Nimue Brown's Blog, page 359

Druidry and Deep Time

By Anthony Nanson

When Nimue invited me to guest-blog on Druid Life about my novel Deep Time, I got cogitating about the points of connection between Druidry and this work of prehistoric fantasy ��� and also about the influence of my encounters with Druidry upon my values and imagination. The first point of connection that comes to mind is the core theme in Deep Time of the quest for connectedness between human beings and the rest of nature. This is the journey of transformation that my protagonist has to undergo.

The modern Druidic movement in Britain has taken inspiration from traditional cultures in other parts of the world which intimately engage with the life of plants and animals and the framework of seasons and natural elements. A complementary source of inspiration comes from trying to imagine the kind of life experienced in the British Isles in the days when the ancient Druids flourished and in the yet more remote periods preceding them. The further back in prehistory you look, the more intensely did human beings live in awareness of their interconnectedness with the ecology they belonged to. There are positive and negative angles to our imagining of human life in a primeval setting. On the one hand, there���s the delight of sensual immersion in nature, of the constant engagement of body and mind with the living world around one; the vision of earthly paradise or the noble savage. On the other hand, there is hardship, fear, pain, dirt, and an inescapable awareness of the precariousness of life and death.

In Deep Time I���ve played with this tension by presenting my prehistoric lost world as sometimes a terrifying test of survival and other times a fabulous ecotopia all but untouched by human intervention. My protagonist, a zoologist, at first relates to nature and its denizens as objects to be studied and understood. Only through the mediation of the woman with whom he travels does he learn to connect, body and soul, with what���s around him in a spirit of respectful mutual attention. His intimate journey of connection with this woman is one and the same as his journey of connection with the world.

Hand in glove with this theme comes a second, more subtle theme, that will again be familiar to Druids, concerning the limitations of scientific understanding: that our connection with nature is not merely ecological but also spiritual, that nature is sacred and all the toil of conservation and green politics will come to nothing without recognition of this. This theme opens up a metaphysical territory of how to square Darwin���s insights about the process of biological evolution with a sense of sacredness and spirit and the necessity of hope ��� a set of questions that Deep Time provocatively raises and which I continue to grapple with in the new project I���m working on.

Find out more about the book here.

Messing up

This is not really a blog post. I’ve messed up a lot of things recently, I do not know where I fit or what I am for. I’m not sure I have anything to say, and every opinion I offer or feeling I have risks hurting and offending someone else. Some of this is depression talking. Some of it is the feeling that my silence and my absence might now be the best things I have to give. I need time to think about this, to work out if I have anything to say that is worth saying. To those of you who have been kind and supportive, my thanks.

I have come to the conclusion that I’m a fairly awful human being, I lack for sufficient compassion and empathy, I am not generous of heart, I am not tolerant enough and I am not reliably kind. I get angry and upset about things and it always, always causes problems. As I no longer have the wit or will to keep trying to hide how rubbish I am, stepping back seems like the most sensible thing to do.

Outside the tribe

Last week, Angharad wrote a really challenging and brilliant post about the language of tribe and othering. It is not an easy read. It is easy to look at something like this and say, ���ah yes, other people are getting it wrong again,��� and to assume that I am ok. I admit my first response was to assume it wasn���t about me. On reflection, it is at least as much me as anyone else. You can read the original post here ��� https://incidentaldruidry.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/belonging/

I know why it happens. Anger and frustration at what the mainstream does, this sleepwalking into environmental disaster, this system that favours the rich and punishes the vulnerable, these habits of ever greater consumption… There have been plenty of times when talking about greener living and cultural change, when I have clearly made people who don���t agree with me very uncomfortable indeed.

Is that acceptable, given what I understand to be at stake here? On my good days, I try to do it more gently, with alternatives and examples rather than howling. But how does that read? A bit smug, possibly. A bit ���see what a good Druid I am.��� If the affect of any post of mine is just to persuade people that I am better than them, then I have failed.

The uncomfortable truth is, that I do want to put some people firmly outside my tribe. The exploiters, the frackers, the pro-austerity and anyone else using their wealth and power to beat up someone who has less wealth and power. This is not my tribe, and I want to draw a ring around it, and if I could literally will the worst offending planet killers out of existence, I would do so without hesitation.

I���m conscious of how Cat Treadwell has been posting about her chaplaincy work, and not giving up on people, and I admire her courage and generosity. I don���t think I could do that. I recognise that I can be quite a judgemental person, and that I am capable of considerable anger. I acknowledge that I would not put so much effort into living the way I do, if I did not consider those choices to be in some way superior to other choices. That has implications for how I think about other people. Whether I assume social conditioning, lack of care, personal greed or lack of understanding informs what they do, I still judge.

