Nimue Brown's Blog, page 36

Being in the flow

(Nimue)

Sometimes going with the flow is a good choice, because it is the choice that involves least fighting. It’s an idea that comes up a lot in Taoist thinking and in the Tao Te Ching – the idea of being like water, flowing, and not trying to push back. Taking that approach can result in more peaceful and gentle ways of being in the world.

There’s also a line of thought that says ‘Don’t go with the flow. Dead things go with the flow.’ Fish tend to swim against the current to stay in one place in moving water. Salmon and eels have to work their way upstream to reproduce. Sometimes what’s called for is resistance and pushing against the direction you are being carried in. If you aren’t in a gentle and safe space, then the flow might be going somewhere vile.

I have an experience of flow that goes beyond this. It’s not about being carried along by whatever immediate forces bump into you. It’s about being in tune with something deeper and more underlying and being able to work with it. This is more like managing your sails so that you can go where you want to go even if the wind isn’t blowing exactly that way. Or it might be about working with undercurrents. It’s the spring tide that comes up the river even though the river mostly flows the other way. Life is full of such moments and opportunities.

Going with the flow can be a very superficial, unconsidered sort of thing. Seeking the flow, looking for what aligns and how best to navigate is a more deliberate process. It means being open and sensitive, and alert. Sometimes it requires wild leaps in the dark, acts of faith, trust and optimism, but I often find those work better for me than being cautious. Getting to where you want and need to be isn’t always going to be a smooth and easy process, sometimes you have to get in the metaphorical river and wade upstream.

It’s such an exciting feeling though, when it works. Like riding a wave, freewheeling down a hill, there’s a letting go and also a second by second process of working with what’s around you. When it works it is wild, and beautiful and Things Happen in unexpected ways. Sometimes you can even become the flow that lifts and moves other people.

(With thanks to Wanne for the inspiration.)

Creating joy

(Nimue)

Life can be grim and challenging. Between the cost of living, the state of the environment and the horrors of war, joy does not show up automatically. However, when we work together to create joy for each other, it’s possible to do all kinds of good things.

The photo I’ve shared is of Keith and myself at a recent fairy event in Gloucester. It was good fun dressing up and there was much to enjoy in the colourful costumes other attendees had put together, and in the creative sharing that dominated the weekend. We contributed music to the event, which went really well.

Joy is necessary for life. Creating joyful spaces is vital for good mental health, and to give people the hope and the energy to tackle the serious issues. This is a significant part of my work, and what I feel I am here to do. Joyful community spaces are empowering, and lift people up and help them cope, and act. I’ve seen a lot of that in action over the weekend. Joyful space is nurturing and restorative.

The events I’m involved with are free to attend in the day, which makes them inclusive. People who are struggling don’t have to pay to be in the room. That’s really important to me. Watching kids enjoying the space, seeing parents having fun with it. Having people of all ages come along and join in, making safe space for people who otherwise out at the fringes – this all matters to me.

Being with Keith has taught me a lot about the process of co-creating joy. It’s in how we support and uplift each other, how we encourage each other and give each other permission to be daring and adventurous. We make more room for joy when we take delight in each other, and enjoy sharing time together. This is true of any human interaction. We also make more room for joy when we hold each other through the tough things and make room for dealing with life’s challenges. There was a lot of that too, over the weekend. Where there is mutual care and support there is real community.

Right now joy seems like a radical choice. It is a form of resistance. Making joy is an answer to austerity, to the hard grind that so many people face. We can meet poverty with efforts to uplift and overcome. We can support good things. These fairy events help raise money to keep The Folk of Gloucester open – it’s a wonderful building, a piece of history and heritage. Keeping it open, viable and available is important to me. Austerity threatens so much of our culture, so much of real worth is at risk right now. There are some serious consequences to doing these ‘silly’, joyous things.

Mental health and justice

(Nimue)

I want to draw your attention to this powerful piece of writing from James Nichol. It brings together issues of justice, mental health and community healing. The post looks at way in which we are responsible for each other, and the futility of approaching mental health as an individual problem in a situation of ongoing collective trauma. These are issues I’ve been poking about in for a while, but James has brought them together here with clarity, wisdom and insight. It is well worth taking the time to read his thoughts.

