Nimue Brown's Blog, page 174

A very hobbit birthday

Dear readers, it is my birthday today and I thought I would take a hobbit approach to that – namely by offering gifts to everyone else!

I have a new poetry collection called How to Unpeel A Monster.

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The cover is based on a photo of me and a Pre-Raphaelite painting. Tom Brown drew me a version of it, and I coloured it using oil pastels. For the photo, I had a small skull duct-taped to my nipple – don’t try this at home! But it pretty well sums up the project – a bit dark, a bit twisted, a bit painful, somewhat preposterous and also quite funny in places.

If you would like a copy, leave a comment – wordpress shows me your email address when you comment, so I can easily email you a pdf. I’ll start sending them out on the 15th of June.

 

Teenage Nimue and the quest to rescue Severus Snape

My good friend Meredith has written an excellent blog post about the problems with JK Rowling – so let me start by directing you there  https://meredithdebonnaire.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/when-you-have-to-break-up-with-an-author

A person could spend a lot of time (and I have) picking over the race, gender and class politics of the Harry Potter books.  But, I thought I would pick up on one of the issues that has always bothered me, and that I would do so by writing about my favourite character, Severus Snape.

Snape, like almost every character in the HP books, has his whole life defined by the person he loved as a child. He’s not allowed to move on, he’s not allowed to heal, or fall in love again and rebuild his life. He is obliged to live in the hell created by one ghastly mistake. This is true for most of the characters, whose lives are defined by their teens – especially who they will love.

Most of us were still working it out in our teens. The more out of synch you are with hetranormative mainstream culture, the longer it will have likely taken you to figure out who you are and where you fit. To tie people to their teenage identities is to leave no room at all for who we grow up to be, and to leave no room for the idea that most of us will change. Some of us will change a lot. It is an awful, untrue story to tell that what happens in our teens is the most important story of our lives, but the HP books tell that story in pretty much every character’s life.

I’d like to rescue Snape. I’d like to rock up in his twenties with an assortment of characters of various gender and body types, and seduce him out of his grief. I’d like to get him some counselling, and give him the opportunity to live in a safe and healthy environment for a few years. I’d like someone to be kind to him, and not leave him in a space of being constantly emotionally manipulated by bloody Dumbledore.

I have thought about this a lot because it bothers me so much. It’s been one of the dominant stories young people of recent years have grown up with, and so much of what it tells us is really problematic. Stories matter. Stories tell us who we are and who we should aspire to be.  The Harry Potter books tell us that we’re never going to get over what happens to us in our teens; that our worst mistakes will define our entire lives and that the only redemption is death. No one grows up. No one moves on. No one heals. This is not the story to tell ourselves.

I am not my teenage self. There’s continuity, but there has also been a lot of growing and changing. I am a much bigger and more complicated version of that person. The mistakes from that time in my life are behind me, the wounds are healing, the choices did not define everything. I will rescue Snape as much as I can. I will quietly tell myself stories in which far better things happened to him. I’m also going to get myself a Snapeish sort of coat, and let my non-binary self play with this a bit. Yes, my teenage self did understated cosplays of male characters I identified with, and I like the idea of going back to that. Not because I am defined by my teenage choices, but because some of my ideas back then were really good. I will be a sexy queer sort of Snape.

Sometimes, ideas and characters turn out to be a lot bigger than the authors who first encounter them. Ancient literature is full of this sort of thing. Shakespeare borrowed other people’s stuff all the time, so there’s a good literary tradition to not letting JK Rowling define her own literary legacy.

Things I am visualising

I recently blogged about tips for visualising – https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2020/06/06/tips-for-visualising/

When building a thought form, it can be important not to undermine it by making it vulnerable to other people’s opinions. This means not getting anyone else’s input, but I think holding boundaries to protect a dream can be necessary and important. There’s a key piece of witchcraft advice around the importance of keeping things secret to keep them powerful. At the same time, putting something into the world can be a way of working towards manifesting it, and writing is part of how I now do this sort of thing.

I am visualising…

Standing at the train station, waiting.

A shed, with a comfortable chair in it, a rug on the floor, and decent lighting.

The sea wind in my face.

Long, luscious damp grass full of wildflowers.

The space that is deliberately empty becoming full in the way I intend.

An advert on the side of a bus.

A really big table.

Dismembered

I dreamed I was a hedgehog. In the dream, I was being cut open, although I was still alive and aware. My innards were being removed, and my body cavity washed clean. Then I was rolled in clay and put in a warm place. This is the traditional way of cooking a hedgehog although I think normally the hedgehog would be more dead and less complicit. It wasn’t a painful dream, it just felt odd.

