Nimue Brown's Blog, page 328

Favourite things – Steampunk Women

I’ve never heard a story about a woman being harassed, assaulted or otherwise abused at a Steampunk event. No doubt it happens from time to time, but compared to the treatment women can expect in many places, Steampunk is friendly. Women at events dress as they please – from the most outrageous of burlesque-style costumes, through to a full-on emulation of Victorian prudery, and all places in between. It’s all fine. With corsets worn on the outside of clothing, cut off crinolines, knickerbockers, and all kinds of padding, a person can emphasise and de-emphasise as the fancy takes them, and play with ideas of sexuality in clothing.

As artists and authors, clothes creators, models and musicians, poets and peacocks (really, literally as a peacock), as organisers and facilitators and innovators, women are active participants at all levels. On one hand I feel bloody stupid writing this, because it should be obvious, and how the world is, and not worthy of comment, but there are still a great many places where this just isn’t true.

A community is what you make it – it is nothing more than the sum and total of the people involved. One of the few rules of the Steampunk community is good manners. It’s amazing how quickly the various forms of sexism generally manifest in the world can be wiped out by this one simple thing. It’s rude to make negative comments about other people’s clothes and appearance. It’s rude to treat another human being as an object for sexual entertainment. It’s rude to assume another person is obliged to pay you attention. Any assumption of entitlement, is basically rude.

Steampunk women tend to have rejected the narrow, mainstream version of what it means to be female. Often in mainstream spaces, women are the ones who will pull other women down for not fitting in. The female author who complained that the first female bishop wasn’t wearing lipstick, is a case in point. Amongst Steampunk women I have found a more supportive culture. We are, collectively, more interested in lifting each other up than putting each other down.

The paying of compliments is a normal part of a Steampunk gathering. Out there in the rest of the world, compliments can be used as a veil for harassment – highly suggestive and sexualised compliments, statements designed to reduce and disempower the target. And if the target objects, she’s no fun, has no sense of humour, can’t take a compliment. She will be told she should be pleased that she’s getting this attention. Many women have learned to fear compliments. A Steampunk compliment is more likely to go ‘nice squid, did you make it yourself?’ It’s more likely to be about the wit and genius of your costume – things you as a person had a choice over. It means there is no gender aspect to who pays compliments to whom, no aspect of body shape or size.

At Steampunk gatherings I see women of all ages and shapes, and women from groups often considered to be marginalised. I see other women getting to enjoy how they look, getting to play with appearance and identity, and enjoy other people doing the same. As a middle aged women uncomfortable in their own skin, not always very easy with the whole ‘woman’ thing either, I feel safe in this space. No one is going to tell me that I’m fat or funny looking, or too old for what I’m wearing, or not sexy enough, or too sexual, or any of the other things I can and have fallen foul of in other places. People are nice to me. Usually it’s my hat that gets all the attention, and this is fine.

If we start from the premise that we owe each other courtesy, so many other things are better. We live in a culture that makes entertainment out of sneering at people on the telly, and that goes in for celebrity appearance shaming in magazines, relentlessly sells us sexualised images of women while at the same time condemning women for being sexualised. It would be easy to fix, we just have to stop thinking assholes are funny, and that ridicule is funny, and start being polite.

Blogging, pacing and a re-think

For years now, I’ve run Druid Life as a pretty much every day blog. Occasionally I miss days, but not often. This week I’ve taken the decision to halve my output. I hope those of you who are following me will be ok with this, but part of the point of halving my output is to improve on the quality of my blogging. It should give me more time to think about things, and fewer days when I cobble a post together for the sake of posting, rather than because I have something to say.

There are other reasons. I want to make more time for music, for fiction writing, and for time off. I’m also exploring video making a bit more. As I’ve been spending time promoting other authors, I’ve come to notice a thing about the internet. It’s especially true on Twitter, but not just a Twitter issue. Vast numbers of writers get out there every day to compete with each other for your time and attention. Many of them do not get the attention they deserve, and there’s also a lot of empty vessels out there making a lot of noise. I want to change my relationship with this. By cutting down on my blogging, I’m making room to spend more time sharing other people’s work, without as much risk of overloading anyone on social media.

My aim is to post here on odd numbered days (the Moon Books blog posts on even numbered days, so this will balance nicely). It may well be that I use the days I’m not creating content to reblog other people, and for guest blogs. I may use that space to flag up things I’m doing other places, I don’t know – we’ll see how it goes.

I’m looking for a gentler life balance, I want it to be easier for me to take days off, and I want to invest more in the quality of my own work. I want to spend more time reading. The daily blogging has become so much an intrinsic part of my day, that not doing it is going to feel weird, but I need to challenge myself, and letting go a bit with this could, I think, be a good thing.

When I started this blog I was a total unknown as a Druid and as an author. That’s changed a bit. Increasingly however, authors have to spend a hell of a lot of time pushing themselves forwards in order to build a readership and sell books. I don’t want to feel this constant pressure to attract people and persuade you to be interested in what I do. I want to share things I think are interesting. I want to help other authors and creative and active people – make life that little bit easier for people who are doing good stuff. So this is, in part, a laying down of all ambitions to be a Very Important Druid or a popular author, in preference for doing something I think will be more useful. I feel good about this choice, and optimistic about the shift of focus; it seems like a step in the right direction for me.

