The existence and importance of other worlds populated by other beings, non-human beings, is consistent across mythological traditions. Today, the dominant culture has a difficult time accepting these stories and yet we continue to tell them.
We continue to need them.
In this episode, I share the Celtic story “The Adventure of Bran” and reflect on what stories like this might offer.
“And there seems never to have been an uncivilized tribe, a race, or nation of civilized men who have not had some form of belief in an unseen world, peopled by unseen beings. In religions, mythologies, and the Fairy-Faith, too, we behold the attempts which have been made by different peoples in different ages to explain in terms of human experience this unseen world, its inhabitants, its laws, and man’s relation to it.” — W.Y. Evans-Wentz
Transcript of Gifts from the Otherworld: The Adventure of Bran
Hello and welcome to Myth Matters an exploration at the intersection of mythology, creativity and consciousness. I’m your host Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide beautiful crazy world of ours, I’m glad that you decided to join me here today.
I recently returned from the Greater Mysteries experience in Kingston, New York. Greater Mysteries draws on the power of music and ritual to create space for reflection on the role transformation plays in life. It was a pretty powerful experience and I’m still thinking about myths of journeys to the underworld and pilgrimages to sacred sites in order to access other worlds. Myths and stories about the mysteries, and our desire to gain understanding of the deeper meanings and truths that support this life as we experience it on this plane and even get a glimpse of what lies beyond.
Of other worlds.
The existence and importance of other worlds populated by other beings, non-human beings, is consistent across mythological traditions. I suspect that if one wanted to offer a monomyth in the manner of Joseph Campbell and his hero’s adventure pattern, one could be found here, in the collective imagining of invisible realms and mythic spaces. An exploration of the nature of these worlds and their treasures, and the value they hold for us, might be an interesting alternative to the pattern of the hero and the focus on individual uniqueness, struggle, and achievement.
It’s so easy to see ourselves as the doers, isn’t it? As the ones who make things happen, who own and control the world, as the king of the hill so to speak, when in fact, we are players in a collective drama, subject to forces within and without that we don’t understand, let alone control, in perpetual conversation with the world and responding to circumstances.
Yes, our actions matter and yet, what we consciously plan and enact is merely one aspect of a much larger and more complex story. A more interesting story. Sometimes we talk about this, using words like chance, luck, synchronicity, destiny, and fate. And encounters with the mystery, experiences that can’t be fully explained in everyday terms, can shake up our perspective on what is real and true, and our place in the whole scheme. They can change your sense of who you are and why you’re here.
The dominant culture has a difficult time with mystery. With accepting what is beyond recognizable cause and effect, what can’t be explained by the rules of materialism and literalism at the foundation of that paradigm. The need to understand, to dissect and categorize in order to control, to find some measure of safety and certainty in this process, has been the central impulse of European-derived culture for the last six or seven centuries.
I think a lot of good has come from this project and at the same time it has hardened into ideologies and institutions that block far-ranging inquiry and contains, as all things do, a shadow side. Colonialism and scientism, for example, reductionism. The insistence on a soulless world that has created a deep soul sickness in us.
Today I want to tell you a Celtic story about a journey to the Otherworld. Much of Celtic mythology revolves around the Otherworld and the deities and other non-human beings, fairies for example, who live there. The Otherworld is a hidden world where the rules of our world, like the laws of physics, don’t apply. The Otherworld is said to exist in various locations. One location is a number of islands in the West.
This is a story from pre-Christian times called “The Adventure (or Voyage) of Bran.” I have a few thoughts about the story to share with you but for now, I invite you to relax and listen. Let yourself enter the world of the story. Maybe be taken away for just a moment, from the things that have been occupying your attention. You might take note of any details that attract you in the story. They can be clues to the place this story occupies in your life right now.
“The Adventure (or Voyage) of Bran”
Long ago in Ireland, there was a king named Bran son of Febal. One day as Bran walked near his royal house, he heard sweet music behind him. Wherever he went, the music seemed to follow. Eventually, this music lulled him to sleep, and when he awoke there was a branch of silver beside him with white blossoms on it.
Bran took the silver branch back to his stronghold and called together his family and comrades. When everyone was assembled behind closed doors a woman in strange clothing appeared in the middle of the house. A visitor from the Otherworld for all to see. She sang a long lay or poem to Bran and everyone assembled there.
In the lay, the woman described a place of splendor and delight beyond the sea. She sang of thrice times 50 islands, each of them larger than Ireland. One of them is the Land of Women, she tells them. The Land of Women is a place of truth, peace, and everlasting life. “Unknown is wailing and treachery in the familiar cultivated land,” she sang, “there is nothing rough or harsh, but sweet music striking on the ear. Without grief, without sorrow, without death, without sickness, without disability..” An enchanted, timeless place.
Fifty verses she sang, and ended the lay with these words:
“Not to all of you is my speech
Though it’s great marvel has been made known.
Let Bran hear from the crowd of the world
What of wisdom has been told to him.
