Nimue Brown's Blog, page 449

Morganwg and me

Iolo Morganwg heavily influenced the foundation of the Welsh eistedfodd movement, and his work contributed significantly to shaping modern druidry. He was a ‘scholar’ who ‘discovered’ a lot of ancient texts and brought them to public attention. In reality he made it all up, but his motto was ‘the truth against the world’.

Morganwg is one of the most fascinating and problematic figures you could hope to encounter. His influence is huge, his genius considerable, and his ethical position bloody awkward. He had a vision of brotherhood, peace and learning that is absolutely inspiring, but at the same time appears to be a total rogue, only in it for his own financial and social gain. Not that he got very far on either score.

I’ve had a bit of a love hate relationship with him, to be honest. My feelings swing from admiration to loathing, delight to frustration and have never settled. My own Druidry clearly owes more than a bit to his work. I like the line ‘The truth against the world’ so much that I stole it and used it as a the tagline for a fictional newspaper on a fictional island (www.hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com) Hopeless being the island, The Hopeless Vendetta being the newspaper, and the truth against the world seeming like a precise description of a hopeless vendetta, all things considered.

When it comes down to it, its not actually Morganwg’s fault that the ancient Druids did not really bequeath us the texts we all wanted them to. And how many of us, if we thought we could get away with it, wouldn’t do what he did? Look around the world of pagan and new age publishing and you’ll see all manner of things from curious, I might even say dubious sources. These days we are less likely to claim the discovery of ancient documents and more likely to say we ‘channelled’ it. And of course once you start channelling ancient wisdom, it’s funny how often it’ll turn out to sit really neatly alongside your personal agenda and beliefs.

So, what would I get is I tried to channel the spirit of Morganwg? What would he bring to this day and age? Something attention grabbing, no doubt. Something that would aim to bring in the coins and probably fail, but that’s okay because I’m not that focused on the money really. Something daring, and ridiculous, and not as well grounded as it should have been. Something exciting and inspiring, an idea that is better than the message bearer themselves.

Other people ask, what would Jesus do, or with tongue a little in cheek, what would Odin do? Although there is much about the man that drives me crazy, I am asking, what would Morganwg do? And I have no doubt, if I pull an answer out of the ether, it will be one that suits and serves me, because that really is the nature of the beast.

Brotherhood is a bit outdated and un-pc. Peoplehood then. Learning. Peace. Something showy. Something crazy. It’s like the ingredients for a witchy brew. I am putting things in the cauldron. The one thing I know I’m never going to do is leap up and proclaim I’ve found the one great truth, but probably old Glamorgan Eddie can forgive me for that one.

Radical inclusivity

There’s a sign up about playground rules at my son’s school. There are all the things you might expect about when to stop, and line up. It also says something to the effect of ‘include in your games any children who are on their own.’ The implications are huge.

When I went through school, the general assumption was that a loner had no one but themselves to blame. If other kids wouldn’t play with you, it was because you were weird and antisocial, and that was fine. Either you learned to fit in, or you stayed out. Children who were crippled by poor confidence, who had not been well socialised prior to school, who didn’t follow the ‘in things’ easily, became exiles. The exiled child readily becomes a scapegoat and a victim, and again when I was a child, picking on the one fat kid, the one weirdo, was considered perfectly normal and no one did anything to stop it. For the record, that would indeed have been me – vegetarian before it was trendy, living without a television, wearing second hand clothes, and with some physical problems that meant I couldn’t run and had little confidence. Oh, and I was, definitively, a weirdo.

My son is, and has always been a bit of an oddball, and has always taken pride in being different. He doesn’t want to look like everyone else, he’s televisionless and does not spend all his spare time playing computer games. Nor does he play football. With his interests in philosophy, green issues and steampunk, he’s not on the same wavelength as his peers. But he’s not any kind of social exile in the way that I was. One of the reasons for this, is that school cultures have evidently changed. There is more onus on the majority to take in and accept the minority. Teaching philosophies around self esteem talk a lot about recognising and celebrating difference. When you get down to it, every child is different. Each one has a unique set of experiences, feelings, needs and intentions.

