Nimue Brown's Blog, page 197

Southern Cunning – folklore and living tradition

Aaron Oberon is the author of Southern Cunning – a book about folkloric witchcraft in the Southern States of America. I asked him some questions about his book and the traditions he’s working with, which he has answered below…

Can you give me a flavour of southern states folklore? What’s unique to the area?

Most of our folklore directly deals with the atrocities that have happened in the South. Slavery, racism, and genocide are all seeped into the soil and stories. Human evil is one of the biggest reoccurring themes throughout Southern folklore, and while some folks try to ignore the continuation of racism and oppression around them these stories speak volumes. There’s a reason the genre of “Southern Gothic” exists, because there is a macabre cast to most of our folklore. There’s a plant that can be found all throughout the more humid southern locations called “Spanish Moss” and in Savanah, Georgia folks say it won’t grow anywhere that innocent blood was spilled. Even the tales we tell about plants remind us of human atrocity. There is also an intense focus on the community and what it means to be a part of the community. The breaking of taboos, the inversion of norms, and the process of “othering” those that live outside of what the community considers correct. More specifically, living life as a Christian or a Non-Christian, and the perceived immorality of being Non-Christian. When witches, the quintessential Non-Christians, appear in folklore they are often marginalized and living on the fringes of their communities. Witch stories can be some of the most interesting because they often directly challenge commonly held beliefs in southern culture. When the witch come knocking to borrow milk you have two choices. You can stand by the value of “Southern Hospitality” and help out your neighbor in which case the witch can now curse you because she has something of yours. Or you can deny her the milk because of who she is, in which case she curses you for not helping her. So which do you choose? There’s no right answer, because the societal constraints shouldn’t be there to begin with. That the beauty of Southern folklore, it deals with the dark and oppressive, it forces you to address these issues of culture and discrimination, but it never gives you an answer. That’s your job to figure out.

How does folklore impact on witchcraft traditions in the south?

From a personal perspective, you can’t look towards these stories and come out the other side thinking the world is sunshine and rainbows. You have to face the atrocities that define the place where you live, and then how do you take this reflection and make something of it. You’ve read clear as day how horrible things are now what are you going to do about it? I can’t speak for how folklore is effecting witchcraft throughout the entire South, but I know that for me it’s been a process of taking action. The magic seen throughout Southern folklore is active, it clearly accomplishes a goal, and often times it seeks to right a wrong. Southern folklore demonstrates not just atrocity, but personal agency, and the impact that personal choices make on the world. Which to me is witchcraft at its core, when you take action in your craft you make an impact on the world at large.

 

What do you find exciting about this as a living tradition?

The biggest thing about a living practice is knowing one day it is going to change and that just because something is working for you now doesn’t mean you have to do that same exact thing for the rest of your journey. Witchcraft, folklore, and human beings are all constantly changing and adapting. So when I look at my practice and realize that something no longer fits, I’m able to acknowledge what it brought into my life in the past, and honor that while finding something that fits better for the now.

What does bioregionalism mean to you?

That as person you are celebrating the natural environment around you in the here and now. Bioregionalism has helped me appreciate my home in a way that has truly changed my life. Spiritually its meant that I am more focused on the local spirits, local stories, and local people around me rather than looking at European models of magic and trying to make that work for me when it hasn’t. On a personal level, I always hated the South.

Tell me about the book…

Southern Cunning is a look at how to approach folklore as an informant for witchcraft. It originally started out as a journal I was writing while I went through books of American folklore and started seeing if there was a way to make this applicable to my practice. It turned out to be a major undertaking, one that changed my perspective on what witchcraft is and what it can be. A good chunk of the book focuses on a specific collection of folklore called “The Silver Bullet”, and I chose this book because of all the collections I went through Silver Bullet was the only one focused completely on witches and the details of their practices. The rest of the book is dedicated to the things that make the South what it is from the cultures in the South, its history, religion, and the land itself. My hope with Southern Cunning is that it’s accessible, fun, and gets the wheels turning for the reader. The best compliment I’ve received has been someone telling me “This inspired me to look into my local folklore and work that into my practice”.

