Nimue Brown's Blog, page 89

Planning a ritual

Rituals can be very small things for one person, through to elaborate hours or days of activity for a group. When it comes to group rituals, there’s a huge amount of scope for getting things wrong for some or all of the people involved. That might be a topic for another day. When it comes to solitary rituals, you can approach this from the position that you can’t get it wrong.

You can of course set yourself up to fail. You can load your ritual with expectations that you are unable to meet. This is most likely to be an issue if you focus on the outcomes you want from the ritual and not the process of doing it. Rituals that centre on spells can be very outcome oriented, but for a Druid there are other ways of approaching things.

I don’t do a great deal of solitary ritual, but when I do, I like to treat it as a process. The first part of this process is to make space for whatever needs and feelings I have that incline me to think that a ritual gesture of some sort is appropriate. I need to understand what’s going on with me and what I need to deal with. Working that through will help me understand what I need from a ritual.

For me, a ritual is a conversation with the universe – or perhaps with some specific part of it. I make rituals because I want to change something. I may not have a clear sense of how I want things to change, or I may not be able to make the changes I need by conventional ways. It may be that I just want to make something for myself – an intention, a dedication, or just the desire for change. I may find in my ritual-making process that coming up with and enacting the ritual gets a lot done for me. Undertaking a ritual is an act of will and intent and can also be a way of having a conversation with myself about how I want to change my life.

For me, the planning part of ritual activity is often the most important bit. Building the understanding, shaping intentions and working out how to meaningfully express that to myself and the universe gets a lot done. You don’t have to have a magical world view to see the useful psychological impact this process can have. I do however have a magical worldview. I see clear ritual action as an invitation to possibility. Everything out there is informed by someone’s intentions, (I say this as an animist – everything is someone). To speak your intentions clearly to the rest of existence can and does change things. It’s not something I do very often, but I’m always surprised by how powerful it is when I do feel the need to engage in this way.

Trauma on repeat

Traumatic experiences change a person. How much I can bear is personal – as it is for everyone. I’m not a terribly resilient person. One of the consequences of having trauma history is that if new people come along and dig their fingers into existing bruises, I will react more dramatically than a not-bruised person would. Of course that makes it easy for anyone who was already amused by giving me a hard time to take issue with how easily I over-react, how melodramatic I am, how much of a fuss I make, etc etc. This has happened, although not recently.

Most people of course are well meaning and don’t go round deliberately triggering other people by deliberately poking their bruises. It will inevitably be confusing then when someone like me reacts in a way that doesn’t make obvious sense. From the outside, a triggered person can look insane and their responses can seem wildly disproportionate. People who have already been harmed are more likely to jump at the suggestion of a threat and to respond with extreme distress to things that other people may consider minor. 

Faced with this, it can be all too easy to assume you’re seeing a drama llama seeking attention and determined to be centre stage. I expect that if someone has already told you that I’m someone who likes to suck up all of the availble time and energy, and then you see what happens to me when I’m triggered and you don’t know I’m triggered… it’s not hard for me to imagine how that would play out.

You can’t see by looking whether a person has wounds or bruises under their clothes. Touch someone who is injured, and they may respond in unexpected ways. It’s easier to think about this kind of literal, physical wounding. Emotional wounding works in much the same way. It can be disturbing to have someone howl over something you thought was a non-issue, but perhaps framing it as having accidentally pressed against a wound makes it easier to think about.

There’s a lot of trauma out there. There are a lot of people carrying wounds from childhood abuse and from domestic abuse. There are a lot of neurodivergent people traumatised by how they’ve been treated. For pretty much every system that we have in place, there are people who have been traumatised by mistakes made in that system. Racism, sexism, ableism and other kinds of bigotry leave countless bruises on so many people. In amongst all of that there are also people who get a kick out of hurting people. It’s not the case that all abused people become abusers, but some do. None of this is straight forward.

