Nimue Brown's Blog, page 25

Why do Druids go to Stonehenge?

(Nimue)

The association between Druids and Stonehenge is complicated to say the least. If you want to get into this in detail then Ronald Hutton’s Blood And Mistletoe is an excellent read.

The short version goes that early historians were working with the Bible as their frame of reference for what the past looked like. Bible history doesn’t give us anything like the length of time actual history involves. Early historians could not imagine just how big the past is. What they did have was writing from Romans, and Romans mentioned the Druids. Therefore, in that relatively small window of time between the beginning of the world and the arrival of the Romans, there couldn’t have been many candidates for building Stonehenge. As the Romans had mentioned the Druids, they were assumed to be it.

When the first waves of people trying to recreate Druidry got started, this was the history they knew. Druids built Stonehenge, so if you wanted to be a Druid, clearly Stonehenge was the place to go do stuff. It isn’t until we get to the Victorians that people began to get to grips with the idea of there being a lot more history than the Bible suggests. This is a prime example of the way in which modern Pagans need to be sceptical about older texts. Old books are not always a better source.

There’s nothing intrinsically Druidic about Stonehenge. The Druids did not build it. However…

One of the things we now know thanks to archaeology is that people re-use sites. There are lots of places in the UK where later peoples have discernibly responded to much older evidence of human activity. Being massive and eye-catching, it probably is fair to assume that Iron Age Britons found Stonehenge interesting. It’s not much of a stretch to imagine that historical Druids went there and did stuff.

What we can say with absolute confidence is that modern Druids going to Stonehenge is in line with what people have done throughout history. It’s the same impulse that builds churches on the sites of old Roman temples, that buries the dead in much older graveyards, and keeps showing up at the same shrines long after the original use has been forgotten. Finding the past resonant and wanting to connect with ancestral sites is of itself a solid historical practice for which we have a ton of evidence.

Which leaves us in the amusing position that while the stories about Druids and Stonehenge are mostly rubbish, turning up isn’t. Showing up at historical sites may be the nearest we get as modern Pagans to an unbroken lineage of practice. Included in that is the way no one really knows what the people before them were doing. It’s a funny sort of continuity, but it’s one we can be confident about.

Ongoing adventures with body chemistry

(Nimue)

In America, adrenal fatigue is a diagnosis you can get. In the UK it isn’t.  Ten years ago I started exploring whether this might be part of what was wrong with me. I’d had several years of high anxiety, including routinely waking into panic attacks. I got to a point where my body just couldn’t sustain it anymore. The experience left me exhausted, prone to apathy and depression.

Our body chemistry is complex, and each chemical interacts with other chemicals and body systems in ways that science often barely understands. Each of those chemicals isn’t just doing one job. Adrenaline shows up for fear, but it’s also the chemistry of excitement, nerves, thrills, and enthusiasm. It has a role in a sexual context, and in theory you get a little burst of it in the morning to help you get moving. I went ten years without that little burst, and I’ve just got it back, which is exciting.

I’ve also regained the capacity to feel excited and enthused. I’ve been really aware of that part of my emotional range opening up again in recent weeks alongside the return of a drop of early morning adrenaline.

To have good body chemistry, you need a good diet, and good quality rest and sleep. You have to not keep doing things that burned out your system in the first place. Much of it beyond that is really circular. We make some of these chemicals in response to experiences. Happiness creates noradrenaline, touch generates endorphins, success gives us dopamine. If your environment isn’t stimulating your body to do chemistry in a good way, that really doesn’t help.

I have no idea why mental health interventions have focused so much on giving people serotonin. It’s one of many chemicals that contributes to us feeling good. Depressed people are routinely told to exercise so as to get natural endorphins, but I’ve never even seen anyone suggest that you could be depressed because your body isn’t doing a very good job of producing endorphins in the first place. I’ve definitely struggled with this. A twenty mile walk used to give me some feel good chemistry, but it’s a long time since I was last able to walk that far as a mental health intervention, and it always took that much.

I’ve seen huge improvements on the endorphin side in the last year. I’m starting to feel the reward chemistry a little bit. That’s totally new for me, I’d previously had no idea what people meant when they talked about dopamine hits, because I wasn’t experiencing it.

