In this conversation, Victoria Loorz speaks with Dr. Martin Shaw, mythologist, storyteller, wilderness rites-of-passage guide, and author of seventeen books, including his latest New York Times bestseller, Liturgies of the Wild: Myths That Make Us. Dr. Shaw is the director of the Westcountry School of Myth and founder of the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University.
Together, they explore the tension between wildness and discipline, myth and religion, exile and return. The conversation wanders through Dartmoor folklore, Orthodox liturgy, the role of beauty and ritual in a disenchanted age, and the deep hunger many people feel for forms of spirituality rooted in mystery, embodiment, and the living world. Martin reflects candidly on what has quietly shifted in him since reconnecting with the Christian story the spiritual consequences of disconnection from land, and a story that didn’t make the final cut of his book — one that illuminates the challenge of this moment: how to ride the "age of the wolf" with courage and faith.
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Timestamps:
- 00:00 — Introduction
- 06:03 — Interview Begins
- 10:56 — Re-exploring The Old Stories
- 13:47 — Living Fidelity of Place
- 18:24 — Discipline of the Wild
- 20:42 — What’s Our Current Story?
- 24:41 — The Age of the Wolf
- 28:31 — The Religious Has a Place
- 31:22 — Eastern Orthodox Expressions
- 34:06 — How Jesus Changes Love
- 39:05 — Martin’s Wild Threshold
- 42:03 — Wild Invitation
- 43:36 — Credits