Nimue Brown's Blog, page 41

I am Taurus

(Nimue, review)

This is a fascinating book and I can honestly say I’ve never read anything like it. In terms of subject matter, I am Taurus is an exploration of the role of bulls in prehistoric cultures. Most specifically aurochs. Stephen Palmer traces connections between different times and places around the mediterranean, all informed by the presence of a bull-like constellation. It’s a persuasive argument, rich in detail about prehistoric cultures.

However, this isn’t simply a non-fiction text. Stephen has undertaken to relate something of each culture he represents through the eyes of the bulls in question. This is what the title is all about – these first person narrations of the experience of being Taurus in different times and places. These tellings include the myths of the culture, related as the lived experience of the bull, which is a striking thing to encounter, I think it would be clear to most readers that these are stories and ideas, blending what we know about these times and peoples with speculation. However, the lines are not clearly drawn. I would have liked some notes – perhaps at the end – to clarify where the author has brought his formidable imagination to bear. Stephen is a well established speculative fiction writer, so this is something to factor in.

With all due reference to Robert Graves and The White Goddess, we do have problems in moden Pagansim with people reading speculative and poetic work as though it was hard fact. I love and value these kinds of speculative engagements that open up room for more ideas and more ways of seeing the world. We need imaginative engagement – that’s what myths are for. It’s when people insist on taking myths literally that the problems tend to start. 

Making meaning is itself a speculative process and I hope this book will help people see that and think about how it works. 

I really enjoyed this book. I’m no great expert in aurochs or prehistory but have enough of an acquaintance with both to really appreciate what Stephen Palmer has done here. You definitely don’t need to already be an expert to  get something out of it but at the same time I think you need at least some awareness of prehistoric cultures around the Mediterranean to get the most out of this book. I think at least low-level familiarity has been assumed so it’s not really suitable for anyone new to ancient Paganism. 

If it sounds like your sort of book then I can promise you an engaging read that will get you thinking and wondering.

More about the book here – https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/iff-books/our-books/i-am-taurus

St Blaise and the Cryptids

(Nimue)

I’m very much a fan of having local festivals and events be part of my wheel of the year, and I think I have a new one to add. St Blaise’s Day is celebrated at nearby Frampton on Severn in a very old church that used to have an image of him painted on the wall. He’s the patron saint of wool combers and sore throats. This was a wool producing area historically so it makes sense that he was honoured here. Frampton has a wonderful giant and a folk celebration of the saint. I’m always up for a bit of living tradition.

We had an unexpected change of programme as the chaps who should have been dancing solo wasn’t able to. Could we do something? A few of us huddled and tried to work out what we all knew that was suitable for a church! We settled on 3 Ravens. Then the organiser asked what we were called for purposes of this event, and we said Carnival of Cryptids.

Rather unexpectedly this was the first outing for a new project. Carnival of Cryptids sings at Mary de Crypt in Gloucester once a month, and goes out to local events. It’s a loose, informal group with plenty of room for people to drop in and out as they see fit. We have some members with a lot of other commitments, and a number with significant health problems so it has to be flexible. James and I are holding the core of it, we’ve got a tight core of capable and fairly committed singers, and a wider community around that. I like running things in ways that allow people to commit to the degree that suits them.

The four of us had not actually sung together before as a group, so I think we did pretty well. I’m looking forward to seeing how this project evolves, to building a new repertoire, and exploring new events and creative possibilities. Keith recorded the video – he would normally be part of this but wasn’t feeling equal to singing at the weekend.

Live at the Folk

(Nimue)

Back in October we played a Halloween gig at The Folk of Gloucester. ‘We’ in this case is Jessica Law and the Outlaws. That gig was recorded and you can now get it from bandcamp. Being a live thing, and having been recorded off the cuff by the chap who stepped in at the last minute to help with sound, it’s not a recording-studio standard. Money raised from sales is going to support the building.

