Apr 22 2023 62 mins
On the occasion of the release of her book The White Deer, we welcome Melinda Reidinger to the podcast. Melinda is a scholar, a translator, a professor, and a writer of that liminal intersection between Myth, Magic, Folklore, Anthropology, Art History, Eco-criticism, Sociology, and History. Basically, she has set up her camp right at the Crossroads where we most like to linger ...
We explore together the genesis of the White Deer project, and what this Uncanny and Otherwordly creature has meant, and means, to us: a harbinger or a herald, of the Strange and the Wonderful. We also discuss the meaning of magic, and what our relationship to it is, and how literature, and words, carry magical freight when used consciously. Melinda eloquently describes her encouters with the Numinous in Nature, and how they reveal the deep essence of Experience as Story.
We also get some fascinating reflections on the relationships between early humans and wolves, and their domestication (and our own!). Melinda's next project is a book of similar scope dealing with the Wolf, and she also has a number of fiction projects moving towards completion, including both post-Apocalyptic and Historical projects, which bear this common thread of the quest for meaning and the importance of our Right Relations with the planet and with Nature.
Melinda's absolutely excellent book is available from Ritona Press at A Beautiful Resistance, here : https://abeautifulresistance.org/the-white-deer
And her SubStack Blog (also highly recommended) can be accessed here: https://melindareidinger.substack.com/
Her novel Swarm Box is forthcoming from The Hidden Library! Watch this space for more details on THAT exciting project ...
(CAVEAT : experimenting with a new system for recording interviews, I found myself quite disappointed here with the technology offered by an app called Riverside. As you will hear, there is some distortion and delay which impacts the fluidity of the conversation; also, some mild Hellish Death Metal Screaming in the background: I think I may have forgotten to flip the "Eliminate Background Hungry Ghosts" setting ... But I believe the discussion is worth releasing for the quality of the content; apologies. I am learning as I go. If you don't fuck around, how will you ever find out?)
THE HOLLOW PATH IS A MEETING OF MINDS AND HEARTS, TO FOSTER EXHANGES AROUND MAGIC, ART, ENCHANTMENT, CULTURE, POLITICS, AND POETICS ...
RE-ENCHANTMENT. RE-WILDING. RE-MEMBERING.
RESISTANCE.