Nimue Brown's Blog, page 40

Pagan Fiction

(Nimue)

There are some hazy lines between Pagan fiction, paranormal writing, folk horror, historical fiction and urban fantasy. There have been many authors who have taken Pagan ideas to use in fiction without really conveying anything much of what Pagnism is like for those of us in it. The film The Wicker Man is a good example here – even though Summerisle is in some ways attractive, the story depends on the idea that being a Pagan cuts you off from modern sensibilities. At the same time, there was so little Pagan representation anywhere that this film was, for a long time, one of the few things that came close.

Representation is really important to me. However, when people write beyond their own experience there’s always a risk of cliche, stereotypes and misrepresentation. Paganism in folk horror is not usually about representing us, but about treating us as other. This is part of why it’s on my mind to write a folk horror novel from my definitively Pagan perspective.

I’ve written a few overtly Pagan novels already. Hunting the Egret strays a bit into the fantastical – it’s a Charles De Lint level of fantasy in that it is mostly set in the familiar world but there are magical elements to it. There’s obvious and conscious Paganism in this one, it’s definitely witchlit.

My Wherefore series is a supernatural soap opera and deliberately silly. However, I did my best animist writing while working on this project. The silliness opened up space where I could write about the intentions of yeast, ice and oolites, and attribute intention to things that, in more serious fiction I might not have felt able to give a voice to.

Spells for the Second Sister is set up to look more like fairytale informed fantasy, but there are some decidedly Pagan themes underpinning it all. It’s a story about what we inherit from our ancestors, about spirits of place, and magically transforming your own life through your own intentions.

At some point later this year I shall be releasing a novel called Ghosts of the Lost Forest – this one has a lot of lived Paganism in it, including people going to moots and doing rituals. It blends the ordinary side of being a Pagan with some of the more startling experiences a person might have as a consequence of following a path.

All of the books in my ko-fi shop are free as ebooks. There’s an option to pay what you like. Alongside the fiction I also have some Druid titles and some poetry collections. I write first and foremost because I want to share ideas and stories with others, which is also why I give work away both here and on ko-fi. Donations via ko-fi and support via Patreon help me keep doing that. If everyone who subscribed to Druid Life dropped an English pound on me once a year I’d be doing really well economically. I’m aware that many people have no disposable income worth mentioning and that many people are struggling, which is why I’d rather give what I can in the hopes of offering some small comfort to people who need it.

The power of positive thinking

(Nimue)

I don’t subscribe to the idea that positive thinking will solve everything. Excessive belief in the power of positive thinking can be really harmful. Unfortunately one of the side-effects of popular but toxic ideas about positivity is that doesn’t allow much scope for nuanced discussion of what a positive mindset can and cannot do.

I’ve been thinking about this of late in relation to my partner’s cancer treatment. There are people who will try to convince you that you can cure cancer with the power of your thoughts. This can put an enormous burden of shame and misery onto people who do not appear to manage it. On top of that, too much faith in your own positive thinking may get in the way of doing things that are necessary – I’ve heard stories to this effect about other people.

One of the things depression does is fills you with apathy. When you are depressed, you see only the bad outcomes and it can be hard to persuade yourself that there’s any point trying. Depression saps energy, steals confidence and undermines hope, and is also often a consequence of those things having happened via external pressures. Basic self care is a lot harder in face of this. Having to really work at self care might be impossible.

I’ve commented before that there’s been a startling amount of work created by Keith’s cancer treatment. There’s a huge amount to do every day to offset the side-effects of radiotherapy. I read up on the side-effects and the interventions early on, and it was clear to me that if you do what you’re told to do, you are going to have a better time of it than if you don’t. We were told at the beginning to expect this would be so bad that Keith would need morphine by the end of it. He’s got into the final week of treatment without using any painkillers.