I don’t have the kind of identification with a single creature that features in many people’s Druid paths. There are creatures I feel strongly about and whose appearance deeply affects me – owls, otters, nuthatches, egrets, curlews, and of course, hedgehogs. An encounter with any living being is powerful for me; I love the foxes, the badgers, the deer, the rodents in the undergrowth… But I do not belong to any specific kind of creature nor has anything been present in my life as a specific guide or mentor.

There is an emotional truth about the hedgehog though. I have mostly been prickly on the outside and inclined to roll into a ball when I feel threatened. I tuck away the soft underbelly, I do not let most people near where I am vulnerable. It’s more of an emotional metaphor than a spiritual consideration.

In some traditions, dismemberment is part of a spiritual process and to experience it in vision or trance or as part of a journey is highly significant. I didn’t seek this out. But as a dream it is clearly significant. A necessary invitation to let go of my hedgehog self a bit. While the imagery sounds violent, I didn’t really experience it that way.

I’m going to take this as an opportunity to flag up with importance of not giving unsolicited dream advice. So much x=y thinking around dream interpretation depends on the idea that dreamer and interpreter share a common dreaming language. That’s a really unlikely thing given how many influences we are all exposed to. It’s also far too easy to assert the truth of your path in face of someone else’s experience. The hedgehog is a metaphor for me, not an active spiritual participant in my life. It was a dream that echoed the kind of thing that happens on other people’s paths, but it makes no sense to me on those terms because of my hedgehog relationship to this point. It was (I know) an invitation to let go of something, not to take more hedgehog in.

A monstrous fairy tale

If there was a time when I did not know I was monstrous, I do not remember it. I like to imagine I was once young and tender enough to be innocent of these things, but that may be pure self indulgence. My monstrousness was apparent from early on, and I learned that without constant vigilance and careful restraint, that monstrousness would get out and do something terrible.

For years I tried to understand what it was that lurked inside me, that had to be controlled. Mostly so that I could better control it. I did not want the monster to escape and cause harm. An unwilling Miss Jekyll who is trying desperately to keep Hyde on the inside.

The only blood I have ever shed is my own. The only person I have ever wanted to kill, is me. Well, not me exactly, the Hyde on the inside. The unspeakable monstrous thing that would undoubtedly do something awful if ever I dropped my guard.

When you are a monster, it is entirely reasonable to find that people need to fight you, knock you down, punish you. When you are a monster you accept that the things done are necessary, inevitable. It’s what any decent, reasonable person would do, faced with the horror of you. And when you are knocked down again, and crying, it is not for the pain of it, but for the horror of being the sort of monster that makes this inevitable.

When you are a monster, and you make a mistake and cause harm, the fear of what must follow is huge. This is why we cower in our caves, retreat to our swamps. We know we aren’t safe to be around. We know what we deserve.

Like every monster, I want to find I am really a princess, cursed by a wicked stepmother. I want to find that there is a spell to break, and that magic exists that could turn me back into a person. How do you tell if you are terrible by nature, or in need of rescue? How do you tell if the knight errant is there to kill you, or kiss you, or both? How do you tell if the hunger that makes you monstrous in your own eyes is truly an abomination, or if you have simply been starving for years?

I do not know.

There is something unspeakable that lives inside me.

Druidry and Politics

It always makes me sad when I see modern Druids claiming that Druidry isn’t political. We know the original Druids were political, and we know this simply because the Romans went to some effort to wipe them out.

On the whole, the Romans took a really inclusive approach to colonialism. They had given some thought to what keeps a population biddable – bread, circuses and continuity. So where possible, your leaders continue to be your leaders, only they are answerable to Rome and send taxes in. Your Gods are still your Gods, although you might get a Roman name tacked on so they become a double-barrelled entity. There’s not much incentive here for the regular working person to rebel. People get grouchy when you take away their Gods and priests, so mostly you don’t, and conquest is easier. You co-opt their Gods and Romanize them too.

One of the few historical accounts we have of the Druids is of the Romans going to Anglesey specifically to wipe them out. Clearly, as an invading and colonial force, the Romans found the Druids a bit inconvenient. Enough to fight them. Enough to describe them for posterity in ways that did not make them look good. Whatever it was the Druids did to cause that much offence, I can’t help but feel it must have had a political dimension to it. Rome just wasn’t that fussed about religious diversity. By all accounts, the Christians of the period really had to make an effort to get martyred.

