Nimue Brown's Blog, page 466

The feeding of trolls

They live in the quiet places of the internet, lurking under conceptual bridges, and in shadowy corners. If you look at them, they will appear to have a human face, and a name, but this may have been taken from someone they ate. They are not easily distinguished from the other sprites, goblins and harmless creatures of mayhem who haunt the imaginary realms. What gives a troll away, is that they eat people. Unfortunately, by the time this is evident, it can be hard to escape.

Some communities will simply leave the slowest members to be eaten by trolls. A kind of natural selection blended with sacrifice that keeps the majority safe. Other tribes have specialist troll hunters, who spend their spare time sharpening weapons and baiting traps. The trouble with troll hunters is that they frequently catch an overconfident goblin by mistake. The internet realms are full of small, irritating but not very effective entities who will never actually eat anyone, they just like to flaunt their teeth. Some of them make roaring noises. This should be a giveaway, because the most dangerous trolls move quietly, they do not announce their presence with bombast and trumpet. They are just 'little old me' as they speak from the shadows and lure their victims under the bridges.

Of course the easy answer to trolls is not to go under bridges with them in the first place. There are philosophers who believe that trolls have a certain kind of magic, and once they cast their spells, the careless are drawn in. Seeing the face of the last person the troll ate, they believe there is a person to talk to, or maybe a boggart to tame, or a pixie to reason with. Somehow, they do not notice the very big teeth, at least, not until the chewing commences.

The creatures who suffer least from troll predation are the ones with wings, who float dreamily at too great a height for shadowy places, and who therefore seldom find themselves on the underside of bridges. They do not speak with trolls, but only with those who float about in the same airy realms. However, they are the trolls' delicacy of preference, and when one is caught, special attention is paid to the tearing off of wings, and the slow, painful act of mutilation.

At many a camp fire, the question is asked, where do the trolls come from? There are tales of youths who set out to become kings or heroes, and, failing utterly, fell into anger and took to lurking about under bridges. It is sometimes said that the trolls do not kill, only maul their victims into hideousness so that they too must become trolls and hide from sight. Some say that it is the troll hunters themselves who ultimately become that which they have sought. One must not only guard against the hunger of trolls, one must guard against the danger of becoming a troll.

In the fabulous land of internet, we choose which face we wear, borrowing a visage from the gods and heroes, if we do not like our own. We are makers of masks, keepers of many identities, inventing names to go with the forms we have imagined for ourselves. Here, we can all be warrior princes, faerie queens, sorcerers and unicorns. The more masks we put on, the greater the risk that they will change when we are not watching, and one day a careless hand reaches for something that turns out not to be a cheerful hobgoblin hat at all. We accidentally pull on a skin one morning, through which we can feel nothing. We wake up thinking that those pretty, winged delicate things have no grasp on reality and we should chew some sense into them. We suspect they would be tasty, and we know it would be fun to make them squeal. We become the trolls.

Walking at Avebury

I didn't blog yesterday because I spent an amazing day at Avebury. I've probably been there eight or nine times before, as a visitor, and for Druid rituals. I caught the last few rituals Emma Restall Orr undertook there, and through those met many of the wonderful Druid Network folk.

Tom, being American, had not previously encountered standing stones, so being able to take him into that space was a joy. For those not familiar with the site, Avebury is about 6000 years old, has a magnificent henge earthwork, and would have had one large stone circle with smaller circles inside it. There were avenues coming off, stones from which remain, and many other sites surround it – round barrows, other stone circles, Silbury Hill, the Kennet long barrow, and Stonehenge is in viable striking distance. It's too big a space, I think, for one big ritual circle, you'd never hear each other over the wind! Different areas of the circle have distinctly different atmospheres, and lend themselves to different sorts of work. There's also a lot of scope for walking – outside the monument, around the henge and around the stones.

Unlike most ancient sites, Avebury has a village in it, and roads running through it (which gives you a sense of the scale). You can't experience the circle as a circle, which is odd. But it's what we've got, and the houses have been there for a very long time. I wonder if people always lived here. It's a place that has a people-friendly quality, it's comfortable to picnic and sunbathe amongst the stones, and I don't find the presence of noisy, enthusiastic children in any way out of kilter with the atmosphere. Avebury, for me, has never felt like a place for solemn and secret things. It's a celebratory place, a community place, and welcoming. Which is as well because it gets hordes of pagans and tourists visiting it.