Do not fall on a bed of sloth,
Let not intoxication overcome you,
Begin a voyage across the clear sea,
If per chance you may reach the Land of the Women.”
Then the woman left and the silver branch, which was a branch from an apple tree in Emain Ablach, the Otherworld, sprang from Bran’s hand to hers and disappeared along with her.
The next day, Bran set sail with three companies of nine men each, each headed by one of his foster brothers. After two days and two nights, the men met Mananan MacLir riding in his two-wheel chariot over the sea. Manannan, the sea God, told Bran that what appeared to his mortal eyes as the sea is solid earth. “Where you see waves and seafoam,” the god told him, “I see orchards and a grassy plain, covered in flowers, with warriors going to and fro across it in their chariots.”
This Otherworld place is one of Mannanan’s homes. The god told Bran that he was on his way to Ireland, where he would beget a son with a mortal woman, a son who would become a great warrior.
Manannan went on his way and Bran went on his way, and the company came to the Island of Joy. There they saw a large crowd of people laughing and gaping. All the people stared at him but they would not answer his calls, so Bran sent a man ashore to investigate this strange situation. As soon as his foot touched the shore, the man began to laugh and gape just like the others. He ignored the frantic calls of his comrades and Bran and the others left him there.
They sailed farther and reached the Land of Women. The lead woman came to the shore and greeted Bran. She invited him and the men to join her and the rest of the women but Bran was wary after seeing what happened to the man who went ashore at the Island of Joy. Then the woman threw a magical clew (a ball of yarn) at Bran’s head which stuck to his hand when he caught it. She then pulled the boat to shore by the thread.
When they landed, the men were taken to a beautiful house where food was set before them. The table never emptied, no matter how much they ate. Each man paired off with a woman, Bran with the leader, and there was a bed for every couple. Every day was full of games, music, and laughter.
The men lived happily in the Land of Women for what felt to them to be a year. Then one of the men became homesick and Bran was persuaded to depart for Ireland.
The Queen of the Island told them that they would regret leaving, that it would only bring grief. She warned them not to touch land. She also directed Bran to pick up the man left on the Island of Joy.
When they came to the Island of Joy, they called their companion’s name and straightaway his mind cleared and he came to them. When they approached the land of Ireland, the coastline seemed changed. The countryside seemed empty of trees, the people less vigorous. Their boats were sighted and a large group assembled near the shore.
Remembering the advice of the Queen of the Land of Women, Bran stayed on the boat. He called to the assembly that he was Bran son of Feval but they didn’t know such man, though the Voyage of Bran was among their ancient stories.
The homesick man eagerly jumped ashore but as soon as he touched the ground, he became a heap of ashes, as though he had been dead for many hundreds of years. What felt to Bran and his men like a year or so had been generations in his old world.
Bran told the assembled people of his wanderings, and he wrote the verses in ogam, an alphabet based on the symbolic meaning of trees that is associated with poetry and magic. Then Bran bid the people farewell and from that hour his wanderings are not known.
What do we make of this story? A man is called by a member of the Otherworld, through music, a silver branch, and a mysterious woman with a poem of instruction. In Celtic mythology, a silver branch or bough often opens the gateway to other realms. The man, Bran answers the call, steps through the opening, and undertakes the voyage to the Land of Women, motivated I imagine, by a combination of the honor of being singled out, curiosity, and consciousness of his role as leader. His people would expect him to meet this mystery as it’s the courageous thing to do.
And what happens? He makes it to the Otherworld and is quite content there. Now, I often say that myths and stories describe liminal spaces, places where the old rules don’t hold and transformation can occur. The Land of Women is a marvelous place, a place where hardship and death are absent. A land out of time. I hear echoes of Odysseus on Circe’s island or maybe Calypso’s but in this case, Bran is not longing to return home. There doesn’t appear to be any conflict or struggle, simply a slip into a type of paradise.
(The Celtic Otherworld is not all paradise, by the way. This land is beautiful and good in this story but ugliness and violence exist in other places in the Otherworld).
Is Bran transformed in the Land of Women? Presumably an experience like this does change one in some deep way but that’s not part of the story. We don’t hear about it. This story doesn’t follow the hero’s adventure pattern of leave home, overcome obstacles, and return a new man. We wouldn’t have the story and know what little we do know, if it weren’t for the homesick man and Bran’s willingness to be persuaded to go back. Likely motivated by the same curiosity and leadership qualities that got him in into his ship the first time.
So, what manner of story is this?
I think this a story about leaving a story, about how those of us in this world received a message from someone reliable, someone chosen to deliver it, Bran, about the existence of the Otherworld. When Bran and his men return to this world, they learn that time doesn’t operate in the same way in the Land of Women. All that they once knew is long gone and yet the story of Bran’s leaving remains. It’s legend and/or history. Becoming myth. But that story is the story of a man who left in response to a call and disappeared. When Bran returns, he’s able to tell the people, to tell us, more about his voyage. He even writes it down.
