Nimue Brown's Blog, page 38

Everyday Druidry and divination

(Nimue)

Divination can be a really good choice if you’re looking for a way to bring small amounts of Druidry into your everyday life. Divination doesn’t have to be about trying to predict the future. You can use it as an opportunity to contemplate what’s going on in your life, to seek inspiration or to just open a little door that might allow some magic into the day.

I favour oracle cards, although any sort of divination tool can work this way. For Druids, I think Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm’s plant and animal oracles are a particularly good choice. I don’t have their Druidcraft Tarot but I’ve heard good things about it. I’m also very fond of the cards from the Matlock the Hare folk, and the Hedge Guild Otherworld Oracle.

Drawing one oracle card, contemplating the image and then looking up the meaning doesn’t take very long. A few minutes to read and reflect, and then you’ve got a dash of inspiration to carry with you for the rest of the day. It’s a good way of making a little patch of calm and reflectiveness. Contemplating a card can be a meditative thing.

Oracle cards can be quite small and easy to carry, so they can be there to dip into when you feel a need for inspiration or to reconnect with the spiritual side of your life. 

Magical discoveries

(Nimue)

I’m currently working on a nonfiction book about spirits of place (follow me on Patreon for the WIP). It’s brought up some surprising things, as book writing often does. 

I’m not the sort of Pagan who does a lot of spells. At this point I’m not doing rituals – although I have in the past. I continue to have a prayer practice, but I have tended to think of myself as a non-magical person. However, writing this book is making me think about all my experiences of spirits of place over the years. There’s been a lot, and I know a lot and I’ve done a lot. But not spells – and perhaps I prioritise those too much in my thinking about what magic is and means..

I’m not dedicated to a deity, although I find deities interesting. Most of the time they seem far too grand and distant for it to make any sense to try and bother them. Spirits of Place however are very much part of my daily life – both the very physical presences around me and the other beings I’m aware of.

It’s not an approach to magic that gives me much scope to change things by will. Most of the time it’s more like being in a conversation, where things might happen as a consequence. It’s work I find comforting, and that grounds me in my surroundings and gives me a deep sense of place, and of belonging. 

It’s not an easy thing to pitch as a practice compared to the kind of magic that Gets Stuff Done. At the same time it definitely does get stuff done, but in quiet and understated ways. I am sometimes the person who has to do the getting done of stuff, what with having opposable thumbs and a corporeal presence and the means to impact on my surroundings. 

I’m discovering a sense of self that has more room for magic in it, and I’m enjoying that as a process. Writing is such a great tool for consolidating thoughts, finding patterns and bringing together what you know. It’s often an adventure in its own right to embark on a book project.

Inclusivity and fairies

(Nimue)

Here we are in Gloucester with a small fairy parade to promote an event at the end of the month. There was a lot of singing in the street and some productive testing of songs for future parading. I’m pleased with how that’s going and with what I’m putting together on the music side at the moment.

My new project – Carnival of Cryptids – is a flexible thing. I’ve got a core of very capable and experienced singers, not all of whom will be able to make it to every event we might do. I also have a wider community of people who, for all kinds of reasons cannot make a substantial commitment. Part of the point of this project is to create opportunities for people whose care roles, health issues and other factors might otherwise make it hard for them to participate in a musical group. It’s also a safe space in which less experienced singers can develop, take modest risks and become more confident and capable performers. I’m really pleased with how it’s going.

Inclusion matters a lot to me. One of the reasons I’m keen to support the fairy events in Gloucester is because of how inclusive they are. You can see in the photo that we have people with disability aides in the mix. There are other kinds of diversity here too that are not so immediately self-announcing. Safe space matters, and the invitation to participate matters.

There was a little team from Carnival of Cryptids out for this, and we’ll be singing again at the end of the month (event info below, visit https://www.facebook.com/JMKordas for more details). We’re going to hold some space where anyone who wants to sing with us can just turn up. Anyone who wants a song sheet ahead of time please get in touch, or just rock up on the day, we have plenty of songs that are easy to pick up as you go along if you’re comfortable with that sort of thing. Or just come along and listen – we’ve got some great singers in the mix and some interesting songs – including some overtly fairy content. 

I shall have some fairy song videos to share at some point. I’ll also be doing fairy songs in Borth on the 9th of March as Jessica Law and the Outlaws – we should be on at 4pm, More details over here – https://goblincircus.carrd.co/

Davóg Rynne’s bardic work

(Nimue)

Today I’m sharing a song by Davóg Rynne which he has put out to raise money for Medicine Sans Frontiers in Gaza. It’s a good example of the way in which bardic work can make a difference.