In face of oppressive, militaristic colonial capitalism moving into their territory, the original Druids put up enough of a fight to justify trying to wipe them out. Now, you can take that onboard and decide that they got it wrong – that the survival of Druidry was more important than resisting Rome, perhaps. You might decide that in the same situation, you’d have been off to some remote and romantic retreat to practice peace and light because your Druidry isn’t political. Maybe there were Druids who did that at the time – we don’t know. But there were clearly Druids who preferred death to submitting to Rome, and that’s about as political a choice as anyone gets to make.

The idea that you can step outside of politics is a mistaken one. The Druid who does not resist the Roman invasion is also making a political choice – to tacitly support the aggressor, to not defend people and traditions, to take what might be the easiest and safest personal path. In times of peril, conflict and great change, not doing politics is itself a deeply political choice with huge political consequences. You don’t get to be a Druid and opt out of politics because you don’t get to be a person and opt out. You do get to decide who you support, and doing nothing is a choice that supports whatever already dominates. Pretending you can avoid politics is a political decision, either to accept what is done to you or because you are comfortable and don’t suffer what the less fortunate do.

No Fucks Privilege

When it comes to appearance, I find increasingly that I have no more fucks to give about what other people think of me. This is something I’ve largely been able to do for myself – so it’s worth talking about because in theory anyone might gift themselves with this.

However, I’m conscious of the ways in which it is also a privilege. It doesn’t really matter how anyone else reads me. My safety does not depend on passing most of the time. Granted, as a tall, furry woman who might dress a bit masculine at times, I could end up on the wrong end of the people who think they can read trans status in someone else’s body. But I’m not, and I would be in a very different position to a trans woman if that happened to me.

I’m non-binary, but I don’t need anyone else to read me that way. My body is overtly female-presenting and I’m not going to make myself miserable fighting that to try and fit what someone else might think non-binary should look like. I look like me, it will do. But, I’m not looking for a partner, I don’t need to make it clear to the casual gaze what sort of person I am. I have advantages of age and a large friend network and also not needing anyone to see me in this regard. There are people who know. It is enough. I have no doubt there are people for whom this wouldn’t work at all. I have privilege.

I don’t think I read as poor – and I’m in an odd inbetween place with that anyway. I’m white and I sound educated and this will inform how people read me, and will inform it in my favour. So if I have no more fucks to give about how people read me, I also have every reason to think I can get away with that. My dress style tends towards the eccentric, not the sexual. I uphold the right of anyone regardless of age, gender, orientation or body shape to present as sexually attractive if they want to, and that everyone should be safe when doing that. In practice, to present as anything other than straight white male and sexual is risky and can be read in ways that are dangerous to you.

There are things intrinsic to being human that mean we want validation from other people. It’s very natural. We all want to be seen and approved of. Many of us are not seen. Many of us face disapproval. It helps being older. It helps being emotionally secure. It helps enormously that I am unlikely to be in much danger from how people read me. Apart from the way rapists read female-presenting people, but that’s not about anything I can control. That’s not about how I present, that’s about the decision to read sexually, and to assume entitlement to other people’s bodies.

If you can bless yourself with no fucks to give privilege, do it. Do it now. And the rest of the time, let’s see what we can do to help people who need to feel more understood when having their appearance read by others, and who need more room and more safety than they currently get.

The Burnt Watcher – a review(ish)

I won’t claim any objectivity on this one. This is Keith Healing’s first novel. I know him personally, and he is the bloke behind the Hopeless Maine role play game. I proof read for him on this book because he’s a lovely chap and I want to support him.

The Burnt Watcher is set in a dark future where there are nasty supernatural things, and people whose job it is to try and keep that under control. The Burnt Watcher of the title is one such person, who is dealing with a legacy of injury from the work. So, this is a book with a disabled main protagonist, which is something we just don’t see often enough. There’s also a kickass young lady in the story, which I really appreciated.

The story is really engaging, dark, sometimes a bit funny. I very much enjoyed it. There will be a sequel, which makes me very happy indeed. Excellent writing and elegantly put together. I thought the structure of it, and how the author plays with your belief, disbelief and sense of how this world works, was really good.

From a pagan perspective, there’s some rather splendid magical stuff going on. The Watchers use rune based magic and deal with the wyrd. Keith really knows his stuff, and it shows. There’s a lot of joy in a magic system with such substantial roots, written by someone who knows what they are talking about.

For anyone local, there’s also the joy that is having Stonehouse as a place of evil activity and eldritch horror. I love reading stories set in places I know, and especially books set in Gloucestershire. I am delighted by this future Gloucestershire full of gothic ruins, terrible threats and monstrous beings. We all need to see ourselves reflected in what we read, and having our locations reflected is certainly part of that.