Life without good body chemistry is awful. It was like living in some cold hellscape, where nothing felt good, or happy or meaningful. It was like eating cold ashes. I’ve spent the last ten years trying very hard to figure out how to fix myself, and asking for things I thought would help – and for a long time not making any headway on that score.

I was right. The things I thought would help me have radically changed my life. They aren’t even that complicated. There are some ways in which my body is a bit odd, and a bit high maintenance, but this is possible to manage well, given the right support.

I am aware of a lot of people who struggle with depression, and who have not been healed by serotonin, nor been able to use yoga, mindfulness or a nice walk in nature to sort themselves out. I’m sharing my experiences so that you know that you aren’t alone in that, and because there clearly are ways out.

If there’s something your soul craves, that you haven’t got, take it seriously. You may well already have the keys to your own recovery.  It can be hard to take that seriously when faced with a barrage of noise about what’s supposed to fix you – but doesn’t.

Health, economics and hope

(Nimue)

Here in the UK, our Health Secretary Wes Streeting recently made a statement that described the National Health Service as, “no longer simply a public services department. This is an economic growth department.”

This has a lot of people very nervous about plans for privitization, but there’s more than one way of reading it. If you find the rest of the statement, he goes on to explicitly link the health of the nation with the health of the economy, which paints a very different picture.

We’re used to health being presented as something for those who can afford it. Here in the UK where the NHS is in theory free and for everyone, health is still treated as a luxury. We’re given the impression that they’re doing us a favour, and one we probably don’t deserve.

Wes Streeting is right in that the health of people and the health of an economy are connected. We should question the value of an economy that makes people sick. We need to recognise that the basis of any economy is ordinary people – everything depends on those front line workers and the people doing the most fundamental jobs. When people are too sick to work and need taking care of, right wing governments tend to frame them as a drain on resources, not a key part of the economy in the first place.

Pressuring sick people to work, or forcing them into crippling levels of poverty is not good for the economy. We should be caring about this as an issue of compassion, but Streeting is right – a healthy economy actually depends on the wellbeing of its workforce. Mental health is a big part of this, too. Exhausted, demoralised, stressed people are not able to work to high standards. They aren’t motivated, or dedicated or anything else you might need them to be. Health and happiness improves productivity.

Getting people well would be good for the economy.  Wellness would be a significant thing to commit to politically. True health isn’t just about sorting out the health service -although that’s a hugely important concern. Dealing with the stress caused by poverty and insecurity would get a lot done. People are healthier when they can access green space and can afford a good diet and have the resources to be physically active.

A healthy economy, an economy that delivers health and is underpinned by health would not be toxic in the way our current systems are. We need this radical rethink and radical reframing of what’s truly good and valuable. A healthy economy is a sustainable one that isn’t undermining the viability of life for future generations. That would be far less stressful to participate in. Imagine if work reliably seemed like a means to do good in the world, if work was fulfilling, and the idea of stressing people to the point of sickness was seen as an obscenity.

Back at the start of the industrial revolution, workers were routinely maimed and killed by the machines they were using. We’ve developed more subtle ways of harming people, but that too can change. Human health needs to come first when we think about work, and be understood as both key to a healthy economy, and what an economy should exist to deliver. We can’t have human health without a healthy planet, and no economy can be healthy for the long term if if it destroying the world it depends on.

Celtic spirituality without witchcraft

(Nimue)

Recently in a facebook group I saw a query about whether you can practice Celtic spirituality without practicing witchcraft.  It raises several interesting questions.

What even is Celtic spirituality? The Celts themselves weren’t a single coherent group of people with a clearly identified set of practices.

There are magic users in the ‘Celtic’ myths – Cerridwen even brews a magical potion. None of them really align with what we think of as modern witchcraft.

I guess for some people, spellcasting is intrinsic to what it means to be a Pagan. Spells can be an expression of Paganism, but witchcraft and Paganism are not interchangeable terms. You can be on any Pagan path and do no spellcraft whatsoever. You can be a witch by dint of being a herbalist, if that makes sense to you.

The whole thing suggests the existence of a modern take on Iron Age beliefs and later witchcraft, combined into a thing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with bringing elements together in this way. But, to have come to the conclusion that it might be hard to do Celtic spirituality without witchcraft suggests some things that trouble me. A lack of awareness of the history of both the Iron Age and witchcraft seem likely inferences.

