Welcome to the Living Myth podcast with Michael Mead, where this shifting, changing world is looked at from a mythic perspective.

This episode begins with a Native American story of the origin of healing rituals.

In telling the tale, Mead emphasizes a remarkable point in the story

when knowledge, healing, and songs all enter the world at the same time.

The songs become central elements in the original healing ritual,

which brings those that are sick or wounded to the center of the community.

Having established the importance of healing songs,

Mead introduces an excerpt from Mosaic's recording, A Song is a Road.

There's an old proverb that says,

Darkness and night are the mothers of thought.

Humans have been looking out into the darkness of night since the beginning of time.

And now modern scientists studying the darkness and the light of stars find themselves having the thought

that looking at the stars is not simply looking at light that's coming from a great distance,

it's also looking back into the past, so that the darkness holds the light of the stars

that leads us all the way back to the origins of the world. Not surprisingly, the study of

mythology reveals many origin stories in which the ancient people or the ancestors were looking out

into the darkness of night, and in some cases received not just thoughts, but also songs,

and even the inspiration for making healing ceremonies.

There's an old Native American story that appears among several tribes.

The tale begins right after the earth has been formed,

and the creator at that moment is called the One Who made the earth. And the story says at that point,

the one who made the earth, shaped people and placed them on the solid ground that had just been formed.

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