Bee Garden Offering

Image by Magnus Manske

A Guest blog by Heather Awen

In early spring many people’s thoughts turn to gardening. Deciding what to plant and where to plant it, some start growing seeds inside while others make a list of flowers to buy and seed savers trade precious heirloom varieties. Gardening is commonly thought of something that people with yards only do, but there are many ways to garden even if you have no private patch of land.

This year why not plant a bee garden as a living shrine to a Deity or bioregion? Bees are dying in such great numbers there is now a term for it: Colony Collapse Disorder. According to Bees Free, http://www.beesfree.biz/The%20Buzz/Bees-Dying “Since 2006, North American migratory beekeepers have seen an annual 30 percent to 90 percent loss in their colonies; non-migratory beekeepers noted an annual loss of over 50 percent. Similar losses were reported in Canada, as well as several countries in Europe, Asia, and Central and South America.”

During this time of peril for bees, the great pollinators, an offering can be made of a safe haven.  Traditionally Pagan rituals focused on the renewal of the interconnected world. Today with 2 in 3 bites of food linked to the need for bees, renewal ceremonies for the pollinators in practical form are needed. Beyond Pesticides One Page Fact Sheet http://www.beyondpesticides.org/programs/bee-protective-pollinators-and-pesticides/bee-protective

states the biggest threat is “Neonicotinoids—including, clothianidin, thiamethoxam, and imidacloprid—are a class of insecticides that are highly toxic to honey bees and other pollinators. They are systemic, meaning that they are taken up by a plant’s vascular system and expressed through pollen, nectar, and guttation droplets from which bees forage and drink.” They not only kill the bees, but sublethal levels cause bees to get lost.

Photograph by Onderwijsgek

Neonicotinoids were banned in the EU in 2013 but this may be overturned according to The Soil Association. “The temporary EU ban on neonicotinoid pesticides is looking like a fragile barrier against the political and financial muscle of the chemical companies.”

http://www.soilassociation.org/banneonics  Unfortunately 100% of the soil samples from the UK’s hedgerows are still filled with neonics, especially the hawthorn, a favorite for bees.

Honey is connected to many ancient pagan sacred rituals while Deities of flowers are abundant. In folklore Fairies are connected to flowers. Eco-pagans working to regenerate the land where they live recognize the important role of flowers, bees and other pollinators. No matter what your spiritual path, creating a native flower garden for bees is a practical ceremony that can be a living temple or offering to whomever or whatever you consider sacred. Consider it for a group ritual or a private meditation.

Your living shrine could be a container garden, a flower box, seed balls thrown into vacant lots, guerrilla gardening or planting flowers in the land where you live. Even if you are an apartment dweller there are many ways in which you can create a bee garden.

 

Step 1: Who (besides the bees!) is your bee sanctuary a living shrine for?

In designing a garden the first thing is to decide who will be the recipient of this devotion. If you are bioregional animist take time getting to know the place where you will be gardening. Listen to its needs, to its past, intuit its hopes for its future. Research what the land was like before industrial civilization changed it so drastically. Look carefully and talk to the land about the garden and sense what it needs. There are a lot of benefits which the land may want to hear about such as bringing beauty to the people and how that could result in the land being treated differently . When doing this sort of work think of yourself as a diplomat reaching out to a land that may not have much reason to trust you. Form a relationship by being honest with your intentions and listening to the environment. Any vow that you make about tending to the garden including watering be certain you will keep. You are not just creating a place where bees can pollinate; you are reestablishing a sacred relationship with place.

Whether you are a hard polytheist, believe that the different gods and goddesses are aspects of the divine or a duotheist Wiccan and believe that all goddesses are version of the Lady and all gods to be versions of the Lord, there are many Deities connected to flowers and honey for who you can plant a living temple. If there is one with whom you have a strong relationship or one with whom you would like to develop strong relationship, consider dedicating the garden to Her or Him. You can also dedicate the garden to several Deities perhaps, arrange a section for the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone or have yellow flowers for a solar Goddess and red flowers for a sacrificed God. Most of all follow your intuition. Please take a look at the following information about the Gods and Goddesses in ancient Pagan cultures and imagine how important the bee must have been.

In the Germanic tradition we have Freya, with flowers falling from her hair; Freyr’s female helper Beyla whose name is suspected to be connected to honey, from

Photo by Umberto Brayj

which the sacred mead is made; and the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of the Dawn and Spring Eostre. Brythonic Britain gives us Blodeuedd “flower face;” Flora is the Sabine Roman goddess of flowers and springtime; Gaelic Scottish Bride is the Goddess of Spring; and the Gaelic Airmid is a healing Goddess of herbalism. Maia is an ancient Italic goddess of Springtime; Mycenaean Goddess Potnia is called “The Pure Mother Bee”; and the Greek nymph Chloris is associated with flowers, transforming many Divine heroes into flowers such as Hyacinth and Crocus. Hindu goddess Parvati kills a demon by stinging him from the bees that come from her body. Bhramari is the Hindu Goddess of bees, Austeja is the Lithuanian Goddess of bees while the Mayan Goddess of bees is Colel Cab. Mayan fertility Goddess Xochiquetzal’s name means “flower standing upright;” the blossom Princess Konohanasakuya-hime comes from Japan; and the Yoruban Orisha Oshun loves honey as an offering.

