The idea of storyteller as shaman has sat with me for a decade.

One of the world’s oldest stories is the biblical tale of the Garden of Eden. There are a whole host of psychological and spiritual insights you can draw out of the story, but I’m going to go with Eve’s discovery of nakedness.

For me, the key mark of sentience is for an individual to understand that they are an “I” and that the rest of the world is “other”. From this perspective, the Garden of Eden tells of Eve’s journey to full sentience. As she recognises her personhood, she also recognises other people’s – and that just as she can see them, they can see her. She realises that she stands naked before them, and hastily covers herself.

Not only does Eve hide some of herself from others, but she also hides some of herself from herself.

Yet for a healthy individual and community to grow, we have to reveal ourselves to ourselves and to each other. The respectful reciprocation of revelation can be called love, and it’s a risky business.

Shamans help to guide and provide a safe place for that revelation through ritual and through stories. Storytelling is a core human talent, one that we use to make sense of our world and ourselves. As we find meaning in what happens to us, so we can shape our sense of purpose. This is crucial in responding to trauma. Purpose affirms that we are not powerless.

Storytellers provide two different paths of healing.

The first is catharsis. We drag people into deep pools of emotion with our fiction, as the Ancient Greeks did with their tragedies, and people release their fear and pain. The story they’re hearing isn’t their story, but the emotions underlying it are … and they can let them go because the story isn’t theirs. It isn’t buried in their bones. Fiction is a safe place to acknowledge emotions that would be terrifying in real life.

The second path to healing again uses the safety net of fiction, but this time to explore issues. Empathy means walking in another’s shoes, and fiction lets you do that. Tough issues can be tested, are tested in fiction. Whether those issues are yours or belong to members of your community, you can engage with them more daringly in a fictional world. Stories provide many paths to understanding and healing.

Some people are dismissive of fiction, claiming “it’s not real.” But let me tell you, writing fiction is hard because it is so real. It’s about heart truths, the things that hide behind what you can see and touch and dismiss.

Storytellers are magic. And each of us has stories to tell. I guess that makes us all a little bit magical.