Nimue Brown's Blog, page 344

No one gets out of here alive

As far as I can tell, I have always had a consciousness of mortality. As soon as I had the words available to me, I started asking awkward questions about death, and god, and eternity and all that stuff. As a three year old proto-existentialist, I was sent to Sunday School. If anyone had taken me seriously, I’d probably have signed up in earnest. I needed answers. What I got was fuzzy felt and things to colour in.

During my childhood I managed to make some peace with the idea that everything dies, the distance between stars, and what it would mean to go on forever. Sometimes these things kept me awake at night. I hit my teens determined to live as though any given day might be my last. It’s a philosophy that has, on the whole, stood me in good stead. That ‘might’ is important because it creates room for long term thinking, too. Along the way I have buried friends, and watched friends suddenly bury loved ones as well. Disease, and accident can come out of nowhere. We do not know how long we have, and we don’t know how long anyone else has, either.

That consciousness of death stops me from taking anything or anyone for granted. It hardwires gratitude into my awareness, because every day I get to the end of without having lost something or someone precious to me, is a bit of a win. I tell the people I love that I love them, because I won’t take the risk that no further opportunities to say it may arise.

Death has taught me that the things we regret not saying and not doing can really stay on and haunt you. It’s not the mistakes that hurt, it’s the failing to sort them out afterwards. The questions not asked, the words left unspoken.

Being afraid of death may make a person wary of acting, nervous about living. To be oblivious to death can be to make poor risk judgements, or to fail to really grasp the moment. A consciousness of death keeps life in perspective. It shows up the petty dramas for what they are, and it also throws a thwacking great spotlight onto the bits, the people, the things that really matter. It means not putting off until tomorrow anything that can be done today, in case the opportunity doesn’t come round again. It means squeezing as much out of living as is possible.

I don’t always get this right of course. Some of my priorities haven’t been too clever, and there are still things I regret not saying, and things I cannot fix. But on the whole, my consciousness of limited time has served me well. It colours every choice I make, everything I say yes to and everything I decline. I have an awareness that you can turn out to be saying ‘no’ forever if someone dies, and not know when you said it, that it would be such an absolute. I take my smaller decisions seriously as a consequence. Often, the little things are all any of us has, and they become the big things by dint of timing and context.

It’s not a dress rehearsal, this, so far as any of us know. We might be collecting points towards a shiny afterlife, but then again we might not. I prefer to live as though this is all I’m getting – it focuses the mind somewhat. I know there are some schools of thought that without a sense of afterlife and consequences, we will live irresponsibly and without virtue. I don’t find that to be the case, but instead feel that the desire for a life lived well is motivation enough to try and do the right things for the right reasons.

Loneliness and Revelation

I took Loneliness and Revelation – a modestly sized philosophical text by Brendan Myers – with me to a recent weekend Steampunk event. It turned out to be very apt reading. The main theme of the book is loneliness, which Brendan considers to be intrinsic to the human condition. Inside our own heads, each of us is separate and alone. There are some religious traditions that try and overcome this by making us one with everything, but as this book so usefully points out, if everything is one, you have a singular thing that still has every reason and opportunity to experience loneliness. That in many myths, the original creator god creates to deal with being alone, is well worth considering.

This is not, as a consequence, a book about how to never suffer loneliness again. It explores the things we can do to tackle our insularity – both the things that work, and the things that are popular, but don’t. There’s consideration of the ethical side of how we assert ourselves in the world, questions about how to live well and be happy alongside this issue of intrinsic loneliness. There’s a lot of reflection on the relationship between creativity and loneliness as well. Given the size of the book, it is broad and deep in ways that I really liked.

A big public gathering of some 4000 people, was in many ways the perfect setting for reading this. Steampunk is a very creative community, in which hours of work and great care and attention is lavished upon kits and creativity. People do this very specifically to be seen, to be noticed by others. The kit in turn gives permission to start conversations; it’s not just acceptable, but desirable to approach other Steampunks and compliment them on attire, artefacts and the like. Having spent some days in a space that encourages social contact between strangers really brought home to me how generally impossible it would be to walk up to a stranger in the street and start a conversation with them. In most spaces, loneliness is supported, not connection.

