Nimue Brown's Blog, page 422

Sacred Sexuality

In many religions, sex is a dirty word. Sexual activity is only tolerated in carefully defined relationships (ie heterosexual marriage) and for the purposes of reproduction. I can’t begin to imagine what this does to a person who buys into it. The human body, in its capacity for sensuality, affection, physical love and pleasure is a thing of wonder. It must be awful to live in a body that you think is shameful and dirty, with urges your religion tells you are sinful.

Mainstream culture seems to have come up with a backlash to repressive attitudes, which consists of turning sex into yet another cheap commodity. It’s still sordid, still filthy. The way adverts sexualise everything, the availability of images of all kinds, the exposed breasts that feature on page three… this doesn’t feel like a healthy and empowering attitude to sex either. It’s just another thing you can get with enough money and the right consumer goods, to be thrown away afterwards like the other disposable commodities in your life.

What both approaches have in common is a total lack of respect: For the self, the other, and for sex. I’ve had far too much first-hand experience of this one. There are too many people out there for whom another human being is just a warm means to gratification. Something to use and discard. A way to scratch an itch. The desire to get a physical release without having to be vulnerable, emotionally engaged and therefore able to be hurt, is a terrible thing. The desire not to know what the other person feels or needs, tuning that out to make selfish wants the only consideration, is in itself a denigration of sex.

We might talk about consent, but based on personal experience I think a lot of people don’t really know what that means. I didn’t. Coercion is not consent. Fear and bribery do not lead to consent. Ignorance of intention, intoxication or unconsciousness are not consent. How unconnected with a person do we have to be, not to know, confidently, whether they want this or not? But if we don’t talk about it, or don’t want to be told to stop, we won’t know. One in three women will be raped, at some time in their lives, and most likely by someone they knew.

We tend to still think of sex as something a man does to a woman, missing out all the other available combinations, and assuming a one sided balance of power. How many songs and quotes go ‘make love to you’ and how many say ‘make love with you’? Or similar. It is a world of difference. Whether you get to be a passive receiver of someone else’s frustrations, or actively engaged in a process between two (or possibly more) people makes a lot of odds. Whether you can speak about feelings, needs and responses, or have your behaviour constrained in some way. Whether you come to sex as an equal, or as a commodity.

Sacred sensuality begins with respect. It embraces vulnerability. A person not willing to get their soul naked really should think twice about taking their pants off. If all you want is a quick physical release, no strings attached, there are ways of sorting that out by yourself without inflicting it on someone else. If you enter a situation with another person, it should be all about the sharing, of whatever you end up doing between you.

Druids talk a lot about relationship. We talk about honour. We’re pro freedom of expression, and diversity. These are ideas that need to be in the world, to counter the long history of sexual repression and to counter the equally destructive mainstream response. Too often still, our culture treats women purely as sexual objects, with our sexual attractiveness the only thing granted any importance. We do it to our sporting heroines, our female politicians, actresses… anyone in the public eye. It’s not enough that a woman be good, clever or talented, she must also present as sexually appealing. I’m very tired of it. Until we stop assuming that women should be viewed as sex objects, that statistical probability of rape will stay with us. There needs to be change.

Why canals are so important

Writing as a Druid for other Druids (mostly) I hardly need explain the spiritual and environmental importance of rivers. We know about that. Canals are a whole other thing, and I think it’s worth taking some time to talk about why they matter.

The canals in the UK were constructed right at the beginning of the industrial revolution, when roads were little more than tracks, and horses still dominated them. The canals allowed easier movement of the coal and ore necessary to start the revolution, building the engines that would later put the canals out of business. Horses towed the first narrowboats before the technology for such engines had been imagined.

The canals themselves are stunning feats of engineering and a tribute to the ingenuity of our ancestors. They were bought and paid for in the blood, pain and death of the many navies who dug them with hand tools. That’s a heritage I think needs recognising. Their coming changed the landscape dramatically, and allowed a previously unthinkable movement of goods.

