Fate and free will, and the longing for purpose and prospect of destiny that hangs somewhere in-between. How do these forces shape our lives? Do we play assigned roles in a cosmic plan or make it all up as we go?
These questions weave through many myths and stories. What answers do we find and how can we live with the questions?
Transcript of Fate, free will, and 3 Swords
Hello and welcome to Myth Matters, an exploration of the power of mythology in contemporary life, and the intersection of myth, creativity, and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this big, beautiful, crazy world, I’m glad you’ve joined me here today.
Determinism and free will. Fate and destiny. How powerful are these forces in shaping our lives?
We approached this question in the last episode through consideration of the Hindu teaching story, the Bhagavad-Gita. According to this teaching, the cosmic forces that we call the ‘gods” or “divinities” have already plotted the course of everything in the universe. Our best response is to play the role that we have been assigned. I’m grateful to Gabriella Nagy, who is an embodied yoga instructor and yogic life skill guide, for bringing her study of the Bhagavad-Gita to that exploration.
Well, that episode inspired a flurry of emails raising philosophical questions and asking for further investigation of the topic of fate and destiny and free will. I’ll take this up today but first, a brief update on the changes that you may have noticed with this episode, specifically the podcast art and my introductory words.
This is the sixth season of Myth Matters and I feel the need to update and refresh. I hope you like the changes and didn’t find them confusing. There are a few other things on the way but nothing that will substantially change your experience of the podcast. Hopefully, they will make it more valuable to you.
Now onto the subject at hand. People around the world have assumed the existence of a cosmic order. This often leads to a philosophy of predetermined outcomes and prescribed social roles. Roles that have to be played in order to keep the social order, whether that’s one supposedly governed by natural laws or a god’s laws, in place and operating. The concept of the individual as a self-determining, self-defining, unique human being is relatively new in the history of human culture.
I don’t think the answers to our questions about the grand schemes of a cosmic consciousness or god, and the significance of our personal choices, will be found on our current plane of existence. I don’t have the answer. That said, intentionally taking up questions about a cosmic order and free will, and formulating a belief or philosophy, is important to living your life and not simply following the crowd or acquiescing to the authority of others.
There are number of ways to approach this exploration. I certainly won’t exhaust it in my reflections today and my thoughts about the topic continue to evolve, but I want to begin with a story called “The Three Swords.”
“The Three Swords” is a story within a story. It’s part of the fantasy novel, The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. The main character in the novel is Zachary Ezra Rawlins, son of a fortune teller. The novel is about love, time, and memory, and stories and the people who create them, tell them, protect them, and live them. I really enjoyed this book. Thank you to Amy for recommending it to me.
The Starless Sea is sprinkled with fairy tales and fables which interact with the primary narrative. You’ll find “The Three Swords”– the story I’m about to tell– on pages 178 through 181. I’ll talk about what inspired me to share this story in connection with our theme.
For now, I invite you to sit back and relax and listen to the story. Take note if a particular moment or detail captures your attention as this can be a portal into the significance the story holds for you right now.
“The Three Swords”
The sword was the greatest the smith had ever made, after years of making the most exquisite swords in all the land. He had not spent an inordinate amount of time on its crafting. He had not used the finest of materials. But still, this sword was a weapon of a caliber that exceeded his expectations. It was not made for a particular customer and the smith found himself at a loss as he tried to decide what to do with it.
He could keep it for himself, but he was better at crafting swords than at using them. He was reluctant to sell it, though he knew it would fetch a good price. The sword smith did what he always did when he felt indecisive. He paid a visit to the local seer.
There were many seers in neighboring lands who were blind and saw in ways that others could not. They could not use their eyes. The local seer was merely nearsighted. The local seer was often found at the tavern at a secluded table in the back of the room, and he would tell the futures of objects or people if he was bought a drink. He was better at seeing the futures of objects than the futures of people.
The sword smith and the seer had been great friends for years. Sometimes he would ask the seer to read swords. He went to the tavern and brought the new sword. He bought the seer a drink.
“To seeking” the seer said, lifting his cup. “To finding” the sword smith replied, lifting his drink in return. They talked of current events and politics and the weather before the smith showed him the sword. The seer looked at the sword for a long time. He asked the smith for another drink and the smith obliged.
The seer finished his second drink and then handed the sword back. “This sword will kill the king” the seer told the smith. “What does that mean?” the smith asked. The seer shrugged. “It will kill the king,” he repeated. He said no more about it. The smith put the sword away and they discussed other matters for the rest of the night.
The next day, the sword smith tried to decide what to do with the sword, knowing that the seer was rarely wrong. Being responsible for the weapon that killed the king did not sit well with the sword smith, though he had previously made many swords that had killed many people. He thought he should destroy it, but he could not bring himself to destroy so fine a sword.
After much thought and consideration, he crafted two additional swords, identical and indistinguishable from the first. Even the sword smith himself could not tell them apart. As he worked, he received many offers from customers who wished to purchase them but he refused.