When I was a child, the building was Gloucester folk museum, and some of the larger pieces from that time are still housed there. It was closed as a museum some years ago and is now looked after by Gloucester Civic Trust. It’s home to local folk, steampunk and fairy events, and other lovely things I’m involved with. 

It’s an amazing building – the original part is Tudor. It’s been residential, it’s been shops, and workshops in its history and a remarkable amount of the old buildings survive intact. But, keeping an old building going is a lot of work, and there are costs. The reason we have events there is to help raise funds to keep the building going. 

We played the Halloween gig for free – although the venue is very good at paying performers and doesn’t expect everyone to donate their time and skill for each event. We have a good culture in Gloucester around trying to make sure everyone gets what they want and need from the events and that no one ends up compromised by being involved. It’s a team I’m very happy being part of, and that I am getting more involved with.

You can listen to things for free on bandcamp, so if you want to find out what Jessica Law and the Outlaws sound like, you can do that. If you like and want to support The Folk, do buy it. You can name your price – another model I‘m very fond of. All funds from this will go to The Folk.

Reading as a bardic skill

(Nimue)

Many of us learn to read when very young and as such it’s a skill we can easily take for granted, and under-estimate. Reading is a very effective way of acquiring information, but there is also massive scope for misreading – most especially when dealing with a text from an unfamiliar culture. By this I don’t just mean the implications of writing from other periods, peoples, traditions and cultures. 

Every group has it’s own way of communicating. A political paper from the EU is written in a very different way from a scientific paper, which is very different again from the conventions of a culinary blog. To read something well you need a handle on the conventions at play in the writing and that takes multiple encounters. Reading the unfamiliar is less likely to result in a complete understanding, and it really helps to factor that in and to consider your own limitations as a reader.

It’s good to be alert to your own biases and assumptions. This isn’t easy, but the more attention you pay the better a sense you get. Watch out for the phrases that jar you or the things you are inclined to reject. Be alert to your own emotions when reading. If something makes you angry or frustrated it’s good to stop and make space to examine that.

If a text has an emotional impact on you, it is good to pause and reflect on how and why that’s happening. Consider whether the emotions are something the text is trying to elicit. If you’re crying over the tragic end of a story then you’re probably responding in the way the author intended. If you’re angry with a stranger on the internet, it’s worth pausing to see if that anger is something you’ve brought with you. It’s worth studying the ways in which you are affected as a reader because that will help you hone your bard skills to deliberately create those effects yourself.

Reading creates opportunities not only to learn the material in the text, but also to learn about ourselves. In exploring our own emotional responses to what we read, we can find out more about who we are. Being more self aware makes it more feasible to choose how we want to be rather than being a victim of circumstance.

Reading is at its most complicated when we get into the territory of what is inferred, and what is implied. Some texts are written with the aim of making us infer things that are never plainly stated. Some texts imply things that the author did not intend to convey but are nonetheless fair inferences. We might think about racism in colonial writing on these terms. There’s (unconscious?) sexism in stories that feature zero women with agency who add no more to the tale than would a sexy lamp.

At the same time we have to be alert to the things we might read in just because we’re looking for them. Projecting can be particularly an issue around this, and that’s not always about bringing anger or the worst parts of ourselves. We can also project our own virtues into a text. As a child-reader I was forgiving, and I filled in the gaps in stories imaginatively. Going back to some texts as an adult reader I was surprised by how much of my childhood reading experience had been about my own attitude and imagination. 

Stories always have gaps in them. The spaces in stories give us room to engage imaginatively with a text, and that’s one of the great pleasures of reading. A book is always a collaboration between the imagination of the author and the imagination of the reader. What we bring, and what we find can have a very big part of our selves in it. We all also tend to respond strongly to books that reflect back to us our own experiences and that show us something of ourselves. A sense of being understood by the author can also have a huge impact on how we read and what we take away with us.

Reading fiction is a creative activity. It’s not about just passively absorbing the text. The best way to learn about how you, as a creator might engage people in this way is to think about your own experience as a reader.

