(NOTE: AUDIO IS BEING REPAIRED)

Hello my lovelies!

Last moon I was building on ideas that culminated in looking at stories as seeds to nurture and grow upon, sacred flames of lessons to pass on, as trees in forests of memories, as the roots that support future knowledge, and as the sparks that lead to change and true stewardship.
For this New Moon, I am hoping to introduce you to you a more elusive and gossamer aspect of storytelling - the spider web, mycelium-like threads that link all of the worlds stories and people together -- which as fragile as it sounds, it is as an integral part of being human as is fire is to cooking. It is something that will be needed to be approached delicately as we circle in on it's true roots  -- much like we will, eventually, return to what I mean as the well known but not seen as such "Toxic Trickster"....

The threads that bind up all the worlds story is a sweeping idea that I would say many of those that I speak of it too have some difficulty grasping as anything but distant.. delusional.. magic. But many of you may have heard of Leylines or even Faultlines, and even the recently confirmed global mycelium (mushroom, folks) network.... Science and magic and mystics all smash up against each other in a beautifully messy way. Simply, there is evidence that the physical world was and is connected in both the "see with you eyes, touch with you toes, taste with tongue, etc.. senses. as well as being in  clues and whispers and tropes and archetypes and rules and such in the spoken and written words that very much point to a world connected far beyond our recorded history. 

When you can begin to see the foundational forms of stories that span the globe, and take note of what has happened historically to who is telling those stories, you can begin to not only just collect, but actually PLANT those stories as your own forest. Remember what I said about understanding the roots of a story to grow and steward it, not just harvest it?  In the course of that, you also see how all of those trees in your forest of memories are connected - form, function, roots, mycelium... 

There are a few VERY obvious foundational stories that tie much of the world's human population together, of those I will pulling those from my forest to tell you in the coming moon - but a few observations to illustrate first...
There are stories of the Seven Sisters, the Seven Warriors, the Seven Stars... all across the globe, some in places that don't have the best visibility of the sky and all rooted in a time 100,000 years ago when a certain group of stars was last seen clearly by the naked eye as 7 stars... as one of those stars moved so close to another that they have only been recorded as 6 stars for all those millennia, but remembered as 7. Their name in contemporary Western culture is Pleiades, In China is Mǎo 昴 (or Qī Jiěmèi / 七姐妹), In New Zealand, Matariki, The mother and daughters, it's rising in the predawn sky signals the New Year.  
In my previous stories the "theft" or reclamation of Fire or Sun by our fellow tricksters for the sake of humans and life is one that spans the globe, in one form or another in nearly every single culture. 
The very foundation of today's major world religions and spirituality have some foundation built on the battle or conflict between the Sky/Thunder people and spirits against those of the Earth/Sea ... between Heaven and Earth, Good and Evil, Enlightened and Lost.... Slaver and Slave.. - and many of the older stories are reflected in a conflict between Eagle and Snake, Thunder Bird and Horned Serpent, Garuda vs Naga, the slaying of the Dragon or the Splitting of the Sea Momster. 
I think it is interesting to note that these stories are absent from places where the Serpent and her wisdom was never defeated - or only recently so - prominent examples would be the Rainbow Serpent and the Naga is some areas.

The first rooted I want us to explore is one that has a very special place in my heart forest. I come back to sit with it again and again because I feel that the little snippets that I have found and unearthed and that have been retold by the biblical man are tangled and need to be addressed... It's a story that is found in much of the world in places that have the battle between earth and sky, and one that I will likely continue retelling until I can find it's true spark and seed.
In some ways there are tricksters in this core story, but the more recent retellings have stripped them and twisted them into examples and excuses for Toxic Tricksters, so it a good place to start for both.

At the beginning of our world there was the Mother. She is the Sea, the Primordial, Chaos and Origin. Creatrix. Womb. Sea Mother. Sea Serpent, Sea dragon. Both Life giving and Life taking, as life needs death to flourish. From her came fresh water and estuary, and from their mixing came the Earth and the Sky, and from her came all the lives of the various wonderous beings. Earth and Sky, as Sea's Daughters, supported the ebb and flow of the complexities of life and death, many times taking on the role of each and not of opposition but in harmony... and more spirits and beings came into existence, taking on aspects of mother sea's unity of life, both the Beauty, Fertility, and Nurturing - and her Rage, Turmoil and Terrible Purges. At this point in the story, later retellings begin to rewrite this origin. Fresh water is Father, somtimes birthed from sea, othertimes split from her (and Later her Ruler).. Earth and Sky are twin Brothers, the orginal daughters of the Sea becoming their minor, spoiled children, rewriting mother focused lineage and trying to diminish obvious origins. Honestly, the spirits and women likely had no attachment to the ownership of creation, simply it was just is and likely did not see the seeping insidious dis-ease of dichotomies...  The stories begin to be one of dominance, control and power, Stewardship and one's place in the web of life falling quickly to the side. The story of Earth and Sky slowly growing and stewarding life and death became one where the brother twins begin to challenge their mother, viewing her womb as some sort of dominion and tempestuous fickleness. The story may have begun as a simple one of seeking to free themselves from the whims of the parent and fear of the world around them, as the twin who was often described as the Trickster, with all the telltale markings of one, was often spoken of testing the boundaries of said world... but quickly and very difinitively the stories became one of division. The Sea, The Mother, was Split in Two. The domain divided between the Heaven and the Earth. Life and Death.. and the stories were begining to become clear on which was superior.. Later on, when Power seemingly strangled Stewardship completely, regalating it to priests and religion, the son of the other twin's brother took over the Uncle Trickster's role, and became a vanquisher monarch. The story became one of war, of justification, of upheaval and conquest. Mother Sea became the Dragon, the mother of monsters, the monster and mother that was no longer needed nor wanted. So the Monarch fought her champion and Slew them both, Splitting the mother in her Defeat... And all was a grand justification of Might makes right.

Much of this is symbolic. The stories carry strong indication of when stewardship became rulership and when that power transitioned. This is heavily borrowed from stories originating in the cultures and societies in the fertile crescent that was quickly growing as agricultural areas in the 3rd and 2nd Millennium BCE (roughly around 5000 years ago). But these stories have been knotted by generations of translations, and frequently lack a focus on the origin of the various characters within. The same general transition has been seen in stories around the world, where Mother and relationships are divided and the stories transition from echoes of stewardship to that of power. I think this is a very important seed to nurture and explore - as much of asking "Why Hierarchy" starts with understanding possible origins of the divisions that it creates and feeds on... on the idea that dichotomies are natural and that RANKING needs to be part of life as much as breathing, eating, drinking and surviving. 
I fully admit that I am taking you on this journey to find that origin, as that knot is so foundational that if it is not untangled or cut away I fully understand that rewriting future mythology is impossible.

This story was hard coming and I fear a bit overthought, it wasn't told in a single sitting, but thought upon over the course of many suns.
I am hoping that I can offer clearer illumination as we move along, but thank you for sitting with me in the dark for a little while.
I wish you all Faire Farren, and hope to see you very soon.