Instead, the sword smith gave one sword to each of his three children, not knowing who would receive the one who would kill the king. And he gave it no more thought because none of his children would do such a thing. And if any of the swords fell into other hands, the matter was left to fate and time, and fate and time can kill as many kings as they please, and will eventually kill them off.
The sword smith told no one with the seer had said, lived all his days and kept his secret until his days were gone.
The youngest son took his sword and went adventuring. He was not a terribly good adventurer and he found himself distracted, visiting unfamiliar villages and meeting new people and eating interesting food. His sword rarely left its scabbard. In one village, he met a man he fancied greatly and this man had a fondness for rings. So, the youngest son took his disused sword to a smith and had it melted down, and then hired a jeweler to craft rings from the metal. He gave the man one ring each year, for every year they spent together. There were a great many rings.
The eldest son stayed at home for years and used his sword for dueling. He was good at dueling and made quite a lot of money. With his savings, he decided to take a sea voyage and he took his sword with him, hoping he might learn as he traveled and improve his skills. He studied with the crew of the ship and would practice on the deck when the winds were calm. But one day he was disarmed too close to the rail. His sword fell into the sea and sank to the bottom, impaling itself into coral and sand. It is there still.
The middle child, the only daughter, kept her sword in a glass case in her library. She claimed it was decorative, a memory of her father who had been a great sword smith, and that she never used it. This was not true.
She often took it from its resting place when she was alone late at night, and practiced with it. Her brother had taught her some dueling but she had never used this particular sword for duels. She kept it polished. She knew every inch, every scratch. Her fingers itched for it when it was not nearby. The feel of it in her hand was so familiar that she carried the sword with her into her dreams.
One night, she fell asleep in her chair by the fire in the library. Though the sword rested in its case on the shelf nearby, she held it in her hand when she began to dream. In her dream, she walked through a forest. The branches of the trees were heavy with cherry blossoms, hung with lanterns and stacked with books. As she walked she felt many eyes watching her but she could not see anyone. Blossoms floated around her like snow.
She reached a spot where a large tree had been cut down to a stump. The stump was surrounded by candles and piled with books, and atop the books there was a beehive. Honey was dripping from it and falling over the books and the stump of the tree though there were no bees to be seen. There was only a large owl perched atop the beehive. A white and brown owl wearing a golden crown.
Its feathers ruffled as the sword smith’s daughter approached. “You have come to kill me” the Owl King said. “I have?” the sword smith’s daughter asked. “They find a way to kill me always. They have found me here, even in dreams.” “Who?” the sword smith’s daughter asked but the Owl King did not answer question. “A new king will come to take my place. Go ahead. It is your purpose.”
The sword smith’s daughter had no wish to kill the owl but it seemed she was meant to. She did not understand but this was a dream and such things make sense in dreams. The daughter of the sword smith cut off the Owl King’s head. One swift, well-practiced swing sliced through feather and bone. The owl’s crown fell from its severed head, clattering to the ground near her feet. The sword smith’s daughter reached down to retrieve the crown but it disintegrated beneath her fingers, leaving not but golden dust.
Then she woke still in the chair by the fire in her library. On the shelf where the sword had been there was a white and brown owl perched on the empty case. The owl remained with her for the rest of her days.
That was “The Three Swords” by Erin Morgenstern and is part of her fantasy novel The Starless Sea.
Morgenstern’s fairy tale skillfully blends images and motifs that have been handed down for centuries in a manner that feels contemporary and yet maintains the mystery of such stories. The creation of three swords, the existence of three children, these fulfill an expectation in us, the expectation of the fairy tale’s use of “three.” And yet, what do we make of the falling cherry blossoms and the stump dripping with honey in a dream forest? And who is the Owl King?
My fascination with this story led me to collect it for myself. The associations that lead me to share it with you today, in an exploration of fate and free will were not part of the plan at all. Now, I wonder. I note that “The Three Swords” is a story within a story, not unlike the Bhagavad-Gita embedded in the larger epic of the Mahabharata.
And is the sword smith or the sword smith’s daughter a variation of the warrior Arjuna? In the case of the daughter and Arjuna, well, each has skill with weapons. Each finds a willingness to overcome an initial reluctance, even revulsion in the case of Arjuna, because the act of killing is in rightly aligned. Feels like fate and destiny. Arjuna and the sword smith’s daughter are both called to commit an act that is part of a personal destiny and also part of larger drama, with outcomes and meaning far beyond the knowledge of the actor.
The sword smith’s daughter’s dream reminds me of religious and philosophical discussions of the relationship between life and dream: what is life and what is dream, what is real and what is illusion, who are we when we are awake, and when are we truly sleep?
So, interesting to me that I collected this story while working, in another part of my life, on this theme.
