This year the School of Myth is offering five stand-alone weekends. Covering stories and ideas both loved and fresh to Martin, they promise to be a spellbinding immersion into the ways both myth and place talk to each other. In each gathering, there will also be the opportunity to learn a folk tale to take home yourself.

These weekends each offer a unique opportunity work with a master storyteller on his home ground of Dartmoor.

Please note these weekends are in-person attendance only. They are open to participants who are new to the School and to those who have previously attended courses.

The Hazel Bush & the Magic Hour

A weekend exploring the mysteries and grandeur of the Celtic and Arthurian traditions. From the Invasion Tales of Ancient Ireland to the magic of Deirdre of the Sorrows, through to lesser-known gems of the Arthurian cannon. This is a masterclass into a world filled with fairies, quests and adventure. Alongside the stories will be readings from bardic sources and some exploration of the Irish philosopher John Moriarty.

Please email tina@schoolofmyth.com if you would like to book.

The Red, The Black & The White

The genius of the fairy tale – a gathering dedicated to the compact vitality of this wonderful folk tradition. Martin will be revisiting some of his favourite stories while introducing some that are quite new to him. What separates a fairy tale from a myth from a folk tale or epic? Alongside the stories, Martin will unpack classic motifs and themes from the tradition.

Please email tina@schoolofmyth.com if you would like to book.

Wild Christ

A weekend of Christian Wonder Tales. From stories of the early saints through to Joseph venturing through the Underworld in Egypt, to tales of Yeshua himself, what do these amazing stories tell us about how to live? Martin brings 30 years of exploring myth and story to the immensity and mystery of the Christian tradition.

With guests Dr Rowan Williams, Mark Vernon, Heather Pollington & Natasha Kozaily.

Please email tina@schoolofmyth.com if you would like to book.

Bearskin

A gathering for men, exploring myths and stories that underpin masculine consciousness in its most elevated form. We will learn from myth and folk tale of the Chivalric tradition, and the concept of Noblesse Oblige. This brings much of Martin’s previous work with Robert Bly, Malidome Some, Daniel Deardorff and many others into new ground. What does mythopoetic work have to say to us in the 21st Century?

Please email tina@schoolofmyth.com if you would like to book.

Red Bead Woman

Please email tina@schoolofmyth.com if you would like to book.

Lo! I have the fairest dream to tell you, it came from dark midnight when all were
asleep. —Cynewulf

This last year has been the most rewarding of my teaching life – specifically the 5-weekend course called The Skin-Boat & The Star. Within it I took three decades of study of fairytale and storytelling and applied it to the mythologies of Christianity. Many of my own mentors had studiously avoided this, but I’d come to realise it was leaving a distinct hole in my learning to keep swerving for more exotic ground.

Tales of creation, Cain & Abel, the Flood, Babel, saint stories, the extraordinary and sometimes uncomfortable teachings of the Galilee druid, I’d not often seen these stories approached with a storyteller’s imagination or a mythologist’s awareness of cultural layers. Lots of theological erudition certainly, but not quite that. I’d seen such tales politicised, weaponised even, which was what kept me away. But what if we let the stories be the stories again? What if we allowed them to live on the tongue again, do their work in the air not just on the page?

Skin-Boat is not church, it’s a learning community. There will be no altar call or emotional coercion of your spiritual life. But it’s of the come-find-out variety. It’s an adventure. It treats the stories lovingly and with respect but doesn’t wallop them over the head with endless doctrine. It allows them to stand in all their vitality unblinking in front of us. We walk with the tales, brood on the tales, laugh and weep with them on occasion. They do their work on us. In its first year we attracted a great variety of folk from all sorts of backgrounds: from confirmed atheists to pagans to clerics. What bound us all together was love of the power of story. Curiosity, kindness and patience were consistent demarcations of character as we sailed our little boat out into profoundly deep waters.

It’s also important to note that Skin-Boat maintains the exploration of folk, fairy tales and wider mythologies. From Irish myth to Russian tales, getting to grips with the technologies of how such stories erupt into our consciousness is vital. We grew to see how essential themes move between biblical tales and the folk story, how these narratives engender courage, sacrifice, and compassion. There was also the opportunity to actually learn a few stories yourself to bring back to your own family, friends and community. So the fundament of the School of Myth’s attention to wider myth remains a cornerstone in the Skin-Boat exploration. Stories are a large part of how we grow into a human being, and we draw on many resources to support what that actually looks like. My decades long work in wilderness-rites-of-passage is also a factor.

The gatherings were quite the reward. Seeing gleeful faces huddled by the fire as a winter storm lashed our backs and Malcolm Guite bellowed his Arthurian tales into the freezing rain. Astonished, over and over, by the poems and insights that rose up from the participants, many of whom have become close friends with each other. It was a tremendous act of spiritual rehydration. It turns out that something like Skin-Boat is starting to light up the souls of people all over the place. From Australia, Skin-Boaters came, and from Japan, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Europe and America.

And we set sail again in September. We will patch up the holes, learn some new songs, fill up the hip flask and follow that star that keeps calling us. It’s that same star that has led so many of us down the centuries.

I will be blessed by some splendid guest teachers: Dr Rowan Williams, Frederica Mathewes-Green, Mark Vernon, Natasha Kozaily and Heather Pollington. This intrepid group open areas of the wider arts, poetics and philosophy while still circling around the central engagement with the Christian mythos. This may be the very last place you would have ever considered gathering for dynamic story, but life, mercifully, is still full of the most extraordinary surprises. I understand. Five years ago I would have bet the farm on never going anywhere near any of this, and yet here we are. I have a habit of inviting amazing teachers at the last minute, so you never quite know what may happen.

If you have a love of myth, storytelling, culture, poetry and truly wild information, then this could be for you.