Songs are good ways of engaging with people, and of fundraising. The horrors of Gaza are so overwhelming, and on such a massive scale that it is difficult to even think about it. I find I cannot make any emotional sense of the killing on this scale, of the deliberate harm being done to civilians, and especially children.

By making this song about specific children and what happened to them, Davog has helped humanise the horrors. Sometimes focusing on the individual experience makes it easier to understand the implications of things on a huge scale. Every child killed in the atrocities in Gaza was an individual, an innocent life snuffed out inexcusably.

Speak up where you can. Petition, protest, contribute. Share this song.

Crafting and magic

(Nimue)

This is the first rag rug I’ve made in a while, and the first one made specifically for the living space I share with Keith. It provides a second life for worn out socks, dead t-shirts and a dress I was very fond of but that was falling apart. It’s a mixing together of our lives, our histories and our old clothes. There’s a certain amount of magic in that. It’s also an expression of intent about the future, and a life together. 

Magical practice is very much about focusing your intent. Crafting takes a lot of time and intention, so the two can go together rather well. This rug is not a spell exactly, but it is willful transformation of worn out things into something new. It’s an act of keeping fabric out of landfill and a commitment to living responsibly.  It’s an expression of love and joy that will sit around in the living room being happy and joyful for some time to come.

I like having unique items, and this kind of upcycling is a way of doing that. The fabric in the rug is full of stories and memories. The colours are the colours we wear, so it reflects us and suits the space. I worked on it with life going on, with documentaries on in the background, with music, so it carries the resonance of all sorts of things that happened around it during the making process.

Making anything creates change and possibility. There is magic in crafting and creating. It’s an enchanting process. I find crafting to be good for my mental health, it soothes me and clears my head. Making is magic, and making magic can involve making other things.

Druidry and Projection

(Nimue)

We don’t have a huge amount of certainty when it comes to the Druids of ancient times. One of the consequences of this is that people project their own things into the space that leaves. How someone perceives ancient Druids usually says more about them than about anything historical. I have no doubt that it’s part of what makes Druidry attractive, that it seems to offer space for whatever you want.

When we come at something with assumptions – as we all so often do – it can be hard to see how those assumptions are colouring our interpretation of the evidence. To give a simple case in point, archaeology is prone to assuming anything that makes no immediate sense probably relates to religion and ritual. Much of it could just as well be sport. As thought experiments, I like asking what sense the ancient past might make if we assumed bureaucracy as an explanation sometimes.

Rituals aren’t just religious. A lot of social, and political things have ritualistic aspects to them. Rituals can be displays of power, ways of making people conform, ways of building or enforcing identity. Sports often have similar things going on – the symbols, the chanting, the praying, the crowd willing the participants to act in certain ways.

The willingness to read ‘ritual’ into the past and not sports or administration has a lot to do with what we believe about history in the first place. If you think our ancestors were primitive, ignorant and superstitious then the idea that they do inexplicable things for religious reasons makes a lot more sense. It’s not the only way of reading the available evidence.

One of the things the ancient Druids can reveal to us (if we let them) are our own beliefs and biases. In thinking about who we want the ancient Druids to have been, we reveal a lot about who we are. This has everyday applications. The more aware we are of what we might be projecting onto the world, the better a chance we have at seeing through our own assumptions to encounter something other than ourselves. Discovering your own assumptions is a good thing to do in terms of developing self knowledge. Once you know what your filters are, you can decide how you want to handle them.

I choose to try and see the best in people. I’m quite aware of the ways that has tripped me up in the past and likely will do again. I give the benefit of the doubt where I can, and assume people are doing things for the best reasons… and sometimes they really aren’t and it doesn’t play out well for me. I choose this because I find it preferable to projecting my anxieties onto the world. I don’t want to go round looking out for the worst in everyone and expecting to be stabbed in the back. It’s no way to live. 

The projection that I’m currently working on is the belief that people know what they are doing and act deliberately. I have made a lot of mistakes based on that assumption and I need to get to grips with it. Meanwhile I am going to allow myself the idea that the Druids of old were wise, insightful people acting in considered ways, because I very much want that to have been true.

Creativity and class

(Nimue)

If you were a working class kid, or someone who went to an ordinary school, your sense of yourself as a potentially creative person has likely been impacted by this. I suspect it’s even more of an issue if you were part of a minority group and that there’s likely to be a big racial aspect to this too, but I don’t have personal experience of that.

