Festivals such as the Solstice, like any enduring spiritual practice, offer times for ritual connection, because ritual is one way to touch the sacred, to sing the awen again.
The challenge, often, is for those who’ve either never experienced ritual and are put off by the thought, or for those who’ve grown allergic to it and are also put off by the thought. Ritual is QWERTY spirituality: a set of keys most of us have heard about and probably know in some way, and second nature for anyone who uses an English keyboard.
first full rhododendron flower, front yard, 5 minutes ago
QWERTY keys aren’t the only set, or the “best”, or any other exclusive label we may try to put on them. But one of their great advantages is that they’re accessible. And practicing them long enough gives us the confidence to try out other combinations — other keys on the keyboard which we may not even have seen, before we gained familiarity with QWERTY. We make the path by walking.
Can I work with that funny word QWERTY and generate a useful though admittedly adhoc guide for ritual planning? Let’s see.
Questioning, wondering, expecting, readying, touching, and y — a dependent variable. We might call it manifestation, or coincidence, or fit. Sometimes it’s the path of least resistance.
Questioning: What’s the ritual for? (Do I need a ritual?) What’s the issue? Who else is involved, visible and invisible? When is the best time? Who can I ask for help? Who’s attending? How many people will take part? How can I maximize their involvement? Where should the ritual take place? How simple could it be? What does divination suggest? What other signs should I consider? How can I acknowledge my guides?
Wondering: Where has my attention been recently? I wonder how my dreams and the coincidences of the past month play into this moment and the ritual I’m considering. What’s my vision of an ideal ritual here? I wonder how I can involve chance, serendipity, inspiration, the awen.
Expecting: I expect about X many people. I imagine good energies at play. I play through a possible ritual in daydream or guided meditation, I anticipate the materials I need, I collaborate with friends, I bless and ask for blessing of the undertaking.
Readying: I clean and purify the ritual space as needed, inwardly or outwardly, I rely on others to do their part, I drop unneeded attitudes and thoughts, I gather materials, I double-check, I do another divination as needed, I listen to guidance, I practice common sense, I rehearse with others.
Touching: earth under our feet, breath in our lungs, light in our eyes, blood in our veins. Gifts already granted. Sweet incense, woodsmoke, breeze, rich scent of flowers, buzz of insects, animal calls, hawk crying overhead at the moment the ritual shifts, a burst of wind, sun emerging from behind a cloud. Touch and be touched.
Y — the dependent variable: Sometimes we won’t perceive this till well after a ritual. Sometimes it arrives in the middle of doing it, unbidden, grace or spiritual presence. Sometimes one person is led to act or speak in a way that makes all the difference. Whatever the dependent variable is, I can’t control it. It’s the universe participating, it’s the magic of manifestation, or coincidence, or fit. Sometimes it’s the path of least resistance spirit takes, like water along a channel, or blood through the veins. Almost always it’s saying “yes” to possibility, change, inspiration, growth and transformation.
And the awen, I notice, asks for “we” from QWERTY. We can find it in community, in the middle of the ritual, in the common experience we all share.
[An exercise from a draft of a book on Druid spiritual practices I’m writing.]
Using your own name, a specific goal boiled down to a word or two, a god-name, an ancestral name, etc., spell the name or word, giving a separate line for each letter (an acrostic). Then, in a meditation or ritual, dream or other prompting, ask for guidance. Write what comes to you. You may wish to do this on successive days, either with the same focus, or a succession of names.
For practice with this exercise, I chose my grandfather’s middle name, William. He died more than twenty years before I was born. We share the same first name — when I was young, I heard people talking about him using “my” name. I first saw a picture of him when I was 10 years old. (I always wondered why my grandmother had so few family pictures in general — maybe memory was painful enough without reminders. He died when she was still in her thirties, left to raise two children through the Depression.)
Hearing and sharing the same name set up a connection, and seeing his formal portrait, and later other pictures of him, confirmed a link I value to this day. I’ve deepened it with writing about him in pieces like the one below.