A system where those outside the boundaries of ‘normal’ are fair targets for bullying or just exclusion, enforces conformity. Those who are ‘in’ are under a lot of pressure to stay in, to be as much like everyone else as possible. That in turn helps to reinforce the boundaries. Those rigid lines between in and out encourage fear and mistrust. Anything different from us is not ok, we should resent it, is the message this conveys. And that attitude plays itself out across the world stage in terrifying and destructive ways.

If you start children with the idea that including people is good and excluding people is not, there is a radical scope for widespread change inherent in that. If you encourage children to accept difference and diversity, you enable them to explore their own natures and not to feel threatened by anything that might make them different. It’s often said that the most aggressive gay-bashers are closet homosexuals afraid of their own natures. Where acceptance is the norm, you just aren’t going to get that kind of fear.

When I was a child, fitting in was the business of the individual, and exiling weirdos was the prerogative of the majority. If that changed, if it became the responsibility of the majority to include, to reach out, to try and understand, to respect the differences, so much would change. And perhaps all it takes to achieve that, is a message on the playground to encourage four year olds not to leave anyone out.

Overcoming fear

I’ve blogged a number of times in the past about the challenges of living with anxiety illness. It’s been with me for years, and has considerable impact on my functionality, and my quality of life. But I’m winning, and aware of having made some progress, I thought it might be a good time to reflect on how and why this has happened.

The biggest development is that I’m not waking up into panic attacks most mornings. I’d endured that for years, and it does not make for a positive start to the day or set you up to cope with anything else. Some days I wake up feeling apprehensive or worried, but this is now a much more manageable thing. This change is because both my circumstances and the way I understand them, have also changed.

During the darkest phases of fear, what underpinned my difficulty was a feeling that I could not win. A ‘you can’t get there from here’ scenario. Everything seemed to be stacked against me, and I had so much hostility and genuine difficulty to field in my life that I started to feel that was normal. That’s the dangerous bit. High levels of trauma are much more manageable if you think they were one-off problems. Smaller but ongoing distress where it becomes normal to be attacked, (verbally counts) normal to be barraged with criticism, to be humiliated, disbelieved, maligned and so forth, creates longer term psychological problems. It’s not always possible to step away from the source, either, although that’s probably the best solution if you can.

What I’ve been doing for some time now, is quite simply building a new reality. As far as is possible, I’ve stepped away from negative, hostile influences. It’s easy to let a few nasty, loud voices drown out the rest, but making that space for myself, a thing has become clear to me. Most of the people I know do not think I’m an awful waste of space. Most of the people I know do not feel the need to tell me off, put me down, nitpick my faults and tell me I am bound to fail.

What really brought this home to me was the weekend at Asylum in Lincoln. We had people coming to the table who had already seen the webcomic, already knew who we were. That was incredible. Lovely, wonderful, brilliant and talented people that weekend responded to me like I was okay to be around, often more. To be in the company of people I really look up to, and to find I pass muster… that means something. The warmth, kindness, encouragement and loveliness of everyone – it was like a huge, weekend long hug. Quite simply, it drove a lot of the fear away.

Yes, I do have a place to belong. Yes, there is a community where I fit in. Actually, more than one. Yes, there are people who value my work. I wrap those thoughts around me like a big, snugly comfort blanket.

Fear and self esteem turn out to be deeply interrelated things. The person who thinks they are worthless and unlovable, is isolated and exposed, at least in their own mind. The person who feels hated and denigrated can hardly ask for help or support. When the world seems cruel and hostile, being afraid is a very sane sort of response. But not everything is cruel, or hostile, and seeking out places to be and people to be with who reinforce my sense of self, who value me and uplift me, has been a big part of the healing process.

There’s only one bit of this I’m sure is relevant to everyone – what you do, counts. The small things, count. Those little acts of meanness, being snarky, point scoring – they really can destroy people by slow attrition. And on the other side, the smallest acts of warmth, community, kindness, inclusion and respect will heal wounds and trauma, will give back self esteem to people who have been trampled. It’s all about the details and the nuances of how we treat each other. There are a great many people whose small kindnesses, and large ones have contributed to me getting to the point of not waking into a panic attack every day. Thank you, all of you. The odds are, you have no idea what your ongoing expressions of human decency have achieved. Most of the time we don’t know how we impact on others, but we can all choose whether to take people apart, or help them hold together, and that choice makes very real differences.