If you aren’t privileged, you have to be good. Really good. Stunningly good without anyone even needing to teach you much. If you are stunningly good at something, there’s a chance that you might not be actively discouraged from doing the thing you are interested in. Otherwise you probably grew up with pointers about what you should do to get a ‘proper’ job. If you were lucky you were allowed to do something creative as a hobby, but many people don’t even get that.

This, I think, is a major contributor to the idea that a lot of this creative stuff is either a magical gift from the gods, or unavailable to you. This is not how it goes for rich kids. Rich kids get lessons, and tutoring and opportunities around things they express interest in. Most of them do not grow up hearing that it isn’t for them. It’s not a coincidence that an awful lot of people who do well in the creative industries came from well-off backgrounds. They do not have to be stunningly, naturally good in order to be given the slightest chances.

The myth of talent stops people from having a go. It encourages you to give up on yourself if you aren’t immediately brilliant at something. In reality, most people need time to learn, practice, study, develop and grow. That time has a far bigger impact on what you can do than any other consideration. If you aren’t allowed that time you will not find out what you might be capable of. The good news is that it’s never too late to start.

I was lucky. I had a grandmother who played the piano and the guitar and who sang and created art. I had a mother who had gone to dance classes growing up and wanted me to have those opportunities too. My father wrote. I grew up with plenty of loud and clear messages that I could not expect to do any of this professionally, but at least I could get to do it a bit. So I had a better start than average when it came to being creative, and the nerve to try anyway. I have done all kinds of jobs along the way, but I’ve managed to hold onto the creative threads.

Creativity is not a rare gift a few people have. Support to explore, study and create is however a much rarer thing and has everything to do with privilege and wealth. If you want to create, then trust yourself and give it whatever time you can afford. You did not miss out on the magic artist genes. There are no magic artist genes. If you want to create then you have all the core features a person needs to be creative. Everything else is learning and practice, opportunity and trusting yourself.

It’s very hard to make a living in the creative industries.That makes it difficult to work creatively without someone supporting you financially. That in turn means that being creative often depends on what resources you have. It’s difficult to work full time and significantly invest energy in creativity. If you’re ill or have caring duties on top of that, it’s nigh on impossible.

Creativity should be for everyone. Making things, expressing yourself and having room for ideas is intrinsically human stuff and it seems very wrong to me that the vast majority of people get little opportunity for that. Worse, so many people are convinced that they can’t create when the truth is that they just haven’t been given enough of a chance.

Cover stories – Ghosts of the Lost Forest

(Nimue)

In the normal scheme of things, when you put out a book you want a cover that alerts the reader to the genre. Matching your genre is a good way of flagging up that you know your stuff, and of course it helps the right readers to find you.

Pagan fiction is not a huge genre. Witchlit is definitely a thing, but none of this is established enough to have any genre conventions where the look of the book is concerned. What this cover does first and foremost is flag up that this isn’t an urban fantasy novel or a paranormal romance. Although if you like that sort of thing there’s a possibility that this story will also appeal. I’m more at the Charles de Lint end of urban fantasy.

It is a cover that suits the story. Within the tale, there are paintings depicting the spirit of the forest of Arden. Having a face that is human-ish but not human works well with the book. There is both mystery, challenge and something uneasy about that face, I think. 

The cover was created for me by Keith Errington, and while there was a bit of photoshopping involved, there was no AI. All of the photos you can see here were taken by Keith. The background tree photo is of a hazel that grows not far from where we live. The foreground laurel leaves were also close to home. The wood texture in the face comes from a photograph of a cut tree trunk. The face itself is something Keith drew digitally. It’s worth noting that digital art and many of the ways of working with photoshop require skills and knowledge, it’s not just about feeding text prompts in.

The paperback version of this book is up on Amazon now. I’ll be releasing an ebook version in a few week’s time. As usual, the ebook will be free or pay what you like. I’ll be posting more about this story over the next few weeks, including ebook links once that goes live. If you want to be alerted every time I put up a new ebook, your best bet is to follow me on ko-fi – https://ko-fi.com/O4O3AI4T

Learning how to be sad

(Nimue)

When you suffer from depression or anxiety, the messages you often get from both medical and spiritual sources are much the same. Your feelings are the problem. Learn to change your thoughts and feelings and you will be cured. That’s never helped me, and I know other people who struggle and have not been able to fix themselves either.

