Nimue Brown's Blog, page 66

Land Veneration

(David)

I tend not to talk in public about my workings. But I will be happy to talk here of philosophies and suchlike, many instances of suchlike probably, including veneration of the land.

First, I’m drawn to start this second post with an extension of the brief introduction I wrote in my first one.

I’ve practised for thirty-two of my sixty-six years in this body, precisely and uncoincidentally since I went and got myself a bit blown up in the Gulf War. Those three-and-a-bit decades have been a world of chronic pain and illness for me, but they’ve also been incredibly rich in terms of spiritual exploration.

Physically, I’m pretty much a hermit in a small wooded valley in south west Britain. My parallel paths of ecosocialist activism and nature magic eventually revealed themselves to me as one and the same walk, so I’m comfortable with that. Other converging aspects have been animism, witchcraft, hedge druidry, and shamanic journeying, which have now merged in me.

For a long time, I have been led by the feminine divine. Then, two years ago, I entered a lengthy period of quietness, a physical hibernation with intense mental and spiritual activity, helped and protected by two of my spirit guides, Bear and Stone, from which I emerged strong and being drawn to look outward more than before.

My power animal spirits are Lion and Wolf, and with the feminine divine still active in me I am now also being called by the masculine divine. This is new. I’m cautious because my old life prior to getting wounded was very masculine, and naturally I left all that stuff behind when I walked into the forest. But I’m not rejecting the call.

I write books. Novels of science fiction and fantasy, but also during my hibernation with Bear and Stone a non-fiction book that turned out to be a magical nature journal and memoir in which I did some shadow work and helped to heal some recent ancestral trauma. It’s all in the book, which (Eek!) my publisher is getting ready to release soon.

So, land veneration. What does it look like?

For me it was growing up on the salt marsh of my blood ancestors, then escaping modern day humans in the adjoining town by running away to sea as soon as I was old enough, then coming home badly injured twenty years later to a tidal marsh valley three hundred miles from my birthplace and learning that those humans had “reclaimed” both of my wetlands to build roads over them, then lying terribly sick and physically broken in my bed, grieving, thinking my useful life was over in my mid-thirties, and attempting to end it. It was the spirit of this valley filling my bedroom suddenly with their presence and beautiful floral scent, and saving me.

It was that event setting me on a new path of mysticism and nature magic, leading these thirty years later to my quietly joyful life in which I commune with and venerate the land.

A polarisation has occurred through my disgusted disassociation from the corruption of human politics in this country, and my beloved association with the more-than-human life in the land. This polarisation feels purifying.

The spirit of this valley doesn’t come in person to me often, but they have introduced me to many others. To spirits of creatures, trees, plants, and inanimate beings. To magical spirits in this world and the otherworld. To my ancestors of blood, of place, and of tradition. Most recently, to myself.

The greatest offering I can imagine making to the land is of myself. That, then is my offering. In every way I can.

I don’t talk in public about my workings, but I will say that I’ll never forget the spirit’s powerful presence and scent. Ever.

Land veneration. What does it look like to you?

Passing Place – a review

(Nimue)

Passing Place, by Mark Hayes is a beautiful, bonkers sort of a book. This is speculative fiction, with a story that isn’t easily explained at all without spoilers. What I can say with some confidence is that if you like the kind of bonkers and speculative fiction I write then the odds are you’re going to also enjoy what Mark does. I feel that we may have been cut from the same cloth. (I think it was a pair of intergalactic trousers, with a print design it might be safest not to examine too closely.)

I’m not claiming objectivity here. Mark is a friend, I know him through steampunk events. To all intents and purposes, Mark is on of the Gloucestershire steampunks, despite the small technical detail of his currently living a rather long way from Gloucestershire. He’s a fine chap, has piled in to help me with book layouts, keeps buying my stuff and has been incredibly supportive and encouraging of me as a person, so, I have biases. But it’s also fair to say that a big part of why I like him is because he’s funny, and kind and interesting and all of that shows up in his writing.