 

Find out more about the book here – https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/southern-cunning 

Car child, or calm child

We walked to playgroup and back, every day, in all weathers. Then we walked to the first primary school and back, every day, in all weathers. Then we had to cycle to the second primary school. Every day. In all weathers. Now, he cycles alone, every day, in all weathers.

During many of those trips I saw parents taking children the same way, only with cars. So, I can tell you with confidence that by the time you have got a child into and out of a car, and dealt with the parking, it may have been quicker to walk. The idea that driving is quicker and less trouble may not be true. It is always worth questioning it.

We had a good time with those walks. We saw wild things, and dogs and cats, which he always enjoyed. He had time to wake up in the morning on the way in to school, arriving brighter, fresher and more alert as a consequence of the journey in. On the way home, he had time to decompress, to share his day with me and to let off steam. I have no doubt that this has improved my son’s mental health at every stage of his life.

Our young people are suffering. Exam pressure, overcrowded classrooms, lack of opportunity to move around, and fear for the future puts a massive strain on them. Bundling them in to cars doesn’t help with this. When I walked home from school as a teenager it was a social activity and that time with friends was a good spot in my day. Kids in cars are denied those social opportunities. Bodily movement is good for all of us. Children need to move, and the journey to and from school used to give people that.

Of course the roads aren’t as safe as they used to be, and a major contributor to how unsafe the roads are is all the people driving their kids to and from school. Each car journey contributes to the air pollution that is killing people on a shocking scale. Not driving your kid to school will do more to keep them well. Most of them do not melt in the rain.

I’ve watched schools try to encourage confidence, physical health and feelings of independence in young humans. And then you drive them home. The young person who has to be resilient enough to get to and from school in any weather, develops self-confidence, self-reliance and a sense of capability and resilience. The young person who knows that their body can get them places, and who learns to take responsibility for that is learning good life lessons. Even at the age when they need accompanying, it is still teaching them good stuff.

Most adults could do with more fresh air and chilled time as well. Walking to school and back creates little pockets of good family time if you use it that way. Stressing your way through heavy traffic doesn’t do that.

What we grow up with is what we find most normal. For the kid in a car, walking and cycling may always seem a bit alien. The kid who walks or cycles is advantaged for the future. We cannot carry on with car use at the same level. One way or another, it’s going to be unfeasible. Might as well be ready for that!

Being green does not mean being miserable. I have no doubt that walking and cycling to school has improved my quality of life, and improved my son’s quality of life. It’s saved us a lot of money and given us a lot of good experiences.

Wave, wind and wonder

Low tide, and the beach a sheen of shallow water catching the sun. Hard to tell what is sea, and what is shine. Oystercatchers along the margins, foraging. The haunting call of curlews against a backdrop of sea roar. No human sounds discernible above the pounding of waves and the rush of wind in ears. There is no time here, only space.

And for a while, I am just wind on skin and light on water. I am the moment when sun fills the wing feathers of an egret turning white feathers into numinous glory. I am the careful tread of boots on sand made sculpture by the retreating tide. I am the touch of cold that is sea on leather and the scent of salt in my nostrils. I am not myself. I am not anyone. I dissolve away into nothingness in this expanse of deliriously inhuman space.

I want to stay here forever.

I know that this marginal, tide turning land is not a place for me. I cannot live here. And still, I want to be light and water and wind and nothing more. I want to be lost, and ephemeral enough to be part of this place.

I am so tired of what humans do to each other.

I am so tired of trying to see the good and so tired of having to forgive what was never good enough and so tired of not being heard when I do dare to ask and so tired of having my heart broken.

