[ **up: [[Explaining the world]]** ] # Storytelling [[2024-0529. 'The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.'|'The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.']][^1] [[2025-0324. 'I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see. All we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything, if you don’t have the stories.'|'Leslie Marmon Silko has written, “I will tell you something about stories. They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see. All we have to fight off illness and death. You don’t have anything, if you don’t have the stories.“']][^2] [[“It matters which stories tell stories, which concepts think concepts … which systems systematise systems.”]][^3] --- - [[Fanfiction]] - [[Tropes]] - [[Writing fiction]] --- ## Story as medicine > *[[2025-0324. 'First the word. Then the herb. Then the knife.'|First the word.]]* > *Then the herb.* > *Then the knife.* > > — [[Asclepios]].[^4] [[2025-0324. 'The mythic imagination, which looks for the connections between things and the meanings inside of and underneath things, is one of the most potent triggers for healing that I know of.'|'The mythic imagination, which looks for the connections between things and the meanings inside of and underneath things, is one of the most potent triggers for healing that I know of.']][^5] --- ## Story as history [[2025-0324. Amber Magnolia Hill talks of having stepped into her 'unofficial role as story keeper for my ancestral line'.|’I became aware of all of this around the time I stepped into my unofficial role as story keeper for my ancestral line, and holding this idea of myself as “keeper of ancient memory” has fortified and emboldened me as an herbalist, ancestral listener, consciousness explorer, and writer.’]][^6] [[2025-0324. 'Modern epigenetic research has proven what witches, shamans, and wise folk have always known- that the experiences of our ancestors are handed down and live on in us today.'|'Modern epigenetic research has proven what witches, shamans, and wise folk have always known- that the experiences of our ancestors are handed down and live on in us today.']][^7] [[2025-0324. 'Modern epigenetic research has proven what witches, shamans, and wise folk have always known- that the experiences of our ancestors are handed down and live on in us today.'|’As Sandra Easter, author of *Jung and the Ancestors* puts it, “Healing in the present is connected across and through time and space.”’]][^8] --- ## Story as (cultural and personal) identity [[2025-0325. We 'seem also to have lost our myths, and thus a tool by which we could explain our role in the world around us, and which once helped us to understand incompatibilities between culture and nature.'|We 'seem also to have lost our myths, and thus a tool by which we could explain our role in the world around us, and which once helped us to understand incompatibilities between culture and nature.']][^9] [^1]: Muriel Rukeyser, *The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser*, 1992. Quoted by Nicholas Campion, ‘[[Campion. ‘The Importance of Cosmology in Culture’, 2017.|The Importance of Cosmology in Culture: Contexts and Consequences]]’, in *Trends in Modern Cosmology*, ed. Abraao Jesse Capistrano De Souza (InTech, 2017), p. 3. [^2]: Amber Magnolia Hill, ‘[[Hill. ‘Story is Medicine_ The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path’, 2018.|Story is Medicine: The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path]]’, *Plant Healer*, vol. 8, issue 2 (Spring 2018), p. 100. [^3]: Donna Haraway, quoted in Merlin Sheldrake, *[[Sheldrake. 'Entangled Life', 2021.|Entangled Life]]* (UK: Vintage, 2021), p. 223. [^4]: Asclepios, in: Amber Magnolia Hill, ‘[[Hill. ‘Story is Medicine_ The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path’, 2018.|Story is Medicine: The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path]]’, *Plant Healer*, vol. 8, issue 2 (Spring 2018), p. 93. [^5]: Amber Magnolia Hill, ‘[[Hill. ‘Story is Medicine_ The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path’, 2018.|Story is Medicine: The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path]]’, *Plant Healer*, vol. 8, issue 2 (Spring 2018), p. 93. [^6]: Amber Magnolia Hill, ‘[[Hill. ‘Story is Medicine_ The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path’, 2018.|Story is Medicine: The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path]]’, *Plant Healer*, vol. 8, issue 2 (Spring 2018), p. 95. [^7]: Amber Magnolia Hill, ‘[[Hill. ‘Story is Medicine_ The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path’, 2018.|Story is Medicine: The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path]]’, *Plant Healer*, vol. 8, issue 2 (Spring 2018), p. 96. [^8]: Amber Magnolia Hill, ‘[[Hill. ‘Story is Medicine_ The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path’, 2018.|Story is Medicine: The Mythic Imagination on the Healing Path]]’, *Plant Healer*, vol. 8, issue 2 (Spring 2018), p. 96. [^9]: Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes, ‘[[Rivera-Fuentes. ‘Gender and Hybridity’, 2000.|Gender and Hybridity: The Significance of Human/Animal Characters in Magic Realist Fiction]]’, *Animal Issues*, vol. 4, no. 1 (2000), p. 31.