Eco-Mythical Activism Cycle
{recipe for fermenting tales}
For this tale cycle, traditional Portuguese tales and myths of various origins and versions were studied. This has already been done through the living process of research-prayer for the books, Tales and Sanctuary, Orada and Siduri.
The tales chosen for the process are left to ferment so that they slowly alchemize with the territory, the body, and the imagination. Symbols, metaphors, and dreams nourish the fragments of eroded relationships, building affective tentacles and sensitive bridges contextualized in place.
Despite the preparation and investigation of each tale's ingredients and symbolic plots, the intentional act of remembering these tales follows the lines of speculative fabulation, aiming to creatively untangle the knots of recent beliefs. Creating a responsible and mature space to access deeper sediment - this is not a project of archiving traditional tales, but of creatively assembling them from the eco-mythological paradigm.
In a slow burn, the normative structures in the tales are broken down, such as human superiority and control over everything else (anthropocentrism); the racism inherent in the enslaved characters (coloniality); female immaturity, evil, and incapacity (patriarchy); or the neglect of seasonal and ecological wisdom, as well as an abstract god in the sky (desacralization of place that generates ecological illiteracy and ecocide).
The stories are critically crafted by incorporating fecund and animistic threads. With pinches of inspiration, which can come from anywhere, the tale begins to take on new contours, which pulse from collective memories: rites and ceremonies open up, as do structures of cyclical time, as well as honest and totemic learning with animals instead of reductively disenchanting them. Women regain sovereignty, maturity, and dignity. Places cease to be inert scenery.
Within this practice, fiction fecundates reality with hybrid and chimerical possibilities, making alternative narratives possible. The tales recover part of their integrity, sacredness, and cartographic wisdom of space and time.
The new versions of tales are no longer exiled to the nexus of the human psyche, individual and abstract, but open up to the archetypes of a diverse, collective, situated, and living ecology.
The tales are now ready to dance with deep memory, the wisdom of ecological relationships, remembering who we have always been! Challenging the cognitive limitations of modernity, awakening other resources, and creating different ways of seeing and feeling.
Serve with tea and welcome with tender embraces.
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