Episode 29
Achtan: A Brave Mother’s Tale, featuring Karina Tynan | S6 Ep29
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This week, a ‘best of the podcast episode’: Achtan: A Brave Mother’s Tale.
Our guest Karina Tynan, psychotherapist and Irish mythology author, tells a story of sovereignty, or spellwork, and of our deepest entanglement with nature. Bees, wolves, and horses play a magical role in the tale of Achtan and the lengths she went to protect her infant son, the future king, Cormac, son of Airt.
In the conversation that follows we explore:
✨Mothering and parenting - both in the ancient times we imagine and in this difficult contemporary moment
✨Our need for magic, and the way we know that magic when we meet it
✨The way Karina blends her imagination and personal experience into all her mythological retellings
✨Sacrifice (whose roots mean “to make sacred”) particularly, when it comes to parenthood
✨Achtan is a druid’s daughter, and Karina imagines the details of the five spells of protection are woven around Cormac Mac Airt in the literature
✨Our fear of our own children’s fragility, including fears of giving our kids an eating disorder or pushing them to suicide
✨The importance of coming of age rituals in indigenous cultures and the lost value of adventure.
✨The role of rhythmic stories, fairy tale, adventure, and romances in the development of children
Music at the start of the show is by Beth Sweeney and Billy Hardy: billyandbeth.com
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