Nimue Brown's Blog, page 420

Suppression is failure

Right now the UK government are talking about filtering the internet, so that people have to opt in to be able to see pornography. Now, I’m no great fan of porn, but I have a lot of time for erotica as a genre, and I think a free and open discussion of all things sexual is really important to combat abusive behaviour. So, my fear is simply that in shutting down access to porn, we will also shut down access to other, far more important things.

However, it doesn’t stop there. We’re hearing noises about restricting access to sites about suicide, alcohol and smoking, anorexia, bulimia, and things esoteric. I realise that just by writing that stream of words I may be condemning my blog to invisibility, and that’s not a comfortable thought. There’s no certainty here, but a great deal that is uncomfortable. The only way to do this will be by blocking words. How do we differentiate, using a computer program, between a site that encourages suicide, and, say The Samaritans, who help people to live? How do we not filter out support groups for victims, sufferers, families dealing with alcoholics, and those who want to quit smoking?

What are we doing, cutting down our rights, as adults, to access information as we see fit? I do not like the idea that a government has the right to restrict access to perfectly legitimate information, and the ‘esoteric’ in the mix sets alarm bells ringing. That’s going to mean Pagans. It’s also going to mean businesses, authors, Harry Potter, and Disney, for how do you tell between one kind of magic and another? Someone is going to sue. Assuming it happens, and of course it may not because it is both silly and unworkable.

There’s also the small, practical consideration that suppression does not work. Even regimes that kill people do not manage to stamp out ideas, silence dissent, and eradicate unwelcome minorities. Hitler failed. China has failed to entirely subdue Tibet. Every country and culture that has ever tried to crush homosexuality has failed to do so. Every dictator who has ever tried to silence dissent and destroy opposition, has failed. Every last one. Freedom of thought prevails. Compassion survives, even in the face of violence and hatred. Ideas survive, even in the most authoritarian regimes. There are always those willing to face imprisonment and death for the sake of freedom and ideas. Always.

And on the other side, no amount of law making has stopped people from raping each other. No amount of public abhorrence makes child abuse go away, or stops people killing themselves, or poisoning their bodies with drugs. Look at prohibition America to see how that works in practice.

Suppression is failure. It is an acknowledgement that you cannot win the argument by rational means and/or that you do not have the will or the manpower to tackle the actual crimes and injustices. Making it harder to access porn does not make porn go away, it just sends it underground. You will not end pornography by banning it. Only a culture shift could do that.

We can make culture shifts. We can learn to tolerate differences of skin colour and sexual preference. We can learn to live alongside people who use other names for their gods and pray in unfamiliar ways. Or we can shift towards fear and hatred, and desperate attempts to create and maintain a power base. We can move towards control and restriction, narrow-mindedness and intolerance.

But here’s a thing. To be afraid, narrow-minded, bigoted and full of hate, is to be a bloody miserable person. No win there, either.

Where there is deliberate cruelty, where there is harm caused, where pain and suffering are real possibilities, we need laws to hold our cultural boundaries, and some means to tackle those who refuse to live co-operatively with those around them. We need to be careful not to mistake difference for offense, and we need to be less afraid of each other.

Dear government, please don’t blow an obscene amount of money making internet filters that restrict the free access of citizens to important information. Spend that money on police officers to hunt down child abusers, rapists and killers. Spend that money on education and improving attitudes to women such that the appetite for porn is reduced. Spend that money supporting the alcoholics, smokers, anorexics, bulimics and the mentally ill. Leave the esoterica alone. Thank you.

Naked Men

There are times and spaces at Druid Camp where you can expect nudity from people of both genders – around the showers and sauna, especially. There’s also some informal nudity, generally in the mornings, people sunbathing and not getting kitted up until the day starts. Before I went, I knew about this and had no idea if I would cope. The idea that naked men would be intimidating, had certainly crossed my mind. I had no idea how I was going to feel about that one, evidently I’d only know by showing up.

