Nimue Brown's Blog, page 11

Festive bag season

(Nimue)

For some years now I’ve made festive fabric bags rather than wrapping gifts. This has many advantages. Not least that it spares me from trying to wrap gifts – something I am utterly useless at. It spares people I know from having to try and unwrap something  have wrapped. No one has to deal with Sellotape! The person with the gift then has a re-usable bag that will save them some hassle around buying paper, wrapping and sellotaping. There isn’t a heap of paper to deal with – a lot of festive wrapping paper isn’t recyclable.

As I’ve stuck with it, bags I’ve made in previous years have started floating back to me. Earlier in the year I sewed up a whole batch of bags for my brother, on request. Re-use goes up, waste goes down.

I buy the fabric from my local haberdashery, so that’s money that goes into my local economy, supporting a small business.

I enjoy doing it – I like making things so I get a few hours of useful crafting, which is also a plus.

As is so often the way of it, being more environmentally friendly results in a whole lot of things that are nicer than doing it the ‘usual’ way. Better for the planet often means better for ordinary people, too. We can actually have more joy, more nice things while being greener. The people who have a lot of money would clearly like us to believe that being eco-friendly means wearing a hair shirt and living in a cave. They want us to think that green living is going to be miserable. For most of us, it would be a better way of life. For the super-rich it would mean having to give up the private jets and other planet killing hobbies they have.

Having nice things isn’t just for Christmas. There are always opportunities to have more fun with things while at the same time reducing your impact in some small way.

Alpine Witchery

(Nimue, review)

This is a brilliant book by Christian Brunner, exploring witchcraft trials in the Austrian Alps. Records from these trials provide a lot of material we can learn from about what people were thinking and doing in terms of historical witchcraft. It’s a great read and I very much enjoyed it.

This book illustrates a number of really important points. It conveys the way in which folk magic and tradition was part of everyday life. Most people dabbling in folk magic considered themselves Christians. There isn’t a big divide between witches and Christians.

The book also lays out the historical context both for the kinds of magic people were doing, and the ways in which witch trials were happening. The complexities and politics of witch hunts are explored in a really helpful way. It also very usefully tackles the relationship between culture, place and witchcraft. The magic here is very specific, relating to the land and the challenges it causes, to human struggles, and ideas about how everything works. Those connections are really important.

Christian explores how these spells would work in a modern context. The short answer is that many of them make little or no sense. Our lives are very different from the lives of people using this magic. Our needs are different, our resources are different, our science is different. Much of this does not apply to us. Some of it can be translated into effective action suitable for modern people. This isn’t really a book about extracting usable spells from the historical record. It is a book about magic, and how situational that really is.

This is a fascinating and well researched book, which I recommend for anyone interested in the history and folklore this explores. It’s a good counterpoint to popular modern myths about witch trials and historical witchcraft. It’s also rich with fascinating asides that take you in many directions.

You can find more on the publisher’s website – https://www.llewellyn.com/product.php?ean=9780738777672&srsltid=AfmBOorEuMcD_pZl5oQOWlIr-Z4-GZ6wymivKeMIxIyXlhluJKBIHXgA

Druidry, winter and nature

(Nimue)

In cold, wet, damp or slippery conditions, getting outside to commune with nature can be difficult. This is more true if you have disabilities. I know a lot of people hold to the idea that there is no bad weather, only bad clothing choices, but this is about money. You can’t make good clothing choices if you can’t afford high quality gear.  For people experiencing serious poverty, the economic burden of extra laundry is also a barrier to getting outside.

If you cannot get out much, that’s not a Druid fail.

It’s important to remember that out there in the natural world, many living beings go to some effort to avoid the worst impact of winter. Many different species of birds migrate to warmer places. There are mammals, reptiles and insects who hibernate. Many plants die back or go dormant at this time. Not dealing directly with the winter is an entirely natural response to winter. Honour nature as it exists within your body and do what you need to do.

If you are the sort of person who remains active through the year, and is still lively in winter then you’ll find plenty of examples in nature that are the same. Foxes and herons, crows and owls will remain active in my area. Foxes jumping about in snow are a particular winter joy, if you are lucky enough to encounter that. Not every tree is sleeping – the evergreens are dramatic presences in a winter landscape.