Mystery teachings from the Living Earth

I started reviewing pagan books many years ago when Rowan asked me to have a go at a Kevan Manwaring novel, for White Dragon magazine. That was a win in so many ways. I’ve been both a reviewer, and a huge fan of Kevan’ work, ever since. That, along with much of my reviewing career was under the previous name.

These days, I primarily review for www.druidnetwork.org – The Druid Network has a huge book reviews source that I’m very proud to contribute to. I also post reviews of whatever I’m reading to Goodreads. I don’t want to do too much duplication – I don’t think I have that many dedicated followers who trek from site to site following my work, but it would be lovely to imagine that I do, and I wouldn’t want to bore you! My reviews turn up other places too, The Lightworker’s Hub and Henge of Keltria have shared my words.

Anyone who does want to repost my reviews is welcome to do so, the usual applies, attribute it to Nimue Brown and stick a link back to here, please!

Every so often I run into a book that is so good, I want to tell everyone about it. This is one of those books, and these are the ones I’ll repost the reviews of here.

Mystery teachings from the Living Earth,

John Michael Greer  2012

Weiser Books

ISBN 9781578634897

It’s rare that I’m this impressed, this enthused about a book. If you can only afford to buy one spiritually orientated book this year, make it this one. And that’s saying something, because I have 2 books out this year.

In part Mystery Teachings has evidently been written in response to the shortcomings of some aspects of New Age thinking. Anyone who has ever twitched about New Age stuff, is going to love what Greer has to say. Anyone interested in New Age material really should read this book as a counterpoint.

This is an overview of the kinds of thought forms that Mystery Schools teach. It’s presented, in keeping with the zeitgeist, in ecological terms. The result is a beautiful, rich, inspiring description of how reality works, and how to work with it.  I had to read it slowly, because there was so much to take in, many sections I read twice. There is a generous stream of humour through the book as well, it’s full of things that made me laugh out loud, especially the deflation of the ridiculous. There are shades of the boy shouting ‘The Emperor’s got no clothes on’ here, which may make it uncomfortable reading for some, but it needs to be read.

For anyone interested in magic, or personal growth, or the inside of their own head, or how they interface with the rest of reality, this book has a wealth to offer. For anyone exploring mediation, there are some stunning meditation approaches suggested here, methods that will enrich life and awareness. Having read the book straight through for review purposes, I mean to go back and do it slowly, and actually do the work involved. I’ve lost count of how many courses I’ve read for review down the years, this is the first one that has actually inspired me to want to follow it.

Unusually, this is a book I think offers plenty to the newbie, and also has a lot to say to anyone who has been exploring their path for some time. It is, quite simply, a must have. I cannot recommend it enough.

Crane song

Coming back to the boat today, I saw four cranes in flight and heard them call out. This was a moment of awe and wonder for me, leaving me tearful and gasping. Cranes were driven to extinction in the UK, and these four are part of a reintroduction program. They are the first wild cranes I’ve ever seen, and there’s every reason to think they won’t be the last.

Sometimes, when humans mess up, it is possible to restore the balance.

Go back a handful of years and I was involved with a ritual honouring the lost creatures of the landscape. At that point as far as we knew, the cranes and the wild boar had gone. But there are boar in the Forest of Dean, and there are cranes on the Somerset levels, and sometimes, on the Severn.

We won’t see the aurochs again though – giant, hairy cows who used to roam our forests. The last one died in Poland in I think the 1600s. (Dates are not a strongpoint with me.) They are gone, entirely and forever, available only in imagination. They haunt me, and I feel their absence in ways I cannot begin to explain.

Not so many days ago my son and I were talking about symbiotic relationships and co-evolution. He’s doing seed dispersal at school, which prompted it. There are trees that depended on their seeds going through the dodo’s digestive system to get germination started. Without the dodo, the trees do not reproduce, and eventually, they will be gone. I suppose we might hang on to them by grafting; apple species after all depend on this method, your natural apple does not produce the kinds of apples you get in supermarkets. They all come from grafts. But the tree would depend on us, and have little scope for genetic variance. I have no idea what will happen on that score.