Though this one’s not specifically about him, it’s about connecting with the ancestral legacy we all bear, about the Ovate flavor of experiencing the inward journey, about the Bardic encounter with ever-deepening mystery at the heart of things. In the end, they’re not separate, and it’s a relief not to struggle to sort them out, but wait until they clarify, like a muddy stream will, in a few days, after a rainstorm roils the waters.
Just pay attention, whisper the Ancestors. That’s a good half of everything we ask of you.
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Ancestral
Washed out of my bones I fly across an ocean green as glass, lifting easy above whitecaps.
Loosed from cages of chest and skull I see them all at once along this dark shore — shadows, lights
moving to music I can’t quite hear,
am always hearing —
ash, ember, blood drum.
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Sometimes what you receive or create is for you alone. It is sacred, which means no one else has any say in the matter, nor any opinion to touch upon what is inmost in you, unless you grant it. What you welcome is not for others’ commentary or reaction or judgment, but for blessing and connection and the kindling of a holy fire within.
Other times, you may receive inward blessing to share, but these decisions themselves are not for debate with others. Choose prudently.
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In the poem above I underlined the letters of the name prompt. The two final lines, both beginning with the letter “a”, came after some listening time, later the same day. When I say the lines to myself I hear them now as a kind of breathing, or sigh, or a voice without words, a sound at the edge of hearing.
“As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars.
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Slow, then sudden — this two-part rhythm is more widespread than we often notice. Not only with love, as John Green’s young-adult novel observes, but with much else besides.
If you garden, the seeds you plant can seem like they “take forever” to germinate, but then abruptly poke through the soil as if it’s really the first day of their existence and they’re busy to get on with it. A “breakout” artist shoots to fame “overnight” — except that happens very rarely. The apparent “overnightness” in truth often is years in coming. “A watched pot never boils” — until it does. Never mind the behind-the-scenes activity, the preparation, the earlier drafts, the years of sweat and doubt, the obscurity and perseverance. The American myth of “instant success”, like instant coffee, is a poor substitute for the slow-brewed original.
What then can we make of this pattern and rhythm? If it’s built into the universe as one kind of energy flow, it deserves study. And of course in other guises it has indeed been studied for a long time. We hear of critical mass, we’ve seen plots of the sine wave, the surfer knows how to ride the ocean’s waves, and researchers looking for alternate energy sources attempt to capture the power of the tides and the rise and fall of sea surges.
Magic, like so much else, can often manifest this way: “nothing happens” and “nothing continues to happen”, until something does.
One of the things this tells me, anyway, is that attention, practice, energy can all accumulate. Repetition doesn’t automatically mean wasted energy. We dance because the universe dances — it looks like a primary parameter of the cosmos that merits our respect and imitation.
The child hounds the parent because past experiences suggest he or she will, sooner or late, cave. The clutch of gangly skateboarders hogging that sidewalk or parking lot repeat and repeat and repeat that impossible trick or sweet move, failing and failing and failing — until they succeed.
“Third time’s the charm” goes the proverb — maybe not literally accurate, but a piece of observational wisdom about the value and power of repetition. Even by the third attempt, we often see with many things that we can “improve the move”.
Animals do it. The play that the young of so many species engages in isn’t “for real” — until it is, and all those rehearsed moves, the testing of the limits of flesh and bone and sinew in self and other, the reflexes, the rhythms, the habits of feint and parry, attack and retreat “pay off” in victory or dominance or “simple” survival.
The profligate production of seeds in the plant kingdom mirrors this principle: bombard the Land with possibilities, and some at least will take root and flourish. Jesus offers the Parable of the Sower in the three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8) as an image, as we might choose to read it, of the “spiritual kingdom” of our actions:
And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.
If we’re all “sowers” or planters of seed, initiating actions, putting energy into manifesting what we desire, making choices, responding poorly or well to situations and challenges, growing and dying and being reborn throughout our lives, do we have the ears to hear, and the eyes to see, this profound pattern inherent in the “way of things”? If not, we’re missing out on a powerful strategy for living.