One of the things I've never been able to do before is explore the surrounding area on foot. All sites exist in a context of landscape, and frequently of other sites or areas of habitation as well. Most of our ancient ancestors would have been on foot, so walking between ancient places is an amazing way of communing with the space and the ancestors who worked, lived and worshipped in it. The first thing we did was avoid going by car through the site – no way to make a first encounter. Tom and I walked in together, which was breathtaking. It's a place with a lot of memories, and ghosts for me, I welled up on the way in, it was painful walking into some of those recollections, but also healing to go back to that. I remembered especially Vicki Williams, whose beautiful song 'Timeless Land' was the visiting Avebury anthem for years. It brought back so keenly my grief over her death. I remembered other friendships that had decayed with time, and fleeting connections that I never had chance to explore. There is never scope to do everything.

We walked the inside of the circle (as best you can) and the henge itself – although some of it was closed to allow the grass to re-grow. It's seldom possible to do the whole thing. Then we followed one of the avenues out, walked over a hill to look at Silbury, and climbed the next hill to the long barrow – I'd not been there before, but the cool and gloom was gorgeous after the sun. Going into old graves is something I find very moving and it ought to get a blog at some point. I could have stayed for hours, but having accepted a lift, that wasn't an option. We walked back, watching the shifts in perspective, rolling hills hiding and revealing different aspects of the space.

It was one of those experiences where it is hard to pin down in words what it did to me. The sense of connection and involvement with landscape, was deep and personal. It took me further into communion with the space than organised ritual has. I'm increasingly finding that walking is my preferred ritual form. Walking the land, the lines, the circles, the contours, meditating, being in the space, learning, feeling, sharing ideas. It's only something that would work for very small groups, and is lovely as ritual for two.

Today I am tired, and much of my head is somewhere else. There was so much richness of inspiration yesterday, it will take a while for all of it to filter through properly.

It's easy to feel like a druid in Avebury, even without the drumming and pageantry of a big gathering. It's easy to walk those hills and feel connected to the land and the ancestors. At the moment I'm lucky because I am living somewhere that is also beautiful and full of ancestral resonance, but many places aren't. It's good to go somewhere that nourishes the soul, but also important to bring that energy back to the places that need it, and to ponder ways of making all space sacred and inspiring in the same way. Not something I can hope to do on my own.

Conversion, paganism and other impossibilities

One of the few areas of wide agreement across pagan paths, is that we don't proselytise and we don't do conversions. People either choose to become pagans, or they don't. Go back twenty years and not only wouldn't we convert people, we'd often collectively take a lot of persuading that someone new was serious enough to be let in.

There are a number of ways of converting people to any faith. Quite often it seems to me that what the would-be-converter is interested in, is getting the convert to go through the motions. Where a religion has lots of visible manifestations – religious gatherings, personal adornments, dress styles etc, it's very easy to look like you're doing it without needing to understand or feel anything. There have been (and probably still are) plenty of times and places where visible participation was all that mattered. It's very much about control and power, and has bugger all to do with religion in any kind of spiritual sense.

Then there are the converters who have seen the light, and want you to see the light too. They may bang on your door in the hopes of persuading you that they are onto something good and important. So long as they have no means to force their opinions, I don't find this too objectionable. Quite often it is rooted in genuine belief and enthusiasm. I do consider that kind of converter fair game and I make an exception for them – I will make as much effort to try and convert them, as they expend trying to convert me.

I assume when I'm blogging that I'm mostly preaching to the converted, as t'were. If people are reading for other reasons – curiosity, academic research, or because they were looking for something about world of warcraft druids and got here by mistake, they can easily enough leave. There's no kind of captive audience here, which is as well.

Very few pagans have grown up pagan. Most of us at some point, have made a choice. I think the majority convert themselves, but there is a process, a route from not-pagan, to pagan. Like all religions it involves a quest for meaning in life, a desire to belong somewhere, and seeing something that touches you. I have no qualms about putting things into the world that might touch people. Those things are likely to be green in essence, about how we live with each other and how we live with this plant. But a person could respond to that in all kinds of good ways that would not take them into paganism at all. There are pagan values that I am passionate about getting out there, and getting into other people's heads, but they are not uniquely pagan: Tolerance, diversity, peace, creativity, community, inspiration, and so forth. You could be deeply honouring all of those things whilst being an active Christian, or an atheist, or probably a lot of other things too.

I do not, in my heart, believe that any person can actually convert any other person to a spiritual belief. It goes with not believing that anyone can change anything that is inside someone. We can only change ourselves. Trying to change someone means trying to take control of them, have power over them, in a way that doesn't really work and is entirely at odds with any good spiritual tradition. What remains is inspiration. If one person inspires another, with their faith, or philosophy, that's an entirely different process. And I think what really has the power to move other people is not what a person says about what they believe, but what they do with that belief. Regardless of what the belief is. If a person is happier, more functional, more able, more inspired as a consequence of a belief, that shows, and in sharing what a belief gives us, we do more to advocate it than ever we could by trying to tell people what they themselves ought to believe in.