When you’ve already been traumatised, you may have very little resilience for some things in ways that make no sense to anyone else. If you’re going through this, I encourage you to cut yourself some slack. Being prodded where you are already bruised is hard to take and feeling distress is valid regardless of what sense it makes to anyone else. 

If you are surprised by someone else’s distress response, consider there may be a bruise you can’t see. You aren’t responsible for the effects of a bruise you didn’t know was there, but how your relationship with that person goes – or if it continues at all – may depend on whether you’re prepared to find out.

Adventures in gender identity

I’ve always had an interesting relationship with gender. The more I learn about other people’s perspectives, the clearer it has become to me that I don’t experience gender in the same way that a lot of people do. In that I don’t really experience gender except in so far as other people’s assumptions about mine impacts on me. Ideas about gender don’t inform how I feel about people. It plays no role in who I am attracted to. I’ve had extended periods of time where it wasn’t really part of my sense of self at all.

The spaces I like best are the ones in which gender doesn’t automatically play a role. It’s one of the many reasons I like steampunk spaces. People are expressive in those spaces, and creative and playful. You can’t assume anything about a person based on what they’re wearing or how they present their bodies. No one tends to assume that a sexily-presented body is an available body. There are people who express and celebrate bodies, gender, sexuality. There are people who play and subvert. There are people who express themselves in ways that have more to do with what they’re enthusiastic about than it has to do with how they relate to their gender. I like that a lot. I love the diversity.

I’ve come to realise that what goes on in my head is much more significantly me than anything that happens with my body. The people I am most engaged with are the people who share ideas with me. Looking back at my life this is no doubt why I’ve always invested heavily in my creative relationships. Those are the spaces where I get to show up mostly as a thinking being.

I’m often uneasy about my body. I’ve had plenty of uncomfortable experiences around people misunderstanding me based on what they think my body means. As a female-presenting person I’ve dealt with a typical amount of sexism. I’ve had people try to tell me who I am and what I can and can’t do because I happen to have breasts, and I’m not a fan. 

Of late it’s become increasingly apparent to me how head-led I am. How much I crave the ways in which I can connect with other people, mind to mind. I’m excited about ideas, and I’m a highly emotional entity, and the people who do best with me are the ones who see further than the accident of how I look.

Spirits in the land

Some places have very distinct atmospheres, and sometimes this can include a feeling of presence. My understanding of this is cautious, but based on long term relationships with places that have very distinct atmospheres, and places that do not.

If I walk from my home along the nearby cycle path, there’s a gentle atmosphere, but nothing much. This is a place heavily used by people, bats, foxes and others. There are some very distinct individuals amongst the trees, and there are places other creatures frequent. When I walk this way, I experience a great host of individuals, including two springs and a stream, and all that lives amongst the trees.

Not far from the cycle path is an old cemetery built on the site of a Roman villa (look up the Orpheus mosaic in Woodchester if you’re curious). This is a place with a lot of history and ancestry in the soil and it has a distinct atmosphere. Again I experience this as the combined effect of a lot of individual presences.

However, there’s a lane I can follow from here up towards the top of the hill. There is a place on the lane where a stream crosses the path, and here there is a presence. There is something beyond the many individuals living on the land. I’m always keenly aware of this presence when I come to this spot and my guess is that it’s associated with the spring at the head of the stream. The only way to reach the spring would be to wade up the stream and I have a strong feeling that this would not be good or welcome.

Coming into contact with this presence is something I find powerful and affecting. I don’t bother it in any way because I have a strong sense that it wants nothing from me. This is often my experience when I have a sense of presence in a landscape. They don’t want anything from me and they don’t want to offer me anything. My sense of their existing is enough for me.

I’m wary of the urge to extract meaning from this kind of experience. It’s really important to me to go to these places where I feel presence and to remind myself of enchantment and possibility. I don’t ask for anything beyond that. I am not called upon to do anything. I actually like feeling that this is not a purposeful relationship. I am not being taught, or guided or otherwise improved by the experience – because this is simply a presence doing what it does. I am not needed or significant. I am not singled out for specialness by having a special relationship. I’m fortunate in having these experiences and that’s all there is to it for me.