Expressing who we are in the world, by word and deed, is a big part of what Loneliness and Revelation explores. The power of manifesting something of who we are and having that seen, known and understood is something Brendan offers as key to overcoming loneliness. And yet modern human interactions push us in the exact opposite direction. Work uniforms, scripts for dealing with ‘clients’, with brands offered to us as self expression, and photo-shopped celebrity mistaken for being seen and recognised. It made me wonder how much online trolling comes from the basic need to be seen and heard, and a loss of any sense that this might have an ethical dimension to it.

That’s a very superficial bit of reflection on a very deep book. It’s changed me and influenced my thinking in ways I have not yet fully digested. There is much here about how to live and how to choose life, and I think it’s a book many people would benefit from reading. If you are the sort of person who likes to reflect and if you lead with the head, and favour a reasoned approach, this is a book that will help you think about how you are in the world, and how you want to be. It’s not always an easy or comfortable read, but if you are the sort of person who doesn’t need it all to be optimistic and upbeat, (and if you’re reading my blog, I rate the chances) you might well want to read this.

What do you look like?

Ever since the first human, back in the mists of ancient history, wrapped a bit of dead animal, or a fig leaf of whatever it was around a damp or cold part of their anatomy, we’ve been wearing clothes. And I would bet you that somewhere after the first fig leaf, someone else looked upon it and thought ‘well, I see the utility here, but I want a bigger leaf!’

Body adornment is universal, although ideas of what is beautiful are not. Alongside what we wrap around our bodies, we modify our flesh with tattoos, scarification, stretching, cutting off. We hide some parts and reveal others. All of this is culturally constructed, with a heady balancing act of fitting in and standing out going on at the same time. We want to be noticed, but we don’t want to be so different that we are ‘other’, often.

One of the many reflections to come out of a weekend of Steampunkery is about how dreadfully banal modern attire is. I don’t always see it, because I’m used to seeing it. When you’ve had a weekend of extravagant hats, amazing dresses, fabulous waistcoats and the such, the average bod in the street looks very dull indeed.

Why is 21st century mainstream attire so incredibly bland, for the greater part?

Some, if not all of it, comes down to mass production. It is cheap and quick to mass produce clothing that is identical and near identical, and to have everyone wearing that. The more individual an item is, the more time, effort and therefore money has to go into it. Most people at a Steampunk weekend will either have lavished hours on their attire, or will have paid appropriately for someone else having lavished hours upon it. This isn’t cheap.

Cheap is a consideration if you are in a state of abject poverty (been there, had the t-shirts). However, we’ve been sold the idea that low cost, banal predictability is actually a good thing. We should want the cheap and the samey any time we can get it, such that if you go into a more expensive clothes retailer, you can still get the cheap and banal aesthetic. We don’t value difference or quality, and I wonder if we are the first period of human history where that’s been the case in terms of how we normally dress and adorn ourselves.

I enjoy difference. I enjoy variety, and the interest that comes when things are made with love and imagination. It’s as true of a lunch as it is of a dress. Of course that’s neither easy nor convenient, and we’ve also been sold the idea that easy and convenient are measures of ‘good’. Increasingly, I am questioning how we got here, and what it’s for, and how to do differently.

In Perfect Love and Perfect Trust

I come from a family that was not very tactile at all, so for most of my life have not defaulted to touch as a way of communicating with other people. Cats yes, people, not so much. Thanks to some random accidents of history and some misfortune, I’ve had trouble differentiating between affection and sexual expression as well. That’s a long and complicated story in its own right, and something for another day. For the greater part, my bodily contact with other humans has been shaped by what they deem normal and acceptable, and it’s only recently that I’ve started to think about who and how I want to be in the world, as a potentially tactile physical presence.

