Nimue Brown's Blog, page 27

Books for Druids

(Nimue)

At some point this year I’ll bring out my book on pilgrimage. It’s finished aside from the formatting and releasing issues. Currently on Patreon I’m working on a book about spirits of place. I already have books out exploring Druidry and the Darkness, and Druidry and the Future. Those are free as pdfs or pay what you like. You can find print versions on Amazon.

Over at Moon Books I have books about prayer, meditation, ancestry and dreaming. https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/nimue-brown

At this point I’m being deliberately slow when it comes to writing non-fiction. Every book takes at least a year and explores a topic I’ve spent considerable time with. I won’t be starting the next book for some months, but I would like to settle on the theme for the next project and devote some time to pondering it well ahead of jumping in.

If there’s anything you’d particularly like me to write about, do please comment.

I’m considering the idea of doing an everyday Druidry book, focusing on small, everyday actions, and ways to integrate Druidry into the rest of life.

The prayer and meditation books are very much about those topics. I have wondered about doing a book of meditations or a book of prayers at some point. I’m also very much open to suggestion!

The Croviss Girls

(Nimue, review)

This is decidedly occult fiction, set in a parallel universe, where music, magic, art and politics have collided in some startling ways. Lon is a 30 something musician, seductress, disaster bi chaos bunny and at the start of the book she meets a chap who is apparently dead, at which point life gets even more complicated.

I loved this book, I really got in with the writing style. The first third has a lot of comedy in it, especially for anyone who has flirted with the occult and knows who Crowley is. It’s a knowing kind of style, and I giggled a lot. The middle section throws us in wild contrast into some very troubled lives and the back story of The Croviss Girls. There’s a lot of handed down family trauma, but there’s also hope. The third section finds us back with Lon, magic, chaos and the issue of a world that might be falling apart.

While the story is complete, it felt like part of a much bigger world, which I liked. Not all of the ends are tidily dealt with and not everything is explained. this is something I do in my own work and I appreciate other people leaving me with things to wonder about and puzzle over. It’s a satisfying story without being too tightly sewn up.

What it most reminded me of was Iain Banks – the author’s tone, the knowing humour, the humanity and the horror all tangled up together and juxtaposing in unexpected ways.

I came across this book because I have some work coming out with Tenebrous Texts, too. I can’t say this is an ‘everyone will love this’ sort of book, but if you are the sort of person who likes what I write and /or likes Iain Banks, then I think it very likely you will enjoy this book as much as I did.

Healing is messy

(Nimue)

Sometimes, before things can get better, they have to get worse. On the physical front, that was evident back in the winter – cancer treatments take a huge toll on a person. At this point, Keith is still dealing with side effects, but he is doing really well.

It is very much true of emotional healing. If you patch yourself up to keep going, you can end up with the emotional equivalent of shrapnel in your body. Potentially quite a lot of it. Undealtwith grief, unprocessed trauma, unresolved issues all lie around on the inside taking up space and getting in the way of life. You can’t function well when you’re full of the things that hurt you in the past. Healing means dealing with them, getting in there and removing what’s on the inside that does not belong on the inside.

I’m finding this a useful metaphor at the moment. This kind of healing is a lot of work. It is worth noting that healing does not often happen in an effortless way. Having space and peace gets a lot done, and makes it possible to get in and deal with the issues. For anything dramatic and serious, healing is a process that involves active engagement.

An experience is damaging when it impacts on a person in ongoing ways. That can mean being overwhelmed with anxiety, or triggered by anything that seems similar to the initial experience. For me, the damage has most often taken the form of becoming less able to trust myself. I second guess my own feelings and needs, question if my needs really are needs, I struggle to ask for help when I most need it, and I am so easily persuaded that absolutely everything is entirely my fault.

I’ve done quite a bit of unpicking in the last year, and rebuilding. The work of learning how to trust myself, and to trust the validity of my feelings is ongoing. I’m deeply grateful for Keith’s support in all of this. His gentle wisdom holds me steady, and his care is something that shows up in active way. As he pointed out recently, it isn’t care if it doesn’t do anything – another important lesson for me to take onboard. When people say they care but do nothing that helps, that also leaves marks.