In terms of making converts for specific faiths, this is not a reliable strategy, which is also a point in its favour, I think. Whatever name you give it, a spirituality that is felt and compassionate is a precious thing, and if more collective effort went into that than trying to claim who has the right names for deity and the best forms in which to worship, we might be getting somewhere.

In pursuit of unconscious druidry

The proof of having mastered a thing, is frequently unconsciousness. By this I do not mean lying prone on the floor, but an inability, or lack of necessity to think in detail about what you are doing. I think this as applicable in Druidry as other places, but to explore I'm going to play compare and contrast with music.

No one could hope to play an instrument automatically and without thought. The process involves learning where the notes are and how to make them, how to pull out the best sounds, and getting a few tunes under the fingers. In just the same way you wouldn't expect to wake up one morning able to unconsciously act as a druid in all things, improvising exquisite ritual and so forth. The measure of transition from learner to master is the ability to do beautiful things without needing to be fully conscious. In fact, at a certain point, trying to think consciously about the process can be a handicap.

The route to this point involves total, considered, conscious involvement with the thing you mean to learn. It's estimated that it takes about ten thousand hours of serious work to master an instrument. To that end you would devote an hour or more every day. There are some practical advantages with Druidry, because that music practice, or art practice can be part of it. And as druidry is not a specific art, but a spiritual approach to life, it can be attached to anything you are doing. What you need is a conscious approach, every day, to living. As the musician learns the instrument, so the Druid learns life. We study the shape and nature of it, we find out where the particularly druidy bits might be, and how to make the best sounds, and we get life-tunes under our fingers – we learn ritual forms and prayers, we learn ideas and philosophy, correlations between seasons, elements, times of life. The aim of Druidry is to master life as one might a musical instrument, and then to be able to play it exquisitely.

Of course, life pictured as a musical instrument is not the most precise of metaphors. Life as a musical instrument might be more like a sentient bagpipe that sometimes felt hostile towards you.

When I go walking, I don't have to stop and think about what I should be looking for and picture the idea of spirits of place in the hopes of them communing with them. I have a keen sense of what's around me and will interact with it without needing to shift gears any more. This is a consequence of having been doing it for a long time, and there was a time when I would step out more consciously and deliberately to look for spirit.

In music, there is no point of finishing. Even when you've got to the point of being able to play unconsciously, that's not the end. I can pick up my violin and jam in on a tune I've never heard before, finding harmonies in the moment. That still feels a bit uncanny to me, a bit like magic. But there are also times when I will deliberately deconstruct my own playing, working in a conscious way because I want to improve something. It's an inevitable part of learning any new tune. If I hear someone else do something I want to be able to copy, I'll go through the same process. I've recently been changing how I use the bow. It means for a while that I don't play with the same smooth ease, that I become conscious again, but I will return to the unconscious playing when the new technique is mastered, or the tune grasped fully.

I see reasons to approach Druidry in the same way. It is not my aim to disappear into total unconsciousness. Mostly because I don't imagine I would ever get to the point of being able to do everything with perfect grace and no conscious consideration. There will always be tunes I do not know how to play. Just as I step back now and then to analyse my violin playing and ponder where it could be worked on, so I ponder my druidry. Which part of my life could I make more creative? How could I be more green? Is there anywhere that I'm not acting to the best of my abilities? Is there something I might be able to do now that I could not do before? Experimenting and exploring are conscious processes, from which things can be taken into less conscious use.

I know this blog may have sounded strange to anyone who has been following my work. I talk a great deal about the importance of being fully conscious and knowing what we are doing and why. But unconscious Druidry is no different from unconscious violin playing. You still have to pick up the violin and intend to do it. You still have to engage deliberately. I'm far more able to play the music than I am the druid life, which is also a consideration. Druidically speaking, I am still learning the tunes.

Wife, lover, partner

I've been married to Tom for over a year now. We've faced a lot of challenges together in that time and been through some hard stuff. I can't imagine being without him, or wanting to be without him. It makes for an informative contrast with my first marriage, and I've been reflecting on the nature of relationship, what it takes to make a good marriage, a good partnership.

I was a lot younger, of course, when I married the first time. I felt strongly about wanting to be a good wife, to make a good home, give love and support and all of that. It was never a conventional relationship. There weren't excessive external challenges – a normal smattering – but it did not work, and I spent most of my time lonely, unhappy, frustrated and burdened with guilt for things that were not of my making.

Although those years changed me, I am in many ways the same person, with the same feelings, impulses, desires, needs and so forth. So, what makes one marriage a miserable failure, and the other a rewarding, joyful partnership? I'm mostly drawing on personal experience here, although I know of other relationships where some of these things have happened too, the good and the ill.