What this leads to is treating your ‘negative’ emotions as suspect, and perhaps even trying to fight or suppress them. That’s very hard work. It’s also at odds with much of what we know about mental health, because suppressing things tends to make matters worse, not better in the long run.

I can trace all of my mental health issues to things I’ve experienced. There’s nothing weird about being anxious when you’re dealing with something that scares you. There’s nothing weird about being sad if you’re suffering. These are natural, normal responses to distress. However, we tend to pathologise grief and distress, and there’s a big economic dimension to that.. 

What would happen if we treated these kinds of mental illnesses as things that had been caused, not as personal failings or brain chemistry malfunctions? What if we assumed a person was most likely having a reasonable response to an unreasonable situation? Rather than medicated them, we’d have to fix the problem. Poverty, abuse, toxic workplaces and insecurity would explain a great deal of this. What would happen if we tackled mental health as a social issue for everyone, not a medical problem for some?

Imagine if workplace health and safety included not being allowed to stress people to the point of making them sick. This would include paying people enough that they could afford to live decent, healthy lives. Imagine the mental health benefits of universal basic income and how many people that would liberate from constant stress.

This winter I’ve been experimenting with taking myself seriously. If I feel sad, I no longer try to fight it. If I’m anxious, or stressed, I give that some space. This might result in a few tears, but I find when I do that, the distress passes and I get on top of my feelings. I had to remind myself repeatedly that with my partner going through some scary and unpleasant stuff, it was reasonable to feel sad and worried. This was nothing disproportionate or inappropriate in how I was responding to that.

I’m having to learn how to be sad about things. It’s taking practice not to see fear or sorrow as a sign that my mental health is falling apart and that I should be fighting to cope better. Making the space for what I’m feeling results in coping far better than trying to cope does. The less I try to tough things out, the more resilient I am. It still feels paradoxical, but it definitely works. Part of this is about not seeing myself as the problem, but shifting my understanding of what I’m dealing with. Being upset by upsetting things is not an illness. I’ve had to deal with a lot of awful stuff along the way, that’s all.

If you start from the idea that how you feel is a fair response to what you’re dealing with, you don’t invalidate yourself. You don’t end up mistrusting your feelings or habitually treating yourself like you are the problem. When the problem is not inside your head, you can’t fix it by changing how you think, and going that route can take you away from the real-world solutions that would genuinely help.

Hedge Guild Otherworld Oracle

(Nimue, review)

This is without a doubt my favourite oracle card set ever, and I’ve encountered a fair few over the years. It’s a collaboration between Jesse Wolf Hardin and Kiva Rose Hardin, and I was sent it to review. I’ve been pulling a card every day for some weeks, and I like it so much that I want to buy the handbook to replace my review pdf. I have physical cards.

The hedge is a liminal place. This set takes us into the marginal and magical, bringing in other than human influences, and inviting us out to the edges. There are sixty Hedge Guild Otherworld cards. They draw on folklore, archetypes and the personal insights of the creators. It’s a highly original set, and comes in three sections. The Guild are characters from the margins, they are guides and archetypes. There’s also flora and fauna. Commentary for each card includes all kinds of wider information – what the card signifies, what folklore it draws on, how you might encounter what’s represented, what questions to ask yourself and so forth.

There’s no judgement here – which is often an issue with cards. All kinds of feelings, energies and possibilities are considered, but not with any sense of them being good or bad, right or wrong. They are what they are and what you do with them is up to you. I like that a lot. Judgy cards can be really demoralising to work with and I don’t find them helpful.

Each card offers richness and wisdom. While you certainly could use them for divination, I found them to be excellent for contemplation. Every card offers food for thought, and wisdom to reflect on. Each card has the potential to take you on a journey towards enchantment and wonder. It’s a wonderfully well-written thing and an invitation to bring all kinds of magic into your life. Taking time to meditate on a card is a rewarding process, making this a good tool for anyone who needs something to work with in order to meditate effectively.

One of the issues with oracle cards is often who the user is assumed to be – especially what life stage you are expected to be at. I didn’t find that with this set. These cards are grounded and thoughtful, but also accessible and not requiring any prior knowledge, I think they could work well for anyone who fancied them. If you like your otherworldliness wild and tender, wise and playful then this is for you.  I wholeheartedly recommend checking them out.

Hedge Guild Otherworld Oracle Deck & Book – Sales Page
https://planthealerbookstore.com/hedgeoracle