Nature is not a single thing that has to be experienced in specific ways. Pagan wheel of the year stories are often unhelpful on that score. Nature is diverse. Connect with what resonates with you and also look out for the beings who are doing something entirely different. Look for the complexity. The leaves are down, and the toadstools are up. The swallows have left for somewhere warmer, the swans are coming in to escape the cold. Those are my local stories. Wherever you are in the world, the seasons play out in a very specific way, unique to each place and no doubt as full of these apparent contradictions.

Of burnout and recovery

(Nimue)

Burnout is a consequence of exhaustion, and overwhelming stress. It can be more of an issue for autistic people thanks to the increased vulnerability to being overwhelmed in the first place. If what I’ve read is a fair assessment, it can take months, or longer to recover from a burnout. To recover, you have to take time off, to rest and to heal.

Except that isn’t always possible. How many people out there are already burned out but cannot afford to stop and rest? Most households are one or two paychecks from disaster, many benefits systems are punitive. There is no resting and healing if doing so is going to involve a real risk of losing your home or being unable to afford to eat,

So you burnout. You have some time where you cannot function at all, and then you crawl back and repeat the things that broke you, until it all happens again. This was me, for years, crashing every six to eight weeks. I was working multiple part time jobs while trying to sustain the creative work and the domestic side of the household. There were a lot of other stressors on top of this, undermining my ability to sleep and making me tense and hypervigilant. As a freelancer you get no sick pay, no holiday pay. There was no time off, no respite. Eventually I got to a point where I couldn’t physically keep going and I had nothing left to push with,

I’ve seen it suggested that recovery from one burnout isn’t quick. How long would it take to genuinely recover from years of living in a constant cycle of burning out? Both my physical and mental health took an absolute pasting. My body is slowly recovering, and my mental health is now reasonably ok, but it doesn’t take much to throw either into difficulty. There can be no healing without being considerably gentler with myself. No more trying to run when I can barely stand – literally or metaphorically.

Here in the UK we have a longstanding epidemic of mental illness, and millions are forced to rely on food banks. There are massive systemic issues here, underpinned by austerity as a political choice. I don’t think the ways in which I have struggled and suffered are that unusual. How can anyone cope in a capitalist system that grinds you down and threatens to punish you once it’s crushed you? There are some 300,000 homeless people in the UK at the moment.

The answers to this lie in a radical political rethink. That’s not going to happen without a culture shift. We need to move away from systemic cruelty and towards more compassionate approaches to work and health. We need to treat health like it matters. Practically speaking, ill health costs a country a great deal. Well and happy people are better able to contribute to society than those who have been crushed by that society.

As individuals, we may not be able to do much to help people who are in crisis. Encourage people to rest and recover, be kind in face of difficulty, do what you can to help. Gentleness and being supportive is worth a great deal. Building a culture of kindness is going to take time. We can contribute to that by challenging those who blame suffering people rather than the systems that hurt them. We can resist narratives that describe sick, exhausted people as lazy. We can value quality of life over economic activity. All of this is tied up in challenging the idea of perpetual economic growth. It’s that pressure for constant growth that means we are all constantly expected to do more with less. It doesn’t work, it’s killing the planet and we all deserve better.

Skulls, sheets and good causes

Once again, Skulls and Sheets is organising a charity auction. I contributed last year, and have done so again this year. Please do head over to the site and have a look as the auction goes live today. There’s some wonderful art, all of it postcard sized and featuring Mari Lwyds.

2024 Mari Lwyd Charity Postcard Auction Preview

If you aren’t familiar with them, this comes from a Welsh tradition involving someone going out under a sheet that’s been attached to a horse skull – there’s usually a pole and decoration involved. You take this to houses or pubs and have something lie a rap battle to see if the Mari can win and get in. It is my understanding that they always and once inside must be rewarded/appeased with food and drink.

The different depictions capture an array of moods and styles. It’s a really impressive set of images this year and I feel proud to be part of it.

Fiddling with Keith

(Nimue)

In my twenties, the violin was my primary instrument, but a cat-related shoulder injury left me unable to get my arm in the right position. For years I had no one to play with, so there was little incentive to push myself. Further adding to that, my violin had developed a fatal problem and on the last round of fixing I was told that if that didn’t sort it, then it probably wasn’t sortable. The back kept coming off, and did so again, to my great distress.