There’s a lot of humour in Passing Place. A surprising amount for a book whose story centres on a suicide. Trigger warnings here for anyone who has been suicidal or lost someone to suicide or otherwise been too far into that terrain for comfort. There were a lot of very familiar thoughts and feelings in the story. There’s a lot of pathos, and insight, compassion and philosophy all woven together to make something extraordinary. I cried several times.

I found a surprising amount of myself in these pages. Mark wrote it long before we met, so it isn’t that he’s knowingly taken scenes from my life. It was disconcerting to read the things that were close to the bone for me, but also deeply cathartic. There’s a lot that’s restorative about this book. It’s a story of wounding and loss and heartbreak and what you do afterwards. Too many stories focus on the drama, and not what happens to your life when the drama stops but you don’t. It’s good territory to explore, and I think a lot of people will find parts of themselves in the characters, and the stories.

If you’re the sort of lost little monster who is looking for Midian, The Passing Place is well worth a visit. There’s a forest in the cellar, the kitchen depends on non-linear systems of cause and effect, and the front door could open to just about anywhere. Or anywhen. A haven for the lost, it might be exactly the place you need to spend some time. It certainly was for me.

Taking time off

(Nimue)

I’m in the rather wonderful position of having something of a holiday at the moment. I can’t remember when I last took more than a day or two off, while going away somewhere just for fun hasn’t happened in years. Having a change of scenery without working at an event is being very lovely.

I don’t have a lot of internet access, which has greatly reduced the temptation to try and do any work. I had a ghost writing project to finish up, and I have review books to get my teeth into, but otherwise I’ve been taking a much needed opportunity to rest and regroup. Walking and contemplating are featuring heavily. Peaceful time outside, and a great deal of time on my own are helping a lot too. I’m in the process of a major life-reboot, and there’s a lot I need to think about.

Having time on my own with no particular responsibilities is opening up space to think about what I am, and also to rethink who I am. Years of depression have been underpinned for me by feelings of uselessness, worthlessness and lack of direction. Since last autumn I’ve been prompted to seriously rethink that. There’s been something of a project to change how I see myself, which was very deliberately organised. It’s been startling to have someone so determined to change how my life is. Other people who were drawn into that project have been gently active for months, too, bringing me different ways of seeing things, and different ways of understanding myself.

I’ve learned a lot about the ways in which I can get things right, and be effective. It’s made a lot of odds to me, and lifted me out of a headspace where I could only see what I get wrong, and where I’ve not felt good enough. I’m taking time at the moment to consolidate all of this, and build a sense of self that includes ideas about being effective. I’m calmer as a consequence, not having to constantly push myself in a desperate bid to do better. I can be enough, and I can be enough without having to break myself.

I’m learning a lot at the moment, about myself, and about how I want things to be. I’ll be unpacking that in the weeks to come. There’s a lot going on for me philosophically and spiritually at the moment, and a definite sense of new ideas to explore. I feel myself stretching, softening, growing and becoming lighter all at the same time. Contentment is featuring a lot, so is optimism. I’m on the right trajectory.

An introduction from David Bridger

(David)

From July 2021 to July 2022, I wrote a nature journal. It became a memoir too, and a walk into my hedge druidry and folk magic witchcraft. Its title is In A Hedge Druid’s Grove, and my publisher will release it into the world on the 1st July 2023.

In the meantime, I’ve missed journalling. When my dear friend and writing partner Nimue invited me to make some occasional posts here on this blog, my heart leapt.

These entries of mine, then, will be me picking up that thread and walking with it to see where it takes me in nature and the spirit world.

Welcome to my garden, my grove, my valley, and my mind.

Druidry and shaking things up

I have a number of significant changes going on at the moment, all of which are taking me in exciting new directions. The first thing to announce is that I’m no longer the only contributor to this blog. My writing collaborator, David Bridger, is going to be a frequent contributor henceforth.

