The Martin Shaw Interview, Part I

The mythologist discovers the True Myth, and that old Christian magic is still about

Martin Shaw, in his natural habit

This past summer in Cambridge, the Anglican priest-poet Malcolm Guite asked me if I knew about what had happened to Martin Shaw. “Whose he?” I asked. Turns out he’s a very well known figure in mythological circles. He is a storyteller and popularizer of mythology, having taught it at Stanford University, and more recently at his own school in England’s West Country. And of late, he has become a Christian — and not just a Christian, but is on his way into Orthodoxy.

I wrote to Martin straight away, and we established a correspondence. Earlier this week, he met me in London for two interviews, general gallivanting around, and pints, and whiskey, and wine. Martin is like the Lost Inkling, the one who wandered into the forest of Devon as a child, and grew up in Tom Bombadil’s cottage. These interviews will all go into my book on re-enchantment, in some way, but first I want to share them with you. Part II will come with the next newsletter. Y’all, this is really special, and I am delighted to present this to you. Learn about Martin’s books here. You should know that he was raised in a Christian home (first Evangelical, then charismatic), but the faith didn’t take … until his fiftieth year, when the fireworks started. Read on…

RD: Tell me about your conversion.

MS: The whole affair began just before lockdown, in October of 2019. I had an impulse, a strange impulse, that I wanted to spend a considerable amount of time visiting the local forest every evening. Now, my background is in wilderness rites of passage, so rather like the Desert Fathers used to do, I spent an enormous amount of my life going out to wild and desolate places, and simply sitting still and fasting – and then taking other folks through that as well. So in a sense this was nothing new. The difference being that rather than being four days and nights, it was 101 days. That wasn’t 101 days without food. It was like turning up for Divine Liturgy before I had the words for it. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to do it; even my daughter didn’t know. And I would just find a way to slip out of the house for one to two hours a day, and go to this ancient Devonian wood.

The reason I was there is that I had decided that it had been an interesting life. I was looking down the barrel of fifty. I was not ostensibly religious, but I was spiritual, as a mythologist and a storyteller. I wanted to give something back to the place that had sustained me all these years. So I would go out at night and recite some troubadour poetry, or tell a story, or I would just sit and be quiet. The main thing is that I wasn’t there on the take. I wasn’t there to use Nature as a backdrop for some sort of epiphany. I was there to give something back.

It was the final night. I was thrilled it was about to be over, because I was glad to get back to my life. I had a belly full of food in me, I had had a cup of tea, and I wandered into the forest for what I knew was going to be an all-night vigil.

In the center of the wood is the remains of an old Iron Age fort. You can’t see it anymore, but you can see it in the ridges, the remains of this old settlement. The idea was that I would sit up in the dark all night and just give thanks, and then it would be over.

Then something unusual happened. I found myself saying, “Thank you for giving me this time with you” – whatever ‘you’ is – ‘and if there’s anything you would like me to see, I’m absolutely at your mercy this evening.” And as I did that, a very, very strange thing happened.