 

The world of flowers and bees is not limited to the feminine. Ah-Muzen-Cab is a Mayan bee God; the Egyptian sun god Ra’s tears turned to bees when they landed on desert sand; and the Hindu love God Kamadeva’s bowstring is made from honeybees. Melissus “honey man” comes from Crete; Aristaeus is the Greek God of beekeeping; and the Lithuanian God of bees is Bublias. Chinese mythology has the 12 Deities of Flowers. In Haitian Vodou Papa Simbi is the herbal healer and magician and Grand Bois is associated with trees and herbs, often given offerings of honey. The Egyptian fertility God Min is offered honey.

Wiccans could create gardens for the Triple Goddess, perhaps focusing on the Maiden or Mother depending on the type of flowers planted. If focusing on flowers of the underworld, the shrine could be for the Crone. The Green Man is an obvious candidate for a fertility pollination garden. If you are a bioregional animist these bee gardens are be offerings to the spirits of place.

Different deities are associated with different flowers. The Lily was a symbol for Ishtar, Hera, Juno and later the Virgin Mary, and of Upper Egypt. Venus and Epona both received roses as offerings. In Scotland Bride brings snowdrops with her in the Spring. In Greece the red anemone is linked to the death of Adonis while the violet is the blood from Attis, killed while hunting a wild boar. Carnations in Mexico are the flowers of the dead. Asphodel is the flower of the underworld, sacred to Hades. Ganesh Jee is known to love red flowers. Irish Diarmaid and Grainne made beds out of Heather to hide when they eloped. Celtic water goddess Coventina is depicted holding a water lily. Freya is associated with milkwort, cowslip, primrose and daisies “day’s eye.” The roots of Aster, the “starflower” of the Greeks, were crushed and fed to bees in poor health. When Virgo scattered star dust to the earth it became aster flowers. The Greek goddess Iris led the souls of dead women to the Elysian Fields, so purple irises were planted on the graves of women. Pansies were white until pierced by Cupid’s arrow when they turned purple. A maiden named Clytie fell in love with the sun God Helios who abandoned her and the Gods turned her into a sunflower. The Brythonic Olwen’s name means “white clover.” Weyland the Smith used to be left Valerian in exchange for horseshoes.

If planting a garden for the Good People, land spirits or elves consider some of these flowers. Fairies love strawberries and St. John’s wort. In folklore fairies meet in gardens of chrysanthemums. The spear thistle is the emblem for Scotland. In Wales foxglove or Maneg Ellyllyn (“the Good People’s Glove”) is sacred to fairies. Elecompane is a good offering for the Alfar who, like the Fey, also love Sweet Cicely. The Dutch called Rosemary “elf leaf” and once believed it to be haunted by elves. Daisies are helpful with forming relationships with nature spirits who also connect strongly to the highly poisonous Lily of the Valley, which should never be transplanted lest the land be offended.

Honey is part of the ambrosia of the gods of Olympus; one of the five ingredients for the elixir of immortality in Hinduism; the basis of the Scandinavian holy drink mead, while in Buddhist myth Buddha made peace among his disciples when a monkey brought him honey to eat. Even the oracles at Delphi originally are thought to be connected with honey.

Obviously honey has been an important part of human ritual for centuries! In the nation of Georgia archaeologists have found honey in an ancient tomb about 5000 years old. The dead had three different varieties of honey for the journey to the Afterlife.

 

Photo by Severnjc

Step 2: Designing the Garden

In planning where your garden will be check where the sunlight is at different times during the day. Bees like sunny places with protection from the wind. Most packages of seeds will tell you how much sun the plant needs and may say what soil conditions are best. Some plants like sandy soil while others prefer clay. Your seed or plant seller should be able to help. In a container garden the right soil seems especially important.

Here is a list of common plants that bees especially love:

Basil Ocimum

Cotoneaster Cotoneaster

English lavender Lavandula

Giant hyssop Agastache

Globe thistle Echinops

Hyssop Hyssopus

Marjoram Origanum

Wallflower Erysimum

Zinnia Zinnia

Calliopsis

Clover

Cosmos

Crocuses

Dahlias

Foxglove

Geraniums

Hollyhocks

Hyacinth

Marigolds

Poppies

Roses

Aster Aster

Black-eyed Susan Rudbeckia

Caltrop Kallstroemia

Creosote bush Larrea

Currant Ribes

Elder Sambucus

Goldenrod Solidago

Huckleberry Vaccinium

Joe-pye weed Eupatorium

Lupine Lupinus

Oregon grape Berberis

Penstemon Penstemon

Purple coneflower Echinacea

Rabbit-brush Chrysothamnus

Rhododendron Rhododendron

Sage Salvia

Scorpion-weed Phacelia

Snowberry Symphoricarpos

Stonecrop Sedum

Sunflower Helianthus

Wild buckwheat Eriogonum

Wild-lilac Ceanothus

Willow Salix

Bee balm

Borage

Catnip

Coriander/Cilantro

Fennel

Mints

Rosemary

Sage

Thyme

(Remember to make sure that they are native to where you live.)