From the first, people living on boats had no ethnic affiliation, they came to work, and came out of need and poverty. This is a tradition modern boaters uphold – we live and work on the canals, sometimes very closely with the waterways, and we tend to do it because, like our ancestors of tradition, this is what we can afford.

The UK has lost a frightening amount of wetland in the last hundred years or so. Canals are not an ideal substitute, because the water tends not to flow, and the banks aren’t ideal for a lot of wildlife. Even so, many water birds use them, and the areas around them. Kingfishers, bats, owls, herons. The towpath is often a toad path on wet summer nights. Swans and ducks breed here, water voles can survive here in the right spots. From an environmental management perspective, canals are also huge water reservoirs, able to contribute to the management of either too much or too little water, depending on what climate change throws at us.

There is a huge urban heritage of canal buildings. In cities, canals and towpaths are green arteries, allowing wildlife to get around. Isolated populations of wildlife are doomed. Those that are connected can survive and thrive. Canals have a huge part to play in this. The towpath provides space for insects and may well have a hedge alongside it, too, this is a vital resource. The towpath is a safe place for walking, running and cycling, usable in most weather conditions. It’s possible to canoe on many canals as well. The scope for exercise and relaxation is a significant consideration – canals are good for human health.

Transport by boat is quieter and more efficient than putting lorries on the road. We could reinvent the canal system as a greener solution to transport. Bristol has boat buses, taking advantage of its waterways. Many urban areas are basing much needed regeneration around canals. It’s so easy to make an attractive, vibrant urban area when you have controlled water in the mix.

The canals are a fabulous and important resource, and there is so much scope for good here. If Canal & River Trust get things right, they could make an enormous positive contribution to the life, health, culture, heritage, and environment of the UK. In all fairness, there are a lot of good projects out there, but those should be entirely what CRT is about. This is one of the reasons it is so important that the charity stops wasting public money and time monitoring how far boaters move, and gets on with looking after the water voles and re-opening derelict canals.

An Open Letter to the Canal & River Trust

I doubt you will read this, but hundreds of other people will, and that matters to me. Nonetheless, in the hopes my words might get through, these are the things I wish to say to you. I am tired of being passed from one CRT person to another, my questions unanswered, my complaints not dealt with. I am tired of feeling like I’m being kicked into the long grass. I am heartily sick of your institutional arrogance, your attitude to boaters, and I find much of what you do an affront.

I consider it an obscenity that a British charity has the power to cause homelessness, and that you threaten people with homelessness, disgusts me. You have the legal right to do this, but that does not give you a moral justification, in my book. I am deeply offended that you use public money to fund your enforcement department and no doubt your court actions designed to relieve people of their homes. Your website, canalrivertrust.org makes no mention of this. Every penny, according to you, is spent on the kind of environmental and heritage work a generous public might be willing to fund. I wonder what would happen if we started putting your enforcement notices in the public domain. I wonder if people would give you money if they knew how you spend it. I wonder if corporate sponsors will want to take you on, if they know about the work enforcement does. How long will it be before the media takes up the story ‘charity causes homelessness’? Have you got your statements ready for those interviews?

How about lovely Brian Blessed, your public face and ardent supporter? Have you let him read enforcement letters? Do you think he’ll feel good about those? Is he going to keep throwing his weight behind the charity that makes people homeless?

You are not fair or even handed in how you run enforcement. It is discernibly not about the good of the canal. Boaters who pay for moorings, and who do not live on their boats, seem to get way with overstaying. Live-aboard boaters are harassed for far less. You don’t police the speed limits on the canal; large, expensive boats can put up waves of a foot or more in height and you won’t bother them, probably because the boat owners are wealthy. Enforcement is simply about getting more money out of people who live on their boats. There is nothing charitable about your enforcement department.