Almost as important, I don’t have to aim big from the very outset (though it’s true that will teach me a whole host of things I can’t learn so quickly any other way). I can start small; I make a habit of saying “thank you” in many ways and mean it, and slowly build a reputation as a respectful and courteous person, setting in motion a vibration that accompanies me wherever I go. Or I don’t. I gather with fellow Druids, or do rituals alone, and the regular practice, daily and at the “Great Eight”, slowly attunes me to a larger harmonic that helps hold me together when chaotic energies flash around me intermittently. A practice builds stamina, even as it plants the seeds for the breakout, the germination, the mastery, the arrival, the highpoint, the culimination.
ADF Druids ask, “Why not excellence?” knowing its achievement may well take place “as fast as a speeding oak!”
And one ideal among Native Americans recognizes the time that full manifestation can take. Wikipedia notes that “Seventh generation stewardship”
urges the current generation of humans to live and work for the benefit of the seventh generation into the future. It originated with … the Great Law of the Iroquois – which holds it appropriate to think seven generations ahead (about 140 years into the future) and decide whether the decisions they make today would benefit their children seven generations into the future. It is frequently associated with the modern, popular concept of environmental stewardship or ‘sustainability’ but it is much broader in context … [applicable] in all our deliberations …
Wisdom, insight — these too seem to follow the same rhythm, accumulating like water in a well, until they fill and we can draw on them.
As a Druid I try to have the sense to apprentice myself to the living world. As the late U K LeGuin writes in A Wizard of Earthsea of her main character, Ged:
From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later years he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from the eyes of animals, the flight of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.
O maple I transplanted four days ago, from where you were poking through the hedge, hungry for light, I’m trying to listen.
If we wish to align these hours with the Four Directions, one possible table could work out like this:
Pylgeint and Bore, late night to mid-morning — East
Anterth and Nawn, mid-morning to mid-afternoon — South
Echwydd and Hwyr, mid-afternoon to evening — West
Ucher and Dewaint, early to late night — North
Here each pair of tides is a time of transition with ever-shifting energies, as the flow created by the “daily generator” of our diurnal cycle moves from the North around the compass and back again.
Or to give a specific example, say it’s 8:00 in the morning. That puts us in the second part of Bore (the Welsh word for “morning”, as in bore da “good morning”), and nearing the transition to South, as daylight continues to grow. This time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, Bore and the Solstice link closely, as light and heat wax and increase day by day, and also during each day. Each day shows in miniature the cycle of the year, with light growing and lessening, dark growing and lessening.
What possible uses of this naming and patterning come to mind?
Well, if I’m awake, a prayer or charm I recite for each of the eight tides, or of the four pairs of them, as I become aware of them. They offer a chance to lift me out of narrow concerns into larger ones. They are a freedom I can give to myself.
Acknowledging the dominant direction and tide at the time of any significant action I (or others) undertake.
Meditating on the shifting force of each direction on each tide as the light and dark ebb and flow, alternating through the year.
Mapping on my own locale the activity and impact of actions taken during the different tides, of weather (especially as the planetary and local climate shifts and heats up), bird and animal and plant life, my own energy and awareness, and so on. To give one obvious example, this time of year our back yard doesn’t receive direct sunlight until well into Bore. Our house lies north-south, with much of the backyard in shadow by late afternoon. What can it teach me, this “Shadow of the West”? An opportunity the land where I live offers me.
Devising personal ritual and dedicating my awareness according to the tides of the days. This can shift daily, or seasonally, as I desire and need. The tides give me a focus for meditation, and a chosen context or “energy border” for my work with the Ovate grade.
As I finish up this post, I’ve entered Nawn, 12:00 to 3:00 pm. Though it’s a rainy day, and I can celebrate the coming of water to plants and trees, keeping the Northeastern U.S. its habitual and lovely green, and replenishing water tables, I can also sense the waxing sun behind the clouds. Delighting in the enchantment of the apparent world, and watching as that enchantment fades, as OBOD ritual frequently proclaims, are twin kinds of awareness that deserve exploration and cultivation.
“When I call your name”, says Professor McGonagall in the first Harry Potter film, “you will come forth. I shall place the sorting hat on your head, and you will be sorted into your Houses”.
How many of us have heard others (or ourselves) say at some point, “I hate labels!”
