The Six Swans

A tale of, shall we say, complicated women

When I started working with The Six Swans, our teacher led us in some guided meditations to explore the characters. For me, understanding the “villains” in a story is really key to how I tell a story because it’s easy for me to fall into the trap of thinking, “That’s a bad person, who does bad things because they are bad.” This is both boring, over-simplified storytelling and not true to life, where good and bad are often much more complicated. Like in good story, in the real world, even the bad guys have a reason, usually one they don’t think is evil, to do what they do.

I was working with the young king’s mother in this meditation and found that she was very concerned with power. She was much more afraid of being weak than evil. For many women, myself included, this is a foreign concept. We have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the role of the “good girl” that we often give up power to maintain our goodness. This story has brought several other lessons since then, but I won’t ruin the story for you or muddy up the path the story wants you to take.

Note: This recording is very quiet. I recommend turning your speakers way up.

After telling this story, Swans have been everywhere. The next day, I went for a walk and a group of six swans flew over twice. Later that afternoon, there were about 4 dozen swans in the corn field on the way home from my daughter’s school. Believe it or not, I even found a dance class inspired by this tale, The Six Swans, that I am participating in right now. Swans are such a lovely symbol of grace, light, power, and transformation. I’m looking forward to exploring more as I dive into learning some of the Swan Maiden tales.

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Please feed the story and share an image or moment you see yourself in or one that jumps out to you in the comments.