When I lived and worked in Japan in the 90s, I became familiar with a major Japanese holiday period called Ōgon Shūkan or Golden Week. It’s actually a cluster of holidays from late April through the first week in May, and a popular time for travel. Many people have paid leave, and many companies shut down completely as employees depart.
Here in Vermont the pollen has been so heavy that this last week of unusually warm weather has felt like our own Golden Week. Our car lay under a dusting of it this morning.
Pollen on our car windshield and hood this a.m.
What’s your earth doing locally? How do you already find yourself celebrating it, honoring it, living in it? How can you extend that, personalize it, make it more conscious?
2 — 750
A month ago I recently posted for the 750th time here at A Druid Way. The month-long interlude between then and now has been a break I needed. Not sure I can sustain this blog to 1000 posts, but there’s a completeness in such a goal far beyond anything I envisioned when I launched this blog a decade ago. Your comments and encouragement continue to matter!
3 — A REVIEW in the WORKS
Start work on one review, I find, and other books arrive, looking for their turn.
I’m working on a review of Paul Cudby’s The Shaken Path: A Christian Priest’s Exploration of Modern Pagan Belief and Practice, published in 2017 and still worth reflecting on. Balanced, thoughtful — a good model for future writers, and a book to hand Christian friends and family.
And just today New World Witchery (Llewellyn, 2021) materialized in the mail, a response to a summons as magical as any a mage performs. The thick, juicy volume now sits on my desk, richly beguiling.
Thumb ready to open the book!
4 — DEALING with our “What About’s?”
Often new Druids are beset with questions. The wide world! Here, the meadows open, glorious with leafing things, beasts gazing just beyond the rise, and birds calling. Or there, the forest path beckons, a mysterious fresh scent drawing you on. Or on the other side, wilderness, desert, or seashore. Each one calls with a yearning that matches our own.
Recently on a Druid forum I offered what I’ve learned over time, that’s become a kind of five-point Druid mantra for me. First, go with what works. Second, experiment as you are guided. Third, learn from every source that runs away slower than you can follow. Fourth, tune to the Awen. Fifth, trust that love will guide you from star to star.
5 — BELTANE, and SOLSTICE
Because we’re about three weeks after Beltane, its energies swirling around us, and a month out from Solstice. Always each holy day rouses me from whatever I’ve been doing and says “Pay attention!”
Recently there was a heartfelt inquiry on a Druid forum asking for suggestions for adapting to a new home in an unfamiliar region. We all face this challenge in some form, either connecting to a landscape with ancestral presences, or finding our way in a new place. And how many times must our ancestors also have faced a similar experience?
Other helpful responses from commenters included making offerings, walking the land, asking for guidance, and — because Kris Hughes’ marvelous new book is still buzzing in my awareness — here’s this edited version of my response.
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My instinct is to begin with individuals, along the lines some others have described. That particular tree, this stone, that stream, and so on. Often they can be an individual welcome-point. (Not all trees pay attention equally, at least where I live. Some don’t talk as much, either, while some talk a lot.)
Kris Hughes writes wonderfully about this in his latest book, Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration:
“I recall quite vividly a workshop where I was given the task to go and speak to a tree and glean any wisdom from it or anything indicative of communication. I failed miserably … How could I be a Pagan if I couldn’t speak to trees?”
“It took one sentence from someone completely unrelated to trees or Paganism to transform the way I perceived communication. It was a Welsh documentary about Bardism, and within it, one of the interviewees casually said that regardless of how different we may perceive ourselves to be from any other life form, we all have one thing in common: we all sing the song of Awen. The Awen’s music is the same in everyone and everything, it is the lyrics that differ according to one’s experience. The resulting song is unique, and it is the tool by which the Awen and, in turn, the universe experiences itself through the countless windows of expression. So I took to thinking that if I contain the music of Awen, then so would that rowan tree I was trying desperately to communicate with. The lyrics, of course, would be different, mine based on the fact that I am a human being … But how on earth would I hear her song?”
“It still didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I needed to do something that would bridge that logical side of my mind with the subtle, invisible spectrum. And the answer to that was to sing” (pgs. 241-242).
So I sing to the trees and the stones, the waters and the land.
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Greetings to a first-time visitor from the Dominican Republic. (I find the flag counter app in the sidebar a great reminder every time I see it that Druidry and an interest in understanding and honoring and celebrating our home are worldwide.)
There’s been a lot of talk in recent decades about choice, and about freedom. Do we know what these things are, or how to perceive them? And if we know and perceive them, what do we do with them? What will we create?
Spring Dreaming … 15 Mar 2021
“As this circle is cast, the enchantment of the apparent world subsides”, says the first part of standard OBOD ritual. These are the words we hear at the same time we see — feel — hear — another Druid physically creating a ritual circle. The ritualist’s circular movement achieves this, along with any intention that person has as they cast the circle. The ritualist doesn’t stand alone, but enjoys the help of anyone else participating, with or without skin on. Visualizing, intending, choosing, celebrating, focusing energy, inviting the circle to manifest. Seeing and sensing it do so.
Any participants in the ritual are already standing in a circle before they hear the words — a kind of reversal of the usual affirmation: as below, so above. The physical reality of people gathered at the event precedes the circle that will be completed inwardly. You might see this as a Druid version of “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”. Or in fact is this too part of the enchantment — that we may confuse outer and inner, or think that one “precedes” and the other “follows”? Are they, or can they be, facets of the same thing, standing outside time even as they manifest within it?
Each person participating may also hear and experience the “subsiding of the apparent world” differently: as a gentle suggestion, or as a simple statement of fact. Or maybe it’s a ritual assumption, something “you do during ritual”. Or perhaps it’s “just words, like all the rest of the ritual”, a kind of communal game or sport or play: ritual theater. Or it’s an observation about transformation and magic. Each of us inhabits multiple apparent worlds already. Literally, worlds that appear to us, that invite or seduce or beguile or convince us in turn, that lure us with promise of their own particular enchantments. If they appear, they also may disappear. Ritual invites us into this possibility of choice and transformation, suggesting we may choose and create more consciously and intentionally. (We may just need to choose an appropriate world, rather than insist on forcing one that may not be the best stage for manifesting a particular choice.)
Which worlds deserve my attention? Which one(s) am I in at the present moment? Can I achieve my purposes best by focusing on this particular world, or are there others where I may be freer to act and to fulfill my intentions more joyously? Does one need to recede so I can better focus on others?
“Come! Be a physical body, experience touch and time, change and pleasure, death and birth, loss and love,” one world invites us. “Ah! Wear a body of light, and move across the cosmos to serve where you are needed”, sings another world. “Won’t you join others in their quest to X?” whispers a third.
Or if this is the only world there is, then when the “apparent world” fades, what’s left? Where am I? Do I jump into “ritual vertigo” if I let go of this world? Is ritual in fact “safe”? And so I enter yet another world with its own answers to such questions, if I choose to accept them.
One link, or common thread, or clue, or all three at once and more besides, for me anyway, rests in the awen. As I’ve written elsewhere on this blog, this is the longest practice I’ve kept up, to enter the world of primordial sound and creativity.
As with most Druid practices, this isn’t one that requires me to believe anything, but simply do something. Over time I may well come to believe certain things, much as someone who has seen the sun rise in the east for decades might begin to be confident it will to do so again tomorrow. I can’t “prove” it, but proof just isn’t all that interesting to me anymore. There are much better things to focus on, more interesting and deserving worlds to choose.
In his new book Cerridwen: Celtic Goddess of Inspiration, Kristoffer Hughes notes that when we enter this soundscape and world of awen, “several things will happen on a number of levels. On a physiological level, something particularly magical happens with the systems of your body. Song and singing profoundly affects almost all of our senses, and the vibratory quality of the sound is particularly affecting, having direct action on the cells of your body…” (pg. 243). He goes on to explore other effects of awen as a practice, on other levels, as a way to communicate with life and lives. Even a little singing or chanting can produce results.