There is so much scope for self expression and communication in touch. Who am I? How am I in situations of bodily intimacy, from the cool handshake to the deep hug and beyond? Who do I want to share that with? I’ve spent a number of years learning how to say no, and to hold my boundaries, and that’s been a very good process for me. I have come to recognise that I hate unmeant, casual and empty gestures of affection. ‘Social affection’ can so often be about enforcing norms and expressing power – particularly the power to make someone else accept your kisses, embraces, and bodily presence. Above all else in this arena, I hate being pounced on and kissed by people who mean nothing, but want to appear open, expressive, passionate, or whatever the hell it is they think this gets them.

If someone is going to touch me, I like to have a warning, and the space to decide whether or not that’s welcome. I’ve got a lot better at holding that line, moving away when it seems threatened, and choosing the company of people who will give me space to say no in the first place.

I also want to be able to say yes. In holding the space of mostly saying no, I’ve had the scope to figure out more about who I am, and what I want for me. I have the capacity to be an intensely emotional, passionate, deeply affectionate and physically expressive sort of person. I don’t want to offer that where it’s not wanted. Up until recently, I’ve seen this side of myself as something likely to be an affront, something to hide and apologise for. Over the last few weeks I’ve learned what an enormous difference it makes dealing with people who welcome me as I am and reciprocate. I’ve known and understood this for years in the context of my marriage, but finding out how the same things could work with true comrades, is a whole other process.

To be swept up by someone who makes no secret of adoring me in return. A hand on an arm, lightly but sincerely from someone who is expressing something important. Being able to trust enough to ask ‘may I kiss you?’ and having that answered with exactly what I was looking for.

I know that the phrase ‘in perfect love and perfect trust’ is used by some Witches or Wiccans in a ritual context, as an expression of how you should be entering sacred space. As a Druid, I’ve been taught to think of each person (human and not human) as having a kind of personal sacred space around them. I do not go casually into the sacred space that is proximity with anyone else. I’m starting to realise what it might mean to do that in perfect love and perfect trust, and it changes who I can be in the world, how I think of myself as a physical presence, and the scope I have to say yes, as well as no.

The Henge of Keltria releases the Book of Keltria

This came to me as a press release which I’m very happy to be sharing along…

The Henge of Keltria is pleased to announce publication of the Book of Keltria: Druidism for the 21st Century. Their original correspondence course was created in the 1980s to satisfy popular demand. Each lesson had been revised, new material developed and is now presented in a book. The subjects are of interest to people new to nature based religions and those practitioners with many years of experience.

The chapter illustrating the nature of religion and divinity guides readers through six perceptions of deity from the simple – animism – to the complex – pan-polytheism. Individuals are invited to make their own comparisons and decide which theism or combination of theisms best fits their perception.

The subject of the relevance of mythology in the 21st can be dry and uninteresting when taken out of the context of the stories. To convey the information, the author employs an ancient bard who recounts a myth to the members of his community. Everyone is entertained and educated at the same time.

Describing the indescribable was the challenge for the chapter on the why and how to participate in a ritual. Here again, a story is the best vehicle to convey the information. The ritual experience is shared through the eyes of an elder, who takes the reader on an emotional journey through a Keltrian ritual.

The Book of Keltria includes information on druid history, Keltrian theology, invocation techniques, and the significance of relationships with the ancestors, nature spirits and the gods of the ancient Celts. Chapters on meditation, divination, magick, and the history of the Henge are also included. This is the first time that this valuable and entertaining information is available without the commitment of taking The Henge of Keltria’s correspondence course.

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I’ve written for Henge of Keltria publications in the past, and although I’ve not studied with them, I’ve always found them a lovely set of people to deal with. I think it’s great that they are making their study material more widely available, this will no doubt be a blessing for many Druids who are walking their own path but want to take onboard the wisdom and experience of others.

Steampunk Druid?

What is Steampunk? I’ve been asked that question a lot in recent days, mostly by people in the street who saw me in my hat, and were curious. So the first answer is that Steampunk is something that enables people to connect with each other. If I go out looking like everyone else, no one stops me in the street to ask me the significance of what I’m wearing, or where I got it, or to compliment me on it, and at a Steampunk event, this is all normal.