Bees also feast on the flowers in vegetable gardens, especially:

Blackberries

Cantaloupe

Cucumbers

Gourds

Cherry trees

Peppers

Pumpkins

Squash

Strawberries

Watermelons

 

Image by Wojsyl

Bees like variety, especially the colors blue, purple, white and yellow. Because different bees have different tongue lengths, include a variety of shapes of flowers. To keep them fed all season, plant a few varieties that bloom in spring, summer and autumn.

Plants that are traditionally considered weeds are the sturdiest. They make flowers, too, and many of them are helpful medicinal magickal or culinary herbs. We have seen bees excited about lemon balm and oregano. You may want to consider having your flower shrine double as a garden for cooking, magick and medicine, which may tie into any deities to whom you devoted the garden.

 

If you are buying seeds be positive that they are organic seeds, with nothing that could kill the bees. Beyond Pesticides has a webpage dedicated to the safe companies in the US. http://www.beyondpesticides.org/programs/bee-protective-pollinators-and-pesticides/what-can-you-do/pollinator-friendly-seed-directory Look for heirloom, organic seeds if you can because those are plants in danger of becoming extinct and we want lots of diversity. Be sure to focus on native wildflowers which will be hearty and support the entire ecosystem. You do not want to risk harming the bioregion while doing something to help it. Every area has a beautiful diverse variety of indigenous plants. Many stores sell an organic native wildflower mix.  eNature has a state guide for the US, http://www.enature.com/native_invasive/ Bee Happy Plants https://beehappyplants.co.uk/ready-ship-bee-pastures/

lists organic pre-19th Century Pollinator Cover Crops (which you could buy from them) or you can look online.

 

Finally if you need to, buy organic soil at your local garden shop.

If you do not have a patch of land where you can plant flowers perhaps you have a windowsill, rooftop, stone patio or balcony where you can have a container garden. There are many resources for creating a container garden. Check your local library or these websites Rhode’s Organic Life  http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/garden/container-gardening-101

And Popular Mechanics http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/how-to/g59/container-gardening-460709/

(Please remember Popular Mechanics is not about organic gardening.) Avoid shipping pallets as they have chemicals sprayed on them to prevent rotting, plastic as it leaches off chemicals and other containers that may be toxic.

 

Another option is guerrilla gardening. From WikiHow: http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Guerrilla-Gardening

“Guerrilla gardening is a term used to describe the unauthorized cultivation of plants or crops on vacant public or private land. For some practitioners, Guerrilla Gardening is a political statement about land rights or reform; for others, it is primarily an opportunity to beautify and improve neglected, barren or overgrown spaces. Guerrilla gardening can be conducted either via secretive night missions or openly in an attempt to engage others in the idea of community improvement….”

Many of the community gardens in New York City were guerrilla gardens in the 1970s. Guerrilla gardening is very popular in Europe especially England. Where there has been gay bashing pansies have been planted and recently there was an international sunflower guerrilla gardening event. The Guerilla Gardening blog has a Getting Started page http://www.guerrillagardening.org/ggwar.html

to help you with the process as does WikiHow. http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Guerrilla-Gardening (Remember, you will have to return for watering and caring for the plants.)

 

Seed balls are actually a farming technique started by Fukuoka which has caught on with many people. “Homemade seed balls are a clever way to sow seeds (single species or a mix) without digging.  It’s inexpensive, easy and you can cover a lot of ground.  They are just scattered onto the soil surface, not buried.  Then they just sit there, ensconced in their mud-and-compost ball until it rains, safe from birds, rodents,  drying out, and they won’t blow away.  They are especially useful in areas with unpredictable rainfall.” Explains permies.com

http://www.permies.com/t/974/fukuoka/Seed-Balls-good-winter-project

with great instructions on to make them. The balls are made of clay, compost and seeds, one of which should be a nitrogen fixer like Clover. Bees love Clover. Making seed balls is not hard and it is a fun group project. The Druid’s Garden https://druidgarden.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/making-seed-balls-and-scattering-seeds-for-wildtending/

has the most truly environmental way to make seed balls, although many of us probably won’t be able to locate clay locally. (Please note that in the Druid Garden blog post there is no nitrogen fixer added to the seed balls because these balls are going into places where there already are a lot of nitrogen fixer is growing. Their post is about restoring native medicinal plants to the land.) Other instructions may be found at Mother Earth Living http://www.motherearthliving.com/gardening/how-to-make-seed-balls.aspx

 

Step 3: Ceremony for the Shrine

Let the process of gardening be an act of magic. If making seed balls, envision peace, health and safety for the community. Bless all the seed balls at the end with a sacred intention for the land. If working with a group, chanting or singing as you make them can enhance the ritual atmosphere, even creating a trance state.

Planting in your yard or containers offers you a chance to experience a new form of moving meditation.  How you approach guerilla gardening may require different enchantments. Planting at night with a lookout, you may want to ask for invisibility.  Many people have stated that planting during the day, especially if they look like a city worker (some even wear a neon vest), makes them almost invisible because they act as if they are “just doing my job, sir.” If you are on friendly terms with your neighbors, they probably will be happy you are planting flowers in the abandoned hole where once there was a tree or nailing flower boxes on to the fence. Some businesses have space for flowers but no money for landscapers and could be receptive to you brightening up their storefront or parking lot, especially when you mention you will be returning to care for the plants.