A part of me is on the sand, between the water and the sky, between the sea and the shore, determined to stay lost. There are not many people I could stand here with, silent and scoured and salted. There are not many people I know how to be a person with, and far fewer I know how not to be a person with, and those, are certainly the best.

Radical change is necessary and you do not get a free pass

It will not be enough to change policies, or get new technology in place. We cannot, as a species, continue as we are. We cannot keeping flying in the way that we do. We cannot keep driving in the way that we do – electric cars are not a magic solution, they require too many resources and we have to scale back. Renewable energy might be good, but energy and resources still go into producing it. We have to use less energy.

I’m tired of the ways in which people let themselves off the hook. There’s the ‘you aren’t perfect so why should I bother’ model in which someone identifies that a protestor used a car, or does not hand spin wool for their own clothes and decides this invalidates the whole message and that they don’t have to bother making any changes at all. Not good enough! Most of us aren’t perfect. The failure of activists to manage to live carbon neutral does not excuse anyone else from trying.

I’m tired of the way that the people who have the most justify continuing to take so much more than is fair or sustainable. The feelings of entitlement that underpin the flying, the long car journeys, the over-consumption. I’m honestly tired of watching people I know and like do this and not having the energy to say ‘really?’ when I know I probably should. The Pagans who fly frequently bother me a great deal.

What cheers me, is the people who are fair and realistic. A fine case in point was listening to a talk from Molly Scott Cato recently. She’s an MEP who does not fly. She has no qualms about flagging up where people are priced out of participation in Green movements, and I’m deeply grateful for that. I’ve got very tired of hearing people being blamed for having very few choices open to them, while those who have most might buy their organic veg from the farmer’s market, yes, but still drive cars and are flying places. Not being able to be green because of financial restrictions is very, very different from choosing activities that aren’t sustainable because you can afford them and feel entitled to them.

And yes, honestly, I wish Extinction Rebellion was doing better on this. It’s high profile right now and an opportunity to show radical action. It’s a chance to live your values, and express them in your actions in any way you can think of. We need examples, and we need creativity, and we need people to be willing to make radical changes in their own lives. We aren’t going to solve the impact that transport has unless a lot of people are willing to make different transport choices. The same goes for energy use, throwaway consumerism, food waste, the fashion industry…

If you can afford to make changes in your life, you have a duty to the Earth to make changes towards more sustainable ways of living. I’ve been doing this for a long time, I have a small carbon footprint and I’m still working on shrinking it. I get very tired of people telling me that what I do is too difficult for them. Unless you are more disabled than me, in more pain than me, in more poverty than me… it’s not too difficult. It’s just more difficult than you’re willing to take on and that’s not actually the same thing.

Do I sound cross? It may be because I am. It may be because every time I have to walk past the lines of poison-exuding cars, most with only one occupant, a kind of rage fills me. An absolute rage at the complacency of people, the lack of effort and imagination, and the lack of feeling responsible. Because if you can afford to put a car on the road in the UK, you can afford to do differently at least some of the time. If you want to hang on to aspects of life that put out carbon, please be a bit creative and at least find some ways to reduce the impact.

Try harder!

Delayed grief

There was never time. There was always someone or something else that was more important. Bills to pay. People to appease. Bullied for mourning the death of a friend because the person I was living with at the time felt that as a personal attack. Told there wasn’t time for me to cry when I lost my home and had to pack my stuff. The things I was not allowed to mourn. The things I did not realise at the time that I deserved to grieve over – harm done to me that I had been persuaded was my fault and no more than I deserve.

Grief isn’t just for bereavement. What I do know from studies into bereavement though, is that grief you don’t deal with at the time will haunt you, and reappear in unexpected shapes and be harder to deal with.

So here I am, and there’s a lot of it. I have carried this a long way. In my mind, in my body. There are so many implications, and so much I need to work through so odds are I’ll be talking about this on and off for a while. Hopefully there’s someone else out there who will find it useful.