In all aspects of life, there are awful mistakes we get to come back from, and ones that, like the dodo and the auroch, are forever. It’s not always obvious until it’s far too late to do anything. The longer we spend refusing to recognise mistakes, refusing to admit we’re messing up, the worse it gets. We nearly lost our otters here in the UK out of blind refusal, for years, to admit that our water systems were being poisoned. We nearly lost our red kites.

This is as true in any aspect of our lives as it is on the ecological front. Sometimes there are no second chances. We’d be a lot better off trying harder not to mess up that badly in the first place. The people who hunted the dodo to death would never have guessed they were also killing a tree. We do not know what else will fall when we mess up fragile eco systems, or human structures, or relationships, or anything else.

Today there were cranes. Today there was something like a second chance, a reprieve, a reason for hope. But there will be no aurochs.

Closed system earth

The boat is a closed system. It’s not on the grid, or plumbed in to the water and sewerage systems, anything that is going to be in the boat either has to be generated in situ (electricity) or physically brought in (water, fuel, food etc). There are of course some obvious downsides to this – especially when you consider having to sort out your poo… but on the plus side having the means to generate your own energy and source everything you need creates independence. If the grid falls over, I’ll still have lights.

One of the things this makes me very aware of, is the degree to which everything entering the boat comes from somewhere, and everything leaving it goes to somewhere. I have a much more direct sense than most people of how much lavatorial waste we generate in a week, and that it goes somewhere else and needs sorting out. It doesn’t magically flush away never to be thought of again. It goes somewhere. Something has to happen to it.

There are no bin collections for us. Consequently we cycle the recyclables a few miles to drop them off, and there are places we can appropriately dispose of the other things. Big bins all boaters use. And where do those go? Away… to that never never land where all the rubbish goes. Looking at those big bins every week, full of things other people couldn’t be bothered to recycle, and all the useless packaging and waste does not make me comfortable.

There are features of modern life that make it very easy to ascribe things to ‘away’. Water comes from ‘away’ and when you’re done with it, it goes away. Petrol comes out of a nozzle, the actual source rendered invisible. Rubbish disappears in a lorry every week or two. We insulate ourselves from most of the process, the whole structure of modern living encourages us not to see our own place in the many cycles we interact with. This is not helping.

The earth is a closed system. Everything we have is here. There is no off-world grid to turn to if we mess up. No method of being plumbed in to intergalactic water and sewerage systems. Anything that is going to be used on the earth has to be generated in situ. Fantasies about getting it all from space are not going to solve anything any time soon. There are of course some obvious downsides to this – especially when you consider having to sort out your poo… but on the plus side having the means to generate your own energy and source everything you need creates independence. Or it would, if we weren’t being collectively insane.

Performance Druidry

I’m not sure what I make of this line of thought, but, here goes. I’ve been reflecting on how I do my Druidry and have come to the conclusion that I’m more overtly Druidic if I’ve got an audience. If it’s just me and nature, then I’ll say ‘hello sky, hello trees’ and whatnot, and then mostly listen. I was down at the river last night. “Hello river, hello hills, hello sunset, hello gulls.” And then rather a lot of just being there, looking, listening, feeling, breathing. I didn’t have any urge to do anything much. Then on the walk home I started talking about the autumn equinox, and I heard myself slip into Druid ritual mode. It was an odd moment.

I’ve done time on stage – mostly with the music, but a bit of amateur theatricals, some storytelling and some public speaking. I know all about the high that is a round of applause, the joys of public appreciation… I never got to public adulation territory, but I’ve been part of adoring crowds and have some sense of how that works. I’m reasonably confident that the performance Druid thing is not merely a desire to get a hearty clap at the end.

I think what happens has everything to do with my desire to inspire and engage other people. I reach for the best words I can find, the most potent language that captures the essence of the moment. I’m open to the spirits of place, taking inspiration from them to help others be more aware of their presence. I try harder.

When it’s just me and the sky, the pace is different, and the intention. I feel the inspiration, but am not motivated to express it right then. It moves into me, through me. I am changed, I grow, but this is all pretty subtle and from the outside won’t look like much at all.

I look most like a Druid when there’s an audience to work with.

Looking back, those times of performance Druidry tended to leave me shattered, physically. Sometimes mentally and emotionally as well. I’d give my all, and it would leave me exhausted and empty. What I got out of that was a sense of being helpful to others, which is important to me. And sometimes fragments of inspiration from what I’d done and said, would stay, but more often, not. When I’m open, it rushes through me. Does the flute remember the tune after the flautist has stopped playing? I felt I was neither tune nor player at those times, just a carrier, a medium.

If I’m out there on my own, or with people who do not need performance Druidry, I can quietly say hello rain, hello geese, and feel the experience nourishing me.

If I go back to doing performance Druidry, I shall make sure there’s a lot more time when I’m doing the less visible work, for my own benefit. Because I need to, and I no longer think my only function is to be a flute on which other things play tunes. There is a difference between looking like a Druid, and being a Druid, sometimes. I think I’m more confident about recognising the importance of the less obvious stuff now.

The joys of ignorance

I’m not talking about the comfort value of wilful ignorance here, but something else entirely. Partly inspired by Red’s recent post – http://theanimistscraft.wordpress.com... partly by the John Michael Greer book I’m reading. I’ve found that every time I learn something, if I’m paying attention then it tends to flag up more possibilities, things I don’t know, questions to ask and so forth. My belief is that the potential for knowledge is therefore infinite. One of the surest signs that I’ve not been paying attention, is if I start to feel like I really know and understand a thing, or a person, situation etc. There are often more questions to ask.

In many ways, feeling like I know something is not a happy place to be. Where do you go next? It was always my problem with games, for example, that once I understand how to play and what it takes to win, my interest in playing or even winning pretty much dries up. I find the same thing with people – once I’ve heard all of someone’s stories for the third time, I start to look around and wander off. Some of this is probably laziness on my part, but as my friend Bill says, there are people who turn out to have hidden shallows. Sometimes, there isn’t any more to know, as with really drab board games. I’ve also been caught in situations where failure to understand has held my interest, when the more sensible option would have been to recognise that a person was just bat shit crazy and therefore not making any sense and that there was no discovery to make.

The experience of learning and discovering is one that I love, but the best thing is this: When a great vista of the unknown opens up before me. It’s like getting to the top of a mountain and finding there’s a whole new country on the far side. These are wild moments. Of course then follows the climbing down and slogging through the details, which tends to be more like work and not as numinous, but it’s good too.

There are always moments in any journey when it feels like you’re not going anywhere. I’ve had a couple of years now of resettling in this landscape, shifting from leading rituals to being solitary in my practice. I’ve learned new way of working with and relating to the land and I’ve spent a lot of time working on the space inside my head, but there’s been a growing feeling of lost direction. What is my Druidry, these days? Where am I going? What am I doing? And then, the John Michael Greer book showed me the view from a mountain top. It’s just been a glimpse, and I know if I want to get a proper look at that country, I’m going to need to do some work. But I know it’s there. The rush of ignorance, the realisation that there’s so much I don’t know, so much to be done, this is a very happy thing for me.

Working like I don’t need the money

I’ve just read Autumn Barlow’s blog for this week, http://autumnbarlow.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/motivation-and-competition which reflects on writing issues and finished with the line ‘After all. This is just a job.’ Much of what she has to say I agree with, although I think about it in very different ways. I could write a small epic answering her point for point, but for the sake of everyone’s sanity, I’m not going there.

I’ve been involved in creative industries from various angles for about fifteen years now. Event organiser, performer, author, editor, publisher, reviewer, commentator, I’ve seen things from a fair few angles. I also know a great many creative people; amateurs, semi-professionals and full time people, some of whom are doing pretty well. I shall resist the temptation to name drop. Oddly enough, the really successful ones all tend to say the same sorts of things: Do it because it’s what you love. Do it because you have to. Make the art that you want to make and then see who responds. We’re not talking bright eyed young hopefuls here, we’re talking successful professionals who make a viable living from their creativity and who have done so for a long time. It would also be fair to say these are folk who work bloody hard – put in long hours, hone their talents, nurture their fanbases, show up at events, put heart and soul into what they do.

I’ve tried the ‘After all. This is just a job’ method. What it got me was misery, and no notable successes. My creativity is not a tap to be turned on and off at will, not a hose that can be pointed towards a lucrative market and sprayed liberally. There are things I am good at, and things I am less good at. The more time I spend forcing my creativity into shapes that are not natural for me, the less creative I become. I’ve tested this more than once. I can do it in short bursts, and then the inspiration dries up and the will to work goes away. The moment I treat it like it’s just a job, I am in danger of strangling the goose. It may not lay golden eggs, but any kind of egg is better than no egg.