You have made me sick with anxiety over the last few years. Your ill-founded threats, the last one of which had no discernible legal basis whatsoever, are no way to treat people. I believe in service, I actively support charities and always will. You had the chance to view me as both a valuable customer, and a potential future supporter, and you blew that, with me and a great many other boaters too. You forget that every person you send unpleasant letters to, has friends, family, colleagues. You forget that we can put our letters in other people’s hands, and tell the stories of our experiences to people who will not be giving you money either. You forget that boat dwellers are people.

If I could afford to sell my boat for scrap metal, I would do so, for the simple pleasure of denying you the boat license money and mooring fees from some future owner. Customer services? I don’t think so. Public relations? Not in any reality I’ve ever visited. The charity that makes people homeless is not one that I will ever support, and as that label comes to stick to you, I think you’ll find the warm-hearted, charity givers in the general populous won’t send their money your way, and that corporations won’t want to associate themselves with the kind of public reputation you will soon have. The charity that makes people homeless is not going to be financially viable, because you cannot squeeze enough money out of boaters to compensate yourselves for what your own actions will inevitably do to your finances.

Or, you could stop spending public money on enforcement, let the police and local authorities handle those rare problem cases, and do something good with the money this will save you. Make those changes, and you may be in with a chance.

An Alternative Wheel

I’ve said in many places over a lot of years now that I do not like the focus on a simple, solar narrative of the wheel of the year. I have a lot of reasons for this.

1) It disregards local difference. There are a lot of variations in climate, timings and so forth and most Pagans do not live in the bit of Europe this originated from anyway.

2) It discourages Pagans from finding out what is actually happening around them and what is unique to where they live.

3) It disregards other stories, of which there are many. Not all of nature follows the pattern of sun and trees. Many humans resonate with other living things.

4) After you’ve celebrated a few rounds of the solar story, it gets tricky to find new ways of doing it without getting bored, and you start to realise just how much you aren’t getting to explore.

So, rather than just griping about it, I am dedicating to do a thing. I’m going to put up a blog post every month over here – http://witchesandpagans.com/Alternative-Wheel/Blogger/Listings/nimue-brown.html – exploring different stories about the wheel of the year. Each month I’ll reflect on things that are happening out there in nature, often with an eye to totally subverting how those things are normally expressed in the regular wheel of the year.

June’s post landed a little late, and was all about fledglings and leaving the nest (because new beginnings are supposed to happen in the spring.) This month’s blog is all about harvests, because while normally we Pagans celebrate that in the autumn, it has a much longer season. I’m wondering what to do for August already, but you can be confident it won’t have much to do with grain harvests or bread, because this certainly isn’t the only thing going on.

The ‘traditional’ eight festivals are a simplification of the agricultural and solar year. Yes, they do draw on historical festivals, but if you read Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun (and you should…) you’ll notice that there are tons of festivals in the UK alone, all through the year. Local festivals for local people, celebrating specific things. The ‘traditional’ 8 give us an easy in, a shortcut to engaging with nature and the year that can be painfully superficial. There is so much more to nature, so much more nuance to the seasons, and so much going on where you live that does not fit neatly into the story. The standard 8 have some use for shared celebrations and getting people started, but we need to recognise that they really are just a jumping off point, not the be all and end all. From a teaching perspective, the 8 are a great place to start, giving people who do not have a relationship with the natural world a way to start engaging. We shouldn’t stop there.

I’m hoping this new blog series will encourage those people who have not moved beyond the big 8, to look more closely at what actually happens around them, and to start building wheel of the year stories that reflect life as lived, in the land lived in. Druidry needs to be local, rooted in the landscape, and engaging with the actual seasons, of the actual year, as it comes.

The thing about trees

The whole Druids-trees thing is undoubtedly my favourite available Druid cliché. I don’t do white robes, am notably lacking in the beard department and am very seldom at Stonehenge, but trees, absolutely. Any chance I get. One of the problems with the last few years of boat life, is that trees have been in short supply. There are some willows, ash, and even hawthorn along my stretch of canal, but only on one side. Being near trees is nice, but it’s not the same as under them. There’s evidence that time under trees – just 5 minutes a day, improves mental health. I find that very easy to believe.

I like willow a lot, its resilience and utility make it deeply appealing to work with. However, I’m also very partial to beech trees, and un-shockingly, I like oak, hazel and yew as well. Hey don’t grow around here much. I didn’t used to get on with yew trees, but we seem to have reached an understanding now.

Being amongst trees is very different from being near a few trees. Ancient woodland is a whole other thing again. This is more than just trees, it’s about the fungi in the soil, the undergrowth and other denizens. A proper wood is far more than just trees. This is something that bothers me with tree planting, because while, yes, you can plant trees, if you don’t have the rest of the community, it’s not a wood, just a big clump of planted trees.

If a place has been wooded in the last fifty years, a surprising amount of what it takes to really make a woodland can be sat there in the soil, waiting for the trees to show up. This awes me.

The air is different, under trees. You can smell it, and that means, as you inhale woodland air, you are also inhaling something that is of the trees. I’m not sure what it is, but I do know how much it calms and settles me, how much cleaner and more whole I feel for getting to do this. I am also affected by the softness of light in woods, especially in summer. I’ve read a lot of tree related science (Colin Tudge, The Secret Life of Trees, Diana Beresford-Kroeger The Global Forest, assorted articles). Enough to know that from a scientific perspective, the impact of trees on people is huge, and often to our benefit. Enough that, if you did not have a handle on the science, you’d have to call the power of trees magical.

I have a very keen sense that my ancestors evolved to live in close proximity with trees. I like open spaces, hill tops, open sky, but not all the time. I crave the dappled light and greenish air, the companionable rustling and the sense of peace. My absolute favourite is woodland that has water running through it. Happily, I found some of that this morning. Leaving the canal will not be hard, because I know where to find the things I need.

The ancient Druids did not have a sacred book. They had trees. Individual trees. Groves of trees. Woodlands. There are things to be learned in the company of trees that one human cannot hope to write down for the benefit of another. It’s something you breathe in, I suspect.

A slowness of books

I rather thought I’d have my third Druid title handed into the publisher before midwinter, last year. It didn’t happen, not least because I was very ill. My first 2 titles (Druidry and Meditation, Druidry and the Ancestors) both came out in 2012 and I was aiming to keep up a good pace there. It’s not quite gone to plan, I’ve had issues of block, weariness and too much everything else… Then Trevor over at Moon Books suggested I write a smaller book for the Pagan Portals line. I jumped at the chance, and the result – Spirituality without structure will be out in the not too dim and distant future. It was an interesting book to write, allowing me to use much of the wider research from the current Druid title, and it helped me focus my thoughts.

Spirituality without structure is an exploration of how to construct your own path, without being confined by conventional religious structures and systems. More of that nearer the time!

The first draft of the next title exists in hand written form. I’m a bit ‘old school’ in that I’m happier creating books on paper. I think better. Electricity has been in short supply, and gazing into the middle distance looking for just the right turn of phrase is a lot harder when the clock is ticking and the juice will run out. I also like having a tangible hard copy that will not melt away in the event of technical malfunction. Getting the next book from paper into the computer has been a bit of a fight. I think it’s more to do with energy levels than enthusiasm, the subject fascinates and inspires me, and also scares and confuses me, making it ideal in many ways. I feel a bit like I’m waiting for life to deliver some sort of punch-line, but it hasn’t shown up yet.

There’s a number of other projects in the pipeline that I’m not in a position to talk about in public yet – fiction stuff. So I’ll just tease you with that, but there is a thing on the way for next year that I am seriously excited about. We’re also talking to Archaia about book 3 of Hopeless and the timing for that, with book 2 due out around Halloween – you can already pre-order it on Amazon! Of course none of this has helped me get the Druid book written, there only being so any hours in a day.

The other big distraction, has been setting up to do a teaching course through the Patheos Pagan blog. I’ve been a columnist there for a while, and when they talked about developing a teaching space, I opted in. So, quite a lot of time went on planning and writing the content for that. You’ll be hearing more about that too, in the next month or so.

There is an argument for saying, do one thing at a time. I gather from the Zen folk that this is considered necessary for mindfulness. The trouble is, I just don’t have that kind of mind. Mine is a grasshopper brain and it jumps about between things. Trying to focus all of my energy into one project tends to make me more vulnerable to block and getting bored. However, the fingers in many pies approach makes me less than brilliant at always turning everything in on time. I’ve become adept at not getting deadlines in the first place. On which subject, I have been sounding out a publisher about a book on dreams, as well, which might happen next year.

I have promised myself that I will get the next Druid title written and handed in before I start on the dream book, or on the novel brewing in my head. That’s about as close as I ever get to discipline. I’m also planning to rerelease by self-publishing, some of my older novels so I need to take some time and polish those up, and we may be going to put out some Hopeless related material that way too. Oh, and audio meditations. Would you like some of those? I might be able to add that to the mix in a month or so. I’m signed up to do an alternative wheel of the year monthly column (links soon) and I’m writing more for The Druid Network too.

I have a feeling that the next twelve months or so are going to be a tad crazy, as in the midst of the above I’m determined to get out to more events as well. With Auroch Grove getting started and OBOD mentoring in the mix, as well as distinct opportunities for a more interesting cultural/social life, I’m starting to wonder quite when I’m going to do any sleeping. I’m just going to assume that it can all be made to fit together, and, with a rare nod to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, seize the carp.

Intuition or fantasy?

As a younger human I had decent intuition; enough to help me steer through life a bit. There was one, total intuition fail, although in fairness I recall wondering on the day of my first wedding whether I was actually doing the right thing. I wasn’t, but I put it down to pre-wedding nerves, and tuned it out. By then I was already struggling to distinguish between intuition and anxiety. That brought me years of being lied to and misled, in ways that left me even more anxious, and unable to distinguish between unhelpful anxiety, and valuable intuition. With my judgement constantly questioned and my preferences continually undermined, I stopped hearing my own voice.

The trouble with anxiety, is that it tells you, loud and clear, that it’s all going to be awful. Fear that what went before represents something normal and dependable starts to blot out your reason. It is this, taken to an extreme, that makes people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder so unable to function in trigger situations. However, for those of us not dealing with that level of trauma, fear can still teach us some lousy lessons. We learn not to trust the good stuff, we learn to expect the worst.

One of the things that mangled my intuition, was a lot of time spent dealing with the bat-shit-crazy, from a number of sources. Having your own, private intuitive responses is one thing, laying them in front of other people as though these are unassailable facts, is quite another. Being able to tell between what you ‘know’ as a fact (it rained yesterday, that’s too expensive, etc) and what you ‘know’ (you’re hexing me, I am magically keeping this other person alive, I have saved you from demons…) that kind of stuff is nothing but trouble, and when someone else drops their imaginary world into yours, the results can be traumatic to say the least.

Being Pagan can often mean engaging with reality in a way other people do not. It means acting on things, sometimes, that other people may find irrational or alarming. Many Pagan paths call for a degree of trusting the magical insight and the intuition, and in a lot of circumstances, that can be a good thing. However, we have to watch ourselves. Taking too much on trust without looking at our own motives can be a dangerous process. It is all too easy to project things onto other people, for a start, especially if we are reluctant to look at our own issues. When we start using intuition as an excuse, or an explanation for that which we could not conceivably justify by other means, we are in trouble.

The key questions to ask are, does this work, and what does it achieve? If intuition fills your world with people who curse you and attack you magically, if you’re fighting wars with demons and endlessly unhappy, consider that maybe something else is going on here. If intuition tells you that everyone is out to get you, that might in fact be paranoia speaking. If all intuition says is that the world is an awful, hostile place, you may be suffering from anxiety. Actually, if all intuition tells you is one thing, be sceptical about it. Intuition, if it is well tuned, will pick up all kinds of things.

If, on the other hand, intuition tells you when to pick up the phone and call a friend, means you grab the laundry before it starts to rain and put your hand on just the book you needed, and other things of that ilk, then it’s good stuff and you may as well enjoy it.