We are killing the planet, and so many people who could do differently carry on seeking their own amusement and will not change in any way because their ���in the moment��� happiness is held as more important than the consequences. I don���t know how to be anything other than judgemental in face of that ��� silence, seems to be about the best there is. I don���t know how not to feel angry, and afraid of what is happening to our world. There are plenty of days when any disrespectful name for the wilfully oblivious seems tempting. Aware also that I justify my own less than perfectly green choices, the computer, the shortcomings in my shopping, the many, many things I do not do well, and do not do better. If I criticise behaviour ��� and I often do ��� then more often than not I cause hurt and offence to someone, based on the feedback I get. While I might separate behaviour from personhood, the person hearing me cannot be assumed to be so cool about the distinctions.

The conclusion that I am coming to, is that I certainly have no right to other anyone else, no right to exclude, and that I need to watch myself for overtly offensive language. I will stand outside of the mainstream, not by trying to exclude anything too mainstream from an imaginary and non-existent ���tribe��� but by recognising that I am the one stood on the outside, shouting into the wind, for whatever good that might do anyone.

Who owns the land?

Owning the land tends to equate to owning any resources in the land ��� minerals and water most especially. Thus the ���right��� to control resources that everyone depends on, is not equally distributed. As Nestle push to own water, and fracking poisons water for many, the question of ownership is especially pertinent at the moment.

It���s worth thinking about how land ownership comes to exist. How do people obtain the resources to buy large tracts of land? And however many times the land has changed hands, the history of ownership comes back to violence. In Europe that tends to mean kings, feudalism, conquest, and in many parts of the world it means the violence of colonialism, the forced taking of land from its indigenous people and all that has flowed from that. Go back far enough in history and no one owned land. The idea of kingdoms, and the idea of big kingdoms and control of vast land areas, is more recent. How many people own land because their ancestors took it by force?

I wonder what it would be like if no one had the right to privately own and exploit material resources. Land, and all that is in the land, and on the land, the water, and the air held as common property in which fair access for all is the priority. Without the scope to exploit these commons for profit, we���d probably have a lot less consumerist culture, and fewer accumulation habits and would be more sustainable. If you can only exploit the land for the good of your community, the whole basis for decisions about benefit and usefulness would shift.

In such a situation, we would own the fruits of our labours. We would own our ideas, the work of our hands, our time. It would move us away from stuff, and towards doing. I suspect such a shift would create radical cultural change, because that minority of people who do nothing useful for anyone else but extract wealth and power through their ability to control the resources we all depend on, would no longer hold that power, while people doing useful things would more readily be respected.

Book Review – Druidry and Meditation (Nimue Brown)

Nimue Brown:

This cheered me greatly, it’s always really interesting for me to see what people make of my books, which bits (if any) are useful to them, what resonates… and if you aren’t inclined to read a book review, just check out the splendid blog site anyway.

Originally posted on Footsteps on My Path:

Druidry and Meditation ��� Nimue Brown

Published 2012 by John Hunt Publishing/Moon Books
ISBN: 1780990286
ISBN13: 9781780990286
ASIN: B00719WGTQ

I meditate. Quite frequently, in fact. Its my way of finding my center when life tosses me an unexpected curve ball. Its my way of de-stressing after 45 minutes to an hour or more in traffic. Its my way of connecting to the world around me. Its my way of communing with the Gods and the Spirits of the Land. Meditation is a useful tool for me.

I also follow a personal Spiritual Path of Druidry. So Nimue���s book was of interest to me. I was not sure what I was expecting. A self-help book? A how-to on Druidry? A how-to on Meditation? What I found was a very useful tome on how to approach meditative techniques from a perspective of Druidry.As Nimue points out several times in���

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What we did at Druid Camp

It would be fair to say that I���m not good with nudity. I can just about cope with other people���s, mine I find difficult. Making my body available to people in any way creates challenges. I have a lot of issues with my body, so inviting people to look at it or to accept my skin is tricky. So, yes, that is my new book cover, and yes, that is my back.

I���ve never considered myself cover material ��� I���m not the kind of slinky, glamorous entity that normally goes on covers. Last year, I decided to challenge this, to see whether my publisher, and readers, would be willing to tolerate me on the front of a book. It was not an easy thing to do. Given the subject matter of the book, I clearly needed to be lying down. For the Pagan aspect to come through, I needed to be lying on something natural, which meant outside. I don���t have a garden. I also don���t have a decent camera. Evidently, this was going to take a team, and the right place.

I took the project to Druid Camp, in no small part because it���s a safe space for me. Skin is acceptable there, and I knew no one would have an issue over my removing clothes. Plus, it���s a friendly, supportive environment full of people with skills. Getting the paint onto my back and the photos was a team effort, and a lot of trust on my part. It was a strange and exposed sort of thing to do, but it left me feeling stronger and less fearful.

