Nimue Brown's Blog, page 46

Seeking Courage

(Nimue)

I started thinking about courage as an issue back in 2020. I had at that point recognised my own lack of it and had no real idea what to do. I’ve learned a lot in recent months and, facing some serious challenges I find I have the courage I need. So, what changed?

Life is full of things to be anxious about. Sooner or later we all face things that may overwhelm us or defeat us. Ultimately everyone dies. So courage is not a state of being oblivious to all of this. Courage is about how we meet life, and that – it turns out – has everything to do with how we feel about ourselves.

Looking back I can see that what caused the problems was my lack of faith in myself. This was largely a product of being gaslit, and of experiences that needlessly undermined my confidence in myself. This year I’ve been able to do a lot of rebuilding.

At this point I have confidence in myself as a person – that I’m good enough, capable enough, clever enough and that I can make a difference. I’m good at understanding things, figuring things out and finding solutions. I have the tenacity to keep going. I am able to be good and useful and to act in meaningful ways. Armed with these things I can face whatever I have to, confident that I can do my best and that my best will be acceptable.

I can’t fix everything or solve everything. Loss of courage may come from being made responsible for situations where there is truly nothing you can do. I don’t have to solve everything. It is enough to meet the challenges, bringing what love and kindness I can. It is enough to try, because it’s the trying to take care of each other that makes life bearable and good things possible. You can do your very best and still not win, but at the same time doing your best is all there ever is.

I’ve been exploring the ways in which my struggles with anxiety have been about a loss of confidence in myself. It’s not the rest of the world I’ve been afraid of, but my own inability to meet challenges effectively and with integrity. Having come to see myself as useless and difficult, I’d become deeply anxious that anything I did would be wrong in some way. I’d been persuaded that I was a problem and that I couldn’t get anything right.

My partner Keith has spent a lot of time in this last year trying to change how I think about myself. He reassures me that I am not going to get things horribly wrong, that it is ok to make normal, human mistakes and that my inclinations are good. Over these months he’s helped me rebuild some confidence in myself as a person, and this makes it considerably easier to act.

I’m in no doubt at this point that I can be good. I’ve seen what I’ve been able to do this year, and what I might yet do. I’m more hopeful, and more certain. It’s not so difficult to find courage starting from where I am now.

Druidry and relationships

(Nimue)

For me, love is the heart of everything that matters. That’s not a radical statement for anyone on a spiritual path to make. Religions tend to centre love, one way or another. Who you should love, or what, or how varies a lot. The Druid’s Prayer prompts us to love – to love justice, the Godds, and all goodness.

Like many contemporary Druids I was influenced by Emma Restall Orr’s work, and she centres relationship in Druidry. This of course means human relationships, but also all of our non-human ones too. As Druids we can consider our relationships with landscape, the air, the water, other living beings, spirits, Godds, traditions, and more. Anything we do, or think or interact with has an aspect of relationship to it. When we see existence as a web of connections – ecosystems physical, conceptual and spiritual – we see how our relationships hold us in the world. We are influenced by everything we encounter and we also have the scope to influence widely too. This sense of our choices mattering is part of how I understand Druidry.

Humans are social creatures and most of us are deeply influenced by the kinds of relationships we have. We derive feelings of identity, belonging and worth from our relationships. This includes work, social, familial and romantic relationships. We each have our own priorities arond these, but they are all equally valid. All four areas are important to me, and often overlap. People I work with become friends, often. Community is really important to me and I’ve always been someone who invests in and tries to build communities. 

Paganism is sex-positive. We’re inclusive, we don’t see bodies as shameful or sinful and there are many deities associated with love, pleasure and sex. Amorous relationships are something to cherish and celebrate if those are part of your life. The mythology we draw on is full of tales of heroic friendship and powerful family ties. We have many diverse examples to turn to. The life lived well is wholehearted, passionate and full of meaningful connections.

Romantic love is really important to me, and always was. To love wholeheartedly and be loved fully in return is a magical thing. To connect deeply with a person on many different levels is something I prize. Comradeship, care, mutual support and co-adventuring are wonders that I treasure. A good relationship brings delight and enchantment, and right now that’s where I am and I celebrare that every day.

Opportunities for joy are also opportunities to see what is good in the world. In falling in love with another person you can fall in love with life, with existence and the everyday miracles of being. That ancient Greek instruction to know yourself is more easily achieved when you have other people to help you learn who you are and to explore the possibilities with. We exist in the spaces we make for each other, and when we do that with love and respect we all have more room to flourish.

Love is a spiritual choice. However you love, whoever, whatever… that love will inspire you and help you figure out how to live and what to do. The love of people inspires justice and equality. Love for nature inspires us to live lightly. Love for the Godds inspires us to live more interesting lives. Love of learning, love of community, love of the land, or the past, or the future – there are many things we can open our hearts to, and where there is love, inspiration is bound to flow.

My First Steps Towards The Morrigan

(David)

This is my promised follow-up to my post The Morrigan, dated 26 November 2023.

I first knew consciously of the goddess known as the Morrigan, or Great Queen, in
my early 30s, maybe 35 years ago, when I borrowed a library book of Irish
mythology. She doesn’t feature as strongly in my memories of those tales as my
impression at the time that the famous hero Cu Chulainn was a right dick, and I’m
not surprised that was my impression of him because at the time I was in my final
years of a Royal Navy career during which I’d encountered a fair number of
braggarts and had fought bullying wherever I found it.

In my 30 years of paganism following my medical retirement from the navy, living in
our lovely little wooded valley in Devon, I’ve formed good relationships with several
animal guides, most prominently Lion, She-Wolf, Bear, and in recent years Crow,
and with some nature spirits. The spirit of place in this valley, Lady, has been a
growing presence in my life here.

So, a month or so ago, when I wanted to petition someone with the power and
authority to grant me a big thing I want, I asked Lady to introduce me to an
appropriate person. That day I received a powerful visitation from Crow, with the
vocal message that my wish was granted. Hours later, led I believe by Crow, I found
Lora O’Brien’s YouTube channel, where I started devouring trustworthy academic
knowledge, and quickly thereafter I enrolled in Lora’s Irish Pagan School

https://irishpaganschool.com , taking introductory courses that focus upon the
Morrigan in lore and experience.

But I wasn’t sure at first that it was actually the Morrigan answering my request.
Someone was, or so I believed, but I didn’t know for sure that it was Herself. I was
very cautious about this new-for-me exploration of working with a deity.

I understood the message from Crow to be that the introduction had been made, not
that my petition was granted, and I decided the right way for me to proceed was to
learn about Herself and not be pushy about the petition.

The Morrigan is a shapeshifter who appears in several known forms. One of them is
a She-Wolf, but I don’t know if the She-Wolf who came into my life 30 years ago is
Herself. Crow is another known shape, but I don’t know if the Crow who came
vigorously into my life two years ago is Herself. I honestly don’t know, and I’m forever
conscious that novelist me is capable of inventing good believable shit.

Then, last week during one Lora’s guided journeys to the Irish Otherworld, the
Morrigan stood watching me from the side of my path. She didn’t speak, and I didn’t
feel invited to, but I knew as strongly as I could know that the woman with red hair
and red eyebrows wearing a red cloak was the Great Queen.

Next day, while preparing in ritual for a long road trip I was about to make from
Devon to see my frail elderly Mum on the Wirral, I asked the Morrigan to protect me
and my daughter during our trip, and I was thrilled that we were accompanied from

start to finish, all the way there and back, by crows. Especially and very heavily in
one place in the Midlands of England where many crows build their nests in tall trees on
either side of the M6. My best guess was somewhere in Worcestershire, and from my
poorly-person bed made up in the back of a car I saw many big crows’ nests in the
tallest bare-branched trees. Scores, possibly hundreds, of big black nests. Yes, I was
acutely aware of them, even more than I would have been otherwise, but as well as
their physical presence in numbers I felt the powerful impact of them guiding us.

This is where I am now. I’m still cautious, even more than I was at first because of
what I’ve learned about The Morrigan. I know she is not someone to mess around.
That a contract made with her is a serious affair. That if I decide to work with her it
depends first if she wants to work with me, and then that I must be in a right
relationship with her. It will be challenging. Difficult. Possibly a very hard road.

I don’t yet know if this is in my future. What I do believe now is that I’ve been brought
into the Great Queen’s presence and to her attention. What will happen next, I don’t
know. I intend to continue learning, taking things step-by-step and remaining
cautious. And we shall see.

History in the landscape

(Nimue)

The hills around my home are made of Jurassic limestone. It’s hard to think about the scales of time this involves. When I walk I often find fossils. Bits of sealife from the ancient past, held in rock, and from which these hills have grown. The enormity of time involved in going from that Jurassic shore to the modern Cotswold edge defies my ability to think about time. I could dig the numbers out, but I don’t think humans have it in us to comprehend millions of years as anything more than abstract ideas.

Every landscape is the product of time. Human activity is often present at the surface. For humans, things humans have done in a place in the last few thousand years are impactful. In geological terms, this is barely the blink of an eye. We forget how small and fleeting we are. It’s good to put ourselves in perspective. 

Housing estates often hold the shapes of old fields, or the road names and place names may carry some sense of what was there before. The past can be surprisingly present when you start looking for it. This is the sort of thing you can do when the opportunity arises. It gives a lot without having to make a big or sustained time commitment. If you’re looking for human history in the landscape, maps can be really helpful. I use ordnance survey a lot because those show ancient sites. Online maps are good if you can access them on a phone to find out what you are seeing.

Wherever you find yourself, it’s worth taking a few moments to look for signs of history. Landscape history is a fascinating thing to get into, and if you have local landscape historians that can be so rewarding to explore. The internet is great for finding information about history in the landscape, and you may find local resources available to you.

Having a sense of your geological history is good, too. There’s a lot to be gained from just knowing what kind of terrain you are on and how it formed. Again you can pick up a lot without having to make a huge time investment. 

These are effective ways of deepening your relationships with the land, and with ancestors of place. It can form a good basis for excursions, meditations, photography and other creative responses. It’s a good thing to take on as a lay Druid because it gives a lot of relationship for relatively small time investments, and you can pick it up and put it down as you need to – it doesn’t need high levels of commitment or any real continuity of practice, you can just explore things when it suits you to do so.

Druidry and Christianity

(Nimue)

There are many overlaps between Christianity and Druidry, ancient and modern. It’s an interesting aspect of our history and shows how traditions interplay. At this time of year there are always a lot of memes floating about suggesting Christmas is something the church stole from the Pagans. Of course it’s far more complicated than that! It’s just a human thing that we get to the darkest bit of the year and want to celebrate something that lifts our spirits.

In the UK, there was Celtic Christianity before Rome established Roman Christianity here. It was it’s own thing and distinct and drew on the Celtic roots of the people doing it. There are existing groups to this day who work with those traditions. I know many Pagans who find the work of the Iona community really inspiring.

In the Druidry revival period there were a fair few people who saw the Druids as a natural precursor to Christianity and who felt that the Druids had probably converted and become the Celtic Christians. Of course we don’t know, but probably some did. A few hundred years ago this made it easier for people wanting to revive Druid traditions to reconcile that with their own Christian heritage. Seeing the sun and The Son as connected can be part of this.

There are Christian Druids. The OBOD course lends itself to this – which I know because I know Christian Druids who have walked that path. It works for them.

Christians who see God as present in the natural world tend to get on well with Druids. We have more in common than not. One interesting manifestation of this is the Forest Church movement – and this is something I suspect I’ll be talking about more in the weeks to come. Paul Cudby, of Forest Church wrote a fantastic book for Christians about Pagans. It’s a great thing to put in the hands of anyone having trouble accommodating us, because Paul is a vicar.  You can find that over here https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shaken-Path-Christian-Exploration-Practice/dp/1785355201

I can also recommend checking out Mark Townsend’s work for books that straddle these two worlds. Mark is a powerful writer and his Gospel of Falling Down is a book that had a huge impact on me https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gospel-Falling-Down-Failure-Success-ebook/dp/B007JK5HUC/

Druid groups are always diverse. We get animists and agnostics, and atheists. We get polytheists and monotheists. When it comes to the polytheists, we aren’t all committed to the same godds. You can’t go into a Druid circle and assume everyone is going to worship the same deities in the same ways. As a consequence, if you’re working in a way that includes all of your Pagan Druids you aren’t going to struggle to include Christian Druids as well.

My feeling has always been that if someone shows up with an open heart and good intent, I welcome them. What they believe is their own private concern, and so long as what we do together works for all of us, that’s the only measure that counts.

Why I’m not using AIs

(Nimue)

I could be using AIs to write a book every day and to create book covers for them all. I’m not. Some of that is because I don’t support the way AI companies are profiting from the work they’ve stolen from creative people to develop this software in the first place. Part is it is because for me that would be both joyless and pointless.

There are a lot of challenges in writing a book. It takes time and work, and the end result tends not to pay very well. I suspect the book a day folk are going to be sorely disappointed about the scope for achieving fame and riches through publishing but there we go. The thing is that I like writing, I like the process.

Many different things go into writing a book. I pull together threads of ideas from all kinds of things I’ve encountered. Often I need to deepen that with research. I spend time thinking about characters and their motives, about themes in the story and about what my readers might need from a story. Then there’s the crafting process – the pace, the precise wording, the quest for the perfect line, or joke, or shiver, depending on what I’m doing. I get a huge kick out of this, and moments when it works are joyful. If I got an AI to do it for me, I’d lose all of that. I wouldn’t get to learn and grow and develop my craft. I wouldn’t feel any satisfaction in finishing a book.