MENTAL HEALTH UNDER SIEGE

Druidry and Dreaming

(Nimue)

If you’re looking for a small, everyday practice, there’s a lot to be said for daydreaming. It’s a surprisingly powerful thing to give time to.

Everything we do begins with an idea. If we’re acting unconsciously there’s a fair risk that the idea we’re acting on was not our own. Making change begins with inspiration. Daydreaming allows us to find and play with ideas and explore what we’re interested in. Time spent daydreaming allows us to consider our lives, wants, needs and feelings. The better a sense you have of what you want, the easier it is to see how to move in the right direction.

The more time you spend daydreaming, the less likely you are to have your wants defined by adverts and social pressure. Deliberately thinking about things that bring you joy and reflecting on good experiences drives out the commercial noise. If you’re on the Druid path the odds are that you want more time in nature, more peace and inspiration, more wonder and sacredness. Make room to think about it and you invite more of that in.

Daydreaming is a low carbon activity. It doesn’t hurt any other living being. Daydreaming time is time that isn’t spent working or consuming. Stepping off the capitalist treadmill for a while is liberating and restorative. It’s a meaningful act of resistance that will make you less vulnerable to these pressures the rest of the time. It’s also a really good form of self care. Daydreaming is restful and supports good mental health. You can combine it with wandering about, or physically resting depending on what your body most needs.

When you invite ideas in this way, you make room for inspiration to strike. Create space for the awen, and it will come to you. Inspiration is sacred and magical, so making room for it every day is a particularly powerful Druidic practice. As inspiration comes to you, you will find more options, more sense of direction, more clarity, priorities and so forth. If you are feeling stuck, or lost, then daydreaming is how you start to imagine a path into existence.

Close your eyes, take a few slow breaths, and see what comes to you.

Truth and Justice

(Nimue)

For there to be justice, there must also be truth. Those who act unjustly will often try to conceal this by also distorting the truth of the situation. They will attempt to blame their victims, misrepresent events and will outright lie. Establishing the truth is often an important step towards healing and, if appropriate, reconciliation.

It can be very difficult for people who have been led to believe something untrue that then causes them to act on behalf of an abuser of oppressor. Coming to terms with the truth in such a context is a painful thing. This raises questions about how we deal with people who have been indoctrinated. It is better to get people to a place where they can accept the truth, but that isn’t easy.

Faced with evidence that your truth isn’t true at all, it can be tempting to dig in. Conspiracy theories, ideas of deep state, and propaganda are especially tempting when you’re looking at something that compromises your world view. In a culture based on lies and manipulation, it is very hard to know who, or what to trust.

When we don’t feel confident about truth, what we have to depend on are faith positions. This kind of faith will tap in to whatever best fits with our existing stories, and whatever most impacts on us emotionally. The vast majority of people want to believe that they are good, that they are doing the right things for the right reasons, and that they have not been hoodwinked. When the truth does not support the story that you are a good person, it can be very painful to deal with.

No matter how good the evidence is, many people do not respond to evidence when it compromises their story and their sense of self. It’s something we can be vigilant about with regards to ourselves, and very difficult to know what to do in face of other people. Belief that terrible things and people are actually good is a massive issue for us as a species right now.

To speak up for truth and for justice is not easy, and in some places it will get you killed. To stay silent is a form of complicity that enables injustice to continue. The question I most often come back to around this is, what can I do that would be kind? Alongside that I’m asking how can I challenge people in ways they can bear? How can I support truth and reason in my day to day life? I don’t have the scope to do anything on a grand scale, as is true for the vast majority of us. However, small everyday choices are a meaningful contribution to our societies, and we all have scope to seek both kindness and justice in our daily lives.

Balance

(David)

This past winter has been challenging for me, healthwise, in that since last autumn I haven’t been able to write even one new page in my fiction works, and I’m only managing to make an occasional post here. Nevertheless, in the deep, still quietness, things are occurring.