When you think you can make a difference to the outcomes you are more likely to take positive action. If you don’t believe you can make a difference, you won’t act. If you give up with something the odds are very much against being able to win. I’m a big fan of picking your fights and knowing when to quit, because that’s also essential for success. Some fights you don’t get much choice about,

Positive thinking on it’s own won’t necessarily do anything. If you can hold enough of a positive mindset in order to take meaningful action when you get the opportunity, that might well get things done. If you make the best of things, then regardless of the ultimate outcome, you still get to have had the best you could along the way and that’s worth a lot.

I now from personal experience that being positive is hard as a solo project. It is depressing to struggle alone against issues of any sort. In community and mutual support we can find far more strength and courage. We can lift each other, and help each other stay focused on whatever is most important. Like so many things, positivity needs to be a shared effort for best effect.

Dogs, dreams and deregulation

(Nimue)

On the other side of the River Severn from me, near a place called Lydney, are the remains of a temple to Nodens. He’s a godd associated with dreams and healing, and a number of small dog statues are associated with his site. That’s the factual stuff – what follows on the Nodens front is speculative.

I have been thinking about the idea of temple dogs in a healing context. Plenty of modern people find dogs to be good emotional support, so it’s hardly a wild idea to consider. If a healing temple has dogs in it, how might that work? It struck me that dogs are of course warm, so sleeping alongside them might be soothing and beneficial. 

Some years ago I was blessed with a cat who was good at getting people to sleep – she enabled me to nap which I can’t normally do. The warm softness of her little body resting on mine was a healing thing and I know she had that impact on other people as well.

One thing I’ve been seeing a lot about recently is the idea that trauma and illness can disregulate our nervous systems. That can have us experiencing things in weird and unhelpful ways, including how we experience pain, dissociation and how we respond to what’s around us. Hypervigilance is a kind of deregulation. How we regulate temperature, blood pressure, digestion, our immune systems – any of this can potentially be disrupted if our bodies are thrown into chaos.

I’ve also seen recently that there’s evidence for gentle time in nature helping us grow the parts of our brains that enable us to deal with stress. We’re very responsive lifeforms and our bodies are deeply affected by our environments and our experiences – both in terms of taking damage and being able to heal.

In myself I have observed over months now that being held takes the panic down. With enough gentle, physical contact, my whole system calms down. In the last nine months or so my blood pressure has improved, I can can digest things more easily, my periods have calmed down, my perimenopausal symptoms have  calmed down, I’m less prone to panic attacks, my tendency to hypervigilance has dialed down, and I’m in dramatically better shape. I’ve established beyond any shadow of a doubt that when I get into trouble, being held through it will get me through it quickly and effectively.

There’s a lot of trauma in my history. It might be fair to assume that my system has been pretty disregulated.

So I imagine a healing temple where you go to sleep and dream. In the healing temple there are dogs – sweet natured, affectionate dogs who love to snuggle and who want all the belly rubs and cuddles. Dogs who won’t mind at all if you sob into their fur, and who will sleep alongside you. Our soft mammal bodies can, I think, be greatly influenced by proximity to other mammal bodies that are calm and gentle. Closeness and warmth can be emotionally healing. Lying next to a calm and healthy mammal might help your own body remember how to regulate itself properly again. In the peace and safety of the temple, comforted and protected, a person might have a better shot at healing themselves. That’s my feeling, anyway.

Everyday romance

(Nimue)

I used to say I wasn’t romantic. I don’t like capitalism dressed up as romance, and I don’t like anything reinforcing gender norms and sexual stereotyping. I don’t like cut flowers flown in from South Africa. I hate performative stuff and this is one of those days where people do showy things because it’s what you’re supposed to do.

I did draw a rose, though. I did three hearts this year – one with tentacles for the Hopeless, Maine project, one with toadstools because goblins, and this one. This one’s arguably a bit romantic.

It turns out that what I find romantic, is attention. It’s spending time with someone when you’re really focused on each other and invested in what you’re jointly doing or sharing. It’s being present together in a joyful way, delighting in each other. Doing things that are very much about sharing the experience rather than just happening to be doing the same stuff.