I realised, over this last weekend that one of the many ways in which Steampunk is like Druidry, is that it is bloody difficult to define, and any definition I come up with will fail to embrace the full diversity and significance it has for other people. I cannot, therefore, define Steampunk. I can only talk about my experience of it, and what it means to me.

It is a space to play. I can present as anyone or anything. My age, apparent gender, body shape, physical capabilities and limitations become less of an issue than how I wish to be seen, and the same is true for all participants. As a consequence it’s a very safe space for a lot of people who do not always get to feel as safe as they would like to.
Like Druidry, Steampunk draws on history but is not history. It takes the best bits (kit, manners, sense of adventure) and does what it can with the complicated bits. Let’s face it, the Victorian era was also a time of poverty, gender inequality, colonialism, environmental degradation, exploitation, racism, and theft on a grand scale. I’m not celebrating that – no one does – but by alluding to it, flagging it up we can also start to look at how those things are still with us. We can laugh at, undermine, subvert and recreate the things that should have been a lot better first time round, and there is definite power in that.
Like Druidry, Steampunk offers a space that nurtures creativity and creates opportunities for self expression. That happens through the display of amazing clothes, through the cunning creation of devices, art, literature, music, games, and entertainments. It’s a very creative space where everyone has the chance to shine and be recognised.
Druidry and Steampunk alike create spaces that trust to their own processes. In neither space do we tell people what to think or how to feel. We create experiences and opportunities and trust people to do what they will with that and find what they need in it. This is in huge contrast to much of life where we are constantly being told, by advertising, and the media, what it is that we ought to think and feel, what things mean, and what we are to do as a consequence. To be free of that instruction, free to interpret your experience on your own terms, free to make your own meaning, is incredibly important. And so both spaces offer room to be yourself, and to be inspired, and I think this is tremendously important in terms of how we function the rest of the time, when we don’t have the hat, or the robes, or whatever it was that helped us define and make sense of the space we were in.

After the Asylum

The comparisons to be made between Steampunk and Druidry fascinate me. Two modern, countercultural movements that encourage more original dress styles, friendliness, and creativity.  Both looking to history for inspiration, but neither really re-enactment, and not historically accurate, and constantly imagining new additions and playing with the possibilities.

We spent the last weekend at Lincoln, for the biggest Steampunk gathering in the UK – some 4000 (if not more) people attend Weekend at the Asylum, a huge event that takes over the castle and assorted other venues, fills the streets with gloriously attired people, and the evenings with remarkable music. It was an opportunity to catch up with some of our favourite people, and to wear hats. It was a really inspiring experience, and I have a lot of mental unpacking to do.

I come back with a lot of thoughts about how I am in the world, and how I want to be. I’m thinking a lot about what Steampunk means to me and how I want to place myself within that. I’ve learned a lot about skin, physical presence, affection, inspiration, and belonging. Tom and I learned a lot about working together creatively when we took to a big stage with only a bit of script, and found our way towards collective improvising. Alongside this, I was reading Brendan Myers ‘Loneliness and Revelation’ which turned out to be the perfect philosophical accompaniment to the weekend (review to follow).

Not for the first time, rain came as a tremendous blessing and allowed us opportunity to do something that would otherwise have been impossible. I’ve been noticing this increasingly, that things which might seem like setbacks so often also offer me opportunities, but rain has been especially good to me this year. Rain throws human schemes into chaos, and allows space for something else to get in (tea, in this case).

Over the coming days I shall try and unpack my brain onto the blog – it’s always an interesting process if I’ve taken a big hit of information and experience. It will take me a while to process the experience for myself, and to work out what I need to learn for me from it all, and what of that is also worth sharing. Asylum this year has changed all of my thinking about how to approach events, and there’s been a significant impact on my sense of self, as well.

It’s curious to note that in terms of inspiration and personal transformation, the four days in Lincoln for Asylum have had far more impact on me than the four days at Rainbow Druid Camp. Much of this is to do with being gently pushed outside my comfort zone, and being offered some really exciting spaces and opportunities to do more. Weekend at Asylum has an ethos of nurturing creativity and giving people spaces to grow and flourish, and that’s not just about giving people educational workshops, its about allowing co-creation of the event, innovation, challenge and an interesting degree of trust in the process of the event itself. More of that as I figure out how to talk about it.

