the place of humans in it.

A STORY AS SHARP AS A KNIFE: The Classical Haida Mythtellers and Their World by Robert Bringhurst

This book opens up a world of shape-shifting ravens and goddesses beneath the sea, bringing us into the company of mythtellers singing epics into being even as disease, famine, and colonization ravage their communities. A profound education in what oral literature is and how its powers maintain the world.

Larger Context

Ong, Walter, ​Orality and Literacy
        A scholarly yet mind-blowing book about the differences between oral and literate cultures, covering everything from
        storytelling to architecture to spiritual life. This book will permanently change how you see the world.

Carr, Nicholas, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains
         Required reading for any of us who look at screens. 

Greer, John Michael, The Long Descent
         A deep look at our current situation as a species and a grappling with the stories that got us here. The sci-fi stories I grew up with
         felt a lot different after they collided with this book.

Mander, Jerry, Six Arguments for the Elimination of Television
        The insights this book offers into the power of televised images still hold true years later, and are perhaps even more relevant in our current age of smartphones. A merciless and eye-opening look at screen images and their effect on the world.
        

Further Resources and Inspirations

www.Jackson Crawford.com             A terrific education in Norse language and myth

Crick Crack Club                                 The website of this legendary organization is packed with wisdom

Dark Mountain Project                       Where we're at and where we can go from here
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​Emergence Magazine