In the last year or so, I’ve learned a lot about myself. The things I didn’t like are still things I don’t like. Deep sharing of experiences and co-creating life feels romantic to me, and intimate and soulful in ways that I turn out to love. Where this has been most powerful for me has often been around the sharing of time in landscapes. Which is not unrelated to the Druidry. My love for landscape is a big part of me, and of how Druidry works for me. Being able to share that in a soulful way works for me on so many levels.

I’m very into love as a verb (thanks to Halo Quin for this notion). Love as what we do rather than it existing primarily as an idea or a feeling. In the shared doing, there is magic and joy. Love as something expressed in ways that feel tangible. Love in the small, everyday gestures and in the commitment to sharing time and life in meaningful ways. 

Valentine’s Day finds us with two more days to go of Keith’s cancer treatment. It’s a strange time.  I have never felt more loved, and it turns out that the experience of romance for me is all about everyday attention and sharing, and the richness this has brought into my life.

Visual art and AI

(Nimue)

Right now we have sophisticated software that can draw data from a lot of images and turn it into new(ish) images. Defenders of the process say it’s just doing what artists do – learning from other artists. This is such an absolute misrepresentation of how to do art that I felt it needed tackling.

One of the things missing here is the intense physicality of making art. We don’t learn to draw, paint or sculpt by looking at art. The first stage is to learn how to use a pencil – most of us learn the basics while learning to write as small children. We learn the fine motor control needed to do more than smear colour across a surface. Training the hand to do what the brain intends is a long process.

To create visually, most of us have to spend a long time learning how to look. I’m not qualified to comment on what visual impaired artists do, but I expect that exists and also doesn’t involve purely looking at existing art. Once you start looking, you start making decisions about what to prioritise – shape, texture, light, shadow, colour, mood, movement. The person trying to capture a sense of movement in the sea will paint a very different picture from the person trying to capture light on water, for example. 

Most young humans aren’t looking at art in a deliberate way. They draw for fun, are exposed to a whole world of experiences and are most likely to want to depict their own ideas and imaginings. Many of us only start looking in earnest at other people’s art when we’re taught to do that. When we start looking critically it’s not just about the surface appearance – we study technique, context and the ideas underpinning the kind of art we’re looking at. Art movements exist in historical and cultural contexts.

Some artists want to work in particular ways that align with existing kinds of art, and some don’t. Either way, how you do art will be really individual. Unless you specialise in art fraud, then the exact way that you put your chosen medium onto your chosen surface will make what you do unique. There’s something of the individual that comes through in how you draw your lines or put your paint down. With artists I know well, I can tell a lot about what mood they were in when they did a drawing because of this it impacts on the lines. This is all also true for digital art where an artist is creating a piece using their own skills rather than word prompts.

Making visual art is a very high percentage about study and practice. The rest of it is about developing your own way of doing things and having ideas about what you want to create. The way that ideas and technique combine is what makes your work unique. Anyone willing to put in enough time can learn to do this. 

Art isn’t something that happens by magic. Great paintings do not pop spontaneously out of an artist’s head to appear on a canvas. Pop culture has given us some really misleading ideas about the whole thing. Artists study, learn, practice, plan and rework their creations. It’s mostly about doing the work. If you can’t draw it isn’t because you missed out on magic drawing powers, it’s because you haven’t put in enough time. Generally speaking, invest ten thousand hours in anything and you’ll become an expert – some of those hours may involve needing to be taught by someone who knows the techniques. What you do in that ten thousand hours will be yours alone, and will be part of you. Doing this changes a person. Art isn’t just about having a finished piece, it’s about becoming the person who can create the piece in the first place.

Imbolc, blackthorn and elf caps

(Nimue)

As the wheel turns from Imbolc to the equinox, blackthorn and elf caps are important seasonal markers for me. Generally elfcaps have a long season through the winter, but in my local area these cheery little fungi show up in February. This is also the time of year for blossom on the blackthorn. Blackthorn flowers before any other tree and at this point in the year, there are no leaves, so the flowers really stand out. These are plants that give me feelings of new life and abundance after the depletions of winter.