In our wider society, the naked male body is a serious taboo, and nothing is less socially acceptable than a willy in a state of arousal. Unless you happen to be in a museum looking at Roman artefacts, in which case, you can have all the up and about penises you could possibly want. The accessible display of breasts is normal. Go into a newsagent and you can pick up breast images with little difficulty. Willies are rude. Or perhaps, one might equally say, that culturally we are perfectly happy to treat the female anatomy as a commodity for entertainment, but that we afford far more dignity to male genitalia.

But either way, naked men are something you don’t get a lot of in normal circumstances. At least, not unless you have a really interesting sort of day job…

I’ve probably seen more naked men in the last week or so than I had in my entire life to this point. Yes, apparently I’d had a more sheltered experience than I had previously realised. Before Druid Camp, I had only experienced male nudity in the context of relationship, and it would be fair to say that not all of the experience was good. I’ve learned to trust and feel safe with my bloke, but unfamiliar men? That scared me.

Only, it was fine. A bit odd, I admit, but not distressing, or frightening or threatening in any way. I spent a while trying to work out why, and came to the conclusion that it was simply this: There were no weapons on display. There was nothing predatory. No one touched me without clear indication that I was open to being touched. No one unclothed even attempted to get into my personal space. Respectful naked men are no kind of problem at all. Men with too much self-respect to use their bodies aggressively. That was a profound learning experience for me.

I do not know if it would be possible for me to get to a point of feeling so confident, so secure, and able to trust, that I would be able to countenance a communal shower or a sauna. A matter of weeks ago the mere suggestion of it was enough to make me feel physically ill. Now it’s just an uncomfortable idea. I’m not ready to go there. I’d like to feel that I could, if I wanted to, whether I actually do or not.

Back to the real world

I’ve just spent days in a field, mostly barefoot, which in and of itself is an unusual experience. I went from Wednesday lunchtime to Saturday night without wearing shoes at all, and it affected my consciousness of the world to such a degree that I’m now finding shoes a problem. I feel disconnected when I put them on.

I’ve spent recent days in the company of gorgeous, creative, inspiring and unconventional people, doing all manner of wild and fabulous things. I have proper reviews to write, but shall give myself a day or two of digesting time first. Now I am back in a flat that suddenly seems very quiet and I miss the sense of being held and surrounded by a community of kindred spirits. And such kindred spirits! A significant number of my very favourite people, all gathered together.

I’ve not used my phone, my computer, or the internet until this evening, when I’ve needed to play catch up. This has enabled me to really slow down and chill out, which has done body and mind considerable good. I’ve danced and sung. I’ve also played. Music shared with brilliant musicians is such a joy, and there should be more of that to come, and it feels very good.

I’ve faced fears head on, and some of them melted away, which was a lovely thing, and some are smaller. I’ve faced challenges, and enjoyed recognition. I return to the computer feeling stronger and clearer in myself, more certain of what needs doing and of how to do it, and starting to put the pieces together.

There’s been enough experience in the last few days to keep me in blog material for months to come. That alone says something. Real world Druidry, with people all in the same place, is powerful stuff. I come to the internet to share, and to learn from others. This is an awesome way of moving inspiration and ideas about. I love the intellectual aspect of the internet, and appreciate the way in which it feeds my mind. Emotionally, it’s a bit sterile, especially compared to people in a space. Voices. Touch. Shared food. Being able to look at the same things.

I need to rebalance my life so that more of it happens offline, and that rather than coming to the internet to seek nourishment, I want to be coming with more inspiration I have found out here in the real world. Druidry with people. I like it a lot.

Tea Dragons

Those of you who also follow my other half, Tom, on facebook, will have seen a few tea dragons. If not, potter over to http://www.copperage.deviantart.com and view some there. It’s a work in progress, inspired by Lewis Caroll, Steampunk, tea and me havng a mind that, according to people who know these things, is much like how people think when they’ve been heavily involved with acid, mushrooms or both. The things I do sober, other people need chemical prompts for. This probably ought to worry me…

A is for Assam, a champion brew

B is for bones, crushed and mixed up with glue

C is for cups which we make from the bone,

D is for drinking, our tea skills we hone.

E is for Earl Grey, full of bergamot,

F for the forest where tea dragons go.

G is for gurning and grasping and grit,

H for the houses where we like to sit.

I is for igloo, which we can’t make from tea,

J is for Jasmine and jolly jelly.