What might be the significance of this message? The value in having such a story, today? I mean, we could say well, Bran was an important figure to these people way back when so, they’d appreciate stories about him just as we appreciate stories about important figures, historical and fictional, today. But who among us knows about Bran now? And people in times past believed in stories about the Otherworld and women leaving silver branches behind but today, many of us do not take this as literally true and might not even find metaphorical meaning in it. Although as metaphor, as image, I find this story very rich.
Our myths and old stories describe mysterious experiences and psychological processes, they convey information, they offer companionship and entertainment, and they inspire us. For me, Bran’s story points to the presence of the timeless in co-existence with our familiar temporal plane, that place of creativity or contemplation where everything falls away. The absorption in the moment is complete. The story offers me a way to imagine this experience.
I hear material for poetry and other art. And I feel this story at work in my psyche, as a catalyst for curiosity and wonder about the mystery. The story inspires so many questions. What did the women in the Land of Women want from the human men they called, and Bran in particular? Did they want this story told or did another type of exchange take place? Reciprocity governs all relationships, including the ones between the worlds. Could I be called? Have I been called? And what of the homesick man?
I guess it’s not surprising that in a group of 28, one would not want to stay. What does his homesickness say about him, his experience in the Otherworld, and his attachment to what he left behind? Was his homesickness a failure on his part? Would I be the homesick man? His homesickness was certainly necessary to the story we’ve received…
Maybe the value in such a story for us today is the questions that arise. The questions and a sense of wonder about the nature of this world, a world that we don’t fully understand, with dimensions and places that lie beyond our understanding. The wonder and mystery are an invitation to stay open and alert to a larger reality, one that’s not contained in the headlines or the result of human intention. A world of possibility that stirs an enlivening curiosity, if we allow it.
I have a poem for you but first, let’s pause to welcome new subscribers. I also have a couple of announcements.
Welcome to new email subscribers: Fay, Darlene, Judy, Betty, Seana, Dominique, Geraldine, Martin, Sally, Dan, Gabrielle, Joanna, Corina, and Sally. Welcome to Myth Matters!
If you’d like to receive links to new Myth Matters episodes in your inbox, go to my website, mythicmojo.com to get on the email list. You’ll also find a transcript of this episode at Mythic Mojo, and information about mythic mentorship and creativity coaching that I offer.
A couple of announcements.
First, on behalf of my colleagues at the International Society for Mythology, some info about their annual Mythologium, an online gathering of people across disciplines who are interested in myth. This is not limited to academics.
The Mythologium will take place March 13-15th, 2026. The theme is “mythic imagination.”
Although the event is some months away, ISM is currently accepting proposals to share different types of work at this conference.
There are several ways to participate: a 15-minute live presentation, a pre-recorded presentation of research, performance, or art, or you can showcase your mythological-themed artwork, music, video, or photography in the online gallery.
Artists, if you create anything from an awareness of myth and want to share your work with a receptive audience, check it out:).
Join mythologists, scholars, writers, artists, students, scientists, psychologists, teachers, storytellers, and visionaries from around the world to explore how mythic imagination can illuminate paths of renewal in our contemporary world. I’ll post the links to ISM and the Mythologium on mythic imagination with the transcript of this episode.
Next, my online course– or maybe experience or exploration is more accurate– Step Into the Fairy Glen, begins October 21st. Step Into the Fairy Glen is a journey into a story and the tools of what Jung called “the symbolic life.”
The fairy glen journey takes place Oct 21-Nov 5th, from new moon to full, at a potent time of year. A time when the veil between the worlds is thin. In brief, the course works like this: I share a story with you on the first day and you receive a bit of material to work with every day after, for two weeks. You work with the material daily (or daily-ish) when it best fits your schedule.
You do not have to show up at a particular time online. Step Into the Fairy Glen is designed to accommodate different schedules and time zones, and to seed your psyche in 10-15 minutes a day.
Past travelers into the fairy glen have gathered insights into self, story, and life dilemmas, and had fun in good company. Additional details and registration link are with this transcript and at my website mythicmojo.com
Now, more than ever, we need to hold space for mystery in our lives and feed the creative fires that light the way through the darkness. I hope you’ll join me in the fairy glen.
I must mention my Patreon patrons and supporters on bandcamp. Making Myth Matters for you as I do, resisting the addition of advertising and all of that makes these folks and their financial support absolutely essential. A big thank you to new patron Luke for joining me on Patreon, and to Kelsey, Linda, and Sam for their ongoing support. Thank you so much!
If Myth Matters is adding something valuable to your life and you can afford to send a few dollars a month my way, please find me on Patreon. And thank you so much for your support of Myth Matters in whatever form makes sense for you, whether that’s a positive review, Patreon, or telling others about Myth Matters.
In closing, a poem by William Butler Yeats inspired by another Celtic myth about a man who is called away from ordinary reality to an experience of the mystery. It’s called “The Song of Wandering Aengus.”
“The Song of Wandering Aengus”
“I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread,
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands
I will find out where she’s gone
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.”
— W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). The Wind Among the Reeds. 1899.
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. In my view, my friend, this world and this vision depend on wonder and mystery. Wonder and mystery.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
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