The important thing to remember is that intuition is one tool in the box. I gather that psychological research suggests we mostly make our decisions intuitively and then figure out the rationale later. It’s always worth doing that cross reference, double checking to see how hard facts and gut feelings work together. When they coincide, you know you’re probably going the right way. If there’s conflict, pause and rethink. Check out facts, and query what the gut said. Either can be wrong.

Midlife crisis (druid style)

I gather that your standard mid-life crisis is a mid-forties affair, these days. For some it’s a reaction against the realisation that time ahead is likely shorter than time behind, coupled with a desperate bid to deny that, by emulating your own youth a bit. Fast cars, motorbikes, new partners, affairs, all that kind of thing. It doesn’t have to be like that, of course. For many people the midlife crisis is a time of recognition.

Materialism, work and normality have not delivered enough, something new is called for, and this is a time that brings many people to Paganism generally, and Druidry in particular. Rather than denying mortality, some people respond to it by trying to go deeper into life. Un-shockingly I’m all in favour of that.

Like most people, I spent time in my teens experimenting with identity, trying to figure out who I was, what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go with my life. Then my twenties came along, and despite some really unhelpful circumstances, I raised a child, studied with OBOD, ran a folk club, learned the bouzouki, and wrote a lot of books. Somewhere in all of that, I lost a lot of pieces of myself, and a lot of my sense of direction. Disenchantment and despair featured heavily.

I may be technically a bit young for a midlife crisis (36) but I find myself harking back to my teens a lot, trying to reclaim the person I was then, the sense of direction, purpose and hope that spurred me on. It’s not resulted in fast cars, drunken depravity or sexual misbehaviour because I didn’t do much of that first time around and it holds no appeal. I’m not looking to drown out the cries of reality and mortality. I want to open my eyes again, not find a bigger bag to pull down over my head.

Going back to the habits of my teens has involved a lot of needlecraft, and I’m starting to up-cycle clothes and other things again. I’m determined to get back into dancing. I used to be a crazy, wild, uninhibited dancer. The first one on the floor at a gig, not caring who thought what of me. I need to lose my self-consciousness and get back to that. I need to sit on hills all night. I’ve gone back to studying, but I want to do more of that, finding people who could, and might take mentoring roles. I don’t want to be directed, but it’s good to have someone to go to now and then. I’m relearning how to believe in my own work, and how to believe that I can make a difference. I’m relearning how to trust.

Crisis is in many ways a good thing. It is so alarmingly easy to fall into ruts and holes, shuffling along with habits that we don’t think about. It is so easy to end up not living out your dreams or walking your truth, knowing that your teenage self would be screaming at you if they could see how you betrayed their hopes and sold them out. Been there. Got the t-shirt. My teenage self was considerably wiser than my twenty-something self. My teenage self had not been frightened into submission or bullied into hopelessness. My teenage self believed. We don’t have to give up the bright idealism of being young. We don’t have to ‘grow up’, conform, settle down, go with the inevitable flow of banal job, television, commute, as we disappear into a fug of apathy. It is never too late to stop and say, “hang on a minute, this is not where I meant to be,” and do some other thing.

My teenage self knew that most of what goes with being “a proper grownup” was stupid, dull, pointless and not worth having. I climbed, all too willingly, into the straight-jackets mainstream society has ready for all of us, but it is possible to climb out again. You may need to go a bit mad first, but it’s well worth it.

Antidotes to unworkable beliefs

I first encountered Colette Brown (no relation!) by reading her book, Maybe the universe just isn’t that into you. As a reviewer I get exposed to New Age writing, much of which makes me want to cry. Colette’s book is a brilliant antidote to this. It’s a small, punchy and amusing read, which lead me to contact the author and ask if she’d do me an interview. So, here we are, and here it is!

Nimue: Maybe the universe just isn’t that into you, made me wonder if you had been subjected to one piece of new age silliness too many. Was there a final straw that prompted you to write?

