Stephanie MacKay Mythology and Culture Remembered

About

Stephanie MacKay is the founder of Myth Club and is co-founder and Director of Fianna Wilderness School. She specializes in ancestral knowledge, earth-based skills, ceremony and myth. Stephanie has a degree in literature, which has been enriched by over 15 years of transformative practice and study. She has delved deep into the realms of myth and initiation through trainings with Animas Valley Institute, Haven Institute, Wilderness Awareness School, and over a decade of study with Martín Prechtel. Her work is deeply informed by the time she spent in Alberta collaborating with Blackfoot and Métis elders as a part of the Rediscovery Initiative. She has held the role of senior guide and director at nature-based organizations across Western Canada.

Stephanie is a fiercely compassionate facilitator, mentor and guide in search of perspectives and practices to deepen the relationship between humanity and the natural world. Grounded in her training in trauma-sensitive facilitation, dreamwork, the way of council, and ancestral rites of passage, she embarks on a profound journey of healing and transformation that encompasses both the individual and collective realms. Stephanie is dedicated to uncovering the vestiges of intact cultural origins within the body of old European mythologies. Drawing from the wellspring of these old mythologies, she seeks to uncover the hidden pathways that lead us to our cultural origins—reviving traditions long forgotten and holding space for the rehydration of ancestral wisdom.

As a 5th generation settler, now living on the lands of the Sneneymuxw Nation, Stephanie recognizes the importance of searching within our own origins for a culture worth living for, that we may come to the table of reconciliation free from the hunger of spiritual poverty. Stephanie is dedicated to the path of allyship and reconciliation, ever broadening her awareness of social justice and anti-oppression. She cultivates spaces of authentic dialogue and communal wisdom, where voices are heard and hearts are held.

In a previous chapter of her remarkable journey, Stephanie was an internationally recognized new media artist, showcasing her work across Asia, Europe, North, and South America—a testament to her innate ability to weave narratives that transcend boundaries and speak to the depths of the human soul.

Testimonials

I’ve been attending Mythology Club since its inception in 2019. Stephanie's depth of understanding and commitment to her study was clear from the first session. Through these assemblies she has provided the scaffolding for my understanding of my cultural and spiritual roots. With the help of her teachings I have renegotiated my relationship to nature, the gods and my ancestry. At times strikingly intimate, then expansively vast, Stephanie’s sessions encompass the most precious detail along with epic themes. Stephanie MacKay is a unique, rare and important voice in the contemporary discussion of mythology.

~CM, Gabriola

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Coming together with others, beckoned inward by a warming fire, speaking an old tale into being, letting it work into bone and rehydrate deep-time wisdom; this is what it is to be human.

To enter Mythology Club is to enter the otherworld realm and remember who you really are. To remember what has been forgotten. To remember who we are becoming.

Stephanie has been living an apprenticeship to these stories for years - they live through her. She beautifully, gently, curates a home and a hearth, through these gatherings, for these wild teachers to live more fully into the world and share their medicine. We are so blessed here on these Coast Salish lands to have Stephanie's offerings and these new ways of entering these ancient truths.

~ Fiona Mayhill, Soul Passage Guide, https://www.fionamayhill.com/

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Stephanie Mackay is a pure joy to be around. Her knowledge and experience of unveiling meaning in myth is awe - inspiring and opens my perceptions of our past, present and future times. She brings a grounded, calm presence and we are always welcomed in a good way.

~Cari Burdett, https://cariburdett.com/

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Gathering with people to read, explore, and untangle ancient myths with curiosity has been one of the most soul-nourishing practices I have found. Stephanie holds space and guides us with expert strength, wisdom, and tenderness, while also offering us the grace to call on our adult, wise, and ancient parts to be escorts through the unexpected and expansive landscapes we travel with each story. I never cease to feel in awe of, and with gratitude for, the profound teachings these wise beings humbly offer us, still every bit as relevant today. Their effects cast ripples of magic, grief, beauty, belonging, and love into the waters of my life.

Robin BW, Victoria

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Myth Club is incredibly enriching! Stephanie's calling is so clear and strong! It’s inspiring and gives me hope, knowing there are such positive forces at play.

~MH

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Myth Club, for me, is the warm feeling of gathering around a campfire with kindred souls. Stephanie leads the group with a deft and gentle hand, carrying deep insights into the myth, and welcoming us to speak what is moving in us. It's never long before our circle is diving deep into layers of time and being: an ocean within what seemed to be a simple old tale.

~TL

Acknowledgements

Land and People

I respectfully acknowledge that my work and life unfolds on the unceded traditional territories of my indigenous hosts - the Snuneymuxw People. I am committed to continually learning and growing as an ally for reconciliation and indigenous justice.

My Teacher

I hold deep gratitude and debt to my teacher Martín Prechtel. Thank you for guiding me to a world where beauty still exists, where beauty is necessary, and lives in the stories as much as it lives in our bones.

My Community

My Myth Gatherings have evolved from a simple afternoon with a few of my friends, to a beautiful offering that spans and connects several communities. I'm so grateful to the ones who have offered their support and enthusiasm for this work over the years.

“Humans are amazing ritual animals, and it must be understood that the Tzutujil, nor any other real intact people, do not 'practice' rituals. Just as a bear must turn over stumps searching for beetles, real humans can only live life spiritually. Birth itself was a ritual: there was not a ritual for birth, or a ritual for death, or a ritual for marriage, for death was a ritual, life a ritual, cooking a ritual, and eating were all rituals with ceremonial guidelines, all of which fed life. Sleeping was a ritual, lovemaking was a ritual, sowing, cultivating, harvesting, storing food were rituals, even sweeping, insulting, fighting were rituals, everything human was a ritual, and to all Tzutujil, ritual was plant-oriented and based on feeding some big Holy ongoing vine-like, tree-like, proceedance that fed us it's fruit.”
― Martin Prechtel, The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic: The Parallel Lives of People as Plants: Keeping the Seeds Alive

About

I've never met anyone with such a keen eye, deep capacity and sustained interest in exploring European folk tales as Stephanie. I can't recommend the work of Stephanie MacKay highly enough.

Testimonials

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Acknowledgements

Land and People

My Teacher

My Community