The Other Side of Virtue

I loved this book, it’s one I cheerfully recommend. I’m very happy today to be sharing an excerpt.

Overture to The Other Side of Virtue (O Books, 2008) by Brendan Myers

The story of Christian virtue begins with the story of Moses, the holy man who climbed the holy mountain to receive the Law. Like any system of ethics based on law, it was intended to separate right from wrong as clearly as possible. This is why most of them begin with ‘thou shall not’. Of course, the law forbids things that nearly everyone would agree do not belong in a civil society: thievery and murder, for instance. So on the face of it, there can be no objection. But we should be very cautious about taking up such a gift and accepting it without question. Such pre-packaged gifts are sometimes like the Trojan Horse. They often conceal all sorts of other problems and complications. In the case of the Ten Commandments, the problem is this: if you accept it, you effectively hand over to God the responsibility for determining what is right and wrong. Your only choice in life is whether to obey or to rebel—precisely the choice made by Eve, in the Garden of Eden.

The original idea of Virtue had nothing to do with Christianity. In Europe, it is older than the Gospels by more than six hundred years. Consider the origin of the word itself. It comes from two sources. The first is the Latin ‘Virtus’, itself rooted in the word ‘Vir’, meaning ‘man’. From this direction, Virtue means something like ‘manliness’, and implies ‘macho’ qualities like toughness and aggression. The other source is the Greek word ‘Arête’, which is sometimes directly translated as ‘Virtue’, but can also mean ‘Excellence’. Excellence is what happens when some quality or talent is perfected, completed, rendered praiseworthy and beautiful. It is what makes someone or something stand out as special, a cut or two above the ordinary, and deserving of special admiration. There is nothing passive about Excellence. Instead of modesty or humility, the logic of arête calls for active qualities like initiative, honour, and intelligence. It also implies a few half-moral, half-aesthetic qualities like nobility, strength, proper pride, beauty, and grace. And it implies various social qualities, like friendship, generosity, honesty, truthfulness, and love. Virtue ethics could be more properly called ‘Arêteology’, meaning an account (logos) of what is excellent (arête) in human affairs. This account describes not only the things someone does, but also the kind of person she is. And it had almost nothing to do with obeying laws. Laws were meant for the ordering of society; being a good person was something else. The questions of ethics, in the ancient world, would never have been: What laws or rules should I follow? Which of my choices creates the least harm, or the most benefit, for those it affects? Who am I to obey, and what gives him his authority? To a Virtuous person of the ancient world, those would have been the wrong questions. The right questions were: What kind of person should I be? What kind of life should I live? What is an excellent human being like? What must I do to be happy? The general answer to questions like these went like this. You have to produce within yourself a set of habits and dispositions, something like a ‘second nature’, which would give you full command over your powers and potentials. In other words, you have to transform your character. The ‘familiar’ side of virtue has to do with a predisposition to follow laws and commandments. The ‘other side’ asserts that who you are is much more important than the rules you follow, and at least as important as the things you do, when it comes to doing the right thing, and finding the worth of your life.

The Other Side of Virtue is about that original idea, and how it is intimately connected with what it is to be human, and what it means to live a worthwhile life. I show how it appeared in the heroic and classical cultures of ancient Europe. Then I show how it appeared again in various different historical movements that revived or patterned themselves after those ancient cultures. The Italian Renaissance, Romanticism in High Germany and in Merry Old England, are only the most well known examples. There are also contemporary movements afoot, such as modern-day Druidry and Wicca, which embody the original idea of Virtue in various eclectic ways. What all of these different movements seem to have in common is that in their own way they all expressed one or more of the following three primary ideas.

First and foremost, life involves inevitable encounters with events that seem, at least at first, to impose themselves upon you. Fortune, nature, other people, and death itself, are among them.
Second, these events also invite us to respond. The response generally involves the development of various human potentials and resources. Some of these are social, such as one’s family and friendship ties, and some are personal and internal, like courage and integrity.
And third, that if we respond to these imposing events with excellence, and if the excellent response becomes habitual, they can be transformed into sources of spiritual meaning and fulfillment. This transformation opens the way to a worthwhile and flourishing life.