Well and good. We’ve all been mislabelled throughout our lives, so it’s not surprising we’ve come to dislike careless and indifferent labels, and especially loathe the unfair or cruel ones that stick like chewing gum to our heels. What we hate, I’m asserting here, are inaccuratelabels. But we long for recognition or acknowledgment of our true qualities. We want to be known. To be called — labelled — as friend, beloved, loyal, true — few of us indeed would refuse these labels.
Why then does Hogwarts sort students into Houses from the outset of their time in Hogwarts? Isn’t that the worst kind of labelling — setting up and closing off expectations that may harm the still-emerging personality and talents of each young student?
Let’s examine the scene.
First, the students have been chosen to attend the School. It’s certainly possible, I suppose, that a student could refuse to attend for any number of reasons. (Doubtless someone deep into Potter lore can tell me if I’m misconstruing this particular point in some way.) But I do know that when Wise Ones call us to accept a kind of destiny like this, it often opens up a corresponding inner recognition in us that our time has come. (Or if it doesn’t, it’s probably not yet our time after all.)
Second, McGonagall calls each name. Insofar as our names represent us (and some choose a Craft or magical name for just such reasons), we face an accurate or honest recognition of who we are, and who we can become. Called by name, we emerge from a group and are assessed individually. “You will come forth” — the real you. Our specific and unique potentials are each recognized.
Third, it’s neither a casual acquaintance nor a cruel bully labelling us, but the Sorting Hat, an intelligence and insight above our own — literally, in the case of the Hat resting on top of each student’s head. (Note for a moment how McGonagall’s hat is virtually identical in its shape and crook, though not color, to the Sorting Hat.)
Fourth, no student — or anyone else assembled — questions the Hat’s judgment (though Harry whispers the fervent request “Not Slytherin!” — which the Hat, after assessing him carefully, does honor). We retain our individual choice. Most of the new students look pleased at the Hat’s judgment.
An accurate assessment of our talents and potentials means we can deepen what we do well, while borrowing some of the confidence and insight and skill we’ve built up and already possess to tackle new areas and abilities. As a shy and bookish adolescent, I continually faced challenges to speak up, to express myself, to “not hide my light under a bushel”, to practice confidence around others until I both increased my store of it, and could also mock it up and enter situations where I might never have ventured before.
Or to play with words for a moment, one possible anagram of the name Hogwarts seems helpful (it’s easy to get caught up in such things and push them beyond their utility): “as growth”. Hogwarts is a metaphor, an image or icon or analogy of life-as-growth. It’s not the same thing, but an image of the same, a representation or likeness.
As George Bernard Shaw puts it,
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy (Dedication, Man and Superman, 1903).
Each of the four Houses corresponds in Rowlings’ universe to one of the classical elements. Gryffindor is Fire, the will, the self that chooses, focuses energy, manifests. The Sorting Hat, recognizing and representing our True Will, and serving as its mouthpiece in the sorting ceremony of Rowlings’ novels, knows us truly for what we are, and for what we may become.
Inspiration, the awen of the Bard, isn’t all or nothing. Sometimes you get one corner, a kind of foothold, a vantage point, enough to see more, to see a whole landscape through a window just before the window closes.
The house of fire —
no closed doors —
only porches and windows
opening onto flame.
A few notes for other stanzas, and that was it. But sometimes a fragment is enough. You can jump-start with it, from it, months afterward.
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Sometimes, likewise, if we’re open and available, the trees really do tell us what we need.
I help oak, and oak helps me —
we’ll join to hold the energy.
This little rhyme came to me while we meditated at the foot of an oak — part of our ritual prep for the main ley-line rite at MAGUS ’18 last weekend. As much as the oak ogham stave in my hand, the rhyme helped me focus during the ritual. Our outer duir oak ring was charged with gathering and holding the energy the ritual would generate, until the moment our ring moved to the center altar and charged the stones waiting there. One fellow outer-ring participant said it felt at first like a very small pup trying to corral a very large beach ball. But then we joined together to “become one big-ass dog that could tackle it”.
Not surprisingly, the carefully-planned ritual generated a lot of power. I know I can often be slow in picking up on magical energies flowing around me. “Obtuse” wouldn’t be too harsh a word, much of the time. So I knew I had to deal with doubts about my usefulfulness as well as concerns about my vulnerability.
