Remembering the sacred mother animal
Author: Pamela Travers
P.L. Travers was a consulting editor and contributor to Parabola since its inception in 1976. Her writings include the Mary Poppins series and What the Bee Knows (Arkana, 1993), and she has written extensively on myth and story. She died on April 23, 1996 at her home in London. Peace, dear friend.
The way in, the way out
A Hebrew Myth, a potent element in the annals of the bees, tells us that when a child is born an angel takes it under his wing and recites the Torah to it. Having done that he puts his forefinger on the infant lip and says one word, “Forget!” Clearly, every tradition has a similar…
It is not ignorance. Rather, one could say, a particular process of cognition that has little or no use for words. It is part of our heritage at birth, the infant’s first primer. And the young child lives by it, gathering into its growing body and aboriginal heart a cosmography of wonder. “The corn was…
We sit on our heels on the tatami, the Japanese woman and myself, telling the stories of our lives. One can do this with a stranger. Too near, and the perspective is lost. Only the far can be near. A sound–a knock, intimation only–had come from the inner door. And there she was in her…