One of the things on my mind as I write this, is the names we use for the seasonal festivals. I’m using the names I was given when I first started studying Druidry.  I’m increasingly uneasy about it because these are Irish names that are being used in wider Paganism. I’m not following any Irish traditions and I’m questioning whether this is the right language to be using. It’s not a fair representation of what I’m celebrating. 

I’ve never adopted the fancy names for the equinoxes and solstices. Those are 20th century anyway, and use of Mabon for an equinox is highly problematic. I’m in a landscape that has been part of Wales in the past, and there is more Welsh influence in what I do than there is Irish, but I feel uneasy about adopting Welsh language instead. 

Imbolc falls at the same time as Candlemas – which is a lovely and much more English word. But it’s also a specific festival and not one I honour. St Blaise’s Day falls at the same time, and while he’s not part of my religion, his presence in the local calender is significant to me. I find Saints fascinating and appealing and some of them suggest something pre-Christian, although he’s not one of those so far as I know.

Some years ago I read Julie Brett’s book on Australian Druidry. She hit all of these issues with the wheel of the year (and more) because none of the seasonal stuff makes any sense in an Australian context. Solstices and equinoxes are ubiquitous, but the rest of the wheel of the year is northern European. She wrote about her explorations of the seasons on her own terms. I think this is something I need to do, and will explore as the year progresses.

Right now it’s elf cap season. That’s definitely the local feature looming largest for me. I’m not sure what comes next, what defines the turning of the wheel of the year. I’ll be watching out and reporting back as I go. In my own practice I’m going to be rethinking the names I use and asking what’s most relevant and appropriate for me.

Learning and Growing

(Nimue)

Life delivers challenges, and we all get opportunities to try and turn difficult experiences into learning opportunities. I don’t think anyone should feel under any pressure to make something useful out of horrible things they go through. I also don’t think it’s an especially good way to learn. What we learn from trauma is often desperate and doesn’t apply well in non-traumatic situations.

Learning and growing because there’s the space to do so is a far better experience. I’ve really been seeing this in my own life in recent months. Having the space to explore my own feelings, and the support to question my assumptions is turning out to be powerful. Much of what I’m doing at the moment involves unleaning the things I learned from traumatic experiences.

Without a doubt, it is easiest to learn and grow when there’s support to do so. Guidance makes a lot of odds. Gentle encouragement to examine my beliefs and change my thinking and behaviour have been really good. As is usually the way of it, I’m struck by how much more effective this is as a shared project than as a solitary one. Working together to support and uplift each other we can create shared space for learning and growing. When we’re able to help each other that’s empowering for everyone involved. There’s nothing like seeing someone flourish in response to what you’re sharing with them.

I know from teaching work I’ve done that criticism is not an effective tool for getting people to learn. Positive feedback is far more effective most of the time. Stretching into new possibility is a good way to grow, rather than feeling pressured to find some way of protecting yourself from some new difficulty. 

The tools we develop dealing with trauma may get us through terrible times. They enable us to survive and keep going. To heal from that means not only getting away from the harmful situation, it also means unlearning the lessons we’ve learned. You need to feel safe and secure if you are going to risk taking apart the coping mechanisms that have kept you viable. It’s a vulnerable thing to do and not something anyone can do when they feel unsafe. 

It’s good to challenge each other gently. Being asked to consider whether something is still true, and what the evidence is can be really helpful. Having feedback from others about what’s fair, reasonable and appropriate can help a person rebuild the inside of their head. When we do this work collectively, it’s easier to think about. I may have unrealistic expectations of what I am supposed to be able to do, but I’ll likely treat another person in the same situation far more kindly than I would myself. I first ran into this in a self-help group for domestic abuse survivors, and it was a powerful thing. It’s easier to think about other people, and to be compassionate towards them where you haven’t felt able to be compassionate towards yourself. When we do that for each other we can build better ways of thinking for everyone involved.