To be able to imagine that I’m ok, I need to get to grips with the idea that I have, historically, been treated in ways that were not ok. This is not easy to do – because it means re-interpreting the nature of some of my past dealings with people and accepting that I trusted people who did not honour that trust.

There’s a popular online saying about ending up in therapy as a consequence of the people who really should have had therapy but declined to go. There’s an element of that here – people acting from their own wounds in ways that wounded me. I can’t do anything about those situations, but I can do my best not to carry on and wound someone else from my own places of distress.

Which is not – I remind myself – about expressing me distress or asking for help. These are not abusive actions. It is not a kind of violence to cry if you are hurt, or to beg for change if you are suffering. It’s not an act of cruelty to flag up if something doesn’t work for you, especially if what’s happening is increasingly unbearable. To be treated as though it is, can be incredibly damaging, and I am squaring up to that damage and to the idea that maybe I’m not a toxic monstrosity after all. Just someone who needed some kindness.

I’m throwing this out there in case someone else can use it to help navigate their own healing. What’s happened to me isn’t that special – so many of us suffer from handed down wounds, and from contact with unhealed people. Many of us at times will be the unhealed people whose suffering impacts problematically on others. All we can do is try to clean out those wounds and replace the damage with something healthy. It’s not just about self care, it’s about being someone who can better relate to others. By this means we all become more able to grow and heal, supporting each other as we do so.

Divinity in the darkness

(Nimue)

I met darkness on the hillside

Crouching low and heavy, unfriendly

In this landscape of ancient, nameless Gods

Who care nothing for human concerns

But stalk the wild ways in those long hours

When the world transforms in shadow.

Wood hunting wanderers, beings of awe

And terror. Vast and uncompromised.

Scuttle back to the small circle

Of protective light, the dark Gods

Will not trouble you if only

You do not seek them out, nor try

To summon, command or impress.

Know they are not for you, and curl

Into safety at the hearth side.

Hear their passing in the nervous bleating

Of huddled sheep – too tame for these

Uncanny hours and wilderness spirits.

Feel your smallness, your irrelevance

Enormity of hill, night, godhood

You are a speck in time, a flicker

Fleeting as the nearby sheep, fearful,

Alive and wise enough to recognise

What does not belong to you.

Slightly less midsummer madness

(Nimue)

Midsummer has tended to be a rather crazy time of year for me. I’m sensitive to light, so the short nights can leave me sleep deprived, and that’s never been great for my mental health or physical functionality. This year is playing out in surprising ways.

To my surprise, I’ve become a lot less light sensitive. As this has been an issue since childhood, I did not imagine it could just go away, but it has. The calmer and more relaxed I am, the easier it is for me to sleep. (Who knew?) I was an anxious child, for a whole host of reasons, but at the time there was no way of identifying that as the cause of my sleep issues.

It turns out that if I’m relaxed enough, I can go to sleep even when there’s considerable light. I may be woken by light, but can go back to sleep – this is wild stuff. It’s allowed me to wake for the dawn chorus often, appreciate the start of the day and then go back to sleep. So here I am in the middle of summer, not being dismantled by exhaustion and getting to really enjoy what the season has to offer.

When something seems normal, it can go unnoticed. You might not even try to change the things that seem inevitable. These experiences have taught me not to assume that anything is forever, and unchangeable. It’s opened me up to a far greater sense of possibility and hope. Not everything can be fixed, not every problem has a solution. Nonetheless, ‘better’ may be a possibility and is worth looking for.

Rather than driving me slowly round the bend, this summer has brought remarkable gifts. I think I could get to like this time of year, with its beauty and bounty.

How to suck at things

(Nimue)

A friend of mine has started learning to play a musical instrument. She commented that she’s getting to the point where sometimes it sounds more like music than noise.