Now it’s easy to rationalize almost all magic. I do it myself, and I often do it well. But rather than debating whether it — or any other experience — is “real” or “genuine”, I can opt to apply different criteria and free myself for more useful tasks. A good logic-fest can be fun at times, but it’s often a tail-chasing exercise. Whether we’re falling in love, writing a song, painting, gardening, caring for others, or working with a dream journal, logic typically isn’t the first or the best tool to employ. A chisel, sandpaper, a potter’s wheel — all produce markedly different effects. They’re so notinterchangeable!
Philip Carr-Gomm addresses the issue in his characteristically understated way. In this short Youtube clip he proposes something other than logic for looking at and assessing experience:
Rather than obsessing over whether an experience is true or genuine, I can contemplate its effect on me and my life. Have I benefited from the experience? While not all experiences are easy or painless, is the insight, perspective or compassion for others than I have gained worth it? “Is the juice worth the squeeze?”
Sometimes, a full answer to those questions may not come for months or years. And that’s OK. By themselves, experiences can resemble an afternoon at an amusement park. Pay your money, get your experiences. But their long-term effect and value is a more helpful measure of their worth.
After a hard winter in much of the U.S., a vigorous flourish of Spring greeted participants of MAGUS 2018 arriving in south-central Pennsylvania at Four Quarters Sanctuary. Blessings of Beltane!
photo courtesy Srinivas Anand
photo courtesy Fae Hanks
photo courtesy Srinivas Anand
EMBODYING SACRED TIME and SPACE
The 2018 Gathering theme “Sacred Time, Sacred Space” emerged in a closely-linked series of workshops preparing the ground for the main ritual of the Gathering.
The saying “If you build it, they will come” has now passed into common lore, but a variation of it is also beautifully true: “If they come, you can build it.” Plan thoroughly, call the Tribe, put your heart into it all, and group magic happens with each person contributing. This holds true each summer for Four Quarters’ “Stones Rising” festival, when another stone is erected in the Stone Circle using neolithic methods, sweat and determination. And it certainly held true this Beltane.
View of a portion of the Stone Circle. Photo courtesy Anna Oakflower.
THURSDAY
After an 12-hour drive from Vermont to Pennsylvania, broken by a stop-over in Binghamton Wednesday night at the house of an OBOD friend also attending the Gathering, we arrived in time to settle into tent and bunkhouse, and attend the first workshop Thursday afternoon, “Envisioning the Future of American Druidry”.
Dana led us to examine what, after all, we do as Druids in the 21st century in this land. What matters to us? What tasks come to our hands as a result of being alive now and here, rather than at any other time and place? How do we acknowledge and interact with a sacred landscape?
After opening ritual later that evening, several of us gathered briefly in the dining pavilion with seven Bards asking for group initiation the next morning, in order to answer questions and attend to final details.
I was privileged once again to participate as a initiation celebrant. As I’ve written elsewhere, this is joyful service. As we perform the ritual of initiation, we strengthen the bonds with our community, we open the circle of Druidry to another person who wishes to stand with us, and we renew our own commitment.
“We swear”, go the ritual words,
by peace and love to stand,
heart to heart and hand in hand.
Mark, O Spirit, and hear us now,
confirming this, our sacred vow.
FRIDAY
The morning dawned warm and mostly sunny, and celebrants welcomed new Bards one by one in the Stone Circle, a powerful setting for initiation. Recognize and invite the ancestors over time, and not surprisingly you begin to pay attention to them more carefully, and sense their presence.
wood pillar, northeast quarter of Stone Circle.
WIth the blessings and active involvement of Four Quarters staff, each MAGUS attendee found a stone for the main ritual, and many attended Forest’s Stone Carving workshop Friday afternoon to incise on them one of four ogham of the sacred trees we were working with in preparation for the ritual — birch, white pine, elder and oak.
Forest’s Stone Carving workshop. Photo courtesy Patricia Woodruff.
After dinner Friday evening came the workshop “Chanting for Sacred Time and Space”, with Tom and Loam helping us to tune to the land and to each other with group songs and melodies.