It’s difficult out there at the moment. Reliable information is hard to come by. There are a lot of people claiming to be experts in Paganism who are selling their own fantasies, things they found in fantasy fiction and monstrously out of date stuff from early folklorists and historians. On top of that we now have AI users creating random crap to sell for money. The more of this there is, the harder it gets to tell what’s useful and what’s not.

Of course, the real test of anything isn’t how old or well sourced it is. If you can make it work, then that’s the single most important consideration. Age does not automatically confer validity – as with the out of date takes on folklore. I think as Pagans we’re in for some interesting times, bringing ongoing questions about what’s real, and useful.

Can you do Celtic spirituality without witchcraft? I honestly think it might be harder to do the two together, but that’s me. If you’re invested enough in something and it is real to you, it will work for you – that’s a key principle of chaos magic. But, if you are invested in something that is not well aligned with the rest of reality, that is going to have consequences.

Dealing with despair

(Nimue)

CW: Animal Cruelty

Back when I was at college, I was taught about a rather hideous animal experiment. It established that if you put a dog in a space, and electrocute part of the floor, the dog will quickly learn where to go and what to do. If there is no safe space, the dog will eventually just give up, lie there and take it. People are much the same.

Despair is a natural response to not having any options.  This can take a person into apathy, disassociation, and really passive responses to situations. A passive response can look a lot like willing acceptance from the outside, but I think it’s as well not to assume it. When there’s no way out and no way to fix things, passivity – as with the poor dogs in the experiment – is all you have left.

It’s so important to have options and the scope to change our circumstances. Laws that punish people for being in difficulty are particularly abhorrent – I’m thinking especially of attempts to criminalize homelessness.

Not everyone can solve the problems they find themselves faced with. Any more than the dogs in the experiments could independently opt out of that or leave the room. Lack of resources is most often what traps people. A lifetime of being told this is what you deserve makes it hard to even think about resisting mistreatment.

Shutting down someone else’s options is not something that we might easily do by accident. It may have more to do with priorities, with a sense of what someone is worth, or what they deserve. For most of us, this will be most relevant around how we vote. Far too many politicians sell themselves on their willingness to deprive vulnerable people of options. Just being alert to this and not going along with it is a useful contribution to make.

The choices we make invariably inform the options we then have. They may well also impact on other people’s options, too. Inevitably in choosing something we may reduce the choice others have. Much of the time this won’t be problematic – so long as other viable choices are available, and no one person is being routinely limited for someone else’s benefit. It’s important to think about how our choices may impact on others, and be alert to unintended consequences. Not having noticed how your preferences limit someone else is no sort of moral defence.

It’s also worth asking what we can do to open up more options for the people around us. How can we give each other more power and opportunity? How can we make sure no one feels like they are trapped in a room where some bastard has put an electric current through the floor?

How to be softer

(Nimue)

I have a deep love of the Tao Te Ching, a text with a lot to say about emulating water. Flow, soften, yield, and move gently. I’ve always liked the idea. Increasingly I find it is not enough to like things as ideas. I need to work out how to live and embody and make real those things that appeal to me as concepts. Ideas that don’t make it out into the world, or into our lives in some way aren’t worth the paper that you didn’t even write them on.

How to be softer, then. How to slow down, and move gently. My Tai Chi teacher of some years ago used to talk about giving it about sixty percent. I liked the idea. Again, I’ve not been so good at the practice. A bit less effort and striving. Not quite so much focus. Pauses. Breathing.

For the first time in my life I have some grasp of how to spend time just being, without doing. I have mostly been a human-doing. That can be relentless, it is exhausting and it takes a toll. I’m learning how to ask less of myself.

The feeling that I should be doing more is a hard one to wrestle with. And of course wrestling with it doesn’t bring softness and ease, it’s just a different fight, a different way of manifesting the internalised capitalism. You can’t try harder at not trying so hard.