Where a relationship is underpinned by love and respect, neither party wants to do something that would not please the other. That's especially true in a sexual context, but important other times too. Where there is love, there is a shared goal of mutual happiness. Sometimes it takes work and negotiation to find out how best to achieve that, but again, where there is love, that does not seem like hardship.

If the two people take joy in each other's company, it doesn't really matter what you're doing, or how much money you have, or how long you've been apart, or if you've got to spend the day on boring practical things, you can still be pretty happy. The ongoing affirmation of mutual love, care and appreciation makes an epic difference. Again, all manner of hard things are easier to take if you know you are sharing life with someone who values, respects and delights in you. The partner who forever finds fault, who says 'you would be attractive if…' and finds other ways to undermine, is no kind of joy to be with.

Competition between partners can be a form of slow relationship death. Where it matters who earns the most money, or who works the longest hours, or has the better car, or is further on in their career or making more headway with OBOD, or seeming to be more spiritual… you are in trouble. Where there is good relationship, seeing the other one progress and develop is a happy thing. If one partner is afraid of being left behind, not being needed, not being important, that can stifle the other. You can find your partner only seems happy when you are crushed, demoralised or miserable. If success is unbearable to the other, you can find you are forever being knocked back when things go well. That is not a recipe for a successful marriage.

There has to be a balance of responsibility and power. If one person has the power – especially control of resources and money, that of itself creates problems. If the other person carries the responsibility for fixing, arranging and figuring out, but without the means to carry through, that's a nightmare. If one person has the emotional responsibility, that's impossible. Equally, if one person is forever being blamed and there is no scope for sharing responsibility, the relationship is not in a good way. True partnership shares, in all ways and in all things. It matters less who was right, or wrong, what matters is how you go forwards, how you improve things, do better in the future, learn, know each other more thoroughly, build understanding and all that.

All relationships have sticky moments, conflicts, times when needs do not neatly balance or external pressures threaten to overwhelm you. The measure of a good relationship is not the presence or absence of these things, it's what you do with them. If you're coming out of the hurricane with arms around each other, the rest is just detail. If crisis makes you pull together, that's very different from a relationship where it's used as an excuse to lash out and injure. And equally, if one party is always looking for opportunities to justify anger or selfish behaviour, it's never going to be good. Good relationship can include conflict, strenuous disagreements, even fallings out, if that overall intention to care, support and be with, is there. It's always better to air a problem than to hide it. Where there is genuine love and good intention, the hardest things can be worked through and dealt with. Where there is only an intention to use, the smallest problems turn into nightmares.

This is a very superficial sketch, I could probably write a whole book. I feel grateful in knowing what the differences are, in being able to fully appreciate what I have, and in having a husband who is most worthy of being loved and admired, and who loves me as an equal, in return.

Personal and political

I'm following on from yesterday's blog, and Jayne's comment about it. "So many people out there who obviously have grievances and feel the need to bore other people with them. What has happened with sharing your problems with those closest to you?"

I'd like to begin with a counter quote from George Eliot, "There is no private life that has not been determined by a wider public life." (From Felix Holt the Radical 1866).

We all exist in a social and political context. That which afflicts one person, often afflicts others too. Aside from the pettiest of our personal gripes, many of the things we experience have their causes at least in part in wider systems and social structures. The most personal things are often the most political.

When my grandmother was a girl, no one talked about child abuse. It was kept private, spoken only to those closest to you. The same was true of rape, and domestic violence. We chuckle about the silliness of modern health and safety laws, but death in factories used to be common place. And I know there were plenty of people who felt it inappropriate to talk about rape, and child abuse, and poor people dying thanks to unsafe working conditions. Silence upholds the abuser. It supports a system that enables violence and misery to continue.

We may have moved on from then, but we're a long way from being the open, compassionate society I dream of. We still stigmatise mental health problems. There is no shortage of anti pagan intolerance out there, along with plenty of other faith, race, gender and class based hatred. We do not fix that in silence either. When there is fear of rebuke, isolation and stigmatisation, it's very hard for people to talk even to those closest to them, about their problems. The more socially acceptable it is to admit to difficulty, the easier it is for those private conversations to take place.

Not everyone has someone close they can trust. There are people who kill themselves as a direct consequence of this. I would rather listen to any amount of someone's personal woes, and support them, than risk pushing away someone who, for all I know, could be wondering if there is any point in them continuing to live. Not everyone has people around them with answers. The 'only gay in the village' scenario. The 'only pagan in the family'. Or perhaps 'the only person on our estate who is going to uni next year.' There can be all kinds of dramatic upheavals and changes in a person's life that alienates them from their usual support network. Sometimes it can be very hard to burden those closest to you with secrets, or with pain. One of the best things about the internet, I think, is the way it's enabled people to find fellow travellers, whatever they are facing. Bereaved parents. Transgender folk. People suffering chronic and obscure illnesses. And too many others to list.