Being time poor

(Nimue)

When I reviewed Sarah-Beth Watkins’ book, I talked briefly about time poverty. Someone queried this as a concept so I thought it would be worth writing a post about it.

There are plenty of people who don’t have enough time for things because they manage their time badly and could do better. That’s not what I mean by the term ‘time poverty’. It also isn’t my term, I’ve seen it in use in other places. Being time-poor isn’t a choice or something easily fixed.

Some neurodivergent people really struggle to manage their time. ADHD is particularly a source of this, but difficulties with executive function are an issue for a lot of people. If organising your time is technically very difficult for you then that can limit your options.

Time-poverty is likely to go with economic poverty. When you don’t have much money you often have to do things the slow way – if you need to go to a library to access a computer to hunt for jobs this is going to use up a lot of time compared to someone who can job search from a home computer. If you have to buy your clothes second hand then hunting through charity shops for things that are suitable takes a lot more time than buying new.

If you are working minimum wage jobs, then you won’t be earning enough to live comfortably. If you’re working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you will be time-poor. Long, unavoidable commutes create time-poverty. Not being able to afford to live where you work causes massive problems for many people.

Time-poverty also goes hand in hand with illness and with caring roles. Being ill takes up a lot of time. It slows you down. If you have a lot of medical appointments, that takes time. Managing a condition can involve a lot of daily work. Caring for someone else also takes time. If you are both a parent and working full time the odds are that you are time-poor and have little time to spend purely on yourself. If you are caring for children and one of them is ill, or your partner is ill, or you have to look after your parents as well, you will be time-poor.

You can’t time-manage your way out of this. You can’t be better organised enough to offset the impact of working two jobs or having multiple caring roles. A person can be in an adequate financial state but also time-poor, and that particular kind of poverty has a huge impact on your mental health, even if your physical needs are all being met. We all need time to ourselves and time for the things that make us happy. We all need rest time and downtime, but not everyone has that, or has enough of it.

The power of creativity

(Nimue)

Here in the UK, the government has long encouraged working class children not to get into the arts on the basis that it’s not good for your job prospects. There’s no sense that the arts have anything to offer of use or value. Although I’ve noted before that getting into the arts is definitely something more affluent children are allowed and sometimes encouraged to do.

Science shows that music is good for us. The benefits of singing have been noted for years. Singing improves your breathing, is good for your brain and good for you socially. Music can be used to help people with dementia. The role of music in socialising and feeling connection to others is really important. Dancing is a great and accessible form of exercise, you can do it with whatever parts of you will move. To dance, you need music.

Every form of creativity helps people process their own emotions and empathise with other people. Creativty is also good for relaxing and for low cost ways to enjoy yourself. When we’re creative, we get to imagine things that did not exist before. We imagine difference, alternatives, solutions to problems. Creativity encourages questioning and originality, and finding your own way.  It’s not hard to see why right-wing governments might have a problem with this. 

There is a quote from Ursula le Guin that seems especially pertinent here: “After all, dictators are always afraid of poets. This seems kind of weird to a lot of Americans to whom poets are not political beings, but it doesn’t seem a bit weird in South America or in any dictatorship, really.”

Following the bard path is a choice that has political implications even when you aren’t being overtly political. Creation is subversion and the more your culture tries to suppress subversive ideas, the more subversive it becomes to create anything original or to express yourself on your own terms.

Living in the moment

(Nimue)

I’m not a fan, honestly. I like the idea of being present for everything, but you can bring presence to a situation without trying to de-contextualise it. Context matters. We bring our knowledge, understanding and expectations to every moment we experience. It’s a big part of how we know what to do. Being purely in the moment is safe enough when you’re sat meditating, but you can’t live like it – because we need our knowledge of what’s harmful to us.