K is for knitting which we don’t do at all,

L is for Lapsang and also for loll.

M is for mice, which are nice in a cake,

N is for not having a very good rhyme.

O is for Oolong, which is more Oo than oh,

P is for perseverance, not much longer to go.

Q s for something, who really cares what?

R is for redbush, and rabies and rot.

S is for sugar, so sweet and so good.

T is for trees, which you need, in a wood.

U is umbrellas, which have no bearing on tea,

V is for villains and vipers, oh glee!

W is for water, the key to a brew

X is a silly letter, I leave it to you.

Y is for yacht, and for why did I start?

Z is for zebras, who are stripy, and fart.

Now that’s my tea alphabet, silly and wrong

I’m sure you’ll forget it in not very long.

The ancestors of Druidry

This is a bit from Druidry and the Ancestors, which, if you get the urge, is on amzon and assorted other places in both book and ebook form.

We have a vague collective awareness of ancient Druids, as a religious group associated with Celtic peoples. As Ronald Hutton went to some length to demonstrate in Blood and Mistletoe, all of the written information about the Druids has come from other sources, and none are without issue. In a much older text, archaeologist Stuart Piggott also explained there are no sites featuring a word for ‘Druid’ that give us a definite link between physical evidence and Druidry. iii Outside those uncertain classical texts, we can only infer Druidic practice by first assuming the presence of Druids. Consequently, there are many things we ‘know’ that could be true, but no indisputable facts. However, the past few hundred years have been full of speculation about the early Druids, including all kinds of ideas that probably had no historical accuracy. Picking through these is very difficult, not least because the ideas and images are so widespread, like the claims for a Stonehenge association, human sacrifice and the white-nighty-robes. None of this necessarily has anything much to do with our ancient Druid ancestors.

In his books, Graham Talboys makes a case for the survival of bardic schools and the transmission of Druidry by other means. If ‘Druid’ basically meant the educated classes, then Druidic ideas will have survived in stories, wisdom teachings, and so forth. It’s a very tempting argument, and one my heart wants to believe even if my head remains uncertain. I hold a duel understanding of this theory. I feel it as truth; I accept it intellectually as unproven. This is entirely comfortable for me.

If our ancient Druid ancestors were complicated, the more recent ones are far more troublesome. The Druid revival began with antiquarians. Archaeology was a new science, for which the rule books had yet to be written. Men with all kind of drums to bang and personal theories to shoehorn in somewhere piled in. Men with political agendas looking for icons to work with. Men who just wanted some fame and money and weren’t too fussy how they got there. Yet from amongst the flights of fancy, forgeries and self importance of the Druid revival, came the seeds that have grown into modern Druidry. Just as we may look back at our blood ancestry with mixed feelings, so too can we find our ancestors of tradition are a challenging lot as well.

Understanding that influence, and facing up to it, is essential. We need to own the story, warts and all. Some of the prayers we use in modern ritual, the forms themselves, and even the cherished awen symbol probably originated with Iolo Morganwg, a man set on forgery and self aggrandizement, who used those around him and betrayed every Druid principle he ever put on paper. His inspiration was beautiful, his life was not. We can make our peace with that.

Mark Lindsey Earley, writing in the handbook for Exeter’s Bardic Chair sums the situation up in this way:

It is worth pointing out, at this juncture, that the historical accuracy of Iolo’s claims is highly dubious and that in all likelihood no such ‘ancient manuscripts‘ ever existed, despite his ironic espousal of the bardic/Druidic motto ‘The truth against the World‘! However, we think it’s rather harsh to label such an important ‘hero’ of the movement as an out-and-out fraud. A more mystical perspective might theorise that he ‘channeled’ his information. At the very least we like to think that he was creatively inspired, and that, although the history he outlined was possibly a purely ‘romantic’ one, it is no less important or valid, as long as we distinguish it from academic history.

The less we make outlandish claims about our historical heritage, the better. The more we focus on our behavior in this time, the better. We need to know how we got here and how that shapes us, and we need to hold a realistic understanding of what modern Druidry is, and where it comes from. With that in place, we have room to talk quietly about the other ways of knowing, the heartfelt truth, the wisdom inherent in trees and the land that comes down to us regardless of human foibles, or any other story that we feel compelled to share. Stories are wondrous things, but it’s important not to confuse them with anything else.