As with all good speculative fiction, this is a book with plenty to say to the present moment. About what kinds of deals we make, and what we think is in our best interests, and what we do when we gone off the rails…

You can find the book here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Burnt-Watcher-Fear-Book-ebook/dp/B08964Q14H/

and here – https://www.amazon.com/Burnt-Watcher-Fear-Book-ebook/dp/B08964Q14H

Tips for visualising

Visualising is a really useful technique with a number of applications. You can do it for entirely spiritual purposes. You can do it as part of making magic, and you can also do it to direct your own mind in a specific direction. I also find that visualisation and divination can be connected if you are inclined to more of the oracle work. Testing visions of the future to see what looks plausible and where that goes can be interesting work.

I’m going to take a non-magical approach in offering some tools here – they would work magically, whereas magically orientated approaches won’t do it for people working more psychologically. The key thing about visualisation is that you build belief. You imagine yourself in a situation, doing a thing, and so when you get there you can handle it better. Or when the opportunities come by, you see them and grab them. Or you do better because you know what you want so the path that heads the right way is more obvious. Visualisation can be a great tool for self knowledge, and also for building courage and helping you take action.

However, some things are really hard to visualise. The bigger and more life-changing your intentions are then the harder it is to picture the outcome of that. If you can’t believe it, feel it and invest in it you won’t make it work for you.

My advice is to aim small. Rather than focusing on the big event you want to manifest, visualise something you can easily imagine. Maybe about how you go for coffee with a dear friend and tell them about how it all worked out for you. Pick a scenario where you can dig in with the familiar details and weave the intended content into it – picture phoning someone to say that the thing has happened. Pick the part of the process that you know most about and envisage that, and frame it with your understanding that the whole thing is in place.

For example, if you’re trying to attract a lover, and you don’t have anyone specific in mind, you can’t visualise them or anything that happens with them. But you could visualise yourself lying alone in bed, afterwards, feeling warm and contented and happy. You don’t have to know exactly how you got there to hold that image, and in holding it you will start to find out things  about how that would work for you.

Equally, if you want a life changing job, you may have no way of picturing how that would work or what you would be doing. But you could far more easily visualise yourself on a day off from that fantastic job, feeling good about yourself and happy in the direction your life has taken.

You won’t know what the new house should look like, but you can visualise lying in the garden listening to the bird song, perhaps.

It’s not always possible to picture the outcome we most need. If you’re feeling a lack and trying to work towards an answer, you may not know what that answer looks like. If you’re too specific, you may shut down opportunities and miss out on the good stuff. Sometimes, focusing on a small, believable detail is a really powerful way of opening up the entire future that you want to create.

Body, Seasons, Druidry

When we talk about the wheel of the year and the seasons in Druidry, most often what we’re talking about is external to us. Things in nature that we might observe, or contemplate from a safe distance.

In practice our primary way of experiencing the seasons is through our own bodies. It occurs to me that I’ve not seen anyone explore it on these terms (if you know otherwise, please do leave a comment).

Often a body experience of a season is about having to mitigate the effects of it. How does that work in terms of communing with nature? If we’re doing seasonal stuff for spiritual reasons, should we not embrace the season? Is our adapting natural, and therefore something to work with, or is it a denial of what’s going on? I could make a case either way, but I think the main consideration has to be… what works for you?

It is summer. We’ve had some really hot days. I adapt by wearing less, staying indoors in the middle of the day, and not moving too much if I can help it. Getting out there for some sun worship would likely make me ill. In winter I have to do other things to mitigate against the cold and to deal with the risks of falling. My response to the seasons is always to try and keep my body in a state where it’s not being overloaded.

The seasons should impact on our bodies in terms of what is available to eat. Whether we favour raw or cooked food can be a seasonal consideration. Our work may be seasonal, and what we do to take care of our homes may well also have a strong seasonal angle. How we travel, how we feel about going out, even who we spend time with can be informed by the season. These are all things we will experience primarily inside ourselves as part of a personal relationship with the time of year.

Summer means bare feet. But it also means grumpy lymph glands, sore skin and the scope for puffy ankles. It means hayfever – as the plants try to have sex with my face. Heat will make me ill if there’s a lot of it. Summer means watching my blood pressure and electrolytes and making sure I stay hydrated without washing too much useful stuff out of my body. Sometimes it means the comfort of warm sun on my skin and the pleasure of sitting on the grass.

These are all everyday, fairly mundane things, easily overlooked. But at the same time, this day to day stuff is how I live the season and how I feel it in my body. It is my most immediate experience. It lacks for drama most of the time, it doesn’t have the big narrative energy of the things we like to say about the wheel of the year. It’s not especially mystical. But, as a process of rooting my Druidry in my lived experience it strikes me as an important one and I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to see it on these terms.