‘Tough love’ can all too easily be a cover for actual abuse. Trying to make people change and grow ‘for their own good’ can easily be a cover for bullying. It’s possible to do incredibly unkind things in the name of ‘only trying to help’. Gentleness gets a lot more done. Most of us do not flourish in response to ‘brutal honesty’ but we do grow, learn and heal in response to radical kindness.

Reading and the creative process

(Nimue)

One of the defences of ‘AI’ is that artists learn from other artists, writers learn from reading. Therefore (so the theory goes) AI learning by scraping other people’s data is just replicating this process. While this is in some ways true, it also misses out so much of the process as to be wrong. I’m going to talk about reading, but I think much the same principles will apply to all kinds of creativity. It’s also worth noting that most creators don’t simply draw their inspiration from other people who were making the same thing. Art, music, drama, stories, poetry and the rest all impact on all of us no matter what we’re intending to make, and we learn from everything we encounter.

Learning from books involves a process of selecting what to read in the first place. Some people only read and write in one genre. This allows them to become experts in the form and to deliver what other readers of the genre might want and expect. However, part of knowing your genre involves knowing what’s already been done – what would be a cliche, or too tired an idea to engage readers. Most readers do not want a story that rehashes other stories, they want something that blends the familiar with the new.

The authors I am most loyal to don’t write in single genres or stay neatly inside genres. There are more people doing this than there used to be, which pleases me greatly. These are not the kinds of stories you could create by rehashing odd combinations of things that already exist.

For someone who intends to write, reading is often an imaginative engagement with the gaps in a story. We think about the perspectives that are missing, or how we’d have handled the ending differently, or why a scene didn’t work the way we would have wanted it to. What authors often take from their reading is the desire to do something very different from what they’ve read. This is also about the way in which our experiences interact with our reading.

This is where AI falls down. AI does not have childhood memories to draw on. It’s father did not read it a highly edited version of The Hobbit where nobody dies. It did not read Robinson Crusoe as a child and then have a radically different experience re-reading it as an adult. An AI has not felt suicidal and found itself empathising with Hamlet. It hasn’t had a conversation with someone about how differently King Lear reads once you are a parent. An AI does not go to Thomas Hardy’s cottage, or get excited by visiting a location it encountered first in a book and as a consequence it doesn’t have the same relationship with a text that a person can. It hasn’t borrowed a book because a friend loved it. It hasn’t reluctantly read a whole trilogy under pressure from a boyfriend.

Reading isn’t something we do in isolation. If it’s part of your life, then your life impacts on what you read, and how you read. At this point I’ve read books probably numbering into the thousands.What I write is not me simply spitting out things I’ve read. My writing comes from my whole life, all of my experience and feelings. It’s that interplay between text and life that makes the writing process possible for me and that results in other people writing things I want to read.

Centering my own experience

(Nimue)

Like a lot of Pagan bloggers, I write primarily about my own experiences. This is a considered thing for me and there are important reasons for doing it. 

Firstly, my Druidry is very specifically about the place i live in. What works for me is deeply informed by the landscape I call home, and by the way the seasons specifically play out here. The history in this landscape, the way my family history intersects with it, and a whole host of things around that inform what I do. It’s very personal. I can’t tell you how to do Druidry on your own terms because if you were trying to do broadly what I do, it would have to work differently. My hope is that by talking about what’s personal to me, readers can decide how or if to explore any of that.

I have biases, privileges I’m not alert to and all the usual human mess. I don’t want to present myself as some kind of all-knowing authority on How To Druid. I’m a work in progress, my Druidry is also a work in progress. I struggle with things, and I hope that by making those visible I can avoid any impression that I have it all figured out and that therefore people should do what I say. You, dear reader, are also no doubt a messy work in progress. Hopefully in seeing my messiness you will feel more empowered to get on with your own explorations rather than being slowed down by concerns about not being good enough. Perfectionism is toxic.