What I’m noticing at the moment is the massive shift in thinking that allows me, for the first time, to see myself as entitled to grieve. I’ve stopped framing my distress as a failing on my part. It’s so often been framed that way for me. The idea being that what was happening was fine, and what was unreasonable was my response to it. Things that hurt me, were hard for me, frightened me, and stole away my confidence were not things I deserved. I was never that bad a person (is anyone?). “That’s not fair” was a statement I was not allowed to make for too long. Well, it wasn’t fair, and I can say it now, and in doing so change how I think about my former self.

It wasn’t ok that I was afraid for so much of the time. It wasn’t ok that my feelings were mocked and treated as irrelevant. It wasn’t fair that I wasn’t allowed to have preferences or to express myself, or to have any and all emotional expression treated as emotional blackmail. It wasn’t ok to be put in situations that made it difficult for me to sleep, and it wasn’t ok that my sleep problems didn’t matter. It wasn’t ok to have things that should have been at least a bit about me arranged entirely for other people’s benefit.

I have lived with rage directed inwards and self-hatred because of how I’ve been de-personed and made responsible for what was done to me. I’ve lived with shame and fear, and stories about how the very nature of my body justified what was happening to me. I’ve lived with unspeakable, un-acknowledgeable grief that has been crushing me for pretty much my whole life. I’ve lived feeling unable to talk about it because I don’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable and there are people who, if they read this, could feel uncomfortable. But unless I square up to all this, I can’t change anything. So here, in this space that is my space I am making some room to assert that there a great deal of things in my history that really weren’t ok.

I’ve been giving myself permission to feel angry about this. It’s been a personal sort of process, I will not take that anger to anyone else, to do so would serve no purpose. But I can be angry for me, and for the person I was and the person I could have been. And I can grieve it, and keep saying that it was not justified, it was not my fault, I did not deserve it.

On Writing Historical Fiction

A Guest post from Laura Perry

Fiction is an interesting beast. It’s imaginary but also real. You can take a real-world setting and make up characters to go in it. You can make up the world as well, if you like, though some portion of it needs to be relatable to the reader, perhaps in the form of some of your characters being human.

Either way, the intersection of the real and the imagined creates the spark of the story. I’ve written two novels set in the known world, one in Central America and one near where I live in the southeastern US. Both had magical aspects to the story, and one had magical/supernatural characters as well. Still, both novels take place in the current time, in the world I’ve spent my whole life in. It’s familiar territory, in a sense, a world I share with my readers.

Then I decided to write historical fiction. That turns out to be a different beast altogether, with its own set of issues.

My novel is set on the Mediterranean island of Crete, among the ancient Minoans. They were a Bronze Age culture that flourished from about 3000-1400 BCE. Now, the Minoans are a subject I’ve studied for years. Decades, even. But when I started writing this book, I discovered just how much I don’t know, how much no one knows about the details of daily life and religion in ancient Crete.

So I filled in the blanks with educated guesses. That’s what every author does when they’re writing historical fiction. And I feel the weight of every one of those guesses, because there’s a thing that happens with any kind of historical fiction, whether it’s in the form of a book, a television show, or a movie: people take it as actual history. You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t) how many people get their history more from television than from the books they were supposed to read in school.

So this book took me a long time to write. That was partly because the story is heart-wrenching and I felt like part of my soul was being ripped out with each chapter. But it was also partly because I had to weigh every detail, consider every possibility as I built the world the action takes place in. I’m sure I’m wrong about some of it; that’s just how history and archaeology are. More information comes to light later on and we recognize our mistakes.

But in the meantime, I’d like to remind everyone that historical fiction is just that: fiction, even if it is framed with known facts and archaeological evidence. Historical fiction is a marvelous romp through another time and place, via the imagination of the writer. So enjoy it for what it is: a story about humanity, about the issues we’ve all faced through the generations. Some things never change.