Sambar Deer

Such large and pretty fearful eyes

In knowledge you are loved to death,

Wanted to destruction, hungry adored

Flesh from bone, a lifetaking appreciation

You are feast beloved food source

They will hunt you.

Pretty eyes, anxious wide and wary

I have seen you on the deer faces

Of hunted women, troubled children.

Victim eyes, large and sweet with sorrow

I have greeted you startled in mirrors.

They hunt you still.

He asks why you evolved to be tasty

As thought the prey has some right

To choose not to be eaten.

Deer eyes, gentle eyes, did you intend

This body to be so fatally appealing?

Did any of us choose?

My son has a huge thing about tigers, leading us to the information that Sambar deer are the prey of preference. We saw some footage. They have big, sad, frightened eyes, and the image stayed with me.

Camping it up

We’re off to Druid camp. We’ve pondered what on earth to pack, what might not go off in a field in hot weather, what clothes might be useful, and we’ve borrowed a tent. We’ve got the buses all figured out, and yes, as Tom asks from the background, I did pack the tin opener. Mister Cat is off on a vacation of his own, where he will no doubt be pampered silly. It’s the closest we’ve been to having a holiday in a couple of years, but I think we’ve earned a breather.

There’s going to be music, and I’m taking my violin, in the hopes that I might be able to jam with some people. That’s a bit nerve-wracking, I’ve done so little playing out lately. There are workshops to run, and I’ve done more of that lately with other events, but still, the frisson of nerves are a given. The lingering fear that, like Rimmer from Red Dwarf when faced with an exam paper, I will say ‘I am a fish’ four hundred times, do a little dance, and pass out.

I did consider taking the computer, as there should be some electricity and I can get online via Tom’s phone. I considered blogging in situ. Then I thought… what is the point of going to sit in a field with a lot of other Druids, if I insist in taking the trappings of my working life with me? So, the comp stays at home. I’m going to use the power of wordpress to set up a few things to post automatically, so that there’s some content passing through, but nothing too arduous. I’ll be back on Sunday, and whatever state I’m in can be announced to the world at that point. I’m pretty sure no one actually needs a blow by blow account.

I’m very excited that I’m going to be meeting Kevan Manwaring for the first time. We’ve been talking online for years, so this is going to be quite a moment. I’m looking forward to listening to Ronald Hutton, and seeing if I can put some rather odd questions to him. Not the sort of thing likely to result in a restraining order, I hasten to add! Talis Kimberly will be there with her band, so listening to her is high on my wish list, too. There are so many people I haven’t seen in months, and probably too many people I haven’t seen in years, so I’m planning to spend as much time as I can making contact. It’s possible there will even be some Druidy stuff. My workshops are music orientated, so I’m not planning any formal Druiding, I don’t feel any urge at all. We’ll see what happens, and what the connections between people lead to. It will be enough to have my bottom on the ground and nothing else to be thinking about.

If you are going, I’m going to sneakily mention that I have a box full of books – mostly Druidry and the Ancestors, and Druidry and Meditation. I have a few copies of Intelligent Designing, a handful of Professor Elemental comics, and one display copy of Hopeless Maine. We’ve nearly sold out of volume one! Tom will also be carrying art and I hear rumour of a market place on Saturday. Hmm, that’s a bit like work…. But it’s days away.

Forest of Dean, land of my ancestors (well, some of them!) here I come. I shall gaze upon your rolling hills, and enjoy the different view of my beloved River Severn, and try very hard not to kick Kris Hughes if he gives the talk about how no one round here honours Sabrina. Mind you, he’s bigger than me…

Money for Old Pagan Rope?

In some quarters, there’s a stigma around doing Pagan things for money. Be that teaching, writing, celebrant work, leading workshops or providing events, there are plenty of people who feel that Pagans should do it for love, not money. To seek payment is to cash in on spirituality. There may be a subtext of, really spiritual people don’t charge, only frauds want money.