I acknowledge that there were many times in my life when I longed to have something spiritual or supernatural single me out for attention in some way. I wanted to be important. I have a lot of personal issues around needing to feel like I matter. I’ve learned to be glad simply to have experiences, and I’m becoming more relaxed around not seeking significance. Increasingly, it is enough just to be and to feel.

Stories about who we are

Making history isn’t an objective process. The choices we make – collectively – about the stories we focus on and how we tell them has everything to do with the present. While studying history can tell us a fair amount about the past, it has the power to reveal a great deal about the present.

Whose stories do we treat as important? Who is missing from the stories we favour? What current political thinking is reinforced by the stories we choose to tell about the past? This can be hard to spot because the stories that don’t challenge us feel affirming and don’t encourage us to question them.

Humans use stories about history to affirm the current state of the world. We like progress narratives that show us as being the best thing so far. We like to give the impression that the way we do things is the best or the only way of doing things.

At the same time we don’t like stories that make us feel uncomfortable. Nations whose wealth is built on slavery, violence and colonialism don’t like stories that cast their shameful history in a different light. The UK is terrible for this, so terrible that we’ve given more legal protection to statues of abusive men than we give to living victims of abuse. There are far too many people in the UK desperate to hang on to the implausible idea that we were a good thing for the many countries we exploited.

I grew up with history meaning stories of white men using their power over others. There are other stories to tell and we need those stories.

When someone tells you a story about the past, it’s always worth asking what purpose that story plays in the present. What agenda does it serve? What does it normalize? If you hear a story about the past and it makes you feel comfortable, consider the idea that this may be because you’re on the winning side that usually gets to write the past down on its own terms. If a story about things historical makes you angry or uncomfortable, or even makes you feel threatened, this is a really good thing to spend time with. What have you invested in that makes this story uncomfortable to you? It’s one thing if history makes you angry because you can’t bear the injustice you encounter, but quite another to be angry because it challenges your sense of self.

We all make stories about who we are and where we come from. For some people, the investment in the past, in ideas of nationhood and shared identity can be entirely good stuff. It’s good to feel rooted and to have a sense of place and belonging. Respect for our ancestors and love of the land are all good things. However, when a person’s story about who they are can only exist by denying other people’s stories and seeking to silence parts of history, there’s a lot of issue there. A sense of self that depends on silencing, whitewashing, minimising or denying is a fragile thing and the cost of keeping it viable can be high, and nasty.

Adventures with strings

Once upon a time I played viola, violin and bouzouki. The violin I’ve played since childhood and the other two instruments I picked up during my Midlands period in my twenties. 

Some years ago, a compression injury took out my left shoulder and made it impossible to play. I have an entirely hypermobile body and they’re easy to damage. I managed to mess up my hands and my right shoulder as well, and so I accepted that musical instruments weren’t going to be a thing for me anymore. It was a big loss, especially the violin. However, in the absence of people to play with, I focused on the singing instead.

There aren’t many things I’m keen on doing by myself. I’m a people oriented person and I’m always more interested in things I can share. It’s the kinds of connections and interactions I can have with other musicians that makes music exciting for me. I’ll practice (a lot) to make that work, but without the incentive of other people I just don’t get moving.

At this point I don’t think I’ll ever be able to coax my arm and shoulder into a position that makes violin playing feasible. However, the viola being larger gives me more options, and I can just about manage it. Relearning the tunes I used to play on the violin is going to be quite a task – the muscle memory I have is wrong for the shape of the instrument. I need to develop muscle strength to help me offset the joint issues, and that’s going to take work. Playing hurts, and to get back to where I was is going to involve weeks, if not months of pain while I build the necessary strength. I’m lifting small weights to build muscle, having had some guidance about what would strengthen the parts of me that are struggling.

The incentive to do this is considerable. There are people I want to play with and I have an Ominous Folk project under way that really would benefit from getting some instruments on it. Apparently I have rediscovered enough of my courage to take the occasional leap into the dark again, and every time I’ve done that in recent months it’s worked out well for me.