 

Find out more about Laura’s Minoan novel here – : http://www.lauraperryauthor.com/the-last-priestess-of-malia

 

Goodnight Sweet Cammo

A Guest Blog by Avril A Brown

 

On the outskirts of Edinburgh there’s a place called Cammo.

Since its last reclusive owner died, Cammo has been the proverbial hidden treasure, known only to a few. Tucked away at the end of a residential street, it was originally an estate with a manor house and parklands designed in the 1700s by Sir John Clerk of Penicuik. The house was eventually damaged by fire and neglect and now only the external ground floor walls still stand. The Council owns Cammo now and call it a “Wilderness Park”. It was gifted to the Council in 1980 as a local nature reserve.

 

I only found Cammo by chance when I got interested in orienteering (there’s a permanent course within the estate). I loved going there because once you crossed the gate you were swallowed up the silence and the green. It felt like a liminal space, reclaimed by Nature and where a brooding yet friendly genius loci slumbered quietly.

 

 

 

Not any more!

 

Unfortunately a group of well-meaning local people set themselves up as the Friends of Cammo. Despite all the good that the group has done – eg improving the diversity of the flora on the estate by planting appropriate wildflowers, introducing honeybee hives, litter picking and so on – I still feel that they should possibly be more correctly known as the Users of Cammo. This is because their ultimate aim seems to be bringing more and more people to the place and using it for ‘education’ and ‘events’. To this event, they have prodded the Council into opening up and publicising the estate more widely and more worryingly, improving it. I confess that I wept to see the previously natural, gloriously twisty, muddy and challenging tracks through the estate being replaced by ugly straight ‘blaes’ type ones. The air resonates with the screams of children attending the Forest Kindergarten and the previously restored ornamental canal is once again full of debris and discarded rubbish.

 

 

Tales of Wrong – a review

There is no earthly way I can write objectively about this book, I have too many feelings about the author and the stories to do anything other than gush.

Tales of Wrong is a collection of creepy and sinister short stories from Professor Elemental (Paul Alborough). There’s humour, whimsy and deeply disturbing things here – my favourite blend.

So, let me tell you about my history with these tales. Quite some years ago I approached the Prof about co-writing, and he was initially cautious, but he sent me a short story he’d written – Confessions Of A Swan Eater – which I loved. I persuaded him to co-author with me and we had a lot of fun doing ‘Letters Between Gentlemen’. During that time frame I also got to see Aunt Fanny’s Horn, and I later saw some of the other stories in their early stages. These stories are in this collection, and it makes me so very happy to finally see them on paper.

It is quite a thing to watch a person go from saying ‘I don’t know if I can write anything other than songs’ to holding in your hands the short story collection they’ve put together. And reading it, and seeing how clever it is – because these stories interconnect and are more than the sum of their parts. It’s a fine collection.

I loved this book. And yes, it is in some ways a hideous misshapen baby grown in a filthy laboratory – you can see that from the cover art I’ve inserted into this post. And yes, it is indeed very wrong – the Punch and Judy story is a definite candidate for the award for most wrong thing I have ever read. But it is also wonderful, and I cannot help but feel that when said hideous baby was in the test tube stage of its unnatural life, a teensy bit of me got in the mix – a strand of hair perhaps, or some highly suspect DNA. And it feels good to have been part of this dastardly process and just a little bit implicated in the results.

You can get copies here – https://professorelemental.com/product/337599

Matching sets – making greener choices

My guess is that the idea of matching sets goes with the industrial revolution and mass production. For most of history, most of our ancestors would not have replaced anything that wasn’t broken. Most people would have put up with broken things, or fixed them, or only replaced what was broken. The idea of matching crockery is a pretty weird one when you think about it in terms of how we use resources. Matching kitchen furniture. Matching bathroom stuff – these things are bulky and costly to replace, but so often if one goes, the lot has to go.

Of course, this whole approach serves capitalism very well. If we feel tatty and shameful with mismatched items and are persuaded to throw everything away and get new ones any time a single thing breaks, we spend more.

