When I was six years old, my mother was studying to become a tour guide in Paris. So every Sunday she would take me to the Louvre and sometimes also to her art history class. So I was bathed in an early age in the stories of the ancient Greek Gods, in the Louvre I was moved by the sensuality and the beauty of those Gods. The sculptures reflected their stories full of romanticism; tragedy; violence and wonder. Their bodies were celebrated and loved by the makers.

Psyche et Cupidon sculpture by Antonio Canova. Photo by Sara Darcaj

Those myths were a living form, engaging the people through storytelling, rituals and actions. Yet most of the traces we have are through the remaining temples, sculptures, writings and paintings. Yet a part of the power of these myths was that they were alive through rituals, embodied through prayers, dance, religious plays. They were a path into collective sense making. 

Recently during the Inter-being residency I performed a ceremony revisiting the myth of Psyche and Cupid and then gave room for the audience to inquire about what myth was alive in them at the moment? The intention was to help us integrate our past by bringing into our awareness that we inter be with a lineage of myths. Unconsciously these myths can become the invisible bars of our prisons. Consciously they become a map to navigate our lives so we can transcend them.  A part of the art of rituals is to make those myths we carry visible, because we can not transform something we are not aware of.

Psyche and Eve performance by Sylvie Barbier. Photo by Vladyslav Chabanenko 2023

So the ritual makers needs to walk the path first, go through the darkness so we can show the light. In that sense the artist must embrace its own inner world while remembering that his experience belongs to the universal condition of human life. This is where the art of mythologies is a helpful raft, as the archetypes frame our collective human experience. This universal experience of life allows the artist  not to drown in the illusion of solitude, separation. And like a cherry tree which has gone through winter, the ritual maker can bloom in spring. That blooming is our way of being informed by the insight we have gained through winter, after the spring blossom will come the fruits of our actions imbued with the scent of our being.  There can not be spring without the insight that winter gives us; they can not be summer fruits without the blossom of our beings.

For the ones who are going through a dark winter, know that you are not alone and that our ability to be with other people's darkness and suffering is a direct correlation to our ability to have been with and transform our own darkness. So we may share the flowers of our lives with our brothers and sisters and enjoy their blossoms in return. 

Each winter is an opportunity to integrate our past so we can bloom by transcending it and for the future to enjoy our fruits.

This is where the artist becomes a master in the art of living.