Acting ethically depends on a sense of past and future. You have to be able to see the scope for causality, and that what you do has consequences. Standing in your own power also requires this awareness. You can’t act deliberately if you aren’t in a conscious relationship with the past and the future and aware of how those relate to the present moment. You can free yourself from feelings of responsibility and obligation by living only in the moment and that is not a choice that leads to honourable actions.

Sometimes the whole notion of living in the moment depends on privilege. If you’re confident that you don’t have to think about the future, then either you are materially wealthy or you know that someone else will catch you. The ‘providence’ people living only in the moment depend on is mostly the labour and generosity of others. 

Many people like to express the idea that animals and other creatures live only in the moment and that all this past/future business is just an unnatural human affectation. This is not so. All living creatures learn and depend on a certain amount of knowledge. Creatures can be traumatised, can be trained, and can anticipate things that they want. These things depend on a relationship with time. Hunting itself is an act of anticipation. Creatures will grieve for lost ones. There’s nothing unnatural about being informed by the past or invested in the future.

To be present in the moment is to turn up with your whole self. You are the sum of your experiences. How you experience any moment is shaped by how you came to it. To be present is to bring this current experience into the narrative of your life and take it forward with you. It might make a very different kind of sense if you are trying to transcend this life and escape from body, physicality and lived experience. But that’s not Paganism.

In practice we cannot separate ourselves from where we have been and where we are going. We can pretend to be free from the experience of time, and we can decline to think about the past or the future, but it doesn’t get us far. It might have some value as a meditative practice, but like many things we do in meditation it’s not something you can do all the time. To try and do so defies your animal relationship with the passing of time, in days, seasons and years. The wheel of the year turns, the seasons change, and to appreciate the ways in which one moment is not like another, we need to be present.

Appreciate what you have, make the best of every experience and be alive to the details of your own life. Be present.

Need, communication and justice

(Nimue)

Give me a topic or let me run with a story and I’m a decent enough communicator. However, when it comes to expressing my own needs and feelings in a personal context, I have a lot to learn. Part of the issue here is that for a lot of things I’ll just try to be convenient and go with what’s wanted. I’ve spent too much time in situations where there just wasn’t any room for me wanting or preferring anything, and there wasn’t reliably room for things I needed. For too long I didn’t even feel entitled to name needs as needs.

I’ve now built a working definition of need, which is helping me navigate. To need something is to genuinely struggle to function without it. If my functionality is at risk, then I am allowed to call something a need and not a want. Sleep is something I need. I’m not the sort of person to do melodrama over trivial things and I need to trust myself on that score. I’ve had too much experience of not being allowed the things I need in order to function, but that doesn’t mean I have to keep treating those things like they don’t matter.

It’s hard to communicate effectively when I’m not making space for my own needs, preferences and feelings. I’m not in the habit of asking what would be best for me or what would make me most happy, and this is something I want to try and change. There is room in my life for me to have feelings and inclinations of my own. 

This is one of those situations that I could not fix on my own. How we handle need is a community issue, a social issue and a relationship issue – how we relate to each other informs how much space each of us is allowed to take up. The person who is invited to ask for what they want is in a very different position from the person who is told what they have to accept. By making space for each other, inviting input, giving each other options and accepting difference we can support each other around this.

People who grew up with poverty learn not to ask and not to want. People who have experienced abuse learn that their feelings don’t matter. Capitalism teaches us that without wealth we do not have the rights to basic things – be that good food, health provision, scope to rest, opportunities for joy. The less money you have the more you may feel obliged to put up with things that compromise your ability to function. 

As individuals there’s a limit on what we can do to tackle the systemic issues here. But, we can invite each other to express needs, feelings and preferences. We can give each other options and respect each other’s feelings. One way of doing this is to be alert to how people get trapped in roles – parent, carer, worker roles especially. Give people space to be more than that, and to meet their own needs. Think about emotional and social needs as well as basic body needs. Humans are social creatures and loneliness can be a killer.