Asking for more

Everyone I know is up against it, one way or another. I don’t know anyone who isn’t hurting, anxious, exhausted, ill, overwhelmed or terrible combinations of those things. Faced with that, how can anyone ask for help, or for more than is already being given to them?

I’ve been doing a lot of rethinking around all of this in recent weeks. I have a long history of not being very good at asking for emotional support. However, I note that I get a great deal out of feeling useful and like I can make a difference. I also note that this is true for a lot of other people as well.

Small things can make a great deal of difference and most large things depend on a lot of small things underpinning them anyway. So, getting the small things right gets a lot done. When life seems overwhelming, those smaller actions can seem far too small as responses, but they aren’t. A genuine smile full of warmth and friendship can change everything. Small acts of care and kindness, of attention and listening aren’t hard to give, even for a person who feels sorely depleted. Exchanging small gestures of care and support we can keep each other going.

I’m finding that being really specific about what I’m asking for helps. Most often what I need is reassurance that the other person is ok with me. Sometimes what I need is a hug, or some feedback. I can be very wobbly, and very much helped by small interventions. I’m very much in the habit of toughing things out, but that doesn’t help me much and I’m not sure how much it helps anyone else.

Some people are of course needfully possessive of their time and resources. Asking for more when a person has already made some firm decisions about where their boundaries are and what they can give, doesn’t go well. But not everyone is holding tight boundaries. For some people, the opportunity to help can be a good thing. Some of us need to feel needed – this is definitely a thing for me and I tend to respond well to opportunities to be helpful. Some people need to feel wanted – in fact the majority of us need social affirmation and things that help us feel we are part of something bigger. Asking for help can be a way of meeting another person’s social needs.

I’m more likely to pull away and disappear if I need something different from someone I am not close to, than to ask for help. I have tended to assume that’s the better choice, and I have come to no conclusions about whether to rethink that or not.

Asking for help creates the opportunity for developing community bonds. What can look like taking from one perspective can seem vulnerable and generous from another. If we are able to collectively soften our edges and move towards each other what happens is not an increasing of each person’s exhaustion. Instead we can have mutual support that makes everyone who leans in feel that bit stronger and more supported.

Call yourself a Bard

Do it. Call yourself a Bard. Or take the other names that appeal to you but seem too big to even try on. Poet, author, Druid, Priestess, healer, oracle, mystic… There are a lot of powerful words out there that can be used to describe who a person is and what they are doing.

Of course there are far too many people who take titles they don’t really deserve. You’ve probably run into that. You may well be afraid of looking like that if you claim the names for yourself. That might not just be a spiritual path issue. That might be about identifying as disabled, or queer, or neurodivergent while a little voice in your head says ‘yeah, but you’re not really queer enough, are you?’ Pick up the name or the label you need and there are reasons to fear someone else will tell you that you aren’t entitled to those words.

Try them on for size anyway. Test how they sit in your mouth. Explore the ways in which you might understand yourself on your own terms.

Too many of us are taught to make ourselves small and not to make a fuss. Too many of us experience being invalidated and not being allowed to express who we are and what’s going on for us. Some of us have family and cultural backgrounds that treat difference as shameful. We may need to reclaim the truth of who we are, and the acceptability of who we are. 

On the inside, some of us are still a small child who was told to shut up and sit down and stop being so attention seeking. Some of us were told that our aspirations were foolish and unrealistic. I see enough people around singing activities who were wounded by being told that they could not sing by people who had no idea what they were talking about.

If you’re on the bard path, call yourself a bard even if you only do that in your own head.

Call yourself a bard when you’re waiting to go out onto the stage, say it to yourself because you are the one person who needs to hear it.