About two years ago, Keith inspired me to take up the viola again. The larger body made it more feasible to hold. As a consequence of that, my body grew stronger and more flexible, then last winter I realised I could get my hand around a violin again. A friend sold me his unplayed electric violin, and I got to work.

On two of these videos, I have the violin. I’m not all the way back to what I could do in the past, but progress is steady. Keith is great to work with – these are all original songs of his. There’s something about the way he writes that absolutely lends itself to violin accompaniment. There’s always an element of improvisation in how he performs, which keeps me on my toes and means that every pass at a song involves deep focus and interaction, which I love. it’s a joy collaborating with him.

In these videos, we were in the studio at Radio Winchcombe for the folk, roots and acoustic show.

This first song is inspired by fairy folklore and is rather faster than we normally do it!

This is an older song of Keith’s – one of those singer-songwriter unrequited love songs.

This one was written during the winter about two years ago, for the Hopeless, Maine project. It’s about Annamarie Nightshade, who is a witch. Originally Keith intended it for the Ominous Folk, as at that point he wasn’t singing much in front of people. Now he’s out and about with music, this is usually in the set

My current fiddle goal is to get to the point where I can record some of my favourite O’Carolan tunes.

Being kinder to yourself

(Nimue)

Recently on Facebook, my friend Vishwam raised the question of what would happen if we were all a little kinder to ourselves. As a consequence of the post, I’ve spent some serious time with that question. What does it mean to be kinder? What does that involve? What happens individually and collectively if we head that way?

Growing up I internalised the idea that to be good you have to be selfless, giving, self-sacrificing, even. I went to a Church of England school and encountered a lot of that sort of thinking. To be selfish is wrong, and to be good you put others first. Everyone else, all the time. I remember instructions to help the needy and I remember wondering how you were supposed to tell if you were the needy and should be helped.

Being kinder to yourself does not automatically translate into selfishness. It doesn’t mean we are being unkinder to someone else, as though kindness is a finite resource we must deploy cautiously. Being kind to yourself may well make it easier to be kind to others, and to the world as a whole.

We could be kinder to ourselves in our own thoughts. Accepting mistakes, honouring our limitations, talking gently to ourselves in face of failure and let-down being examples. How we talk to ourselves has a huge impact on our daily lives. Being kind about this costs no one else anything at all.

You should be able to have time, space and resources for the harmless things that nourish, cheer and lift you. A few hours with a book, a jigsaw, a walk amongst trees, and so forth. We should be able to be kind to ourselves in these ways.

This is where self-kindness starts to interact with justice. If you are carrying an unfairly large burden, then there may be people – at work or at home – who are invested in you not having the time or resources to be kind to yourself. That kind of unkindness is internalised all too easily, and the habits of thought can remain even when we aren’t being misused.

Systemic abuse occurs in contexts where people are also set up to believe they don’t deserve kindness, or rest, or opportunities. This tends to involve other factors – race, gender, sexuality, and poverty are especially common. When the systems you live in are designed to knock you down, then being kind to yourself is a pretty radical choice, an act of rebellion that will have all kinds of consequences.

Kindness is the best way to fight oppression. It is key to dismantling abusive structures, and to surviving bullying and exploitative people and situations. That kindness has to start in how you treat yourself – and that isn’t always easy when you are habituated to unkind treatment.

As with most things, a community approach is more effective than going solo. When we are kind to each other, and support each other in self-kindness we can build resilience and better ways of thinking. We can learn ways of not participating in our own oppression and that makes us better able to resist, and to create something better.

If you struggle to treat yourself kindly because so much more seems so much more important, remind yourself that this is where a real revolution can start. How can we hope to make the world a kinder place if we don’t practice that? Where better to begin than in our own minds and lives? Take any opportunity for kindness that comes your way – including being kind to yourself.

Winter blessings

(Nimue)

Winter is a time for seeing our blessings through the contrasts. It is thanks to the longer hours of darkness that we can enjoy the presence of decorative lights, for example. Snow, storms and ice can make curling up indoors feel especially snuggly and comforting. Assuming of course that you have the resources available for this.

For those who have plenty, there’s an invitation at this time of year to think of those who do not have enough. If you have blessings to count then consider what you can do for those who do not. This is a good time to think about donations, and many charities have winter fundraisers on the go right now.

