whoever was beaten by this Angel/ (who often simply declined the fight)/ went away proud and strengthened/ and great from that harsh hand,/ that kneaded him as if to change his shape./ winning does not tempt that man./ this is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. — rainer maria rilke, ‘the man watching.’
***
thresholdic + integral / integrative consciousness ~~ audrey nova di mola Is:
devoted to exploring {what i’m calling} the somatimaginal; restoring The Village and re-story-ing the world. underworld-grown, mercurial, edge-character. ~subject to change.~ :) i have hermes’ wings tattooed on all 4 of my ankles as well as LIVE YOUR LEGEND on my forearm. // NYC-born + raised multidisciplinary artist, writer + researcher, Listener + oral tradition storyteller, creative facilitator + sacred space-holder. offering adventurous, care-oriented international gatherings, and 1-on-1 sessions in the realms of therapeutic inner explorations and the craft/ethos of storywork and storytelling. for further info on my work, click here. <3
some of my (human) inspirations/teachers are: daniel deardorff, clarissa pinkola estés, sharon blackie, martin shaw, cynthia bourgeault, báyò akómoláfé, ursula k. le guin, mary oliver, francis weller, marion woodman, michael meade, robert bly, joseph campbell, sophie strand, perdita finn, paulo coelho, michael ende (author of the neverending story), and newly (excitingly) john moriarty … !
*
what is ‘the Angel; for wrestling’ ? as with most things i do, i let the thing show me what it is— let it be Emergent. i’m just returning and returning here, to one of my deep first loves— writing. about: myth and the old stories, mental health/recovery, new-old ways, integral consciousness, Seeing with the eye of the heart, intergenerational trauma, unwinding + reweaving, recovering what has been Lost to us, and …
{i’ve also been tracking aka oversharing the last decade-plus of my life on instagram; excitingly (!) as of 2024 it is seeming to be tapering off— but either way, but this substack is its own kind of mythic animal..}
*
some (video / real-time!) samples of my recent work:
~ previously unlisted youtube playlist of storytelling samples
~ dropbox audio file of my telling of ‘the maiden king’
~ knowing your own mythology: the life-saving act: icarus, pratītyasamutpāda, and the alternate shapes of ‘mental illness’ — essay published on northern spirit house
~ encountering the urban mythic presentation — on ‘the art of enchantment,’ dr. sharon blackie’s substack [full video for paid subscribers] // and my post on THE URBAN MYTHIC on my own substack
~ live video telling of ‘the moon palace’ [at 5:30am NYC time!] for australia-based online mythopoetic community, the fifth direction
~ living your legend: a myth could save your life — podcast conversation with chaise levy of northern spirit house
~ myth + mental health: wulf speak + heart-eye vision presentation — on ‘the art of enchantment,’ dr. sharon blackie’s substack [full video for paid subscribers]
~ since early 2022 i’m also the proud proud assistant to the steward + community weaver for mythsinger legacy project, founded in honor of my late great storytelling teacher and author of the other within: the genius of deformity in myth, culture and psyche, the ever-brilliant and trickstery, daniel deardorff. <3
*
in the dismemberment proliferated by modernity, We Need sheltering spaces for Re-Membering. We Need peace-full places to be, to Encounter ourselves and others, in safe/brave ways. We Need the voices of those from the edge, who are Telling Different Tales— from what the overculture gives us. what the news and social media give us. even from what the most utter destitute places in our hearts and bodies, give us. This is what i will Forever be devoted, to doing. and Being.
*
in myth is the Truth. // more of me on the internet: here and nifty linktree here.
and that was the task he set himself, to cleanse perception, to free himself and subsequently, he hoped, to free humanity, from all of the forces, societal, cultural, religious, that he saw as fencing us in; to free us from the hypnosis of the modern world, to break down all of the walls, inner and outer, that have kept humanity, as he says, ‘within a great prison we are unconscious of’, because ‘we don’t have eyes to see any other world, we don’t have any other way of looking.’ — mary mcgillicuddy, on john moriarty.
*
the war against imagination is the war against initiatory sickness, interiority, and descendedness […] to remain unconquered in such a war one needs deep roots— the ill-logic of the mortally wounded animal-body, the dark logic of duendé, the Water-of-Death. else, uprooted, torn from the earth, ‘lacking the poetry’ and lacking ‘the images and imaginings of the underworld, one takes one’s torments literally and personally.’ taking the wound ‘literally and personally’ is something the initiand, the victim/beneficiary, the Other Within, cannot afford to do. […]
what is sought for is not a total theory of imagination, but the reconstitution and resuscitation of imagination as a way of knowing— in the Waters-of-Life-and-Death, of the spirit and the flesh, a way now matured by virtue of the initiatory wound, a mature imagination set forth as distinct from the connotations of abscondence, delusion, hallucination, and wishful thinking— set forth distinctly, as in avens’ definition: ‘our whole power, the total functioning interplay of our capacities.’
— mythsinger daniel deardorff in his classic text, ‘the other within: the genius of deformity in myth, culture, and psyche.’
*
‘What is the Personal Legend?’
‘It is your blessing, the path God has chosen for you here on Earth. Whenever a man does that which gives him enthusiasm, he is following his Legend.’ [...]
‘The simple possibility of achieving that which we desire causes the soul of the common man to be filled with guilt. He looks around, and sees many others who have not succeeded, and so he thinks he does not deserve it. He forgets everything he overcame, all he suffered, everything he had to renounce in order to come this far. I know many people who, when they are within reach of their Personal Legend, make a series of silly mistakes and do not attain their objective— when it was just one step away.
This is the most dangerous of the obstacles, because it has a certain aura of sanctity about it […] But if the man is worthy of that which he has fought so hard for, he then becomes an instrument of God, aids the Soul of the World, and understands why he is there.’ — paulo coelho.
*
the universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. by a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. there is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. and then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns or warms him but with which he will not part. — annie dillard.
*
They talk of the triumph of the machine, but the machine will never triumph. Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man the unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at the sun, for one sad century machines have triumphed, rolled us hither and thither, shaking the lark’s nest till the eggs have broken. Shaken the marshes, till the geese have gone and the wild swans flown away singing the swan-song at us. Hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling, but through some hearts they will never roll. — d.h. lawrence.
latest book:
“THE BOOK OF LEGEND” (2019)
“What an astounding book, it’s really like nothing else I have read, it’s like you have created your own unique unrepeatable genre. A new species of book. It’s haunting and powerful and ultimately very affirming. You’ve invented a new way to tell a story in order to tell a story about stories. […] I’ve read books on spiritual topics and the unseen world, […] but your book really stands alone because yours is written from right inside the heat and struggle and agony and ecstasy of the experience of having your life twisted and wrung out and melted down and hammered into a previously unimaginable new shape. It’s so rare and wonderful to see someone writing from that place. For daring to do it.” — ryan brown.