If you are inherently sustained by the prospect of making money, the ‘just a job’ approach where you follow market trends, leap on bandwagons and try to be the next Dan Brown may work for you, but frankly, I think you’d be happier in the kind of job where returns are a bit more dependable. It’s also been my experience that people who are motivated by a desire to be rich and famous are usually not very good musicians, singers, artists, authors, dancers… not compared to the ones who are driven by passion and who are dedicated to their form.

Success as a creative person depends on dedication. If you’re always looking for the next lucrative bandwagon to jump on, you never really find out what you’re good at by developing your own skills. JK Rowling made YA fiction big. Think about what the YA fiction scene was like before Harry Potter. Yes, there have been a ton of Dan Brown conspiracy rip off books since his Da Vinci code came out, but he’s the one who cleaned up. It’s not the copycats who tend to make the money, it’s the innovators. Of course, if it’s just a job, then that niche may appeal.

When creative work is all about the money and all about the bottom line, the soul goes out of it. The world is full of examples of this. Cheap, disposable, forgettable, throwaway entertainment that kills a few hours and gives you very little. Good art should be entertaining, I’m with Ursula Le Guinn on that one. It should be moving, surprising, inspiring, uplifting, funny…  all manner of things. It shouldn’t be a way to not be alive for a few hours. It should enhance life. I do get very angry about commercially led, box ticking rubbish designed to appeal to everyone, which appeals to no one. The market for books is not growing. The mainstream music industry has been on its knees for some time now. Sure fire hits tend not to be as sure fire as they are supposed to be, and if we imagine that creative industry can function without risk…. We’re on dangerous ground.

If you’re creative and you want to make a living, you need to be professional, you need to polish your work, build an audience, promote, all that. But if you aren’t doing it for love, you won’t get through that first winter when you can’t afford to heat the house and have to sit in cafés to write. That was JK Rowling. If it’s just a job, that’s the point at which you quit and go work in the nearest takeaway place. Thank the gods she didn’t, the world would have been much the poorer.

Guest Blog: Walking your talk

Mark put this out as an email, and I asked if I could reblog it because I think it’s a great example of doing your druidry, and quite literally walking the talk. So, with his permission, here we go…

 

By Mark Lindsey Earley

Well, I just about did it! I had foot problems leading up to the walk, so A/ wasn’t able to train very well, and B/ started the walk with very sore feet, which didn’t bode well!

Towards the end it made sense to stow my boots and I did about six miles (where the route was over soft grass) barefoot.

This made it feel even more like a pilgrimage (which in many ways it was, to me). Arriving at the Avebury stone avenue felt very numinous, and being barefoot,  walking at a very sedate and measured pace, holding two staffs, I felt like a bronze age high-priest making a very dignified entrance (and for a while, a bit less like a fat, middle-aged bloke stumbling along like a slowed-down Ozzy Osbourne).

As I approached the Avebury henge I came over all unnccesary. This was probably a combination of relief & achievement; the poignancy of my 300- odd comrades, who were nearly all walking in memory of someone they had lost to dementia, and the sheer magic of having physically linked two of Wiltshire’s (and the world’s) most magical places.

The walk was stunningly well organised and the route was fantastic. I would have expected a few dull bits, or maybe a few short spells trudging alongside busy roads, but we had none of that. The route led through the wild, martial expanses of Salisbury Plain, past barrows, ancient earthworks and target zones (!), down into the vale of Pewsey, through water meadows, parkland and picture-postcard villages, along the Kennet and Avon Canal and then up the huge and dramatic escarpment onto the wonderful Marlborough Downs. We passed  Adam’s Grave, a chalk White Horse, walked along the amazing Wansdyke (the West’s answer to Hadrian’s wall) and past West Kennet Longbarrow. I absolutely love this part of the world.

A huge thank you to all who sponsored me, spread the word, dog-sitted etc. and to John for the loan of two trecking sticks which saved my life.

Anyone who still wishes to donate has until Halloween. I’m 48 % of the way to my target, so please keep the sponsorship coming in. Thank you.

Lots of love

M