You don’t have to be small. You don’t even have to be sensible. Call yourself a bard to honour the most preposterous parts of yourself. Use the word to reclaim all the not-sensible bits of you that don’t fit neatly into the demands of a dying capitalist society. Call other people bards, too. Call them heroes and goddesses and miracle workers if you can. Call the people around you visionaries and marvels, call them courageous and generous and mighty. Tell people they are powerful and remarkable. Tell them they are valid, and support the ways in which they want to express who they are.

Use your bard skills to lift people out of their feelings of ordinariness and insignificance. Tell people who they really are and tell them how greatly they matter.

Nature and spirit

There are (I think) three key ways of considering the relationship between nature and spirit. Which approach you favour will inform how you do your Druidry.

Option 1 – nature is everything, there is no spirit in nature other than life itself. This is atheist Paganism and it means engaging with the world in a rational way and not seeking anything magical or non-scientific. It tends to foster pragmatic relationships with the natural world but does not rule out numinous experience or a sense of wonder.

Option 2 – everything that exists in nature is possessed of spirit. The material world is alive with presence. This perspective will incline you to see every living being as precious and capable of having opinions and preferences. It opens the way to encountering other-than-human people and is consistent with an understanding of reality that has a lot of room for enchantment and wonder. Any encounter with wild things may be laden with significance, but the power lies in the encounter and you are a spirit present in the world encountering other spirits who are present in the world.

Option 3 – spirit manifests through nature. Wild things can therefore be being moved by some greater force and may have some message for you or be there to teach or guide you. I struggle with this one because I prefer to see living beings as existing in their own right and not being here to bring us messages. This approach can be problematically human-centric. It does however open the way to seeing every encounter as laden with potential for meaning and magic. It is probably the strongest option for the person seeking enchantment and wishing to re-enchant their own lives. I have no doubt it is also possible to see the physical world as spirit manifesting without having to attach personal meanings to everything and to instead see the living world as a means to commune with something greater that lies beyond it.

What does it mean to step outside and see a bird, or a cloud or a really nice rock? How does that encounter fit into your world view? How does your world view inform how you interpret your experiences? What do you want to experience and what do you want from the wild things around you?

Druidry and community

When I first came to Druidry some twenty years ago, part of the attraction for me was the social aspect of it. Groves and Orders, open rituals, music and those first online spaces. I was in an area where a fair bit of in-person stuff was happening, and able to travel further afield sometimes to connect with other Druids.

The social side of religion is an important aspect of it for a lot of humans. Many of us long for a place to fit and a community to be part of, and many of us find those vital social connections through our spiritual lives. It’s normal to crave approval and validation, and religions generally give people opportunities to prove their devotion.

Community has the capacity to amplify things for us. When people bond together around good causes and the need for positive change, this can truly bring out everyone’s best qualities. It’s easier to be your best self when you get social approval for your generosity and kindness. Getting involved with a fundraising activity where a lot of people come together to do something good is affirming, and encourages you to do more of that thing.

It’s worth giving some thought to the things your Druid community focuses on to make sure that aligns with the qualities you want to develop in yourself. Some groups are very much focused on ritual and spiritual connection while for others coming together in the same place will be primarily about performing and sharing creativity. Online spaces are often more focused on learning and thinking, which works well for the more philosophically minded. Moots are good for people seeking to meet their social needs and can be particularly valuable for folk who are otherwise solitary.

The key really is to find a space that answers your needs. Sometimes it works to go into a space and ask for there to be room for more of the stuff that speaks to you. And so it is that moots sometimes develop open ritual groups, and ritual groups spawn study groups and moots end up with a lot of bardic content, or a whole table full of philosophers. All of these things are valuable.

The social side of Druidry allows us opportunities to be inspired and uplifted by each other. It may motivate us if we have people we want to impress, or delight. I know there are a lot of arguments out there against the idea of anything that looks like ‘ego’ but I’ve read enough mythology to feel that there’s plenty of room for bombast and good kinds of showing off, and that these things are only at odds with being spiritual if you’re part of something that teaches you it is good to be humble. Feeling socially recognised and valued isn’t a non-spiritual state and feeling validated by our communities can do a lot to help us work on things we find challenging.