It’s not good to be stripped back to the most basic essentials. There is more to being human than requiring water and enough food not to die. There are questions to ask about the differences between continuing to live and being able to flourish. Why would we want anyone to live a life that is not pleasing and meaningful to them? 

The Five Minute Druid

(Nimue, review)

Sarah-Beth Watkins has written a gem. I have no time at all for the kinds of books that tell you that you can have the moon on a stick for no effort at all, but this is absolutely not that kind of book. This is a book for people who are short of time and/or energy but want to bring something of Druidry into their everyday lives. It covers all of the basics and offers things to try that will work if you can only dedicate a little time.

Lots of people are time poor. Poverty, illness, and caring roles are particularly hard to do anything about. If you don’t have much time for yourself then taking what you can and making the best of it is a really good choice. This book can help you do that.

Many people are time poor because they are distracted, overstimulated and not able to manage their time well. Breaking out of that – be it doom scrolling, game addiction, too many screens, too little quiet time – isn’t easy. Making small changes to change your life is a good response if you’re actually after a radical shift. Most of us can’t run off to live in a hut in the middle of nowhere, but most of us can find five minutes every day to start reclaiming some control over our lives.

The book assumes that you are new to Druidry, it doesn’t have much to offer anyone who has their practice in order and to their liking. It may however be helpful to anyone who has fallen off their path for some reason and who needs to rebuild what they do. I think it might be especially useful for anyone struggling with depression. The focus on small daily actions means there’s nothing too intimidating or overwhelming about having a go. The book itself is small, the tone is warm and encouraging. It’s a punchy little text with an upbeat tone. It’s not going to make you feel judged for being short of time or energy, but rather it will help you feel less alone with that.

Happily my blog made it to the list of recommended reading for people looking for small Druidic things they can do every day. That’s a really affirming thing for me and I very much appreciated it.

Find out more on the publisher’s website – https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/five-minute-druid

Being ill, being green

(Nimue)

Being ill makes it considerably harder to live sustainably. This can take many different forms. For us, it has included a bunch of things Keith needed that could only be sent to landfill after use. There’s more packaging to deal with, more that is consumed because more is needed. Travel has increased – regular hospital appointments have resulted in a lot of driving. We don’t have the public transport infrastructure to get people to and from hospitals comfortably or efficiently. When you’re ill you really don’t want the extra stress of dealing with unreliable buses, long waits, and longer days trying to get about.

Food waste has gone up. It’s harder when you are ill to make good choices about what you might be able to eat, and how much of it. Normally we’re close to zero food waste as a household, but in recent weeks that’s just not been possible. Illness can also impact on what kinds of food you’re able to eat and this can make it harder to go for more sustainable choices.

Being ill takes time and energy. This can make it unfeasible to do things in slower and more environmentally friendly ways. Walking and cycling for transport aren’t feasible if you are ill. Time and energy saving shortcuts become more tempting, but they all use more resources.

You might find you need more heating, that you have more laundry, or that you need to buy new clothes. Illness can cause changes in body shape. Weight loss is common around illness. Around cancer treatment you are encouraged to gain weight ahead of treatment because it improves outcomes. Some meds cause weight gain.

All of this costs money. You may not have the resources for it, and not being able to work will impact dramatically on some people. That in turn means cutting budgets where you can and not being able to afford those more sustainable but more expensive options.

There are some things I really want people to take away from this. The first one is that not everyone has a lot of choices about how they live. You can’t always tell who is ill and they might not let you know. Tackling these kinds of issues as an individual in a system that doesn’t take care of ill people very well and doesn’t make greener choices easy, is tough. It will be beyond some people.

It’s really important not to shame people for not living up to your standards. It’s easy not to think about this stuff if you haven’t dealt with it. Suggesting that no one needs to buy new clothes, or that everyone can eat vegan are cases in point here – both things I’ve seen done. Sustainability without compassion becomes a kind of eco-fascism. If the revolution doesn’t have room for ill, impoverished and otherwise vulnerable people, it isn’t going to work.