My magical practice has by necessity through these months been reduced to three small acts each day, but an interesting new practice as winter eases into spring is drawing a single card of a morning, now and then, from the Urban Crow oracle deck created by MJ Cullinane, which was recommended to me by a fellow dedicant of the Morrigan.

This week I’ve drawn two cards from it, three days apart.

The first was Upheaval. The guidebook entry starts with this: “Nature does not discriminate. Upheaval is a reminder that things can change on a whim, through no fault of your own. Are you prepared for change? Are you able to regain your composure and fly off to a better, more stable position?”I sat with it for a while, seeing in my health crises of these past several months a quite relentless continued upheaval, and I’m satisfied that, yes, I am able to do this.

The second card, today, is Balance, for which the guidebook entry starts with this:
“Have you ever noticed how even on windy days, crows and other birds can stay perfectly positioned on a thin telephone wire? They seem almost unfazed or unbothered by the wind. When we are in balance, we meet external forces with our internal strength, giving each space to exist in harmony.”

A timely image, this, because I’ve been sitting at my study window watching Nature’s first flourishing of the season while strong winds off the Atlantic have ruffled everything relentlessly out there in our valley. And then yesterday I heard my friendly neighbourhood Crows calling for the first time in what feels like ages. I answered them, even stepping outside on unsteady legs to call back and not caring if my neighbours heard us, and that raucous conversation filled my heart with gladness.

This all reminds me strongly of standing on the bow of a ship in my old life, balancing as if surfing as we powered at speed through the oncoming waves out into the Atlantic, where even on a fine day the seas can be mountainous. That sensation is the most thrilling one of my life. It’s what I remember of my old life with overwhelming joy, and what I look forward to enjoying again in my next life when this one is done. Perhaps too in the Otherworld between my goes at this human life.

Balance. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. It brings me happiness. I’m grateful for it.

A Westerly Wind Brings Witches

A Westerly Wind Brings Witches is a witchcraft novel by Sally Walker – who is new to me but came to my attention through Moon Books. I had the pleasure of writing her an endorsement back before the book came out, which goes as follows:

This novel balances rather knowing humour about modern Pagans, with well informed dives into history. It’s a remarkable blend of comedy and compassion that manages to make jests about some of our standard witchcraft fantasies while offering a compelling view of reincarnation and personhood. Full of unexpected things, entirely charming and well worth your time.

I’ll add that I love being surprised by books, and this one absolutely delivered on those terms. The main character – Moira – is a total non-event for the first forty years of her life. Then she runs away to Cornwall and, while trying to find herself, joins a coven. What she finds is far more than she ever imagined, and includes a lot of past-life recollection. This content is well rooted in history and draws on what we actually know of cunning folk, and witch trials – often so sorely misrepresented in fiction. There’s some gleeful playing with tropes and resisting of conventions here.

This is a hopeful book, with good things to say. It could so easily have been something mean-spirited and snarky, but Sally pokes fun from a place of affection and understanding. Anyone who has been a Pagan for a while will see something of their own experiences here, I have no doubt. We’ve all met some of these characters. At times, most of us have probably been them to at least some degree.

The writing itself is delightful, and uses alliteration to a startling degree. It’s a really playful style in the more contemporary sections, and often cheerfully anachronistic for the historical parts. At times the book is emotional and challenging, but overall it’s a warm-hearted and hopeful thing to read.

More on the publisher’s website – https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/westerly-wind-brings-witches-novel

When I wrote this review it was simply as a result of having read the book. At this point I’m also doing some publicity work for Sally, so wanted to be clear that I’ve ended up doing that because I liked the book, and have not been persuaded to like a book because of a job.

Panic and healing

(Nimue)

What can you do in face of overwhelming panic – be that your own or someone else’s? When I sought medical support, I ended with a handbook full of thing to do to manage mild anxiety. I was unable to persuade my doctor that I was experiencing panic to a far worse degree than that. I’ve seen helpful apps that work much the same way and very little that would do anything for the kind of panic that feels like drowning.