I’ve been writing with David for more than a year now. We first met via the Witchlit group on Facebook, traded fictional works and then realised we have a lot in common. At this point we’ve written one novel together and are underway with a second. David is a solitary Druid, exploring folk magic and witchcraft amongst other things, so he’s going to be bringing experiences from his own journey.

I anticipate that at least some of the time we’ll be passing ideas back and forth between us over different blog posts, and that this will be a good way to stretch into new ideas and possibilities. We do well when we’re swapping ideas, and I look forward to seeing how this plays out on the blog.

I don’t always experience summer as a rush of energy and possibility. Outside my window, the nearby hawthorn tree is smothered in blossom. I feel enthused and inspired by what’s going on in my life with this opening out of new possibilities and ways of working. At the moment it is as giddy as midsummer flowers, with that buzzing energy of pollen, bees and high summer, but that may be in part because I’m out of practice when it comes to enthusiasm. The things I’m exploring and developing at the moment all feel sustainable, and my energy levels have improved dramatically in recent weeks such that what I want to do no longer feels ambitious.

Onwards!

Dreaming wildly, rejecting control

Some years ago, I wrote a book about dreaming. I wrote it in no small part because most of the dream material I’ve seen doesn’t work for me. It’s usually too focused on finding meanings, in a way that strikes me as reductive and pointless. I had a lot of things to say about how personal and nuanced symbolism in dreams can be, and that taking meanings from dictionaries is unlikely to give you much.

I’m not a fan of trying to get control of your dreams. I’ve had experiences of lucid dreaming, but those have come unsought and I prefer it that way. 

If you can control what happens in your dreams, then all that will happen in your dreams is what your conscious mind chooses. Dreams are an opportunity to meet your wilder and more unconscious self and to experience yourself in ways that your conscious mind might not allow. Repressed feelings can come to the surface in dreams. Issues you aren’t dealing with, aspects of your shadow self and things you are in denial about can all be there waiting for you when you sleep. Exploring this offers so much, and trying to be in control won’t let these things come to the surface.

There’s wisdom in the unconscious. If you’ve crushed yourself down trying to fit what you think is socially acceptable, your dream life may be where much of your soul has taken refuge. If you don’t seem to dream at all this can be a sign that you aren’t letting yourself look at all kinds of important things. 

We don’t have to tame everything. We need to learn how to make room for the wild things, and there’s a lot to be said for starting with ourselves. Honouring our animal bodies, recognising our connection with nature and seeing how nature manifests within us is critically important for this. Dreams are wild, natural things, arising from our animal bodies, our fundamental needs and our emotional lives. We can also do a lot of processing and making sense of things through dreaming, and there’s a lot to be said for not interfering with that process.

You can find out more about the book over here – https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/moon-books/our-books/pagan-dreaming

Who are you allowed to be?

It doesn’t get any more personal than your own identity. However, who we are is shaped by many factors, most especially our genetic material and our environments. How much of who you are is simply the consequence of who you have been allowed to be?

From the moment of your arrival, the people around you will have treated you in particular ways. You will have learned about what it means to be a person of your gender (or assumed gender). You’ll know what it means to be part of your religion, or not a religious person depending on what your parents believe. You’ll learn the implications of your race, class, abilities, disabilities, and all of this starts to shape you long before you’ve any scope to think about it.

Families pass down stories. Families that have been subject to trauma often pass down the trauma. Ancestral wounding can continue between generations when people don’t know that these cycles exist, much less how to break out of them. If you’ve grown up being taught to feel ashamed of yourself, that’s going to impact on your sense of self.

Don’t get too big for your boots. Don’t get ideas about your station. It’s not for the likes of us. It was good enough for me so it’s good enough for you. Do you think you’re better than us? 

Some of this is meant to be protective. Disadvantaged parents may try to shield their children by giving them what seem to be realistic expectations of life. All too easily that can turn into a feeling that you don’t deserve nice things and it isn’t worth trying. Disadvantaged communities may try to protect their own by refusing to go along with anything they associate with their oppressors. There are no tidy answers here.

