Welcome to Kalliope's Sanctum, a story podcast hosted by writer Sylvia V. Linsteadt. This podcast is dedicated to Kalliope, primordial and first Muse of epic poetry and ecstatic song in ancient Greece. This podcast is a place of sanctuary for her oldest stories. It is a return to the wild garden, to the spring, to the ground of being & the source of inspiration in the Earth. Here, we honor Kalliope as Muse of Earth. Here, you will find some of the stories beneath the stories of Old Europe: s ...
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16. Swan Stories- A Conversation with Nao Sims
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In this special, first ever interview-episode, I'm sharing a recent conversation between myself and my beloved friend Nao Sims—teacher of women's sacred dance for over 25 years, beekeeper, gardener, homesteader, mother, and lover of poetry and myth— as a celebration and announcement for our March 2nd & 3rd in-person workshop on Vancouver Island, Sw…
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15. Tam Lin: A Traditional Scottish-English Ballad
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Practiced, sung and recorded through the winter solstice, new moon and now the edge of Christmas, as the Virgin Mary swells with child and comes to the eve of birth, I offer into this moment of celestial light and earthly dark a faithful rendition of the old Scottish borderland folk ballad Tam Lin (Child Ballad 39), accompanied and mixed by my brot…
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14. Morning Star Woman & Ivan the Youngest Son
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Morning Star Woman & Ivan the Youngest Son is, in its original bones, my own telling of the Russian fairytale "The Maiden Tsar," as explored by Robert Bly and Marion Woodman in their book The Maiden King. I will admit, however, that I've taken it and run with it. You will see flashes as far afield as the Fisher King of Arthurian legend, and admitte…
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This is the fourth and final part of my novella The Dark Country, set on the imagined, Greek-inspired island of Kefthyra. In it, a maiden, mother and crone call forth the old language, and the snakes that live in the Earth, to try to overthrow a colonial empire. See Episode 11 for part one.I am sharing the full novella in four parts over the spring…
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12. The Dark Country- Part 3
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This is part three of my novella The Dark Country, set on the imagined, Greek-inspired island of Kefthyra. In it, a maiden, mother and crone call forth the old language, and the snakes that live in the Earth, to try to overthrow a colonial empire. See Episode 11 for part one.I am sharing the full novella in four parts over the spring & summer seaso…
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This is part two of my novella The Dark Country, set on the imagined, Greek-inspired island of Kefthyra. In it, a maiden, mother and crone call forth the old language, and the snakes that live in the Earth, to try to overthrow a colonial empire. See Episode 11 for part one. I am sharing the full novella in four or five parts over the spring season.…
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10. The Dark Country - Part 1
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This is part one of my novella The Dark Country, set on the imagined, Greek-inspired island of Kefthyra. In it, a maiden, mother and crone call forth the old language, and the snakes that live in the Earth, to try to overthrow a colonial empire.I will be sharing the full novella in four or five parts over the coming weeks. May these words be seeds …
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In this episode I explore the story of Calypso, the nereid daughter of sea-Titans who is infamous for seducing Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. Here, Calypso gives a different perspective. Here, we see Calypso as a keeper of her lineage's ancestral traditions of seeing and healing, as the powerful keeper of secrets, as a font of wildness and of earthen…
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In this episode, I read the short story "The Pythia," from Our Lady of the Dark Country, my 2018 collection. This tale explores the underpinnings of the myth of Apollo and his takeover of the oracle at Delphi. In the oldest stories, Delphi belongs not to Apollo but to oracular and dreaming women who spoke to the Python in the Earth— the child of Ge…
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7. Ashes, and the King Who Came Home
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"Ashes, and the King Who Came Home," is a short prose-poem-tale, written last August 2019 (and first shared on my Patreon https://www.patreon.com/sylvialinsteadt). It is a reflection and weaving of many threads, both personal and mythic, that were pressing strongly on my psyche at the time. It is about the great wound to the masculine in our cultur…
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This episode of Kalliope's Sanctum is a reading of my story The Garden, from my 2018 collection, Our Lady of the Dark Country. It was inspired partly by one of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, which I read in the introduction, and partly by the truly enchanted garden of my dear friend Nao who lives on Vancouver Island, and is a beekeeper, dance teacher,…
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This week, I wanted to offer a space of respite, of nourishment, and of comfort in these wildly unknowable, difficult, but profound times. So the Nunnery of Iona came to me, coupled with a sister poem, The Queen of Moss & Green, both of which I wrote during my time in the Scottish highlands and Hebrides this past August of 2019. I hope these words …
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This episode is Part 2 of a two part reading of my short story, "Rhea Silvia," from my January 2018 story & poem collection Our Lady of the Dark Country (https://www.ptreyesbooks.com/book/9780999696606).Please listen to Part 1, the previous episode, before Part 2, or it won't make much sense! :)This is a retelling of the tale of Rhea Silvia, the so…
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This episode is Part 1 of a two part reading of my short story, "Rhea Silvia," from my January 2018 collection Our Lady of the Dark Country. (https://www.ptreyesbooks.com/book/9780999696606)It is a retelling of the tale of Rhea Silvia, the so-called mother of Rome— mother of Romulus and Remus, twin brothers who were later suckled by a wolf, and who…
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In this episode, I explore the ancient Greek story of Cassiopeia and Andromeda (Queen & Princess of a mythic "Aethiopia"), with a brief opening musing about Our Lady (Divine Mother, Mary, etc), the constellation Cassiopeia (that great M in the northern sky), and the roots of this story with the Babylonian sea-dragon, Tiamat, mother of the world. St…
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Welcome to the inaugural episode of Kalliope's Sanctum! In this episode, I begin with a poetic imagining of Kalliope's story, the one before she was ever Muse on Mount Olympus, and also after, now, as we liberate her back to her own ground of being, where she began. I introduce the episode with a few notes about her mythic context, but the story-po…
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