I recently went round this with the kitchen floor. A number of the vinyl floor tiles were breaking up and not fit for purpose. Doing the whole floor was clearly going to take a lot of time and effort, so neither of us got round to it. Eventually it dawned on me that there was no need to do the whole floor. No need to take up perfectly serviceable tiles in order to replace them. We bought a single pack of tiles, removed the damaged ones, inserted the new ones – a job that didn’t take Tom very long at all in the end. A small amount of unusable material went to landfill.

We now have mismatched floor tiles in the kitchen. It’s perfectly functional. It looks like what it is.

So much of it comes down to what we think is desirable, acceptable, good enough, versus what we think will get us judged critically. If looking overtly green was considered your sexiest option, it would be persuasive. If you thought people would look on you favourably for waste-avoiding choices, then chucking a whole bunch of things away because one thing was damaged, would not be even slightly attractive.

The Revolution Must Be Inclusive

I’m not a member of Extinction Rebellion and it’s a movement I have mixed feelings about. There are a lot of people I like and admire who are getting involved. There are a fair few people co-opting it for self promotion purposes, or to further other personal projects. That it is getting attention for climate crisis is important. That its means do not align reliably with its intended ends is a problem for me.

I am absolutely in favour of gathering in Trafalgar Square to speak truth to power. Protesting in the right place, in the faces of those in power whose minds need changing, is a good idea. Not all of it goes this way, which I think is counter-productive. I’ve seen a lot of it locally and there have been too many actions that alienate people rather than engaging them.

To radically change our cultures, our behaviour, our laws and politics, we needs as many people persuaded as possible. That makes the question of who to inconvenience, and how, an important one. An inclusive movement draws people in and persuades them. There is going to be discomfort for people whose lifestyles are not sustainable, and there will be pushback, but if people feel too uncomfortable, they’re more likely to dig in and resist change, which does not help.

I worry about the way in which many Green activities look like middle class hobbies. It suits certain areas of the media to push that message, because persuading most people that it’s snobbery and hypocrisy and not for them is an effective way of maintaining the status quo. Activists need to think carefully about this because we need more people engaging, not being put off. It is important not to price people out of participation. Protesting in ways that hurt people who are already struggling isn’t an appealing look.

I’ve been in a lot of spaces where I was the youngest person in the room, as a middle aged person, conscious that an even younger person might have had a much harder time of feeling comfortable there. The assumption that you are retired and can afford the time is a big assumption, and a common one. I’ve been in so many spaces where the assumption of middle class affluence was a real problem for me, and I’ve heard people say some pretty awful things about ‘the poor’ in those contexts.

It isn’t easy for people who feel themselves to be normal, to see who is missing from the room. All-male spaces don’t notice the lack of women as an issue. All-middle-class spaces don’t notice the lack of working class people. All-white spaces don’t notice the lack of ethnic diversity. Able bodied groups do not notice the lack of disabled people. And so on. Invariably, it becomes the job of the first person in the room not to fit to try and make that space. Which is exhausting and difficult and thankless. We should not be making disadvantaged people fight to get into the room and fight for a space at the table. We should be smoothing the way whenever we can.

If you think ‘those people’ aren’t in your movement because ‘they’ don’t really care about that sort of thing, please rethink this. If you’re treating a demographic as all being the same, you are going to be making terrible mistakes. If you’re participating, and seeing someone else’s lack of participation as them not being the sort of person who would, you won’t change anything. When you ask what you can do to be more inclusive and to enable more people to get involved and see green movements as for them, in their interests, and spaces where they would be welcome, you can make changes.

A non-inclusive revolution won’t work. A revolution for the middle classes won’t tackle many of the ways in which poverty and environmental problems go hand in hand. A revolution that isn’t for everyone, isn’t going to work. It will take maximum engagement to really change things. It should fall to those who are most able to help people get involved. If something is easy for you that doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone.