Kalliope's Sanctum

Oct 17 2024 17 ep. 44 mins 56
Kalliope's Sanctum Podcast artwork

Welcome to Kalliope's Sanctum, a story podcast hosted by writer Sylvia V. Linsteadt. This podcast is dedicated to Kalliope, primordial and first Muse of epic poetry and ecstatic song in ancient Greece. This podcast is a place of sanctuary for her oldest stories. It is a return to the wild garden, to the spring, to the ground of being & the source of inspiration in the Earth. Here, we honor Kalliope as Muse of Earth. Here, you will find some of the stories beneath the stories of Old Europe: short fictional/poetic pieces written and read by Sylvia that explore elements of indigenous Old European mythology (a term coined by the late archaeologist Marija Gimbutas), with a focus on pre-Hellenic (pre-Patriarchal) Greece. Come sit with us in the honeyed light, among the ripe pomegranates, in Kalliope's sanctuary, where the stories that arise directly from the ground of being and lifeforce can still be safely told and celebrated. Come lean against the sun-warmed stones, with the fragrance of propolis & myrrh in the air, and the trees heavy with autumn quince. This is the garden before the fall, a sanctuary for all hearts in this time. Join us, and be revived. PODCAST SOUND EDITING: Simon Linsteadt PODCAST ART: Catherine Sieck PODCAST MUSIC: Antonis Leontidis (Cretan lyra composition from the album Krifo: https://antonisleontidis.bandcamp.com/album/krifo) ABOUT SYLVIA V. LINSTEADT: Sylvia V. Linsteadt is a novelist, poet, scholar of ancient history, myth and ecology, and artist. She divides her time between California & Crete, where she is currently working on a novel set in Minoan times. Her published fiction includes the middle grade children’s duology The Stargold Chronicles— The Wild Folk (Usborne, June 2018) and The Wild Folk Rising (Usborne, May 2019)— Our Lady of the Dark Country, a collection of short stories (January 2018) and Tatterdemalion (Unbound, Spring 2017); her works of nonfiction include The Wonderments of the East Bay (Heyday 2014), and Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area (Heyday, Spring 2017). Her short fiction has been published in New California Writing 2013, Dark Mountain, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, The Golden Key and Deathless Press. Her creative nonfiction can be found in Dark Mountain, Earthlines Magazine, Poecology, and News from Native California. For three years (from 2013 to 2016) Sylvia ran a stories-in-the-mail business called Wild Talewort, in which she sent out rewilded tellings of fairytales and myths to the physical-post boxes of hundreds of subscribers around the world. Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area won the Northern California Book Award in General Nonfiction in 2018. Website: http://www.sylviavictorlinsteadt.com/ Substack: https://sylviavlinsteadt.substack.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sylviavlinsteadt/ Newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/sylvialinsteadt

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17. Of Fairytale Soup and Female Storytellers - Kitchen Table Talks with Nao Sims (Part 1)

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Brew a cup of tea and join me and my dear friend Nao Sims— women's sacred dance teacher and lifelong lover of old stories— as we discuss some of our late-night ideas about the rhythms of female myth-telling, why fairytales are kind of like soup-recipes, and why they were the only thing Nao wanted to read while she was pregnant. All while her little daughter sleeps on in the bac

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15. Tam Lin: A Traditional Scottish-English Ballad

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14. Morning Star Woman & Ivan the Youngest Son

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12. The Dark Country- Part 3

Jun 02 2021 64 mins  
This is part three of my novella The Dark Country, set on the imagined, Greek-inspired island of Kefthyra. In it, a maiden, mother and crone call forth the old language, and the snakes that live in the Earth, to try to overthrow a colonial empire. See Episode 11 for part one. I am sharing the full novella in four parts over the spring & summer seasons. May these words be seeds in

11. The Dark Country - Part 2

Mar 18 2021 58 mins  
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10. The Dark Country - Part 1

Feb 17 2021 68 mins  
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9. Calypso

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8. The Pythia

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