Codes From The Old World

An Evening with Master Storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw

In May 2023, we brought celebrated storyteller Dr. Martin Shaw right across Canada - from Nova Scotia all the way to Vancouver Island. It was a grand time of impossible adventures, old-world magic, and ancient hospitality.

You Can Experience The Magic

On May 15, Martin delivered a performance at Sunset Labs in Victoria, BC. The full evening is available for streaming right now.

Hidden in ancient stories are all kinds of secrets about how to thrive in a time of unravelling.

How do we work with such codes? How do we court them? In a time of strip-lit, rational thinking how could we, as modern people, cultivate an etiquette of the uncanny?

From his years living in a tent through to his life now, mythologist Dr. Shaw will weave personal experiences up through any number of stories from the very edge of the fire.

No evening on the Codes tour is quite the same as the last. In the tradition of the old Celtic Seanchai, Shaw works entirely in the moment, with any number of tales he may produce from his crane-skin bag.

Dr. Martin Shaw is a celebrated international storyteller and award-winning writer. Author of seventeen books, he founded the Oral Tradition and Mythic Life courses at Stanford University. The Irish Times call him “a Seanchai, an interloper from the medieval,” and Madeline Miller names him “a modern-day Bard.”

Martin Shaw’s Website

Some of Martin’s work: