Nimue Brown's Blog, page 448

The Druid Look

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I wrote an article for Steampunk Canada this week about Steampunk Druids (here http://www.steampunkcanada.ca/apps/blog/show/19252985-steampunk-druids ) and Tom did an illustration for it. We talked about it before hand, considering that the target audience was Steampunks, and that we couldn’t assume the readers would have complex ideas about who Druids are. And so we plumbed for the blindingly obvious icon, the old beardy guy with the robes.

I gather from reading Ronald Hutton that this image owes a lot to a mistake about some statues of Greek philosophers, and is nothing to do with ancient Druids. However, if you need to conjure up a quick image of Druidry, our beardy friend is currently the chap for the job.

Now, I’d be prepared to bet that that vast majority of Druids out there look nothing like this. Arthur Pendragon is trending this way, but he’s the only one I can think of. (Do self identify if you fit the archetype though, I’d love to know!). I’m about as far from looking like this as its possible to get. There’s the whole being female issue, for a start. Which means I am unlikely to ever have a long and lustrous beard of my own. This may be as well! I’m also still young enough to have brown hair, there’s not much silver in the mix. Lastly, I do not wear robes much. I might do it for comic effect, I don’t mind dressing up for celebrant robes, but I’m… shall we say ‘buxom’  and putting me in white robes makes me look far too much like a refrigerator. It’s not a style I enjoy. Also, it shows the stains too readily!

When it comes to book covers, most Druid authors tend to resort to that reliable old chestnut – sometimes literally. The tree. Nothing says Druidry, apparently, like some trees. There’s of course Stonehenge, which has associations, but also says ‘hippy’ and probably doesn’t work if you’re in another country anyway.

So here’s my question. What does a Druid look like? If we were going to replace the beardy chap with the white hair, what would we want instead? This is not a hypothetical question. I’m married to an artist. I have books, fiction and non-fiction, with Druids in and I’ve just started talking in public about the possibility of The Secret Order of Steampunk Druids. I think Druid imagery is going to feature in my future.

I know from publishers that aside from the beardy guy, there aren’t iconic Druid images out there. We all know what witches look like. They’ve got pointy hats and five pointed stars, cats, broomsticks, cauldrons, magic wands… combine two or three elements, throw in some cleavage, you’ve got a witch. It’s not currently possible to do the same things for Druids.

What do we look like?

What do we want to look like?

Everything starts somewhere, after all. I think here is as good a place as any.

Managing the energy

It’s all gone mad. My whole life. Not in a bad way, I hasten to add, but this is the kind of crazy rush that ought, in theory to happen at midsummer, and didn’t. This is not normally a ‘rush’ time of year for me. Some years when I’ve been pickling and preserving, it’s been busy, but not like this. Part of it is a direct consequence of my shout out earlier in the week. The response has been amazing – as a consequence I’m writing two or three articles a day plus this blog, trying to meet demand. It’s stunning, humbling, inspiring to find so many people are willing to put something of mine into the world. (And, do keep them coming, I’m holding pace, I will get articles to everyone who asks, and each article will be unique).

I’ve just been asked if I’ll read a book with a view to putting an endorsement on it. This is a first. A gobsmacking, overjoying first. There is no greater validation as a writer, than some other writer liking you and your stuff so much that they want an endorsement. Sales are lovely, fans are lovely, and startling, but this is a whole other level and my head is reeling.

I’m talking to a review site, that I want to work for and that may be interested in me. Things are moving for Tom as well, with all kinds of glorious chaos potential there too.

This morning I wrote a gothic short story, destined for an audio project with some great people. I have a series to write, and the creativity is flowing.

At the moment it feels like hurtling down a slope on a tin tray. It’s all going very fast. I have some semblance of control, but probably not as much as I need. Stopping could be messy…

Many of the creatures I love most are absolutely adept at harnessing the natural environment. Buzzards ride the wind, and I watch them most days, soaring effortlessly, using what is there. It’s so easy to get buffeted about, blown off course, thumped into trees though, for creatures like myself who are not adept at flying. My Druidry of the last few years has been so much about a quest for balance, peace and stability. I’m caught in a tidal wave of awen, a tsunami of potential, and am quite aware that it could crush me. I need to become the sort of creature that can ride the currents, harness the wind.

I know from past experience that the crazier the rush, the harder the crash, but I want this life, and I want the many things that are opening up before me.

Where the water flows

Yesterday we were in Stroud, as the tiger sat an exam, the 11+ that may determine which school he’s going to. (For readers beyond the UK, this is a relic of an older school system, you have to pass an exam to apply for a grammar school, these are generally better schools, which benefit from being selective.) I’ll write about selective schools properly sometime. It’s a big, uncomfortable issue for me, but this was what the boy wanted to do, and I respect his choices.

Stroud is where I intend to be living in less than a year’s time. It’s a small enough town that a person can get around it on foot, which is important to me. It has a lot of unique shops, a great weekly market, a thriving arts culture, lots of pagans, greens and other, lovely alternative people. As far as I know, it doesn’t have a steampunk scene… yet. It’s also easy to get out of, making it an ideal base for us as we set off into the wider world to do events. It feels like the right place to be.

However, stood in the street yesterday, looking at the beautiful hills around the town, the woodlands turning towards autumn, I felt an uncomfortable itch. It took me a little while to pin it down, and it goes like this… I don’t know where the water is. The canal runs through Stroud, sort of, although it’s being restored and isn’t currently navigable. Canals don’t flow, as such and are man-made constructions. I have discovered in myself a significant, personal need to know where the water flows.

In my current location, it’s easy, I can get to the river Severn from the canal, and there are a lot of streams heading that way too. I know this landscape, and it’s one in which water is easily found. Logically, as Stroud is surrounded by hills, the water will be at the bottom of the five valleys. But, where landscapes are developed, often the water ends up in culverts, underground and inaccessible.

I know that when I move, one of the first things I will need to do is figure out where the nearest source of freely running water is. I’m anticipating walking a lot – I love to walk – and with a barely familiar landscape to explore, I’m going to have a lot of fun. But, more than trees, more than hills, I need to know where the water is. Of course trees and hills are easy to spot, because of their size, but water is more secretive, more mysterious.

I don’t think, until I moved to the boat, that I was properly conscious of how important free moving water is to me. I need it. I need to be able to look at it, and walk beside it. I need the sound of it, and the healing effect of these things. Some of that is probably just my mammal self wanting to know where the most critical resources can be found, but this is not just a pragmatic how-to-survive-a-zombie-apocalypse thing. It is very much part of my Druidry.

For preference, what I want to find is somewhere water flows between trees. That kind of place always speaks to me, fills me with happiness. We shall see.

A hungry world

I heard a story yesterday about a girl collapsing in school, because it had been so long since she’d last eaten. In some parts of the world, the curious bits would be that a poor child was in school in the first place, and a girl-child at that. Hunger and deprivation are normal for so many people. But this wasn’t a developing world story, it came from a few miles down the road, from the green and pleasant heart of England, where that sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen anymore.

In this country of wealth and plenty, no child should have to go hungry to the point of collapse. Our government should hang its collective heads in shame that they have allowed such a situation to exist. Food banks are on the increase, as are the numbers of people who desperately need access to them. Where people are already in debt, living hand to mouth, one wage packet to the next, the loss of work can plunge a household into total crisis at no notice. This is happening. Where benefits are cut, support with housing harder to come by, budgets that would not make ends meet now cannot be stretched. What do you give up? The mobile phone that enables you to be contacted if a job comes in? Heating? The cost of fuel has been on the rise for some time. Maybe you give up the car that you depended on for shopping and that actually made you more employable. We have a structure that pretty much demands you have certain things, and increasing numbers of people who cannot afford them.

And yet in some households, perfectly good food is thrown away all the time.

I stood in a queue today and listened to an obscenely spoilt brat howling with dismay that he was being made to stand up, and was not allowed to sit in the car. From the fuss he was making, you’d think someone had told him he wasn’t going to have anything to eat that week.

It’s the perspectives that really gets me, the comfortably off who denigrate the poor and assume that poverty is proof of not working hard enough, for one. The line between viable, and unviable is thin, and seldom visible. There but for the grace of the gods, goes any of us. One big car bill you can’t pay that leads to debt, and never being able to quite get ahead again. Or that classic of a sudden health disaster that takes job, income, dignity and hope in one fell swoop.

Any one of us could wake up tomorrow and find that some personal disaster, beyond our control, has thrown us into a state of destitution. And it happens every day, to a frighteningly large number of people.

We’re so quick to blame those less fortunate than ourselves, and so quick to assume that some inherent quality in us is keeping us in better fortune. Not luck. Not pure, blind, irrational chance. I think luck has everything to do with it. I’m lucky. I can afford to feed my child. Another woman in Gloucester, could not. If only we had a culture in which failure to look after the weakest was a source of shame, not pride. If only we could collectively stop looking for reasons to blame, and put that bit of effort into finding ways to help. If only we cared enough to notice.

I’m in a fairly affluent area, there are no hungry children on my doorstep, as far as I know. I like to think I’d have a clue if there were, and I know that if I knew, I could not stand by and do nothing.

The sacred loaf

I used to always make bread for rituals. Creating the loaf was a big part of my preparation work, often happening the day before. I got increasingly into creating breads that were fun, tasty and decorative, it became an art form for me, an expression of love for community, a moment of connecting with my breadmaker ancestors, connecting with land, grain, the essential stuff of life. I also used to make all of my own bread for home consumption, but that just doesn’t work on the boat – issues of storage space, kitchen size and other hassles have made it too awkward to do. I miss it though, and it’s one of the things I’m looking forward to having back, after the boat.

I always used to make a loaf for harvest festivals, too. My son’s previous school was Church of England and closely related to the local Church, so they celebrated festivals there. He’s never been Christian, but I think a grounding in tradition is good for a person, so he always participated in these. I learned how to make a traditional harvest loaf – they look like a wheat sheaf and are decorative rather than edible, they are loaded with salt and slow cooked so as to last, but not good nomming. The vicar always loved getting them, and used to take the loaf round to show older parishioners, who remembered the tradition and enjoyed remembering. It’s nice to do something that reaches out into a wider community. Said vicar knew perfectly well I was a Druid, but we had a good mutual understanding and both of us cared more about community and making good stuff happen than anything else. It was a good situation.

This year, I was once again able to make a harvest loaf, thanks to a lovely friend with a lovely kitchen. We were a bit time pressured, but we got there. It was wonderful being able to share the method with someone else, and initiate another child into the idea of traditional bread! Today, the loaf is heading to church, where there will no doubt be a lot of children who haven’t seen a real harvest loaf before.

I’ve said before about how, sometimes, being a Druid means not going round overtly being a Druid. I’m off to church today, and my loaf will be there. Maintaining traditions matters to me. Supporting the local churches matters to – they are an integral part of villages, focal points of life, history, tradition, and surrounded by the bones of the ancestors. It’s not the religion that draws me, it’s the lives and histories of my own people, the call to community service, the making of bread.

A shout out for help

Hello, this is a somewhat different sort of a thing today.

 

I know that many of you reading this have blogs of your own – some of you I follow diligently. A number of you have been kind enough to reblog my posts in the past, and on occasion, enthused enough to write responses to my ponderings. I’d like to write you something, if you’d be willing and able to find it a home on your own site or another space.

I can do articles, poetry and flash fiction to order, I’ll try my hand at any topic, within reason. If you would like something for your blog, magazine, website, egroup or any other space, please just say. Let me know what sort of thing and what sort of length, and if its remotely feasible, I’ll do it.

If you were wondering why… Over the coming months, Tom and I have two books coming out. The long awaited first instalment of the Hopeless Maine graphic novel series is on the way. We’ve been working towards this moment for years. There’s also a much more recent project – Druidry and the Ancestors.

Now, the book industry, is a bitch. There are something like 250,000 books published every year, and some of them have advertising budgets and authors who are already well known and other such advantages. We are not in that position. We have publishers who can and will promote, but they aren’t massive houses with money to burn, and neither of us is terribly famous.

Tom and I will keep doing the stuff we do, but obviously, if we sell a lot of books, it’s going to make it easier to focus on the things that really matter to us. We also want to share the things we’re passionate about, and that means finding ways to reach out to people. This is why we’re asking for help. Word of mouth advertising works. If you like what we do (and, if you’re reading this, I assume we have that one covered…) and you can find one or two other people who might like it, and they can find one or two people… this is pretty much how 50 Shades of Grey just went viral. Advertising budgets of course are nice, but what really spreads the word about a book is people who like books, talking about them.

I spent a number of years writing custom fiction. I can still do it. I also write a lot of articles as it is. So, if there’s something you’d like to see from me and are able to put somewhere, it would be a great help if we could make that happen.

And, if you have a thing you want to raise awareness for, do ask, because I’m more than happy to post things here, and to do shout outs for other people. There are always slots here for guest blogs and I’m always happy to do email interviews for other people.

Beauty in limitation

One of the concepts that runs through John Michael Greer’s recent Mystery Traditions book, is the way in which it is limitation the both defines a thing and gives it its power and beauty. Without limits, he points out, we would be nothing more than sludge. The limits of our biological structures both define us, and give us life.

One of my favourite poetic forms is the haiku, which is the perfect expression of this concept. Three lines, with a tight syllable structure, a thought has to be perfectly crystallized to be expressed in this way. I like flash fiction, where again the tiny form requires total precision of language. The same could be said of blogs. I aim to write under a thousand words each time, so that these make good bite-sized reads, and that structure helps keep me on topic and focused down to one specific concept. There is, after all, a great deal that can be written about, and it is in the creating of shape, form, structure and limitation that formless everything becomes the meaningful something.

So, where else can this way of thinking be applied? Almost everywhere, I think. I’m very conscious of the relationship applications. I spent a number of years in a polyamorous situation, where fidelity was not a feature of my primary relationship. The reasons for this were many, but that primary relationship was not with someone who considered monogamy valuable. In my experience, humans generally aren’t that good at monogamy, it’s not as natural or as easy as our social structures prompt us to assume. To fail on this one, is to be very human indeed. But when a relationship has the strength and depth to demand all of your attention, when it has the richness to invite total dedication, then fidelity becomes really powerful. I’m not talking about martyrdom or any kind of suffering here. Having been for some years now in a totally monogamous relationship, I have no desire for anything different and I don’t find it restrictive, but that focusing on one person is only viable when that relationship in and of itself, is enough. In this way, the beauty of the thing and its limitations actually feed each other.

If the limitation does not result in beauty, or in something discernibly good, then it can readily be identified as a not-good limitation. The limitations that create a poem are very different from the life sapping limitations of abject poverty or crippling disease. Not all limitations are a good thing, although many limitations can be made to work for us, is we are determined to harness them.

There is also that which we choose to give up, or do without as part of our spiritual dedication. Anyone who chooses limitation in order to be greener and more responsible, is also choosing a path of beauty. There can be no choices without letting something go, giving up certain of our options, and it is out of these choices and renunciations that we have the scope to bring beauty into our lives. I really like this idea. Many aspects of modern thinking take us towards, more, bigger, faster in our desires. To seek less, to focus down, is to make what we do more intense and more powerful. Limitation can be a gift in this way; one that we bestow upon ourselves. It also helps define the edges, the boundaries, and once you know where the edge is, you also know where the liminal is, and that’s a whole new adventure.

The hero who was not a Celt

I love the work of author Lord Dunsany. He’s an interesting figure and nothing like as well known as he deserves to be, and his relationship with Celtic nationalism/revivalism is interesting to say the least. I’m rubbish at dates, but, Dunsany was writing up to and around the time of the First World War, making him contemporary with Yeats. He was an Irish Lord, at a time when Irish national identity was being constructed in part, through literature. W.B. Yeats being a fine example of this. I’ve read letters, I think, or excerpts of letters from Yeats to Dunsany in which he complains bitterly that Dunsany does not tap into the rich heritage of his nation, for the good of the nation.

So much of our modern notion of ‘Celtic’ nations owes everything to the nation building at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. But Dunsany wanted no part of it. He wrote about the Gods of Pagana, instead, who were wholly of his inventing. He’s one of the great grandfathers of the fantasy genre, with The King of Elfland’s Daugther far pre-dating the more famous Tolkien elves. With his lyrical style, dashes of humour and wild imagination, I think he’s brilliant. I wonder to what degree his lack of widespread current fame is due to him not being caught up in the political agenda of his day, though.

I can’t point at Lord Dunsany and claim him as a proto-Druid in the way that we like to claim Yeats retrospectively, and all those other folk working with mediaeval ‘Celtic’ myth at the time. But read his work and the love of landscape, the sense of magic, and the biting religious satires are thoroughly resonant. He reads like a pagan, to me.  Bits of more personal writing give me a sense of Dunsany as rather alone and isolated in his life and his work. There’s a mournful longing to his stories that result in me picturing him staring into the middle distance from high windows, utterly and totally alone. That may of course just be me, and not him at all, but it’s what I get.

Every time I read his work, I come away with the desire to be able to make him a nice cup of tea and say ‘well I get it, and you’re not on your own.” He writes like a man who has glimpsed the colours of faerie, who has heard the last, drifting notes of a song from the otherworld, and who would risk life and limb to see a unicorn for himself. Or anything else otherworldly for that matter.

To the best of my knowledge, Dunsany did not associate himself much with any traditions, new or old. He satirised religion, especially the Church. He was not afraid to mock gods, but not as an atheist might, more as a man who has seen the nature of small gods, and knows their terrible limitations. Whether he would have liked it or not, Dunsany gets me as a creative descendent. He also gets Neil Gaiman, which is probably far more cheering and much less complicated.

He chose not to be an overtly Celtic, druid revivalist type at a time when to do so would probably have done his writing career an abundance of good. Instead, he kept dancing to his own tunes, and to those echoes of otherworldly tunes that were so evidently in his ears. He was true to his awen, and I love his work. Having Dunsany as an ancestor of tradition, given where I stand as an aspiring druid and author, is an interesting place to be. Of all the people I would like to sit down and talk with, he’s one at the top of my list. And like most ancestors of tradition, his opinion isn’t available and he has no scope to rein me in, tell me off or point me in the right direction. This is usually part of the nature of ancestry.

If my own passions are not in tune with the zeitgeist, and are not tapping in to the next big commercial thing, then so be it. Like Dunsany, I can’t be what I am not, and I’d rather follow my inspiration than shoehorn it into a shape that feels unnatural to me. And for all that he did that, Dunsany was, in his own time, prolific and successful and while he may not get the attention he deserves, he’s not lost in the mists of time yet, and hopefully never will be.

The great toad massacre

It’s exactly what happened last year. In the autumn, frogs and/ or toads move about. I suspect they do it at night, and I’m not sure which sort of amphibian it is. All I see are the splattered corpses on the road. There’s a horrible irony to finding them on the last few miles down to the famous wildfowl and wetland centre. The odds are some have been killed by people who came out to see the wildlife.

The trouble with cars, is that doing fifty miles an hour down a darkened lane, you aren’t going to see a frog crossing the road, much less have time to avoid it. That’s assuming you’d care to bother in the first place. Our amphibian populations are in decline. If the number of corpses I’ve seen in the last week are anything to go by, road deaths must be a contributing factor.

Of course there’s a thirty mile and hour limit on this road, but a lot of people don’t respect it. Especially not on the pub run at night. There are always horses, joggers, dog walkers, cyclists and children in the lanes round here, even after dark and there are always stupid, mindless idiots who drive at full tilt. And there are also always corpses. Birds, small mammals, larger mammals, pet cats, I found a grass snake once, it’s head crushed by a passing vehicle. One of the things about being a cyclist is that you get to see the carnage. We stop for anything and everything. I’ve rescued frogs from the road, worms, caterpillars, beetles. I have accidentally killed a couple of snails, I admit, but the death toll created by cycling is fairly low. Up on the main road, someone did get a horse a couple of years ago, the poor animal so badly wounded that it had to be put down, while the distraught child rider had to be taken away in an ambulance.

All for the sake of getting there a bit sooner, or for the dubious pleasure of speed.

We kill a lot of people this way too, pedestrians, cyclists, children.

There is a widely held idea that guns don’t kill people. People kill people. Cars don’t kill people and wildlife. People driving cars kill people, and wildlife. I’d like universal recognition that cars are bloody dangerous things that can and do kill people every day. And that kill birds, mammals, amphibians and insects in horrendous numbers. Speed makes it worse. Speed gives you less time to notice, less time to avoid, it gives the creature itself less time to get out of the way, human creatures included. The higher your speed, the more damage you are likely to do when you hit. And when you hit something of flesh and blood, that damage is immediate, painful, and quite possibly lethal. Cars are killing machines. They need treating like dangerous killing machines, not like toys.

I don’t drive. I simply could not face the responsibility of directing something so phenomenally dangerous. But killing things with cars is normal, and people just shrug it off. The toads, on the other hand, have no shrugging options at all. They aren’t going anywhere.

Practicing Gratitude

The idea of making active gratitude a part of my daily Druid practice is one I’ve picked up by listening to what other Druids do. I’ve been consciously doing it for several years now. I think it conveys a lot of psychological benefits as well as contributing to the spiritual life.

It’s easy to use any religion as a comfort blanket, turning to deity with pleas to make things better, and imagining an afterlife full of rewards. Plenty of religions denigrate this life, describing it in terms of sin, or as something to transcend. Pagan religions just aren’t like that. The practice of gratitude encourages us to give daily time to looking at what is good.

From a psychological perspective, dwelling on the bad can be unhealthy and disempowering. Negative thought patterns reinforce depressed and anxious states, and feed anger, low self esteem, and pretty much any other unhelpful mindset you care to consider. What we do with our experiences goes a long way to inform what we make of our lives, and how we feel.

It’s tempting to think that a grateful attitude might encourage a person to accept that which is not good. This has not been my experience. I have been in situations of accepting the unacceptable, but that wasn’t fuelled by gratitude, but fear. In gratitude, I deliberately dwell on the things I value and appreciate. This tends to be a last thing at night activity for me, and usually my first thoughts are of profound appreciation for the comfort of my bed, and the lovely man beside me. I am grateful for the presence of my child in my life, for the roof over my head, for my health. I am grateful not to be hungry, or drinking unclean water. In this process of gratitude I make a point of putting my life in context and reminding myself that, whatever challenges I may have to face, there are plenty of worse things out there.

If anything, making a daily contemplation of gratitude helps me see clearly both the good in my life, and the less good. By focusing on the one, I am better at spotting the other, and keeping it in perspective. There are things I do not appreciate at all, from individual behaviour through to the actions of the government, the media, big industries and the masses. But I am also glad that I at least know these things and have some defence against being embroiled in them.

Taking for granted is a very easy form of destruction. It takes no thought, no effort and yet it has the power to erode relationships, undermine trust and make us blind to the good things. Assuming a right to anything works in much the same way.  A sense of entitlement can often be very much at odds with a capacity for gratitude. Where we feel entitled, we dwell on shortcomings, where we feel grateful, we dwell on the blessings. The difference between experiencing people who are practicing entitlement, and those who are practicing gratitude, is vast. The former are demanding, self important, critical, and seldom pleased. The latter tend to be far more compassionate, aware, and co-operative. It’s one of the many choices a person can make consciously, but so many people don’t even seem to realise it even exists.