Later, several of us gathered by Sideling Creek for the night-time Ovate initiations. A few brief spatters of rain refreshed rather than soaked us. Peepers and owls sang the initiates through the rite.
The Fire Circle that evening was livelier than Thursday’s. I longed to stay, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open for more than another half hour, so voices and drums and laughter saw me off to bed.
Photo courtesy Crystal Collins.
Forest models a t-shirt. Photo courtesy Patricia Woodruff.
SATURDAY
Cat’s morning workshop, “Terra Incognita: Mapping the Sacred”, helped expand our sense of maps and spaces, and led us deeper into the energy ley lines can carry.
Cat’s workshop on mapping the Sacred. Photo courtesy Patricia Woodruff.
That afternoon, in “Creating an American Ley Line Network”, Dana focused us further, letting us draw an ogham stave with one of the four tree ogham. Now grouped with the others who drew the same staves, together with our group leaders we practiced chanting galdr, the tree/ogham name, and meditated to strengthen our connection to our specific tree.
MAIN RITUAL
Preparing the Main Ritual space. Photo courtesy Dana Driscoll.
By 4:30 pm Saturday we’d assembled in the Stone Circle, transformed earlier in the day by the ritual team who marked out the sacred space. Now it was sparking with energy from the bright yellow cornmeal rangoli. [For a picture of the rangoli at ECG 2017, go here, and scroll down to the ninth image.]
Participants each brought their stones to lay in the center of the ritual circle, ready for charging in the powerful galdr ritual that followed.
Below, Sue and I stand together briefly after ritual and our group’s grounding session, the ogham duir “oak” in white on our foreheads.
Photo courtesy Anna Oakflower.
Careful attention by the ritual leaders kept us all grounded and centered, though you can see we still look a little dazed. The Four Quarters kitchen staff made sure we had a meat option at dinner a quarter hour later, to help us earth any remaining energy.
EISTEDDFOD
And of course no Druid Gathering is complete without the Bardic arts of music, poetry, drama, etc. This year MAGUS added a visual arts eisteddfod to celebrate a wider array of skill. Below, the eisteddfod continues in spite of rain, indoors in the dining pavilion.
Photo courtesy Patricia Woodruff.
SUNDAY
Linked now by magical intention and the physical key of a sacred rock each will take home, we closed the weekend in a gentle rain with our final ritual. An extended acknowledgment of each person who had contributed to the weekend helped ground us and speak our gratitude as the MAGUS team recognized workshop leaders, ritualists, support staff, organizers and Four Quarters staff.
We said our goodbyes, and departed. I know I will return, in the meantime “singing up the ley lines”, as the verse of one of our chants reminds us to do. I whisper the words as we drive home in the spring rain.
As I wrote for MAGUS ’17,
How to convey the blend of the speaking land, the personal and the tribal at such Gatherings?! You come as someone new to Paganism, or to OBOD more specifically. Or you come knowing you’ll reunite with your people once more, across the miles. If we saw each other every day, we might begin to forget the human and spiritual wealth that surrounds us. In ritual, in conversations in the dining pavilion, or over coffee during breaks, we’re reminded that we’re never alone, no matter how solitary we may live the rest of the year. Inner connection exists over any distance.
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[For those interested in further details and the perspective of one of the principal Gathering ritual organizers and leaders, here’s the most recent of Dana’s posts on “An American Ley Line Network: A Ritual Of Creation”.]
For practice with this exercise, I chose my grandfather’s middle name, William. He died more than twenty years before I was born. We share the same first name — when I was young, I heard people talking about him using “my” name. I first saw a picture of him when I was 10 years old. (I always wondered why my grandmother had so few family pictures in general — maybe memory was painful enough without reminders. He died when she was still in her thirties, left to raise two children through the Depression.)
What then can we make of this pattern and rhythm? If it’s built into the universe as one kind of energy flow, it deserves study. And of course in other guises it has indeed been studied for a long time. We hear of critical mass, we’ve seen plots of the sine wave, the surfer knows how to ride the ocean’s waves, and researchers looking for alternate energy sources attempt to capture the power of the tides and the rise and fall of sea surges.
A Druid Way 