There are a few others, but these ones are the most important. If I had to gather them into one sentence, this is what I would say: Virtue is the ancient idea that excellence in human affairs is the foundation of ethics, spirituality, self-knowledge, and especially the worthwhile life. Self-knowledge blossoms first and foremost with adventurous transformations of our way of being in the world. The Immensity, as I shall call it, is the situation that calls upon us to make the choices which create those transformations. It is a situation that changes us. But since our choices are involved, this is the change that also configures us, creates us, and so makes us who we are. To answer the call to Know Yourself is not only to discover who and what you are, but also to become that which you discover yourself to be.

Find out more about the book here – http://www.moon-books.net/books/other...

Pagan Aid

Pagan Aid logo

Pagan Aid is a new Pagan charity – https://www.paganaid.org/ It has Greywolf, and PF President Mike Stygal on it’s board of trustees, and a vision for changing the world, quite simply. I was lucky in that I got to hear founder Ian chandler talk about this project in its early stages. Ian works in international development, and had noticed that while other religions have charities expressing their values around the world, pagans do not. A Pagan charity would support people to live in sustainable ways, in harmony with the earth, and with no reference to their spiritual beliefs.

It’s really exciting to see Pagan Aid get official charity status and launch into the world.

From their website:

Our beautiful, sacred Mother Earth is under attack. Her forests are being cleared. Her minerals are being plundered. Her rivers and seas are being poisoned. Her sky is being choked and her climate changing. Her creatures are being driven to extinction.

Meanwhile millions of people live in extreme poverty. Some of them are poor as a result of the exploitation and industrialisation of the environment. Some of them have no choice but to deplete their local environment because of their poverty.

PaganAid wants to break this cycle of destitution and destruction by helping people to meet their basic needs through living in harmony with nature. We will do this by funding small-scale projects that help poor and marginalised communities to protect and develop their own livelihoods and the environment about them – projects that put equal value on ending poverty and protecting Mother Earth.

You can hear Ian Chandler being interviewed in this edition of the Druid Podcast.

Donations are very welcome – you can do that via the website, and if you’ve skills, experience or other relevant things you want to offer, do get in touch with them.

Away with the Steampunks

Assuming the gods of rail were kind to me, and the gods of steam and subversion felt willing to let me in, I am at Asylum this weekend. To clarify, not *an* asylum, but Weekend at the Asylum, the UKs biggest Steampunk gathering, in Lincoln.

I fell into Steampunk by accident. I’ve always liked things gothic, subversive, counter cultural, and friendly, and Steampunk, it was rapidly evident, would give me all of that. I like the kind of spaces it creates, where all manner of things become easier and more possible.

As Steampunks go, I’m not a very dramatic dresser. I don’t flaunt my underwear, I don’t have any fantastic contraptions. As I travel by train, my kit has to be worn to the event, so for me it’s a lot about the hat, which is probably going to have a solar panel on it for much of the time, because it would be useful, and I can.

Over years of doing Steampunk events, I’ve noticed that this is the space where I am most likely to see people who appear to me to be biologically male dressed in attire conventionally associated with being biologically female. What I love about this, is that’s really all I can say on the subject. Are they trans folk? Are they clothes fetishists? Do they just find it fun? I can’t tell, it doesn’t matter and it’s none of my business anyway. Excellent! When the man next to you has a giant kraken on his hat and is talking to a woman wearing just her underwear and a pith helmet, a guy in a dress is really a non-issue.

I may have a moustache painted on my face for the event. I may not. Whether I do and why I do, does not matter, and this cheers me enormously. A big part of the point, for me, is that you can present as whoever you want to be – explorer, exotic dancer, inventor, male, female, robot… it’s all ok. It doesn’t matter what you look like or where you start from. Age, biology, body shape, skin colour…. not an issue. Be who you want to be. There’s room. I just wish the rest of life was as roomy.