If your bee garden is going to be for a deity you might want to think about painting, wood carving or making a mosaic sign in honor of that deity, perhaps something like “Flora’s Sacred Shrine,” “Potnia’s Protection” or “The Field of Mead.” Symbols related to that God or Goddess can be painted onto the pots, buried into the ground or hung from a fence or tree. Images of bees or honeycombs, the Gods drinking their honey drinks, and open flowers are all appropriate. Finding images at the garden store for a Fairy garden should not be hard.

When the flowers are in bloom and the space feels settled consider having a dedication ceremony. Perhaps invite some like-minded people over and explain how you are working with nature to repair the damage from Colony Collapse Disorder. Let them know the dangers of pesticides. A group meditation to raise energy to attract bees or requests to the Deity for whom it is a living shrine about honey and nectar could be the central focus of the ritual. Then drink mead or eat honey sweetened cakes as people sign international online petitions about protecting bees at Care2 and http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/673/611/950/

Greenpeace http://sos-bees.org/#petition to cement the energy in the political world. Toast to the sweetness of life and bees themselves. Tending to the living temple (not needed with seed balls) continues your offering to the land, Fey ones, Deities and bees.

Imagine garden after garden united in the sacred return of the blessed bee!

 

Heather Awen’s Writing Archives

https://heatherawen.wordpress.com/

The price of romance

Valentine’s Day can be an uncomfortable time if you’re single and don’t want to be. It can be a challenge if you’re happily single but feeling pressured by all this focus on romance and coupleness. Not everyone wants, or can sustain long term relationships and not everyone is inclined towards the collective idea of romance. Dinner, flowers, chocolates, looking extra good and maybe getting laid if you do a decent enough job. Tears, rows, bitter disappointment and misery if it goes wrong.

Based on both observation and personal experience, Valentine’s Day is much more important in relationships that generally aren’t romantic. The focal points in the year – this, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas – become times of really needing some sort of gesture from the other person. I see it most amongst women who are mothers to young children and who feel taken for granted. I honestly have no idea if men feel as pressured about these dates, and as in need of some obvious show of care and attention if they aren’t feeling it the rest of the time.

It’s not about spending money (or at least for me it isn’t). It’s the idea that the other person has taken the trouble, remembered, bothered, cared. When there aren’t many signs of that, the smallest gesture is worth a lot. It’s about needing some sign that you are loved. I’ve had birthdays that were forgotten, spent mother’s days alone doing the cooking, and many a Valentine’s day passed by ignored in my twenties. “We’ll go out and you can pick something’ is not much of an answer, if what you wanted was the other person to care enough to pick something for you.

I’m not doing much this year. There will be something – we might buy ourselves a box of chocolates to share, or go out for cake, and it being a Sunday, we’ll probably have a slow and snugly start to the day. Over the last five years of married life, Valentine’s Day and Christmas have become understated things. Birthdays we make more fuss about, and we always do something for our wedding anniversary. Usually these things are jointly planned.

The difference is that this relationship does not leave me looking around desperately for some signs of being cared for. That I am cared for is obvious, and woven in to every day. I hope I do as much of that in return.  We have dates – again not big showy things, but time for us. When there is a constant exchange of care and attention in a relationship, big romantic gestures aren’t needed in the same way. And when there are big romantic gestures, they’re triggered by something other than it being the 14th of February and some sense of ‘ought to’.

Big romantic gestures can be used to offset a general absence of care and romance. There are people for whom the answer to the emotional side of a relationship is to throw money at it, and buy expensive gifts now and then. Big gestures can be used to keep a relationship viable, to assuage guilt, to compensate for things that are lacking. I’ve had some experience of that, too. It’s a no-brainer for me – I’d much rather have the day to day expressions of love, affection, care and consideration, where those things show up in the details of how you treat each other, than any of the alternatives. For me, romance is not about money spent, but about the person who will flirt with me across the table any day.

Of course we’re encouraged to focus on the big gestures, not least because at key points in the year we’re being sold the idea of romance, or mother’s day or what Christmas *should* look like. We are relentlessly sold these big dates as focal points, and told what we should be buying to properly express out relationships. I don’t think it helps in the slightest.

Personal landscapes and the contents of a map

What would you put in a map? It’s an important question to ask, because when you pick up someone else’s map, you are dealing with their values and priorities, not your own. Would you make a map that described the topography? The Ordinance survey is very much about getting an accurate sense of the geography onto the flat surface of the page. Most of the maps you will find otherwise are road maps, and are entirely about the places cars can go. Wild places are just patches of emptiness, with little or no detail offered. Perhaps the ultimate in transport maps is the London Underground map – which gives you no sense at all of the geography of London, but makes a beautiful, easily read representation of where the trains go.

Would you draw your maps as pictures, like map makers of a few hundred years ago? Or would you make a narrative map like a Saxon perambulation, a story of a journey rather than an image of the place?

Would you put wildlife sightings on your map, or really good views? Would you put in pubs, or ancient sites, or especially good places to duck out of sight for a quick pee? Would your map have seasonal information on it, or notes about the wind so as you knew which walks would be best depending on where the wind was coming from?