Softness calls for letting go, for acceptance and not being so goal focused. It doesn’t mean abandoning all ambition and intention – that’s never going to work for me. There are a lot of things motivating me, and I have no desire to let them go. But I do want to be more comfortable, and I am already on that trajectory. During the years of deep burnout, I felt ragged and threadbare all of the time. I’ve overcome that now, and am starting to ask questions about the scope for feeling good, and well. A different kind of ambition, and a better one.

Softly, with relaxed muscles and an easy pace. Softly, with plenty of rest and sleep and things that nourish my mind, body, heart and soul. Making more room for that soft, animal self.  Making more room for life.

Fiddling in public

(Nimue)

This photo was taken at a gig on Saturday the 6th July. My first gig with the electric violin. My first gig with a violin in about fourteen years. It’s wonderful to be playing again.

The photo shows pretty much the only position I can hold a violin in. This is a long way from a classical violin hold, but I can play like this. Folk is much more forgiving, with instrument and bow held however you like, including at the hip and half way down your arm and any other way that works for you. I don’t have great mobility in my shoulders still, but I have enough,

Playing is a joy and I’m so glad to be doing this again. This is what comes of not clinging to perfectionism, being willing to deal with being a bit crap, and having ago for the sheer love of the thing. Getting back into playing over these last two years has been a fight, and often physically painful, but it’s been worth it. Do the things, do all the things, in whatever way you can.

I love accompanying Keith, his songs lend themselves to my playing style, and he’s a great deal of fun to work with. He’s a great deal of fun to do absolutely anything with. He’s helped me learn about the importance of joy, and how to seek it and to live a richer life on those terms. So much about quality of life comes down to our small, everyday choices, and I’m learning to make better ones.

Several friends took videos during the gig, so hopefully I’ll have something on Youtube soon and will share that here when I do.

Politics and compassion

(Nimue)

We need a kinder approach to politics, one that values both human and non-human life and works for the good of all. What we have is self serving, and promoting the interests of those who have most. We’re seeing the far right voices getting louder, promoting ideas that the answers to humanity’s problems lie in hate, oppression and cruelty,

What can any of us do in face of this? It poses a huge conundrum. When you’re dealing with people who can only be fought, and silenced, but your entire approach is rooted in the need for kindness, it’s hard to know what to do. This is of course the tolerance paradox and we know that if you tolerate the intolerant you facilitate them, and that has to be avoided.

One of the things that I’ve picked p on the psychology side is that empathy is something we normally develop early in childhood. Or don’t. People who grow up in environments that don’t teach empathy, have a hard time learning it later on. Change is always possible, but for the person who can’t empathise with others there may not be much of an incentive to even question that. Even so, trying to promote empathy and understanding seems important to me. There are everyday opportunities to do that, and to gently push back against the unkind narratives.

I’m not much of a fighter. I don’t handle conflict well and my body responds to aggression with panic, all too often. That limits what I can do. I’m not cut out for punching Nazis and there are times where that’s clearly absolutely necessary. To preach peaceful responses to violent people isn’t workable. There is a difference between wanting to stop people from causing harm, and wanting to cause harm, although there are those who would have you believe these things are exactly the same.

The ideal of course is to avoid getting into that conflict in the first place. Developing empathy and compassion, and getting people to a point where they don’t feel like harming someone else is the answer. Protecting diversity and minorities, refusing cruelty and eugenics, and countering this monstrous idea that it is those who have least who are causing the world’s problems.

For people who don’t have much power or self esteem, cruelty to others can be a way of feeling powerful. It especially attracts people who feel like they ought to be powerful. People who do have privilege, but not enough privilege to feel secure or comfortable. People who have far more in common with the people they would hurt by punching down, than they have with the people inciting them to hatred. These are not easy issues to tackle.

I’m a firm believer in  the power of small, everyday actions. Cultures are made up of people doing stuff. What we do contributes to that. What we say, what we tolerate, what we ignore, what we allow. Every single one of us is part of co-creating human society and every single one of us has some small amount of power to affect others. Humans are profoundly affected by what’s in our environments, and we all have the scope to inform the environment that impacts on others. Kindness is a powerful thing, and the small acts of good that each of us can do will produce ripples that go a little further out into the world.

Druidry and the human animal

(Nimue)

The idea that humans are somehow separate from ‘nature’ underpins everything that is wrong with us a species. It causes us to act in ways that are harmful to us and destructive of life on the planet. Consequently, engaging with our own animal natures is important work that allows us to challenge and change this dangerous misconception.