It is all too easy to absorb what’s in your environment and let it be who you are. This is a significant feature in domestic abuse, where the victim absorbs messages of fault, uselessness and their own responsibility for what’s happening to them. When your abuser gets to define who you are, it is hard to think that you could have a good or happy life. There’s no point escaping if you think you are the problem.

We are shockingly easy to persuade. If you’ve not had someone rob you of your sense of self, it may seem to you that only a week or foolish person would let that happen. Human minds are malleable and we respond to what’s in our environments. You can take a person apart with a steady stream of tiny cruelties – little put downs, little acts of mockery and derision, droplets of criticism and regular blame, and the person won’t see it happening or notice how much harm it causes. Day by day, the old sense of self is replaced by feelings of incompetence, and of deserving the constant small blows. 

Humans are social creatures. Our sense of identity is very much informed by how other people treat us. If you’re used to being treated like you’re a problem, then you’ll have a hard time imagining that you aren’t one. Equally, if something like having a lot of money means you get treated like you’re clever and important, if your ego is boosted at every turn you can end up with an inflated sense of your own worth. This is in no small part how we come to have such incompetent people in governments.

Grim and terrible things

People are attracted to bad news. It’s something that impacts on how our mass media works, and what it puts in front of us. Bad news sells. It’s easy to plug into feelings that we have to know about the awful things to have a hope of staying safe. That’s the urge that sends us doomscrolling. The more anxious you are, the more likely it is that you’ll move towards bad news because you’re trying to feel more in control.

I can see that in my own behaviour at the start of the covid pandemic. I scrolled a lot, desperately looking for information. However, once I started finding information I could work with, I started being able to control what I was exposing myself to. Not having everyday contact with televisions probably helps.

I see it here on the blog. When I put up titles that seem hopeful or restorative, I tend to get fewer hits than if I put up something that promises grim and challenging content. Blogs with content warnings tend to be popular. This is a mixed bag. I tackle subjects I think need attention and if I think I’ve got something to say that isn’t being said, I’ll get in. Abuse, oppression, mental illness and inequality are topics I’m always going to talk about. I try to do that in a helpful way.

Like most people, I’m affected by a desire for attention. There’s a temptation around that to write more about the bad stuff, the things I struggle with, the things that hurt. There are quite a lot of challenges that I’ve deliberately never talked about in public, for reasons. I don’t want to mine the worst parts of my own life to get hits and I don’t want to become part of the problem where grim content grinds people down so they feel unsafe and seek out more grim content.There’s a cyclical aspect to this, and it’s clearly not good.

Attention can be addictive. Katrina Townsend’s book, The Anti-Consumerist Druid (reviewed here) exposes the addictive nature of seeking attention online. There are difficult stories that need to be told – we need to know what life is like for disadvantaged people so that we can build empathy and do better. The trouble is that all too often what we end up with is tragedy porn, the fleeting emotional hits we get from terrible stories, and then no way of doing anything about it. That kind of stimulus encourages people to seek another hit – be it by telling the awful stories, or by consuming them. Nothing is actually improved by this.

It’s really important not to approach difficult stories as a consumer. Paying attention to what we treat as entertainment in the first place can help. If you’re consuming media that invites you to observe other people’s misery, even if that feels cathartic to you, it is worth being cautious about it. If there isn’t some aspect of how to improve things, the content is going to be on the toxic side.

When we’re dealing with individual people, I favour being indulgent. Take the time to listen, be supportive, offer comfort, do something restorative if you can. If you think someone is wallowing about in their own misery for attention, you won’t get them out of that by telling them or by trying to make them feel ashamed. Instead, try giving them time and attention over things that aren’t about their personal drama. Whatever is going on in a person’s life, offering them attention in good and healthy ways is restorative. It might not fix the underlying problem, but it does provide comfort. If someone’s self esteem is so battered that all they feel they can offer are their worst stories, then offering compliments and appreciation of other parts of them can help them build their way out of that.