Colette: Actually it was a build up over a few months. I had watched an acquaintance forge forward with what seemed like a very daft idea ‘because this is what the Universe wants of me’. That in itself wasn’t that bad but the venture itself would involve other people. When it failed I was upset for good folk who had invested in it. Then I thought ‘when will it be ‘a lesson from the universe?’ and sure are goodness that is the next thing I heard from the acquaintance! Simply a bad decision being flaunted as ‘lesson’.

At the same time I had been reading daily inspirations from a site on the Internet and was becoming bored by the way they all seemed to be saying the same thing day after day. To be truthful, I didn’t find them inspiring as most seemed to be saying if you could visualise success, then you could achieve it. I thought this was a bit much if you were starving in a third world country, had a terminal disease or were long term unemployed. The flip side of it seemed to be saying that circumstances play no part in life and to almost be blaming folk for their ‘failure’ even if they had no control over their circumstances. What annoyed me is that I still looked for these ‘inspirations’ and was hooked in case I missed a good one. They can be addictive.

Then I read something on Facebook along the lines of ‘God only gives the strongest warriors the pain and suffering’. Like pain and suffering was gifted to strong resilient folk but that God avoided giving it to wee sensitive weak folk? NOT TRUE!

It just seemed one thing after another. Spiritual people following ideologies like sheep, disrespect to higher beings like angels who seemed ‘on call’ for anyone who cared to turn an angel card and people spouting conspiracy theories online. I was ranting about it all to my husband, injecting humour so that it didn’t depress me and he said simply ‘write all this down’ . So I did and that is how the book came about.

I consider myself spiritual. I do believe that in the correct circumstances, with the correct intent and a lot of hard work, that we can work with the Universe to make things the best they can be. But there are times when ‘maybe the universe just isn’t that into you’ and you know, that is ok too.

Nimue: I share your unease about ‘failure to achieve’. That’s troubled me with New Agey stuff for a long time. We can’t all be winners, logically. What have you found most helpful when you’ve been learning?

Colette: I am an avid reader so I found it easy to read lot on lots of different subjects and then dispense with books or ideas that didn’t suit me. You have to be discerning as there is a lot out there and not all of it is good. I also found a strong connection with the tarot early on and found that it became such an amazing tool for self-knowledge and personal development.

I have been lucky to have some wonderful teachers i.e. people who walked their talk and informed me of it but then let me make up my own mind on it. The best teachers are the ones who simply live it and don’t preach or stifle your own thoughts.

I also have felt that my instincts have served me well. If something seems too good to be true, it normally is. I like simplicity. There are so many terms out there just now that simply don’t mean anything or are confusing to say the least. If your brain can’t understand the name of a workshop or therapy, then be wary! Either it will be a rehash of something else or it will be something you have to pay to understand the intricacies of or become ‘apprenticed ‘ to.

My family and husband have also made my spiritual life very easy for me. They accepted that it is who I am and that without it, I lose me!

Nimue: Not everyone seems to know where to find their intuition, much less how to trust it. Any other suggestions for how to tap into the innate knowing we probably do have somewhere…?

Colette: The fact is that we are sentient beings so we all do have intuition. I liken it to having the potential to play the piano: some folk can be very good piano players if they practice and give time to it. Others may well be more talented as such and have a more impressive natural gift. If they use this natural gift AND practice, then that will bring the most successful connection.

So I feel that first we must accept that we are all intuitive to different degrees and practice as much as we can to achieve our own personal best. To me there has to be time, discipline and energy given to this pursuit, even if you are a natural. A friend of mine who is a very respected astrologer told me he thought that I was like a psychic athlete who flexed and honed their psychic muscle every day as I meditated and did readings most days. So I think maybe we need to think of our psychic senses as muscles and feed them good spiritual food and exercise them a lot but not too much.

My basic requirements for this are: solitude, nature, meditation, mantras and prayer, burning herbs, and my trusty tarot deck.