I’ve been making this part of my daily practice for some time now. I make a point of stopping regularly and just checking in with how my body is doing. I’ve become much more alert to my own needs for breaks, for rest and for very quiet downtime. I’ve increased the amount of contemplation I do.

Like many people, a lot of my work is intrinsically sedentary. I’ve become more aware of my own discomfort around spending long periods sat at a computer. I’m making a point of taking more breaks to stretch and move, and take care of my body.

Nature is part of us. We are mammals, creatures, animals and in the habit of denying this. We all need food, rest, sleep and comfort. We aren’t machines to be productively grinding out labour all the time. We’re creating ways of living and being that don’t suit us at all. The human animal needs green space for physical and mental wellbeing. We need fresh air and movement, peacefulness and also the right kinds of stimulation. We need less noise and more content.

Finding out what kind of creature you are is a journey. We all have our times of day when we best function and many of us are not suited to a nine to five job. We each need specific things in terms of diet. Some of us need more rest and sleep than others. Some of us need more stimulation than others. Making time to explore what we most need is a way of connecting with nature. Making room for nature as it manifests in our own bodies is a good choice for a Pagan. It’s about making honouring nature less of a nice but impractical idea and more of a lived reality.

In my experience, being more in tune with my animal self calls upon me to be gentler and kinder. I move at a slower pace, and I rest more. I also get more done that way and I don’t waste time on pointless, unfulfilling things. I’m better able to support and encourage restfulness in others – which is impossible if you’re rushing round all the time. I can make more space for the quiet, soothing activities that support and nurture the people around me.

There’s only so far with this we can go as individuals, because what we need is social change. However, being an individual and embracing nature within yourself will impact on the people in your life in all kinds of ways. Change can ripple out from us, inviting others to drop pace, and find ways to live kinder, easier lives too.

Making creativity possible

(Nimue)

My friend and collaborator Jessica Law has recently launched a Patreon account in the hopes that people will support her as a creator. In this post, she talks about how difficult it is making things wok as a musician. I play viola for her. Going out as a four piece band, it isn’t easy to get gigs that cover the cost of  being there, the travelling time, performance time and rehearsal time at a minimum wage level. This is normal across the creative industries.

Why I’ve launched a Patreon page

I’ve always worked other jobs, although I don’t talk about them much. Many of them haven’t been that exciting. It’s easier to get paying work marketing or editing books than it is to get paid for writing them. I’ve done a lot of social media and blog related work in previous years, and a whole host of other things as well.  There are only so many hours in a day, only so much energy a person can deploy, so writing part time is difficult.

You are more likely to succeed as a professional creator if you can invest time in it. In practice that most often means having someone who can support you while you get going, and who can continue to support you once you are working. You can be a full time professional author with a decent contract at a larger publishing house and still not earn enough to live on. Wild success as an author looks an awful lot like poverty, as things stand as at the moment. Which is bonkers.

Creating professionally means practice, research and development before you do the creative bit of the work. Once you have something you can put into the world you need to sell it, market yourself, build an audience. Like all other jobs, there’s admin to do, and networking and building a customer base. It’s exactly like being a small business, but one where creating the product takes a huge amount of time, effort and skill. It’s exceedingly difficult making all of that work when you are also working other jobs.

Patreon is really helpful. I don’t have a massive revenue, but it’s reasonably predictable, and reassuring. Royalties get paid every six months for most authors, so having anything in the gaps is also a blessing.

Jessica Law is an amazing, brilliant person. She was part of The Mechanisms – a band with an international following. She was part of The Magnus Archives – another very successful project in terms of popularity and size of audience. She’s got a novel out there, and her first children’s book was a huge success and her second one came out this year. She’s the sort of person who really should be winning, and should be able to create as a full time professional. But, the world doesn’t work that way at the moment.

You can support her over here – https://www.patreon.com/JessicaLaw

And, if you want to support me, this is my Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/NimueB

One off donations are also a thing, and you can find me on ko-fi, where you can also pick up a lot of pdfs of my work, and drop a quid or two if the fancy takes you. It all helps. https://ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T