When someone stands up in public and says 'I do not like this thing that has happened in my life, it is not ok,' the world changes. It used to be totally socially acceptable for men to beat their wives. If no one had ever spoken up, or spoken out, if every female victim had kept that private and dutifully avoided washing her dirty laundry in public, it would probably still be totally socially acceptable and there would be a lot more of it going on.

I remember when I was a child, very few people would publically admit to being pagan, because they were afraid of the consequences. We could have sat silently on that one, too. Fortunately for me, and those other pagans of younger generations, we can be 'out' with a fair degree of safety, because of those brave souls who spoke up first.

New ideas, evolutions and revolutions do not spring into life, fully formed and with a glorious leader ready to enact them. They grow slowly, out of sharing. People dare to imagine that what is currently normal may not be best. They dare to dream of a better world. And then, only then, can there be scope for making it happen. In the UK, Mind and others have a campaign to encourage people to be more open about mental health issues. One in ten of us can expect to be hit by something in our lives. We need to be able to talk to each other.

We don't get social change by suffering stoically, in silence. We don't build a better world by telling people off for 'whinging' about things that are not yet right. Sure, there are people who devote a lot of time and energy to grumbling over pointless things, but perhaps if it was easier and more normal to talk about bigger issues, fewer people would feel the need to focus on the small problems that can more readily be aired. It's easy to complain about other people. It's hard to make change. But when people are talking to each other, all manner of things become possible. Sorry Jayne, if my sharing personal things offends you. But you don't have to come here and you don't have to read. I would say to anyone, if you don't like something and it isn't harming anyone, you have the freedom to go somewhere else. I'm not obligatory.

Private life in public

All writing is inherently personal. Even when we're not writing autobiography or offering insights of heart and opinion, a lot of who a person is can come through in how they write. The choice of language, the absence or presence of logic, compassion and other such qualities. Even in supposedly factual report writing, the prejudices, assumptions and lack of effort put in can speak very clearly about the author. And yes, I have seen one of those recently.

There are many reasons for putting aspects of the private self into public spaces. Some more noble and productive than others. Kiss and tell celebrity stories, the angst of famous people, the fad diets, infidelities and other reasons for shame are frequently fodder for magazines. I look at the covers every now and then to make sure my own prejudices are up to date, but I wouldn't read one unless someone pointed a gun at my head first. Selling the sordid and intimate details of your life can be a way of getting public attention and courting fame. I wonder what some of the people who go in for it imagine they are going to get. There are also magazines devoted to the hideous real-life stories of the 'ordinary' where the more grotesque the tale is, the better. Freak shows are alive and well, and living in paper form.

When a person is famous, or infamous, the appetite for insight stories goes up. When you are trying to become famous for work, or a cause, it can be tempting to use anything that will bring the cameras round. If you think the ends justify the means, that might make it even more tempting. However, the media is seldom kind, and loves the opportunity to make people look stupid. Many are the well meaning pagans who have agreed to don ritual attire for a camera, only to be presented as an object for ridicule. Any time we put part of the private self into a public space, there is considerable scope for humiliation. And not just for the individual. It can impact on families too, on neighbours, communities, the orders and organisations you belong too. Anyone might be tarred with the same brush, and these things can so easily get out of control.

Talking about spirituality, or druidry, or any other aspect of being alive and human, calls for honesty. It is easy to use that authoritarian third person voice and keep the content impersonal, but that kind of work doesn't resonate. I have tried it, long ago, it did not achieve much. If I wrote this blog from a place of calm authority, with a tone of 'you should be doing this' or worse still 'this is what all druid do' then I rather hope that most of my readers would have buggered off in search of something more useful. Spiritual experience is personal. We also learn more from the mistakes, the falling shorts, the flailings and the personal trials than we do from ease and success. If I want to share in a meaningful way, I get more mileage talking about the things that I get wrong, or struggle with than ever I do by speaking impersonally.

I've had very little scope for privacy in the last few years, required to recount painful, personal things to police, doctors, social workers, solicitors, and more. I've endured invasive physical examinations. People have read and photocopied my diaries,, which was such an unwanted invasion of privacy that I still smart over it. For the purposes of getting my bloke into the UK I've had to write to faceless officials about the details of a love affair. As court business proceeds, all aspects of my life remain open to scrutiny, and I have no right at present to any kind of privacy at all. I also have publishers who want me talking in public in ways that will encourage the sale of books. This has not been an easy process, and has forced me to look hard at what I want to keep private and how it might be possible to hold a sense of self that does not belong to anyone else. Do I have any entitlement to privacy?