Nimue: There’s a lot of warm humour in your book…. who makes you laugh?

Colette: I have always loved observational humour and for me the best with this is Eddie Izzard. He can make something as mundane as hoovering so funny. I was also blessed to see the late great Les Dawson live before he died and laughed for weeks after it.

I laugh at myself a lot too. I am dyslexic and some of the faux pas in my writing can be so funny. Thank Goddess for great copyeditors! I am a real people watcher and can find humour in most situations. But I don’t like humour that is cruel or divisive.

My previous book was Weegie Tarot which was the tarot Fool’s Journey set in the east end of Glasgow. This gave me so much fun as I had worked there for many years as a pharmacist and so enjoyed the humour of the people. I relayed stories I had heard and some from my own experiences and chuckled so much as I wrote it. Of course it was sad too……

I feel that many spiritual people can take themselves far too seriously. I think we all need to lighten up and have more fun with life. If a ritual or ceremony goes a wee bit wrong and something funny happens, it is ok to laugh. I don’t feel that the ancestors were humourless!

Nimue: Where can interested people find you online?

Colette: my website is http://www.coletteclairvoyant.webs.com my facebook is Colette Brown ( author) or colette clairvoyant.

Colette Brown MRPharmS

author of

Tarot Novice to Pro in One Book (Nov 2011)

Menopause a Natural and Spiritual Journey ( May 2012)

Weegie Tarot Life of a Foolish Man(October 2012)

coming in 2013….

Maybe The Universe Just Isn’t That Into You

How to Read an Egg

The Quest for Inspiration

I notice over on her blog, Cat Treadwell is pondering inspiration – http://druidcat.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/the-joy-of-inspiration/. Here I am, dog tired, with a ton of things I need to be doing, struggling to get together a blog post. Yesterday there just wasn’t time. I try to blog every day because I think it is important to write every day. It’s like flexing more physical muscles, and keeping in the habit, helps. Making the effort to find a good idea and write about it, keeps my brain clunking along. This is rather a ‘cheat’ blog, because the reason for writing it is actually how short of inspiration I am.

Much of my mental energy at the moment is being diverted into getting the stuff from the boat to the flat – and all attendant stuff sorting. Quite a lot of my mind is occupied with trying to wrestle the Canal & River Trust into acting more decently. I am making progress, they want an in person meeting, but I am sore pressed for time. However, other boaters can and will go in my stead, so I may be able to pass the baton there. All well and good, but between the two, energy for wordy creativity on the blog is not what it could be. I’m so worn that finding the energy to work on typing up the current book (first draft was on paper) is an effort. So much for this being the high energy time of the year.

I have a good relationship with the awen most of the time. If I seek inspiration, it comes, and I do something – be that a poem, a blog, a blanket or an innovative meal. I don’t generally suffer from a shortage of ideas. Often the bigger issue for me is picking through the rush of possibilities to find things, or combinations of things, that will work. There are days when that just doesn’t happen, and this is one of them. I know what the problem is – if I try and run to hard and too long without resting, I lose the ability to manage the idea flow. If I do not nurture myself with good input, that also doesn’t help. I need more rest time, and more absorption time. I have been reading Jonathan Green’s excellent Pax Britannia books, and have read Craig Hallam’s Greaveburn and Meg Kingston’s Chrystal Heart, which have all helped keep me going. Tonight I shall curl up with Genevieve Tudor’s wonderful folk program (google it, you can listen online). Tomorrow, back into the maelstrom no doubt. In fact, this afternoon I have to get back under a bed to tackle the things that dare to dwell in such places… may the gods have mercy on me.

It’s not difficult to get ideas for books, or blogs or anything else you might want to do creatively. The world is full of ideas, old and new. The trick is having the peace of mind to be able to encounter those and reflect on them, the skill to separate good ones from useless ones, and the wherewithal to then turn that idea into a thing. And lo, I find myself somewhere over my target minimal word count, and possessed of a blog after all. Inspiration, it’s often just a case of doing the work and a lot less mysterious than it seems.