It’s not a Pagan specific issue. Creative people get it too. Music, fiction, writing, films, games – plenty of people feel it’s wholly legitimate to pirate those, that creatives are unreasonable in wanting to be paid and that art should be free.

We all have to eat. There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us cannot run flat out all the time. Can you run workshops in the evening regularly and sustain a full time job? Part of the problem, I think, is the assumption that artistic and Pagan work are fun and easy, and therefore do not need paying for. Doctors, lawyers, shop assistants, road sweepers, those are ‘proper’ jobs. It’s a masochistic culture that says if you like what you do, it has no financial value. Don’t tell me those highly paid solicitors don’t get a kick out of writing each other snotty letters!

Running an event is exhausting, and requires a lot of attention on the day, plus vast amounts of preparation in advance. Then there’s the learning and study that enables you to do it when you show up – more parallels with creative industries, where you can be paying for twenty years of experience, even with relatively young creators. Some of us start young and work hard from an early age. Anyone who thinks celebrant work, or writing a decent book, or giving a talk, is fun and easy to the point where it should be viewed as a hobby and not charged for, really ought to try it some time.

I’ve experience of being a performer, author, workshop leader, public speaker and celebrant. I’ve also run the kinds of events where I needed to pay folk to turn up. Where I couldn’t find enough money, I would try and offset that by being at a convenient point in the tour – a gig and a bed when you’d be driving past anyway are not such a bad deal. I’d feed people, and if I could pay more than I’d thought, I’d pay it. With that work, I took no money for me at all. I’ve given away my time, I give away my writing, but if I did that with all things, I would not be viable and neither would anyone else.

Service is a wonderful thing, but should not automatically imply doing it at your own cost. Especially not when the people you serve could perfectly well afford to pay. I will charge with an eye to what’s manageable. For local places that have little resources (schools, for example) I’ll do things for the cost of getting there. If someone wants me to travel to a venue and be their celebrant, after they’ve booked the hotel and bought the wedding dress… why should I be the one freebie in the mix? On the other hand, if someone comes to my Grove and asks for a handfasting, informally of an afternoon, why should I charge?

For all of us, the choice as to what and when we give freely, and what and when we need to charge for, should be personal. It then falls to others to decide whether they want to pay. Give me a free venue I can walk to, and I won’t charge tickets, but I may bring some books to sell.

There is no shame, or disrespect, in either charging for professional Pagan services, or seeking them. There is no requirement to seek them, which is important. You can do it yourself. There are plenty of things in life I could have learned how to do, but haven’t, and prefer to pay for. Boat electrics being a case in point. There are things I have learned how to do that other people may find they want to pay me for. We can figure something out.

The thing people forget is that Paganism isn’t all spirituality and esoterica. It is full of other things too: Intellectual stuff, philosophy, history, biology. Performance skills. Admin and organisation skills (try running a Pagan organisation some time!) Much of this is done for love because we remain a small community that cannot really afford to pay its people properly.

There would be something to take pride in, should we get to the point where subscription magazines can pay their authors, organisations can pay something to the staff who work for them in vital roles, and our teachers, celebrants and facilitators are not frequently working themselves into the ground because they’re doing the job alongside another, paying job. It is not an insult to ask for fair recompense. It is an insult to stand on the outside, with no idea how much time, energy and personal resources people are putting in, and demand that you do it for free, and suggest that if you don’t, you are dishonouring the gods. Shame on those who think that way! Are we afraid that money corrupts us? Should we not consider that in most aspects of life you get what you pay for, and that expecting a high quality of resource for free is laughable. And yet so many people deliver that, out of love, while the community around them will spend money on alcohol that it would begrudge paying to support the work.

Satan and other horny guys

From pretty early on in life, I grasped that Satan was a Christian propaganda job. He was based on our horned god, our goat footed god, and by making him into the symbol of ultimate evil, early Christians thought they could get more Pagan converts. And of course, stigmatise the deities and you can persecute the people. No, I am not the first Pagan in my family.

Satan is a bit of a bugbear for Pagans, not least because the fevered belief that we really are worshipping him does linger on in some minds. Satanism is a whole other path. As far as I can make out, some Satanists do identify as being Pagans, but most Pagans do not self-identify as being Satanists. Even those of us who like horned male deities don’t equate that with what, to many, seems like a figure from the Christian pantheon.