Holding the boundaries of self in face of adversity and scrutiny, is not easy. We've not quite got to the stage of my being publically stripped naked and displayed, but from an emotional perspective it has felt a lot like that at times. And yet, I have this growing impression. All the exposure, all the poking and questioning, is only superficial. The answers are truths about my life, exposures of pain and history. But I am more than this. My own knowledge of self is bigger than what is taken from me continually by processes I cannot control.

Part of why I write here, is because I choose what to share and how to say it. I have no problem, I realise, with high levels of openness and honesty. But I would much rather choose to give than have it prised from me.

Your superior druid, shrink wrapped

Yesterday there were debates on facebook, a question that perhaps it was not wise to ask in a public place, and a backlash. The details don't really matter for the purposes of this post. It got me thinking, however, about those oft-recurring issues around authority in druidry. Every time our community, or some bit of it hits a crisis, someone will comment that it would be nice if there was a proper governing body to sort it all out.

This can mean one of two things. Firstly it can mean wanting someone else to shoulder the responsibility and come up with a magic fix. That's a very simple, human response to difficulty. Sometimes we all want to be children again and to find a parent who will make it all better for us. The more troubling motivation is based on the desire to control the beliefs and behaviour of others.

I'll freely admit I had a moment yesterday of wanting to be the one who could lay down the law and tell everyone what they ought to think, and do, and believe. I get these bouts of hypothetical megalomania, and if facebook is indicative, so does everyone else. We all know we've got it all figured out, we have the right way, the perfect solution, if only everyone else would listen. Except they don't, and most of the time we're wrong, and the 'perfect' solution would not work for everyone.

One of the dangers on any kind of spiritual path is that you start feeling important. You know more than those around you, and this makes you a better sort of person. Being better, wiser and whatnot, you are then, in your own eyes entitled to lead. It's not a big leap from leading to dictating. I will also admit that when I first came to druidry, many years ago, that desire to be important, special, ahead of the pack, was part of what motivated me. I wanted to matter. Again, I suspect I was pretty normal in those feelings and aspirations. I sought responsibility because I wanted opportunities to shine and impress.

The idea of being, or becoming 'better' is inherent in a lot of spiritual traditions. The idea of the chosen few, the special ones, the ones god will save and give the cushy afterlife to. The whole point of some forms of spirituality seems to be betterness. In being better than we were, we are surely becoming better than some of those around us. We can look at their actions for evidence of our own superior wisdom. We have the moral high ground now. It's not a long walk from there to words like 'master race'. Spirituality that feeds arrogance and self importance, is not really that spiritual at all, when you stop to think about it.

So I get angry and self important, like everyone else. I am thankful today that I did not say anything yesterday that I have cause to regret. The more I think about it, now that the initial frustration has passed, the clearer I am that I don't want the responsibility of telling other people how to live their lives. I have no desire to be the person who says who can, and cannot call themselves a druid, or what druidry means, or how to teach it. I'd quite like to be part of the process that is a living and evolving tradition, but nothing more than that.

Does that make me a better sort of person than I was when I came to druidry? Can I now hold this up as proof of my improved state? Ah ha! Betterness is not about getting out front with self important titles. Betterness is all false modesty and sitting back, not getting my hands dirty and being smug at a distance. There are other daft ideas to run around, other ways to feel bigger whilst doing nothing of any great significance. Other ways of deluding the self.

Who measures the betterness? Me? A deity who might or might not exist? The druid community or its leaders, should we appoint them? And what does that betterness achieve? What happens when we make qualitative judgements about the worth of one life compared to another?

If everything has spirit, how can one manifestation of that be better or worse than any other? How can any existence be more or less valuable than another?

And yet, weigh against that the notion of excellence in all things. It is impossible to seek excellence without having some awareness of how what you do compares with what everyone else is doing. We find our goals by looking at each other. We measure ourselves by contrast. So much depends on what we want that excellence for. Do we seek it for the good of our community and the enhancement of the world, or to raise ourselves up above everyone else? That, I think, is the critical difference.

Cat Treadwell interview

I first met Cat Treadwell through The Druid Network, when she stepped up to run the reviews section. Being one of the people she sends review books to, I've had a fair amount of contact with her over quite a few years now. In that time, I've watched Cat journey from being someone who just wanted to help out, to being the most actively involved of Druids, her work taking her in all kinds of exciting directions. She's fast becoming one of the leading lights in UK druidry, and is undoubtedly one to watch!

Nimue: What first brought you to druidry?

Cat: As with most modern pagans, I think there's always been something inside, whether it be an affinity for the wild lands, the seasons or just the magic in/of story. I've always been a voracious reader, and can remember making up my own characters and adventures from a very young age. I'd also be the strange little girl playing in the hedgerows during breaktime at school, getting to know the trees and birds! So I think it's always been there in that regard.

Official 'Druidry' came about when I discovered 'Spirits of the Sacred Grove' while working through the huge amount of pagan books out there. Bobcat's words struck a chord with me (as they have with many others), I sought out the BDO Yahoo group, found out that the webmaster was planning a local Grove… and here I am!

Nimue: What prompted you to take a more active role in the druid community? Was that a gradual thing, or did you make a conscious decision?

Cat: I was prompted in large part by a good friend asking me and my partner to officiate at his handfasting ceremony. I'd never overseen public ritual before, let alone an event of such importance. I still cringe when I remember the rehearsal beforehand in my back garden – it was truly awful, and I learned quickly how NOT to approach such things! But a wise man on The Druid Network forum advised me to be brave and find my 'druid bollocks' – and so I did! Strength in laughter, after all… *grin*

Since then, it feels that as I've grown, so have the challenges I'm faced with. From my first funeral rite, to a Beltane handfasting at Stonehenge, to my forthcoming book, and the latest request: to travel overseas for workshops and talks. Not to mention essentially working as a 'professional Druid' in order to pay the bills (due to redundancy last year). Life is busy!

Nimue: What do you do when you need inspiration

Cat: As I came to the end of my 'training' on Anglesey, I was going to make my promises and state my intention to the wider Universe as to what I would be doing with this. That really was a life-changing (and affirming) step, in many ways. Why had I undertaken it all? What for? How could it be best used?

Looking back, everything seemed to evolve in stages. I spent time as a beginner for a good few years, solitary and studying whatever came along and appealed to me. Eventually I joined a Grove (as part of the British Druid Order, now The Druid Network) and opened up to more 'formal' teaching/learning. Now came the time to step up – it wasn't just about expanding my own knowledge, it was putting it to good use.

Nimue: How easy did you find the writing process when you stepped up to creating your first book?

Cat: My favourite image of 'inspiration' is one I saw years ago on a documentary. The wonderful Terry Jones sits at his desk, preparing to write. He chews his pen. He stares out the window. He fiddles with his tea mug. THAT is what searching for inspiration is like, quite often!

I tend to be mostly inspired when outside, whether walking the dog or just wandering (or even staring out of the window!). The simplest of natural events can be a reminder of something important, reconnecting you to that crucial spark that allows the creativity to flow. Ultimately, it can't be forced… but it can be encouraged. Often by just putting yourself in the right frame of mind, with the right tools, and getting on with it!

Nimue: So, go on then, tell us about the book!

Cat: I actually felt as if I was cheating for a good while, because a lot of it had been done already on my blog! But then I realized the difference between writing 'casually' for an internet audience, and writing 'professionally' for a readership, who are physically expending energy (money) and effort to read my words. More responsibility, but determination to really speak my truth and be aware of what I was sending out into the world between those covers!

One thing that did help was that if I could ever honestly express my 'life's ambition', it was (and still is) to be a writer. I still can't believe it's really happening, but I've always written, usually fiction. But I love the process, the joy of inspiration (when it flows!), ideas coming together… and then the utterly wonderful feeling of others talking to me about something that I have written. To know that somebody appreciated my work is the greatest gift, and I will always be thankful for it. So while yes, I do write on what interests me, what keeps me going is that others enjoy it as well. And hopefully find it inspiring in turn.

Nimue: What's the book called, and how/when can people get their hands on it?

Cat: Well, as most folk know now, a few years ago I was yanked into giving a public talk at a Pagan Federation Conference with five minutes' notice, and a deep-seated fear of speaking in public… but I did it. And was asked back!

So I figured that it might be a good idea to structure the next talk *grin* and started a blog, to ask the wider Web what exactly they wanted me to talk about.

The book came out of that, when last year, Moon Books were looking for new Pagan authors. As far as I know, while there are many 'published blogs' on the shelves (?) of Amazon, there hasn't been one from a Pagan author yet. So I've taken time to turn it into a book, add a fair bit… and here it is!

While there's more 'Paganism 101′ books out there than I can count, one thing I found seriously lacking when I started out was EXPERIENTIAL stories. How other Pagans live, of whatever path. This has now started to change, thankfully, but that really is my goal with this book. To show how Druidry (and wider Paganism, usually) is lived for me, but also to make the reader question themselves and their own quests. What are you doing? What are you looking for? How far are you prepared for your life to change as your practice actively grows?

I don't have a problem with those who are 'trying out' a path by reading all the books, trying the rituals, but not challenging themselves very much. I believe that this knowledge actually DOES tacitly move them forward, as they discover what they do (and don't) want to be/do/live. I'm just being more up-front about it!

I love Druidry for being so honest, so challenging, such a daily adventure. Good and bad, dark and light – it's part of our lives and the wider world. I hope this deep passion comes across in my words and my actions… but as I say in the book, feel free to question me if you don't agree!

The book is 'A Druid's Tale', and is currently available for pre-order on my website: http://druidcat.wordpress.com/a-druid...

It's due to be released on 29th June, and I'm told an Amazon page is being organised, with Kindle version available on there.

Cat is also out and about doing talks, workshops, interviews and all manner of other exciting things, so there's all sorts of scope to encounter her both online and in person, if you haven't

Living with fear

One-off traumas are awful to experience, but generally, if it seems like a singular event, people get over it fairly well. It's the experience of living with fear, and having the unthinkable become normal that does the longer term damage. This is what underpins shell shock, as experienced by soldiers. Post traumatic stress disorder is just as likely for civilians after wars. However, being crippled by fear is not an experience unique to this level of hostile experience. People who experience much lower levels of bullying, abuse, persecution or difficulty over a long period can end up just as scarred. It's not a very well understood problem, nor is it much talked about outside support groups for the afflicted.

People coming out of long term bullying, or abuse can be just as psychologically damaged as people coming out of war zones and can display all the same kinds of symptoms as shell shock. This is not because victims of these apparently lesser problems are somehow being weak or pathetic. This is a biological process that has everything to do with how fear acts on the body. It is a very bodily condition. Once you can get your head in on the process, you're actually moving towards healing. Prolonged fear causes physical sickness and needs treating more like an ailment of the body and less like some kind of character failing.

There are a number of things that can happen to a person. If you are constantly victimised and nothing you do will protect you, you will come to believe that the whole world is hostile and threatening. You may be unable to respond to even mild setbacks, and feel overwhelming despair in face of even the smallest problems. You may build fear associations such that leaving the house becomes unbearable. For me, it was postmen. I still break into a cold sweat if I see a postman, or post van. I know why, but that doesn't stop me. When you have lost power and control in your life, the idea of being able to solve problems, or being able to cope barely exists in your head. Each new scenario is there to punish you further, to take you apart, to kick you again. The loss of hope is a consequence of living with fear.

You may develop superstitious beliefs about actions or behaviours that will keep you safe. This can lead to obsessive and compulsive disorders. People only feel safe when they have performed rituals that, from the outside, look crazy and irrelevant. The desire to be safe may also lead to passivity, acquiescence. The abused woman may make no sound when she is beaten if acknowledging pain makes it worse. She may become unable to vocalise any kind of pain at all. The abused child may learn to do anything at all to please adults, in the hopes of avoiding further torment and thus become even more vulnerable.

Once your body has learned fear as normality, things go a bit crazy. The fear responses happen when there's almost nothing to trigger them. That can mean heart racing, stomach heaving panic attacks that leaving you weeping and fighting for breath, and not even knowing why. The experience of this kind of bodily panic suggests that there must be something terrible going on, you just don't know what it is yet. When terrible has become normal, that's not irrational at all.

There was a cure for shell shock. All you had to do was get the soldiers out of the war zone, give them total rest and tranquillity, gentle physical activity and time outdoors. With peace and the right support, many would heal. The only way to break the cycles of physical terror, is to bodily remove the sufferer from the source of their fear, support them to feel safe, keep their environment unthreatening and gradually rebuild their sense of what 'normal' ought to look like.

This is one of the reasons why those apparently lesser forms of harm can turn out to be the most damaging. Short of going into a hospital, your chances of getting a few gentle, stress free weeks in order to heal are slim. The longer you are trapped in a fearful situation, the more normal it becomes. A few weeks might enable you to recover from a few months in a war zone, but what if you've been a victim for a decade? Making a new 'normal' so that you are not afraid all the time, is not going to be so quick. A good doctor can do a lot to help a person, but a careless one may feed paranoia and reinforce feelings of powerlessness and hopelessness. Add in the social stigma of mental illness, the fear of having your children taken away, or losing your job, and the fear itself becomes self perpetuating.

Fear does not always show on the outside. Panic attacks, and expressions of a terror that is rooted in your body like a parasitic plant, are humiliating. Most sufferers go to a lot of effort to hide it.

What would you do if you saw someone succumb to what appeared to be irrational panic? Tell them to pull themselves together? Mock them? Pity them? Avoid them? And if it happened to you, who could you go to for support? Who could you tell? Who would hold your hand and help you rebuild your life?

There but for the grace of… what? Go any of us. The going is easy and there are plenty of people who will happily take you there. The coming back is very, very hard.