This is why the Greeks needed myth: for that boundary, to know where they stood amidst the infinite. No one can simply coexist with the ocean, storms, the cypress trees. They had to codify the elements with language and greater meaning, and create gods out of them—gods who looked suspiciously like themselves—so that even if they were powerless over

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We are literal, scientific, rational, surface-oriented, and fast-paced. Yet without imagination, the world becomes arid. Mythopoetic language is magical; it brings worlds into being. Stories of warriors hunting the windswept plains, gods who trick and deceive, maidens transformed into sea monsters, and spiders that weave the web of life have long

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As if under the spell of some Old Testament prophet, the turning tide drains Scilly of its turquoise sea and from nowhere, it seems, citizen and tourist alike begin to pick their way, more or less dry-shod, across low sandy causeways to what had recently been a neighbouring island – to visit friends, to take advantage of the free passage or, more

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