Stories are a good way of sharing information. Often what I’m doing here is sharing stories about my own journey. Your mileage may vary. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot from other people telling their stories, especially around domestic abuse, living with hypermobility and making sense of neurodivergence as well as the sharing of tales from the Druid path. I like stories. I like the way in which the telling of a story invites other people to also tell stories and it’s great when people share their experiences in the comments. 

There are of course personal aspects to this. Blogging is cheap, therapy is expensive. I find the process of writing helps me clarify my own thoughts and work things through. I also find if I put something personal into the world there’s often someone who finds that helpful for figuring out their stuff, or someone ahead of me in dealing with whatever I’m trying to make sense of. The scope to benefit from each other’s experience appeals to me. It’s encouraging when people come back with parallel experiences or can say ‘I’ve been where you are and it can get better’. It’s affirming when things I struggle with are recognised by other people and not rubbished – I think it’s normal to fear being rubbished by others. 

For me, the process of sharing my experiences is very much a process of wanting to learn and change. I’m working my way through the impact of a lot of trauma. I’m dealing with an array of challenges. I want to do better, to stand in my own power, manage my own thoughts and be deliberate in my life. Blogging has been a tool for helping me feel more in control of my experiences and more able to deliberately choose how I live. It works for me because I’m a very words-orientated person. No doubt other strategies would work better for other people.

How do you know yourself?

(Nimue)

‘Know Thyself’ was an instruction carved onto the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. If you mean to leave a considered life and to act deliberately, this is an essential foundation. Of course who we are changes over time as we grow and learn. But how do we know who we really are? How do we find our authentic selves?

There are a great many different forces acting on each of us. We are each born into a specific family, informed by long ancestral lines. Our families exist in the context of the cultures that surround them. We grow up exposed to ideas about who we are and what we should aspire to. Adverts tell us what to want, politicians tell us what matters, employment demands conformity, fashion dictates our uniforms and so forth. 

It’s not easy to find your true self if you spend most of your time in situations where people are loud and clear about who you are supposed to be. It’s not easy to be authentic when economic pressures dominate how you spend your time. It is worth asking what you’d do differently if you had the financial freedom to do what you please, because that tends to be about what we most love and value.

It is possible to figure yourself out to some degree through the fine art of navel gazing. However, the more information you have to reflect on the more effective it is to ponder your own self. I don’t think the truth of who we are lies in what we think of ourselves. I think the true self is measured through action. Who we are is best expressed by what we do. You can’t make good choices when you don’t have good options, and this afflicts many of us but at the same time, what you do around the stuff you can’t control is also a measure of self.

Who you are when everything is easy may not be as telling as who you are under pressure. Who are you when you are afraid, or hurting? How do you act when things don’t go your way? What do you do when you’re thwarted, limited, let down or otherwise set back? Life throws up challenges all the time, and what we do in response to them tells us a lot about who we are. The more open we are to recognising ourselves in tough situations, the more whole and integrated we can be. None of us is perfect and saintly in all things. To be passionate and authentic and to care deeply about things will also make you messy and complicated sometimes. Seeing how the best parts of yourself relate to the most challenging parts of yourself can be illuminating – often these things run close together.

There’s a power in learning to be radically honest with yourself. That means uncovering your strengths and shortcomings alike. It means knowing where you are vulnerable and what you don’t handle well. Know what the best of yourself is and also know when and why you don’t meet your own expectations. Know how you impact on others but don’t let what other people want you to be entirely define you.

Life is an experiment. We try things and see if they work for us. We explore ways of being in the world, ways of thinking, relating and acting. Hopefully with enough experimenting we get to know who we are, and we become wiser, more patient with ourselves, more at peace with things. It’s good to feel like a work in progress and not like something that has gained its final form already. Know yourself, and know that tomorrow could radically change that for you.