We move towards the shortest day, safe in the knowledge that the light will return and there will be spring. While we live in desperately uncertain times, there are at least some things we can still be confident about. The year turns.

I’ve never been very good at belief, and that’s part of what brought me to Druidry. I do not need to believe in nature, only to be aware of it and respectful of the living world. The planet tips, the seasons turn, the leaves fall. This year they are falling late, but fall they do. The continuation of these things offers a certain kind of impersonal comfort, and as humans persist in making a dreadful mess of things, I am glad of the familiarity of frost and long, dark nights.

Hexford Witches 2

(Nimue, review)

No Illusions is the second book in Craig Hallam’s Hexford Witches series, and is an utter delight. Building on the story established in the first book, this is a tale of magic and friendship, with a dash of romance. It’s a story full of surprises and a very engaging plot that has you rooting for the various sympathetic characters while intermittently being driven a bit round the bend by their various human frailties. You can find my review of the first instalment over here – https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2024/06/19/make-believe-hexford-book-1/

Hexford is one of those magical towns that those of us with a penchant for murder villages would cheerfully live in. It’s a witchy place, and Craig knows his stuff such that the magic feels substantial and resonant. I love the presence of spirits of place in this story, and the role that community plays in the tale. While there is a bad guy to deal with, the solutions are pleasingly complex and it isn’t a tale that depends on battles. These are stories about people stepping into their own power in all sorts of wonderful ways.

These are perfect tales for a dark winter evening. I very much enjoyed both books, and can wholeheartedly recommend them as great stories in the witchlit genre.

Book two will be out a few days after this post goes live, so you can buy or pre-order here (depending on when you read this!) https://www.amazon.co.uk/No-Illusions-Hexford-Book-Witches-ebook/dp/B0DHPKRFB2

Contemplating mistakes

(Nimue)

We all make mistakes. The most common and forgivable sort are born from not knowing something. With the best will in the world, it is impossible to always spot where something you don’t know might trip you up and even then you aren’t going too know what it is – that’s the nature of the beast. The only thing to do is learn, chalk it up to experience, forgive yourself and move on. Do the same thing for everyone else’s innocent human cock-ups and life becomes a lot less stressful.

The more serious mistakes have other forms entirely. They come from not paying attention, from lack of care, not thinking things through, prioritising the wrong things, not taking the right things seriously and so forth. These are errors of judgement. People tend to be more defensive about them because they come from a place of shortcoming. The faster you can acknowledge them, the less harm they do. Often people choose to double down on these mistakes, protecting the lack of care or the bad priority that might look like a character flaw if examined too closely. These are the mistakes that often result in people blaming something other than themselves.

There’s not much to be done about the first kind of mistake. We all go there. Avoiding the second kind of mistake is something we can focus on. The more attention we pay and the more care we bring to what we do, the less likely such mistakes become. If we’re set on doing the right thing, we’re less likely to mess up. In my experience, the second kind of mistake often shows up as an omission. Failure to act doesn’t make us any less responsible.

Practicing gratitude is a helpful tool in all of this. It keeps us alert and attentive. Being active about compassion is another good one, as is reflection. Taking the time to think about things, rather than just going for knee jerk reactions means we are much more likely to handle situations well. A more reflective and compassionate approach to life helps us avoid making damaging mistakes.

Of course when people are inexperienced, they make poor judgements. I try to assume I’m seeing mistakes based on lack of knowledge rather than lack of care. However, if you’re dealing with a functional adult who persists in making the same mistakes despite being given information about it, that’s a whole other thing. There comes a point when the defense of ‘mistake’ no longer holds up and you have to consider that it is deliberate and malicious. These can be hard calls to make.

People who mean well will own mistakes and try to learn from them. People who do not mean well will blame anything or anyone else, and will keep claiming a ‘mistake’ to enable them to keep doing what they want to do. Sheltering behind incompetence, feigning incomprehension and acting out of a lack of care often isn’t a mistake at all, but is entirely intended. What they intended was to do it and get away with it, and the wounded responses that go with such behaviour have more to do with being called out than with feeling badly about the harm caused.

We all make mistakes. We are all capable of going down that route involving carelessness and defensiveness. At any point, anyone can choose to turn back and do something better.