Starting out as a musician is tough, because in the beginning you will sound awful. This is hard as an adult – children seem to have more stamina for it. As an adult learner if you have an interest in music the odds are you know enough to have a keen sense of just how awful you are at the beginning. It’s true of almost anything you might take on where you haven’t been automatically blessed with some innate ability to do it.

It can be hard to push into things without the comfort of being innately good. Having a natural gift means very little beyond that early insulation. It’s easier to get started on those terms. However good you are at something there will come a point where you have to work, push and struggle to improve. That can catch out the people who thought they were intrinsically good, and plenty of people give up when they hit that first challenge.

If you want to be good at something, what has the most impact is the time you invest in it. If you love something enough to keep working on it, then given enough time, you will become good at it. The idea that talent is key is an absolute lie. It just makes it less intimidating to get started.

It is absolutely ok to suck. It is ok to be crap at what you’re trying to do. In the case of instruments as a beginner there should be no shame at all in making terrible, unmusical noises. You won’t get to make the beautiful noises without passing through this. Every great musician you have ever heard had some point in their life when they did not know how to play. There were years when they could not play as well as they do now. They may become even better in the future. Anyone who plays music is on that same path.

It takes a certain amount of courage to suck at something and keep going. I was not a naturally gifted violin player in my teens. I was mediocre at best, and had no feel for it. Once I got out of the classical/school system and learned to play more by ear and with people, I started to flourish, and I got fairly decent. Body issues robbed me of the ability to play and I’ve been obliged to go back to sucking at it in the hopes of getting better.  It’s not easy.  

If there is something you want to do, but you have no natural aptitude, do it anyway. You will get better. Allow yourself to suck, and be prepared to struggle. If you want it enough to put in the time then you will improve. How much you improve will have more to do with the time you invest than any other single factor.  If someone has told you that you can’t do the thing because you weren’t able to magically to it straight off, ignore them. These are not good teachers. Time and dedication are what makes someone good, and you can start anywhere and work towards being capable.

Questions of perfection

(Nimue)

Demanding perfection of yourself, or of anyone or anything else is a terrible idea. Seeking to be the best that we can be has a lot to recommend it. If you let that tip over into perfectionism, it will be the enemy of getting anything done, and it will suck the joy out of everything. There’s far more to be said for ‘good enough’ and cracking on. If we wait until things are perfect, we may never act, never truly live, never see the good around us.

Being alert to the existence of perfection is an entirely different process. This is something I’ve been increasingly aware of as I spend time with Keith – he’s good at spotting moments of perfection and alerting me to them. We spent some time in the yurt talking about the nature of perfection and how best to seek it and relate to it.

Nature often offers us perfection – in moments of beauty. Skies, landscapes, plants and living beings will reveal themselves to us in this way. Moments of perfect tranquillity, of bliss, and gentle wonder. These can be everyday things, and noticing them is really enriching. Perfection can show up in small, brief ways, tiny gem-like experiences that are worth pausing to relish and treasure.

You can’t make perfection, but you can witness it. You can’t demand it, but you can be open to it. Pushing and striving makes it less available, while greeting the world from a state of openness allows the grace of perfection to occur in those shining moments that are sprinkled through a day.

Make Believe – Hexford book 1

(Nimue, review)

Just buy it.

Ok, proper review. I’ve loved all of Craig’s books so far, this might be my favourite. Hexford is a magical town in Yorkshire, a bit disconnected from the rest of reality. It is the sort of town you probably want to live in, because it’s full of magic, and the supernatural killing probably won’t put you off.

The book features witches, and folklore and spirits of place in ways that really, really worked for me. The writing is lush, the characters are endearing, and the tale that this sets off looks very appealing. Unsurprisingly (for anyone who knows Craig’s work) there are some decidedly gothic elements too.

This is a small book – I read it in the course of an afternoon, and it made me very happy. For me this was very much a comfort read, but it is likely (given everything I know about Craig) that the series as a whole will at least saunter along the edges of horror now and then. For now it feels fairly cosy (to me) but then I often find that in certain kinds of darker fiction.

If you’d like to live in the enchanted house, and you’d add your witch mark to the wall, knowing that a house with that much protection on it probably has to be protected from something pretty serious… this is for you.