I was walking in some very popular local fields, when I passed a local archaeologist who was chatting to someone else. A fragment of conversation reached me. He said “Everyone could draw their own map of the Heavens, and they’d all be different, depending on which bits were important to you.”

We aren’t encouraged to make our own maps, but to use official ones, on which no one has written ‘here be dragons’ or ‘the swinging tree where Eric broke his leg’ or ‘where granny fell off the horse’. Making your own physical map is a way of finding out what’s important to you.

We all have the potential to make maps inside our heads as well. Most people who drive have inner maps for the routes they habitually take. People who walk for leisure will often have a few favourite routes mapped out in their heads as well. Taxi drivers are legendary for their ability to map vast and complex cities in their heads. However, aside from taxi drivers, most of us do not set out to build maps inside our heads, and we aren’t taught how to map a landscape. We pick up routes by use, from signposts, from official maps, and the like. It’s worth noting that back before there were signposts, drovers took animals over vast distances from the places they were reared, to the urban markets where they were sold. We have a capacity for inner maps, far beyond anything most of us normally explore.

To have an inner map is to know where you live. It’s to have little anxiety about ever getting lost. It is also a consequence of relationship with a place, and as such it has a massive rooting influence. When we make our own maps – on paper or in our heads, what we plot onto them are the things that matter to us. This changes your relationship with the things that matter to you, as well. Part of my personal mapping is a mapping of wildflowers, noteworthy trees, and wildlife sightings, so when I’m out and about, I have a greater awareness of what I could see, and thus more chance of seeing it again. My local maps are full of stories – family stories, local history, folklore, and things of my own. I can never feel lonely in a place where there are so many stories.

Favourite Druid things

I’ve done a couple of Steampunk posts recently on favourite people, so I thought today I’d put together a list of favourite Druid things. In no particular order…

Druid Camp – organised by Mark Graham, this is a gathering of several hundred Druids in a beautiful location in the Forest of Dean each summer, for a bit under a week. Talks, workshops, music, community, inspiration. I’ve done three now. It draws in many of my favourite people.

OBOD – The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids taught me when I’d been led to believe myself unteachable, welcomed me when I had been excluded, and gave me a sense of dignity when I was largely on my knees over other issues. It is an honour to be able to contribute.

Contemplative Druidry – a monthly group meeting to sit quietly, and a way of doing things. Being in this space has taught me to slow down and let go, to face up to my fragility, and to trust. I’m not good at trusting people, I find it hard to feel like I belong anywhere, but this group has caused me to face those assumptions and rethink them.

Druid Music – Damh The Bard, Paul Mitchell, Paul Newman, Talis Kimberly, Arthur Billington, to name some obvious names, and beyond that just that there is Druid music, and that our rituals have songs and tunes in them, and we can connect, celebrate and share in this way.

Druid books and authors. Ronald Hutton, Cat Treadwell, Robin Herne, Penny Billington, Graeme K Talboys, Brendan Myers, Morgan Daimler, Kris Hughes, Philip Carr Gomm, Brendan Howlin, Lorna Smithers, and beyond that everyone writing blogs, and poetry, and articles, and writers who aren’t intentionally Druidic but teach me folklore and history and landscape and all the other things I feel a need to know about.

People doing stuff – and there’s so much of it that I can’t hope to name check. Artists, crafters, activisits, photographers, dancers, runners, people taking their Druidry into their work, into volunteering, and charity, and acts of generosity. There are many, many names that deserve to be mentioned here. People I meet at events, locally and online. But this is one of the things about the Druid community – perhaps one of the most important things – that it is a lived tradition. It’s not something we do at the weekend, or at special festivals only – it’s a day to day thing shaping how people live, and driving people to acts of beauty, abundance and radical change. It takes us to protests and politics, to knitting and animal welfare and countless other things.

We meet primarily as people doing stuff – on an equal footing, because we are all active in some way, all experienced in some field – or working on becoming that, for the younger and newer folk. I look at the Druids I know and I see so much to love, and respect and get excited about.

All community is conditional

Yesterday I found I’d been thrown out of a large Pagan facebook group (Pagans and Witches of the UK). It was a sobering reminder that all communities are conditional and that any community is perfectly entitled to evict me at any time and for any reason. It’s not the first time I’ve been kicked out of something and I’m sure it won’t be the last – the other two occasions were far more upsetting. There is no point protesting innocence, or appealing, getting angry or objecting, because in any community, the people who hold the boundaries have the power, and person evicted has none, and thus endeth the issue.

I wasn’t rude to anyone. I wasn’t trolling. I thought I wasn’t spamming, but four posts in eleven days is just too much, it turns out. Let me be clear, I failed to pay enough attention and I broke their rules and for this reason they are perfectly entitled to close the door on me. I don’t recall exactly what the posts were – proof enough that I wasn’t careful enough about this group. They will have been, for the greater part, me sharing things I thought were good and interesting that other people have done. It’s what I do, and on that score I remain unrepentant. Most Pagan organisers and creators have little or no budget for promoting their work. I will give shout outs, and share on things I think are good, things I’m asked to share – and yes sometimes things I’m paid to share (but I still have to think those things are good to take them on!). Feel free to ask me, or to make use of the spaces I hold.