I don’t want to write books that are re-hashes of other people’s books. Yes, like an AI I have learned a lot by reading other people’s work. However one key difference between me and an AI is that I’m trying very hard not to write something that’s already been written. I’m not bringing the plots together from three existing books and mashing them together to claim I have something new. I’m trying very hard to make things that are genuinely new, and genuinely have new things to say. This is really important to me. As a reader I’m also not looking for books that are an awful lot like other books I might have read. I want to be surprised and I seek out authors whose books are distinctive.

Humans have the capacity to imagine things that have never existed. This is a wonderful thing about us. Our imaginations can go anywhere, to any time or place, any kind of life form. We have an infinite capacity for storytelling. This is a magical thing. It’s worth the work and the effort to be able to use your imagination effectively. It’s worth spending the time learning how to craft with this amazing mode of communication that humans have spent so much time developing. Language is beautiful and worthy of your close attention. 

What you can get from spending a few minutes prompting a machine to do something for you is comparatively little. The joy is in the process, in the learning and the pleasure of developing skills. The feelings of success you might get from writing come from the writing itself, and there are no shortcuts to that.

Winter walking

(Nimue)

Winter walking in the Uk presents a number of challenges. Getting outside to commune with nature in any way can be difficult at this time of year. More so if you have any body issues to contend with.

If your body doesn’t interact well with winter then there’s a lot to be said for honouring nature as it manifests in you and not doing anything you find problematic. However, the yearning for outside, for open sky and access to the earth can be an intense thing.

I struggle with the smaller windows of opportunity. With it getting dark so early in the day, options for walking are time-limited. In the past when I’ve done longer walks at this time of year I’ve had to start very early in the day. I don’t enjoy finding I have to race the light to get home. Being out in the dark in summer is lovely, but at this time of year there are too many other hazards and I need to be able to see what I’m dealing with.

As it’s wet, wilder places will also be muddy. This present hazards for the walker and makes walking a lot more arduous. It’s also a really important consideration that when we walk in muddy conditions, we churn up the ground, damaging soil and plants. At this time of year I tend to walk in places that have surfaces, for my own comfort and to reduce the harm I might cause.

It’s a lot easier to get into trouble at this time of year. There are more things that can cause falls. Unexpected weather is much more of a hazard. I tend to be cautious, because I’m not that robust. I also don’t want to put anyone else in the position of having to come and rescue me. Where I walk that would likely be an inconvenience, but in wilder landscapes if you get into trouble you can also put your rescuers at risk of injury, or worse. It is as well to make gentler choices, I think.

Letting go of perfectionism

(Nimue)

Humans are storytelling creatures. If you can figure out what kinds of stories a person has, it becomes much easier to make sense of what they do. Stories that help us effectively navigate through the world are good and useful things. However, stories can also be limiting and harmful – and the less aware we are of our stories, the more likely they are to lead us astray.

One of the most common and harmful of stories is the one that goes ‘I must get everything right.’ Many of us get this from our families and from our experience of school. It can have a number of effects.

The person who cannot get anything wrong may be unable to act. Afraid of making mistakes, it seems safer not to do anything – as though inaction somehow doesn’t count as a choice that also has consequences. Inaction will result in not learning or growing, not trying things or exploring and it can also lead to neglect of self and others.

If perfectionism is combined with power, then the person suffering from it can simply refuse to be wrong and demand everyone else stays in line with that. When things go wrong, scapegoats will take the blame. Those who are truthful will be punished and silenced – it’s a trait most obviously associated with mad dictators, but it can show up anywhere there’s a power imbalance.

In trying to hang on to the belief that everything they do is fine, people with perfection issues can end up distorting reality. This might lead them into delusional states where they can’t even look at what’s really happening because it conflicts with their story about who they are. It can also result in gaslighting others – not perhaps deliberately, but because they cannot bear the consequences of looking at their own failings or shortcomings. This can be incredibly difficult to deal with.

The need for perfectionism can also translate into needing others to be perfect in all ways at all times. This of course isn’t realistic, to be human is to make mistakes. When we get cultures of perfectionism, the people in them are given incentives to hide mistakes, lie about things they were responsible for and try to shift the blame onto others. Mistakes are thus entrenched and no one can learn anything when something inevitably goes wrong.

Perfectionism can be used to shut down people who are still learning and growing. If you aren’t allowed to act until you are perfect, then you aren’t allowed to act. We see this a lot around ecological protestors and anti-capitalism – you get labeled a hypocrite for being part of systems you can’t opt out of while trying to change those systems. There’s often a class aspect too around shutting people down for being imperfect. The bar tends to be set high if you are poor, queer, part of the global majority, female presenting or combinations of these things. Perfectionism can be a weapon in the hands of people who want to make sure the playing field never gets levelled.

It’s ok to make mistakes – it is essential for learning and growing to feel safe trying things. Perfectionism is the enemy of getting anything good or meaningful done. If you are waiting to be perfect you will wait forever, it is better to act. It’s good to own mistakes and deal with them, solve the actual problems and let your relationships be honest and fair.

Taking myself seriously

(Nimue)

I’ve been putting various kinds of work into the world for a long time now, so it might seem odd for me to say that I struggle to take myself seriously. Some of this is about internalised capitalism – the impact of being measured by how much we earn. If you’ve been reading the comments you’ll know I’ve had a lot of trolling on this blog in the last year and regular attacks on my worth based on my not being massively successful economically. It’s hardly an unusual experience and there are plenty of now-famous creators whose work is prized, who were unvalued paupers while they lived.

None of us know what kind of legacy we are leaving or how the future might view us. To live well calls for living as though what you do could make a difference. We are all part of this world, and we all impact on each other to some degree. There’s a lot to be said for living as though your choices and actions matter. It’s a way of being that allows us all some dignity and self respect. We are considerably more than our earning power. The worth we contribute can take many forms, and the work that we are most called to do may not be well rewarded economically.

For most of my life, the work I felt called to do has come second to other things. Responsibilities as a parent, and obligations to pay the bills have dominated how I’ve spent my time. A lot of the things I’ve done were voluntary, and there are so many things of value that only happen because people give freely of their time and resources.

I find myself in the remarkable position of living with someone who values what I do and who wants me to do more of it. I’m not under the same economic pressure that I was, and I have the space to follow my own inspiration and explore what I feel most called to do. This has opened up a lot of space for me as a creator, and it’s also making me look at what other kinds of things I should be doing. Being able to focus on what’s needed and what I am best able to give rather than simply how to earn money is an incredible privilege and an opportunity for which I am profoundly grateful.

It’s also very difficult to earn a living as a creator when you have to pour most of your time and energy into other things and can only fit it round the edges. Having the time and energy to be creative with makes a lot of odds. Having the brain space to think about writing, to imagine and to learn in a way that supports that imagining makes worlds of difference. Most full time creators are only able to be that because someone else is willing to support them, and that’s a facet of the creative industries as a whole that really needs talking about.

So I’m trying to take myself more seriously, and look at what I can do best. I’m trying to act as though what I do matters and can make a difference, and to believe in my own skills and insights. This is a process of learning to trust myself, finding my courage and my conviction and working out how to make the best things that I possibly can. I’m excited about it, and hopeful about where this journey will take me.

Stories in the landscape

(Nimue)

Recently I read an article about appropriation of Welsh culture (over here if you’re curious – https://nation.cymru/culture/mari-lwyd-and-the-appropriation-of-welsh-mythology).

I heartily agree with the writer that the use of ‘Mabon’ as a name for the autumn equinox is really problematic. Mabon is a Welsh figure from myth and very probably an ancient Pagan God. However, there’s a critically important detail missing from that original article. Mabon’s story is set in Gloucester.

At the moment, Gloucester isn’t part of Wales, but the border has shifted a lot through history. Gloucester is the place Mabon was imprisoned and the Severn is the river where the oldest Salmon swam. The Severn has often been the border with Wales. But not always.

In another Welsh myth, Bran the Blessed’s head ends up in London. Welsh God Gwyn ap Nudd is supposed to live under Glastonbury Tor – also not currently part of Wales, while the Nudd he is son of is probably Nodens, whose temple sites in Lydney, Gloucestershire and in Lancashire – which also aren’t in Wales.

Stories an be really important parts of how we understand and relate to landscapes. Our sense of connection with place has so much to do with what kinds of stories we have to tell about it. Disconnection and disenchantment are the consequences of not having those kinds of stories. The stories that come from Wales do not speak only of the Welsh landscape, they range across this landmass, and into Ireland. This is often the way of it, because traditions and stories often don’t respect physical or political borders.

There’s a tension here between the ancestors of blood, land and tradition that we might look to. There’s a need for respect, and for treating living cultures respectfully. At the same time, many of us live in parts of the UK that have been part of Wales in the past but aren’t at the moment. Many of us have Welsh ancestry and the relationships between people, landscapes and traditions are not as simple as the coloniser/oppressed people narrative the article I’ve linked to wants to suggest.