It’s out at the end of the month, you can pre-order it from the publisher, or from you preferred bookseller. https://salpe-publishing.sumupstore.com/product/make-believe-hexford-book-one-pre-order

Back from the wilds

(Nimue)

I had a very lovely week living in a yurt. Twice, I encountered deer in the field in the early morning. There were buzzards, kites, ravens and wild geese as well as a whole host of small birds in the nearby trees. Some of them were quite friendly. There were owls, and bats, wildflowers, and a massive, beautiful view. The weather was occasionally challenging.

Being off grid and having no wi-fi is rather entertaining as a short term experience. I have lived it – during two years on a narrowboat. I would not choose to live that way again. The challenges of everyday life with a drop toilet and limited electricity have charm when you’re doing it for a week, but are exhausting when you do it all the time and also have to earn a living.

It was a great luxury being able to take so much quiet time, immersed in the natural world. At the same time it renewed my appreciation of indoors plumbing, especially. It is good to be reminded of how comfortable modern living really is, and how much we benefit from it. It is all too easy to romantacise the off-grid life, the shift ‘back to nature’ and all the rest of it and to forget how tough and demanding that can be if you are living it rather than playing at it. I like playing at it, and I can recommend playing at it.

One of the things that struck me is how much I take for granted and depend on running water in the kitchen. It’s quite a challenge cooking without it – although not impossible and I’m good at cooking on a fire. It has to be said that cooking on an open fire is a pretty inefficient way to do things. Again, I was only playing at it because I did not have to do the work involved in sourcing or prepping the wood.

Like most humans, I really benefit from time in the open, in peaceful surroundings rich with beauty. Like most humans, I’m not cut out to live like that all of the time. We’ve spent thousands of years developing ways to live more comfortably, and there is a lot to be said for it. I do think we have gone too far, and that we need to learn to be happier with less, and to better enjoy what we have. Right now, I’m feeling the love for a toilet I can visit in the night without needing a coat and a torch. That’s luxury, and many of our ancestors would agree. The rest of them were probably better organised with buckets/chamber pots.

Teaching and gatekeeping

(Nimue)

I’ve always been interested in spinning, even as a child. About ten years ago I had a fleeting experience, which led to being told in no uncertain terms that I could not spin and would not be able to spin. The problem, apparently, was that I was far too tense, and only relaxed people can spin well – or I was informed.

Back in March I bought a drop spindle. I saw one at a re-enactment event, and decided I could have a go. Even if I couldn’t get anywhere, it would be a nice item to add to the living history side of what we do.

On the Saturday at Chesters Fort, I settled down to learn. There were a lot of muttered swears on that first day as I tried, slowly and ineptly, to put theory into practice. I wasn’t very good at the beginning. People often aren’t automatically good at things they are new to.

I kept at it – for hours, over nine days, and I made some progress. I’m still not brilliant, but I’ve not been doing it very long. During the week a few women approached me – a few who were also spinners, a few who had tried and could not get to grips with it. They were all encouraging and made me feel like I was making progress. It’s not the easiest thing to get to grips with, evidently.

When I have other hats on and am getting people to sing, I regularly run into people who have been told that they can’t. The overwhelming majority of them can, and have the potential to be really good if they put in the time and effort. Being good at something does not depend on being able to do it effortlessly and immediately. Most of us need some time to learn new skills.

 I have thoughts about people who call themselves teachers, but can only teach people who are naturally gifted. That isn’t teaching at all. Helping people learn means being able to take on those who are not instantly brilliant and show them how to grow, giving them tools and support. Real teaching doesn’t reject you at the outset for not being good enough. That’s gatekeeping, not helping people.

Whatever you try, know that it is fine not to be perfect. You do not have to magically know how to do everything. It’s ok to learn by trial and error and to make mistakes. It’s also absolutely fine to do something because it appeals to you – how good you are doesn’t really matter if the process gives you joy. Generally speaking, people get better at things with time and practice, but it’s also ok to just be at a level that makes you happy. We don’t have to be constantly working at everything.