I put this image out into the world with some nervousness. I tell myself that it will be ok because I am well used to people criticising my appearance. Only a couple of weeks ago on Twitter, a chap asked ���why the f*ck would anyone want to go near you?��� I���ve had people telling me how ���funny looking���, fat, and unattractive I am my whole life, this cover will not change that, and it will likely bring more of the same. I am used to thinking of myself as ugly, it is part of my sense of who I am. What makes me nervous, truth be told, is the risk of being found attractive. I find a measure of safety in being the sort of person very few people would want to touch anyway. It is simpler, and unthreatening. People affronted by my body have never even tried to hurt me by then using that body unkindly. Other people���s desire has not always worked out well for me and part of this wider process of testing my edges is about trying to establish that there isn���t something about my body that justifies abuse.

So here it is: awkward painted mammal by the light of a summer sunset, on the lush meadows of Druid camp.

Avebury and the Neolithic mind

I love Avebury, I���ve been there many times and the landscape as a whole, with its many ancient features, I find incredibly compelling. I���m not much of a historian, I find it hard keeping dates straight in my head and the who ruled when habits of history don���t agree with me. I���m much more interested in how regular people lived, what they thought and believed, how they organised their lives and so forth.

Nicholas Mann���s Avebury Cosmos is a fascinating book. As the title suggests, it���s very much about archaeo-astronomy, working out how the night sky would have looked at the time of building, and the different stages of development around Avebury, from its early beginnings at the Windmill Hill settlement, through to the building of Silbury, and the abandonment of the site for the overtly solar Stonehenge construction. Mann makes a compelling case for Avebury being a place of star watching.

Knowing very little about the night sky before I started reading, the star information here was hard work, but accessible to me. I learned a lot, and I can honestly say that some of what I learned staggered me, and has left me with huge questions about how we might be shaped by our environments and how, for those ancestors, the order and motion of the night sky might have influenced everything. How the making of something on the scale of Avebury would inevitably change the culture that made it, too.

Issues of geographical layout, dating of constructions and positions of stars are laid out with confidence and authority, often with reference to other authors. As a non-expert I have to take this on trust, but given that these things can be checked, and the manner of presentation, I am happy to trust.

Much of the rest of the writing is concerned with re-constructing Neolithic culture by seeing what can be inferred from the site. Some of the inferences are very logical ��� the scale, resources, number of hands required and duration of building tell us that there was some kind of organisation here and that Avebury was an important centre drawing workers and celebrators from across the south west. Mann considers the behaviour of other star-watching peoples who left more tangible evidence. He considers later myths and legends that might connect to the site, or to star watching ideas. Frequently he offers multiple interpretations offering an array of suggestions as to what people might have been doing here, and why. The speculation is clearly presented as such, and as there is no great case to make, no rabbit out of hat mystery to solve, it is a much more readable work for someone like me. Mann does not have any big claims or huge answers, but he opens the way to thinking about what life was like around Avebury, and how radically different cultures may have understood their existences. As someone who has a lot of issues with modern culture, these alternative views gave me hope.

Anyone looking for great goddess matriarchy won���t find any direct reference to it here. However, Mann charts the shift from the apparently gentler, less hierarchical organisation of the Neolithic to the first signs of conflict in the resource-poor Bronze age. He talks of climate change, and also the effect of the beginnings of trade in over-production and impoverishing the land. There are lessons here, too and it made me realise how hierarchy and patriarchy depend upon capitalism.

The diagrams are not easy to look at in a kindle, I couldn���t get notes and images onto the screen at the same time, which was frustrating, so I would suggest paper is probably better. If you have any interest in ancient history, stars, or Avebury itself, you want a copy of this book.

Paperback����AMAZON US | AMAZON UK
eBook����AMAZON US | AMAZON UK

Mammal shaming

It often seems to me that human acceptability has everything to do with the hiding and restraining of the mammal part of the self. I find this doubly true for women, where body hair is not acceptable, body fat must be removed, faces must be painted in order to pass muster and until very recently, grey hairs must be dyed a more acceptable colour. All the various liquids that the female body produces must be hidden or lied about, and in adverts some will be replaced with inoffensive blue fluid.

If there was a time when I wasn���t ashamed of my body, I do not remember it. Being teased about my appearance is one of my early memories. Being clumsy, awkward, not fast enough or co-ordinated enough dominated my early school days. When I was about ten, some of my peers took me aside and said they���d seen a thing in a soap opera where a plain-Jane character was transformed by a perm and some makeup, so there was hope for me after all.

At least in matters of appearance, I have limited control. Too tall, too broad, too solidly built, too prone to laying down fat, and certainly too furry ��� all I can do is mitigate. I could never have been a beautiful, willowy elf maiden, starting with these proportions and this face. As a child I fantasised about having plastic surgery to fix all the many things that were wrong with me, but a steel allergy makes that unthinkable.

The trickier bits are the things an animal body does and wants. It gets hungry, but I learned early that to express hunger is not ladylike. It doesn���t want to sit down quietly for hours when it���s told to, does not want to push past exhaustion to keep working, again, and it revolts against things that frighten it. Walking on ice, learning to cycle and to swim were hard battles in my childhood, not least because I was so mistrustful of my unreliable body. It doesn���t handle heat and cold well, it wants to be warm, to be comfortable, to rest for longer, not to have to get up and push this morning, to sit in the sun for a bit. It has appetites that are best not spoken of, because that would be vulgar. This body fears and craves affection in about equal measure.

It is possible, I suppose, that other people feel similar things under their better constructed veneers of civilization. The vast majority of people I encounter seem to dress and act the part far better than I do. I am an awkward, hairy mammal, as unlikely and comedic as a chimp in a dress. I walk through the world feeling like a Stone-age visitor, not able to keep up with everything a modern human is supposed to do and be. All too often this leaves me hating the skin I wear, this awkward lump of a self that I shuffle, shamefaced through my days with.

It is also possible, that if I ever felt safe in just honouring that mammal self and taking care of what it wants and needs, that I might not be so mired in despair so often. Exhaustion breaks me regularly, because I ignore the need to stop. Other needs, and wants that manifest in my body are so uncomfortable to me that I find it hard to think about them, much less say, or act on it. Faced with high heels, lipsticks, diets, hair removal and all the other norms and expectations, I feel lost, frightened, wanting to crawl back into my cave and be some other sort of animal.

Matters of destiny

This is what should happen.

You are out, on your own at one of those quieter times of day. There���s probably a very good reason for this ��� please fill in the backstory as you see fit, making sure that you find it plausible and satisfying, because all stories work better when you believe the starting point.

And there you are, ambling down the side of some non-descript bit of water, thinking your own thoughts, or not thinking, or perhaps an odd mix of the two where random things are allowed to float through your mind. But you���re not totally self involved, so you notice when the arm sticks up out of the water. Pale arm. Slender. Not drowning, but not waving either.

Up she comes. An entire, shimmering wet, river weed coated, heart-breakingly beautiful woman. Eyes of sky and water that you know are looking straight into your soul. Eyes that see all that you have been, and all that you could be. There is no judgement in her face, only recognition and you know that she���s been looking for you. She reaches out a hand and offers you…what? A sword that speaks of power and destiny? A pen that is of course mightier than the sword? A paintbrush? This is, after all, your story so it���s yours to know what a watery woman slipping into your time from the place of myth would bring with her.

Of course it is not just an object. It is an act of recognition of who you are. It is not merely permission to go out into the world and do something amazing, it is a demand. Myths do not come round and accost everyone in this way.

Be brave, she says, be bold and be real.

What happens? What really happens, when there are no ladies of lakes bearing Excalibur? What happens when one day is too much like the other and the idiots are many and the wonders few? You do it anyway.

 

(Now and then I write things for people, because something is wanted. I used to write custom fiction professionally, although usually I have more to go on than I had this time. It would work as a sort of pathworking, I think, adapted to personal circumstance.)

Small films, big ideas

This year, Stroud had its first film festival. I managed to be at the launch, not so very long ago, which included the winning films from the film competition associated with the festival, because Stroud doesn���t do things by halves!

These are all short films with local connections, and they were all played on the night, and for all of their localism, they have things to say that deserve a wider audience. In the order in which they were shown then…

What is Art? Funny, playful and also rather clever. John Bassett does a lot of local theatre, his update of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists last year sent me out to read the original novel.

Ganapati Clayman. Andrew Wood talks about art and Parkinson���s disease. I spent a few weeks last year being Andrew���s studio assistant. He���s a brilliant and fascinating person. I spent a lot of time re-whiting walls and cleaning floors, being a studio assistant not being a terribly glamorous sort of job really.

7 Miles of Pinkness is about the huge Wool Against Weapons protest last summer ��� 7 miles of pink knitting stretched between 2 nuclear weapons sites as we watch the government trying to claim that spending ��100 billion on replacing Trident – ��weaponry it would be unthinkable to ever actually use ��� is a good idea. Much to my surprise, I discovered on the night that I am fleetingly in this film. My abject panic does not come over as clearly as I had feared. My section had just run out of wool, we had no idea where any spare wool was, and I was stood where the wool wasn���t when a nice man pointed a camera at me. I���m very proud to have been a very tiny part of this epic, international project. I���ve also helped turn the scarf into blankets for international aid projects.