I try to make sure that, in any space I’m in, I give enough of value to offset any short comings or mistakes on my part. I do my best to make sure I’m putting things in the hat that have at least the same value as anything I might benefit from. I had been an active participant in this ‘community’ but with thousands of people involved, what I give has little value, while my mistakes (largely that my understanding of ‘advertising’ is not theirs) are noticed.

I’m probably not alone in craving community spaces where I don’t feel this pressing sense of conditionality. Spaces it might be safe to turn up in need, and places where saying ‘hey look, a book!’ would not likely get me thrown out. Places where my value as a human being is good enough to offset my sometimes poor concentration, and my getting things wrong. Also spaces where I can champion other people’s projects and help them along.

On which subject, lovely Laura Perry has an online course running in Minoan spirituality – http://www.lauraperryauthor.com/#!online-classes/cmyn

Gods and Radicals is looking for submissions for its online site and twice yearly publication A beautiful Resistance http://godsandradicals.org/never-submit/   (forest-edged words, I love this so much).

You may not have seen the new online shrine to Rhiannon, which is also open to contributions. http://www.churchofasphodel.org/shrines/rhiannon/welcome.html

Of course it flows both ways, because my participation in any group is also conditional. Why would I want to be part of a Pagan group that wants to limit the sharing of Pagan creativity, events, courses and so forth? This is not somewhere I could ever call home. For me, one of the fundamental aspects of community is mutual support, and another is taking an interest in what each other are doing. I don’t know what you have if you take those two things out, but I do know its somewhere I wouldn’t choose to spend any time at all. You can’t have real world action if you can’t talk about things that are happening outside of facebook.

There is an enormous sense of power in being able to reject – especially the power to throw people out of spaces that mattered to them. The power to hurt and to deny can be a massive ego trip. On the whole I prefer the kinds of communities where every effort is made to include and support, they’re just nicer places to be. I’d rather be in communities where the conditions are very unlikely to force out anyone who really wanted to be there.

Put on my Pagan trousers!

For me, the first consideration when thinking about clothes to do Druidry in, is that it should enable me to spend time comfortably outside. Walking boots are a default – if I’m inside I’ll take them off and go barefoot. I think in terms of waterproof coats, rather than cloaks, I may also don waterproof trousers. Otherwise for a large chunk of the year, warmth is a major consideration, and in the brief summer, not over-heating is high on the list. Most of the time I won’t carry much extra gear to change into because I’m limited in how much I can carry, not having a car.

I take a very different approach to celebrant work, because I’ve found when working with unfamiliar people, and often with family groups that are a significant percentage non-Pagan, looking the part helps them. I do have a slinky black velvet dress and I’m not afraid to use it! People booking a celebrant tend to pick accessible places, sheltered and easy to work in, and they tend to do their celebrating in the warm part of the year, which makes this easier.

Going to Pagan events, I notice that a lot of people take the opportunity to wear and enjoy their more alternative clothing – which is great fun. I’m lucky in that I live in Stroud, a place that’s becoming a byword for hippies and green innovation, and that has a lot of Druids in it. In an understated way, I perpetually look a bit alternative and feel safe wearing things I like, so I just tend to carry on in that vein unless I’m thinking about it.

But I’ve also started thinking about it, because frivolity and play are on the list for this year, and I see a lot of frivolity and play in the things Pagans wear to do their stuff. This is no way to suggest that having special clothes to be Pagan in, is in any way not serious spirituality – I think play is important, and something I don’t do enough of.

I’m not cut out for slinky velvet witchcraft. I’m inherently scruffy, and I can’t really pull it off for more than brief bursts. As a person I’m not shiny – I cobble things together, I improvise, I’m more practical than elegant, and I’m seldom at ease in anything designed to draw attention to gender or sexual possibilities.

Last year I made a tabard – dark green and dark red with gold leaves appliquéd on. It’s lightweight and easily carried, and can be put over or under other garments so is passably practical. As an item to wear to rituals, it’s worked out well for me, and does a decent job of being celebrant kit as well. This year I’ve decided to go a bit further and make a cloak. I’m knitting it. I’ve had a lot of problems with my hands around knitting, so I’m making tiny squares and sewing them together. Most of the wool is other people’s rubbish – always my favourite thing to be working with. It’ll be mostly green and mottled, and at the moment (I have the hood and shoulders) looks a bit like the commons when the summer flowers are out, which is an evocation that pleases me greatly.

Overtly Pagan clothing can be about wanting other Pagans to recognise us and take us seriously. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m generally too hung up on other people’s approval for it to be a good idea. I need to work on being accepted as myself, not trying to fit in. Working out what to wear, and which needs I can answer in my choice of clothing, is an ongoing consideration.

Favourite things – of Sloths and Men

It may be a bit of a cheat plugging something I’m heavily involved with as a favourite thing for Steampunk Hands Around the World, but bear with me. There’s considerable justification for me claiming Tom Brown as a favourite thing. Favourite to the point of marrying him. He’s also a significant percentage of how I came to Steampunk in the first place (the other percentage being attributable to Professor Elemental).