Here are some things I have learned…

Get out of the situation and get to somewhere you feel safe. That might mean having the space to have your own feelings while you work them through. If you’ve triggered into something historical, the key thing to keep saying to yourself is ‘I am not there now.’ Say it out loud, let yourself hear it.

My worst experiences of panic comes up around making mistakes or feeling that I’ve got things wrong. I suspect this isn’t unusual – abuse so often includes victim blaming. Being punished for errors and mistakes as though you are being deliberately useless or uncooperative leaves marks. I am allowed to make mistakes. I am allowed to be human. No one is perfect. I cannot magically know everything. These are good thoughts to hold.

What’s helped me most is hearing those affirmations. My partner Keith has been brilliant at supporting me though panic attacks. He sits with me, reminds me that I am safe, and loved. He tends to help reduce my sense of the size of the problem, rather than making me feel like I’ve over-reacted. He tells me that I’m good enough, doing well, and things of that ilk. This comes from a substantial understanding of how and why I panic. When someone else takes the time to understand, that’s really powerful.

Affirmations are good in face of panic. There’s a balance to strike around supporting a person without minimising what’s happening. Reassurance and kindness in face of panic gets a lot done. Even if what’s going on makes no sense to you, affirming that you care, and want to help, and mean to help the panicking person get things under control, is powerful.

Doing and saying nothing is not a good response. It leaves space in which the person suffering from panic can plug in all of their fears unchallenged. Small affirmations of care and support are enough to stop that happening, or to at least help keep it under control.

I used to have panic attacks that went on for hours, often over days at a time. At this point they don’t last anything like as long. Keith’s affirmations come up for me even when he isn’t present, and that helps me cope. A lot of people who struggle with poor mental health have voices in their heads – critical, abusive, destructive voices from the past. Countering that works. It’s something to know regardless of whether you’re dealing with this personally. Any time we approach each other with warmth and affirmation we’re potentially giving someone else the means to fight their demons.

Druidry and the equinox

(Nimue)

We don’t know whether ancient Druids celebrated the equinoxes. If they did, we don’t know what they did. We do know that prehistoric peoples were interested in the night sky, the solstices and equinoxes from the alignments of stone circles and other monuments.

It makes a lot of sense to honour the equinox – it’s a part of the turning of the year. These solar points are important parts of the seasons, and recognising them in some way is good for keeping in touch with the natural world.

I’ve never found them easy to celebrate, because there’s not a lot of folk tradition to draw on. In my part of the world, this is a busy time for people living close to the soil. But then, our more agricultural ancestors wouldn’t have needed a wheel of the year to help them connect with nature, they were living in the world far more than we do. Many of us are well insulated from weather, seasonal variations and what’s living around us. Most of us are not as involved with actual life as our ancestors were.

Festivals offer opportunities to reflect on our own lives, and to connect with the seasons, the land and our ancestors. If you only have a little time to devote to Druidry, it makes sense to focus on the day to day shifts – the seasons, the weather, and what the living world around you is doing. A few minutes every day to observe and reflect on this is worth a great deal, and will ground whatever else you do.

Fairy songs

(Nimue)

As there are regular fairy events happening in Gloucester, it makes sense for me to have more fairy songs. Fairy events most places tend to focus on that Victorian inspired, cute, winged fairy idea. One of the things I and my comrades-in-folklore have been doing is trying to get more of the older material into the mix. It’s a good opportunity to educate people, and the more diverse the fairies, the more human diversity is supported.

This first song is for fairy parades. For this one I’ve gone for the beautiful but dangerous perspective, these are the Belle Dame Sans Merci fairies. I look a bit beaten up here, but we made the video during Keith’s cancer treatment and I wasn’t sleeping well.

This is a more recent video, taken during a Jessica Law and the Outlaws rehearsal. I got this song from a chap called Dan Evans, and it is based on the novel Lud in the Mist. We sang it at Borth, and a small group of teens danced very slowly to it, which was perfect. In the story, this is a piece of music that lures people into fairy.

Keith has written a cracking fairy song this spring, but we don’t have a recording of that yet. At some point I will fix this and share it.