When you are the one overwhelmed by some terrible thing, and needing to talk about it, try not to let it become your entire sense of self. Try not to let it define you. Fight for the parts of you that aren’t in that story and make space for the aspects of yourself that you like. Seek out affirming things that remind you of who you really are, because this is important for trauma recovery.

However many reasons there are to focus on the most awful things, try not to let those things become the whole story.

Dragon incidents

Once upon a time, when James and I were gardening, he shouted to me that he had found a dragon. I made ‘well done’ noises, assuming he was playing a game. A little while later, there was a much more alarmed cry of ‘it’s moving,” at which point I went to see what he’d actually found.

It was a common lizard, which made perfect sense – and not a bad guess for a child who had no doubt seen more dragon pictures than lizard pictures at that point. It’s also a good example of how children plug what they observe into what they already know. Inevitably that’s going to lead to a lot of mistakes, so there’s a lot to be said for expanding knowledge in an affirming way rather than making a child uncomfortable about their best guesses around unfamiliar things.

The second dragon story is a bit more odd. We were on a very long walk – longer than anticipated so I was trying to keep James chatting so that he’d cope better. We’d seen some heavy plant clearly involved in tree cutting, and I’d suggested that might be one way a dragon could hide in the landscape. We crept past the big machines, pretending they were sleeping dragons in disguise. We thought about where else there might be places for dragons to hide.

Then we came out into a field that had a dry stone wall that dipped up and down, snaking down the hill until it came to a little bump that looked like a head. The whole mood shifted, and we looked at each other. I have never seen anything in a landscape that looked so much like a dragon before or since. We crept past it, neither of us spoke until we were well clear of the head. Unlike the same with the big machines, this felt very different – uncanny, and significant. It was a very strange experience. 

Things that feel magical can also be alarming. Awe and awful go together as words. Dragons who are really common lizards aren’t so scary, but landscapes that feel like dragons are a whole other experience. I’m usually fairly pragmatic and it’s rare that the mood of a place gets to me, so I tend to pay attention when it does. I can’t make any claims about what happened that day or what it meant, but it was a powerful experience and it gave me feelings of wonder and possibility that haven’t featured that often in my life.

Waking with the dawn

I’ve found that if I’m not obliged to live by clock time, that my sleep patterns shift according to the light. This means in winter I wake up about 8am, and that I am inclined to stay up much later. At this time of year, I wake early – I’m often awake before the dawn chorus starts, and it’s lovely hearing that through the open windows.

My hope has always been that I’ll somehow master the art of the siesta, sleep in the hot part of the day, get to enjoy the summer darkness and generally have a good time of it. Not that it’s even slightly warm at the moment, and I write this post from inside a large jumper. For whatever reasons, daytime sleeping is often beyond me. The only time I’ve done it reliably was when I had the assistance of a cat. She used to steal my awakeness, and if she climbed on to me, I became able to rest.

What usually happens around midsummer is that I can’t get enough sleep and go a bit round the bend as a consequence. So while in theory the ‘proper’ Pagan response to midsummer is to feel the high energy, I’ve had many years where I’ve just been a broken and exhausted wreck.

There is definitely some kind of relationship between how stressed I am and how light sensitive I am. I crave darkness, but how much deep darkness I need may also depend on what my stress levels are like. The more stressed I am the less likely I am to be able to settle and sleep, and the more of an issue the light levels are.

Recently I’ve been doing better around sleep – being able to settle more easily, getting more benefit from sleeping, and generally not being so stressed, so it will be interesting to see what impact that has on my experience of midsummer this time around. I’m finding at the moment that I can handle far more light pollution than I’ve been able to in the past, but I’m still being woken by the dawn, so, it’s a mixed bag. 

I’m fascinated by the ways in which my body responds to the seasons, the day length and my environment. Humans are too inclined to believe in our separateness from nature, but nature is with us all the time, in our environments and in our own bodies.