When I first met Tom, through a publishing house many years ago, he was writing and illustrating Hopeless Maine by himself. I was entirely smitten – it was strange, gothic, moody and a bit Victorian in look. Tom wandered more deliberately into Steampunk, having always been attracted to things Victorian, but not until recently, aware there’s a whole movement. I trotted along behind, and here we are. Of all the projects I’ve worked on since then, Hopeless Maine stands out as a favourite thing for me. Tom eventually persuaded me to write for him – I was reluctant because I’d never written comics and had no idea how to do it. A long period of close collaboration, and all the wider conversations around it, and we ended up with an emotional attachment that took me across the Atlantic to visit him, and later, him across the Atlantic to live with me. I owe a lot to Hopeless Maine.

Which brings me round to the important matter of Sloths. Sloth Comics have now gone public on their slog, with the news that they are picking up Hopeless Maine. We’ve known this was happening for a while, but there’s nothing like a big public declaration of intent to get things moving. When our relationship with the first publisher – Archaia – fell apart because they’d been bought out by bigger and more commercially orientated Boom Studios, we looked around for someone cool. We liked Sloth as soon as we saw them – they publish comics that aren’t obvious, and formulaic looking. They also make very high quality books, and we’re looking forward to seeing Hopeless with that much better page print quality.

We’re not Sloth’s first Steampunk project, either. Happily, this move puts us alongside Francesca Dare and her glorious Penny Blackfeather, http://www.pennyblackfeather.co.uk/ (this comic I really like, its funny and full of unexpected things) the link will take you to the webcomic. Another canny female lead with a slightly dappy male sidekick, we suspect Salamandra and Penny would get along fairly well. Sloth also have Steam Hammer – an alternate history with a Scottish hero and a Victorian Britain that’s been overrun by steam powered Americans. I haven’t read it, but it looks good. Then there’s The Ring of the Seven Worlds – steampunk and studio Ghibli influenced. There are other non-Steampunk titles too, and I have some reading to do to catch up. It’s great moving to a house and feeling excited about everything they do.

I’ve popped the new cover in this blog – it’s for the omnibus edition that will bring volumes one and two out in the same book, with some other things that haven’t been seen before, and then we head for book three. This is the first Hopeless Maine piece where Tom and I have collaborated on the art – he does the lines, I do the colours, he does the magic and the photoshoppy bits. I can’t claim it as a favourite thing – it was an absolutely terrifying thing, but likely means I’ll be more involved in the art for future books.

Slowing down, a work in progress

One of the things this blog does, is to chart my relationship with the idea of slowing down. For much of my life, feeling financially pressured, and spending time on low paid work (usually writing based) has left me feeling that I have to work all the hours there are.  Slowing down in 2012 looked like trying to step away from 12 hour days and seven days weeks – https://druidlife.wordpress.com/2012/04/12/life-in-the-slow-lane/ – I was very, very busy.

It’s only in the last few months that I’ve managed to get my week reliably down to six days or fewer. I’ve found one day off in seven has an enormous impact on my concentration, and my emotional wellbeing. Time off really contributes to not succumbing to bouts of depression. It also discernibly reduces my experiences of anxiety. I’m not tired all the time, I have something in reserve for emergencies, rather than living like I’m in a perpetual state of emergency.

I’ve learned to drop pace, to not always be working as fast as I can. I gaze out of the window more. I take time to pause, contemplate and gather my thoughts. I’ve come to think of the one afternoon a month taken for contemplative Druidry as a necessity, not a luxury I can barely justify. Time is the most precious thing we have, and we only get to use it once. I’m eliminating the rushing, the feelings of pressure and panic, ever more keen to have a working life that doesn’t make me miserable, and thinking I could manage to be much happier.

There are feelings of luxury to be found in the lie in – getting up at 8 rather than at 7 is enough to give me that. The early night can also feel luxurious and indulgent. The days spent pottering about, and how much more pleasant the domestic jobs are when there’s plenty of time to do them and I don’t start out feeling exhausted. I’ve had the time to rediscover cooking as something I can enjoy. Most days, I now work under 10 hours, sometimes only 6 or 8 – this also makes a lot of odds. The twelve hour days, and longer, leave little energy or brain for anything else. It’s important to me to have time for reading, crafting, music walking, and socialising.

The big leap forward in recent months has been around time management. I’m organising my life with a diary rather than an endless ‘to-do’ list. I start each day seeing what I’ve pencilled in, I add things as I go, and I make sure that my days do not get too full, and that the fun things are also in the diary. I’ve got into a position where I can structure my work across the month, pacing it, and knowing where it’s going – unpredictable demands on my time have been a real problem in the past, and I’ve learned to avoid that. I’ve also learned not to just do what people want from me the moment they email me – having work constantly interrupted by other work is a really inefficient way to go. Demands go in the diary, I let people know a time frame for my intended response, and I get back to what I was doing.

This Christmas just gone, I managed to take a whole week off. I want that to become more of a regular feature. I want a couple of weeks off every year, and I want more patches of two or three days of break as well. I want to achieve more and spend less time doing it, and a big part of that involves looking at who is allowed to use up my time. I want the time to support people who need supporting, but I have to watch out for people who just want to use up my time for the sake of it. Historically, other people’s less than reasonable demands have been a serious barrier to slowing down, but I’m getting better at moving away from the people who don’t respect boundaries or take no for an answer, and the impact this has on my time has been dramatic.