My experience has been that Satanists are often an unfairly maligned bunch. There’s a delightful kind of irony to that. Modern Satanism, as far as I know, is all about hedonism, freedom and going your own way. I’ve not read much Anton de Vey, in fact I’m not even sure how you spell him. Satanism might well encourage significant degrees of selfishness and self-indulgence, but that’s not the same as being evil. So many awful things in the world are created not by selfishness, but by the deluded belief that we are saving people by doing something to them. Crushing their culture, burning them at the stake etc. Compared to the holocausts, whose perpetrators never think they are the bad guys, a bit of Satanism is pretty mild stuff.

What worries me about a figure like Satan, is the ease of ducking responsibility when you put that kind of character in the mix. I was tempted. Satan led me astray. It’s a way of letting yourself off the hook. If all the evil in the world derives from Satan, you can also perhaps let God off the hook for the way in which, in monotheism, that all knowing, all powerfully, wholly benevolent God seems to tolerate a lot of nasty stuff. This works only if you don’t think about who created Satan.

If we personify a quality to put it outside ourselves, we do ourselves a disservice. Generally speaking, I don’t think Pagan deities operate that way. They may be gods of the vine or of healing, goddesses of the forge, or horses, or any number of other things. They may or may not be horny. The one thing they do not do, is own our activity. We might dedicate it to them, but our shit firmly remains our shit, and that’s as it should be.

Plus, with Satan, it’s also very easy to typo him as Santa, which amuses the hell out of me.

(And if you were wondering why this odd tangent, this is blog post number 666, and I simply couldn’t resist!)

Identity and address

When pondering that deep question of ‘what defines the self?’ we might bring location into the mix. The land we grow up in, the shape of it, climate, trees and the such can shape our growing selves. We might think about our relationship with the soil, and the presence, or absence of the bones of our ancestors. There’s much scope for getting all poetic here.

What you probably won’t jump to thinking about, is the relationship between your postal address and your identity. Legally speaking, your post is a big part of your identity. Your credit rating, police checks, your contracts, and ability to access the wider world are all tied to the post. Your ability to vote in elections depends on an address, or a lot of wrangling, assuming you can find out how to do that. In some circumstance, a letter or two with your name and address on, constitute proof of identity. For most of us, most of the time, there’s no reason to give that a second thought.

It was only when we moved to the boat that this one really hit me. By having a care-of address rather than a letter box of my own, I was suddenly a bit marginalized. Extra hoops to jump through sometimes manifested. Lengthy explanations had to be given. No, we don’t live at the post office, we live on a boat. Fortunately, the lady running our post office was brilliant and really went out of her way to help us. For example, important paperwork allowing you to stay in the country can only be delivered to your postal address and your passport must be shown to get it, and no, they can’t give you a day or time. All manner of things I had taken for granted suddenly became tricky. We managed, but it was a lot of unwelcome hassle.

This is a common issue for boaters. I’m sure other travelling people must have the same problem, and for anyone who is homeless, it’s another problem to add to the many. It was an isolating and unnerving experience, and it left me feeling vulnerable and disenfranchised. With housing ever harder to afford, housing benefit being capped, wages not going up while rents and mortgages rise, ever more people are going to have to resort to unconventional living arrangements, for the short term and for some, probably longer. Cars, caravans, boats, yurts, couch surfing… there are all kinds of solutions that take you out of what is normal. There are, I gather, people in the UK who in desperation have resorted to living in caves. No postal address there. Where poverty gives rise to shanty towns, no formal addresses exist, and those at the margins are vulnerable indeed.

We don’t tend to think about legal identity as part of our personal identity unless we are pushed into a place where that’s an issue. It can come as a nasty shock. A person without paperwork struggles to legally exist as a person at all. I’m a Druid, author, daydreamer, wife, parent, cat-mother, activist, trouble maker… I am now a person who can apply to vote, a person who pays council tax and has something of an official existence. I didn’t notice those as being part of myself until I no longer had them. What else have I taken for granted? What else is more fragile and unreliable than I would wish to think?