Turning back to the story, we have a sword smith who unintentionally crafts an extraordinary sword. Many artists understand this experience. He takes it the seer, who in the manner of a true oracle, gives him a message that is seemingly straightforward and yet contains a mystery. The sword smith thinks that he knows the meaning of the seer’s words.
We often think that we know what the messages we receive mean and ironically, in what we call a “twist of fate,” the meanings we ascribe become the vehicle for the fate we had hoped to avoid.
In the case of the sword smith, he took some precautions against the killing of a king by his sword. Maybe you would have done more. His silence around the destiny of the sword may have been his greatest act of prudence. And he resolved the matter for himself by leaving the possible killing of a king to fate and time.
Fate and time. Whose story is this, and whose fate? Is this tale of “The Three Swords” about the sword smith? The daughter? The Owl King? Or the sword itself? The sword that comes into being through some previously hidden potential in the sword smith, with no effort or forethought on his part. The sword that in one way of another, definitively shapes the lives of every other character in the story. The sword that disappears at the end of the story, having fulfilled its mission.
What is the sword? Did someone or something will it into being– a god, an intelligence, or necessity? Perhaps the needs of the story?
Our lives are predetermined in some important ways. Our genetic inheritance and other life circumstances, for example, establish some of the parameters of our lives. We know this and yet, we don’t know how this will play out exactly. Matters are further complicated by all that we do that is unconscious, and when we do choose, the significance of decisions and events is often hidden from us at the time. Crucial turning points are only recognized in retrospect.
With reflection, we sometimes see the threads and patterns that make our life what it is and understand something about what we’ve been tracking all along. But we only see this in retrospect. I think this awareness is very valuable. An inner compass. And yet a story about what is past is not a prediction of the future.
I think there is a question, a matter of belief, philosophy, or life experience that influences our interest in the questions of determinism and free will and the answers that we’re willing to entertain. Albert Einstein supposedly said, “The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.” Whether or not this famous man is the source of this insight, I agree.
Your ideas about the disposition of the universe influence the way you feel about playing your role and whether or not you are willing to accept the assignment, or accept that there could even be an assignment. It’s easier to trust fate in a friendly universe.
For me, this is a collective movement to good, to what we call love. Powerful experiences with plant teachers, ritual practices, and other people have led me here, to an image of a friendly universe that is love. You may have a different definition. You may have a different view of it altogether.
I began this reflection with “The Three Swords,” a story embedded in a story, relating to other stories, changing those stories and being changed by them, contained by a larger narrative that extends beyond the pages of the book and into the lives of readers. Who knows how far it goes? Human beings are storytelling animals in a storied universe. Our dialogue with life and with each other, with death and time and memory, fate and destiny and free will– all of it– is story.
There may not be an answer to the question of the roles these forces play. Of whether or not they even exist. But the desire then, as I see it, is to be in the right story, the story that fulfills the potential in your life. To carry your sword through the dream forest to the waiting Owl King.
I have a poem for you in closing, but first– A big welcome to new email subscribers: Claire, Michael, Jessica, Mark, Jane, Leslie, Erin, Fabiana, Ricardo, Cynthia, Chris, and Kim. Welcome to Myth Matters!
This podcast is available on a wide range of platforms but you can have links to new episodes delivered to your inbox by signing up at my Mythic Mojo website. A transcript of this episode and information about my mythic mentoring and creativity coaching are also at the website.
Many thanks to Chris who became a new patreon patron of Myth Matters. Thank you Chris! This podcast is made possible through the financial support of patreon patrons and bandcamp subscribers. You can support the show for as a little as $2/month. Visit mythicmojo.com to learn more and thank you for your support.
Feel free to email me in response to this episode or post a comment on the mythicmojo website. If you have questions about mythology, I’ll do my best to answer them.
In closing, a poem by Billy Collins called “Serpentine.” from Picnic, Lightning
This morning I saw suddenly
on the road ahead of me
the moving question mark of a snake,
black thumb of a head lifted,
some ancient node within the dark hood
urging the long thin body forward,
sensing its way
through its slippery existence
as it had been doing since birth,
slithering toward our moment of intersection,
the swishing passage no longer hidden by grass
or the wet cover of leaves,
but its entire length visible now
in the pure daylight of this dilated second,
just as I had been moving toward it, too,
all my life,
in my own upright, warm-blooded way,
walking the long sidewalks, riding trains,
leaning on the railing of a ferry,
or as today, driving a country road,
which from the air would look like a snake itself
curling through the dense green woods.
No moment was given there
spacious enough
to brake or swerve within,
only time enough to keep my line,
hoping without hope,
knowing, as I needled through the instant,
that the two of us had always been meant to meet here,
my curved line crossing his
as on some unknowable graph
spread out on a vast table
under the glare of a hanging lamp—
a relentless diagram,
millions of faint red lines
forming millions of tiny squares.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world.
Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
The Greek myth of Oedipus is a classical examination of the question of fate and free will. These episodes– which I made a few years ago- might be of interest. Here are the links:
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