I return yet again to an observation by Philip Carr-Gomm which strikes me as uncommon good sense in these challenging times:
Try opening to Awen not when it’s easy, but when it’s difficult: not when you can be still and nothing is disturbing you, but when there’s chaos around you, and life is far from easy. See if you can find Awen in those moments. It’s harder, much harder, but when you do, it’s like walking through a doorway in a grimy city street to discover a secret garden that has always been there – quiet and tranquil, an oasis of calm and beauty. One way to do this, is just to tell yourself gently “Stop!” Life can be so demanding, so entrancing, that it carries us away, and we get pulled off-centre. If we tell ourselves to stop for a moment, this gives us the opportunity to stop identifying with the drama around us, and to come back to a sense of ourselves, of the innate stillness within our being. And then, sometimes, we are rewarded with Awen at precisely this moment.
Rather than judging one world as “good” and another as “bad”, I can simply note if I’m pulled off-center while I’m in it. (Sometimes the distraction is the point!) If you’re like me, you may only realize this after the fact. Then I ask if that’s what I want. If I’m pulled away from myself, and if I’ve identified with the drama around me, rather than with what I am, I can test a world further: can I act freely and creatively as the presence of awen in this moment? The awen I sing, from the deep I bring it, sings Taliesin. Can I do that right now? Can I come back to a sense of myself and act in my best interests?
If I can, the way of awen is a good way for me. And if I can’t? Then the way of awen might be a good way for me …
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This post has offered a number of seeds for contemplation and practice. As we near the equinox, a time of balance, they can give us fruitful ways to manifest and mirror what the seasons are doing around us.
Part 2 — because how can a book of lore that also offers a path of initiation and suggestions for a regular practice be properly reviewed in a single take?
Kristoffer Hughes has helpfully made Youtube recordings of some of the Welsh that appears in this book, because the sound of the language is one approach among others to entering into sacred space with the goddess. As of today, there are four videos on his Youtube channel: “Ritual to meet Cerridwen”, “Welsh ritual phrases”, “Guide to Welsh pronunciation”, and “Cerridwen: glossary of words”.
The dedication page is brief: I Cerridwen — Mam yr Awen: “To Cerridwen — Mother of Awen”. And because she is Mother, Kris reminds us, we are Plant Cerridwen — the children of Cerridwen.
All of us, whether we’re Welsh or not? Of course. But a caveat … As Kris notes in the opening paragraphs of his first chapter, “The Quest for Cerridwen”:
The current New Age trend of spiritual commercialism has dissected the mysteries to their component parts … This has profoundly affected our relationship with the mysteries … The permanent individuation of the gods to the exclusion of the landscape in which they exist does them a disservice, for the landscape inspires and breathes life into the divine … (pgs. 1-2).
Yes, those wishing to enter relationship with Cerridwen and gain initiatory wisdom and insight from her mysteries can do so anywhere. No, she is not “a universal goddess, never mind what we call her”. So if we wish to avoid “damage to an archetype” as Kris calls it, a real possibility if we wield our indifference like a blunt instrument, and thereby miss much that Cerridwen asks of us and offers in return, there are several things we can put into practice. One that should come as no surprise is observance of the Wheel of the Year.
Such observance “causes us to stop, take heed, and observe a world that we believe we are familiar with. To those who fully engage, they begin to sense more to the world than first meets the eye” (pg. 202). The “apparent world fades”, as OBOD standard ritual reminds us — a world largely created by the inner chatter that, unchecked, fills our waking hours. “To sense the subtle and perceive the space between spaces that connects all beings, we must learn to be still and identify that space within our own beings. In my tradition we have a name for this process: we call it finding one’s taw” (pg. 202).
In a section titled “Appropriate Appropriation”, Kris addresses such concerns head on:
There is a strong possibility that you, reading this book right now, may not be Welsh or even have a connection to Wales. But somehow, by some means, you have found your way to reading this particular book. Cerridwen has found a way to seed within you the spark of Awen. You are the sum totality of all things that went before you, including the magic of the Welsh bardic tradition, which is held somewhere deep in the recesses of our species memory. By all means, learn a little Welsh or at least strive to understand the complexities of the history that brought Cerridwen into the light of twenty-first century Paganism. Know that you are equally expressive of the Plant Cerridwen and have as much right to claim that title as any Welsh person.
Whilst it is important to develop honest, nonappropriative practise, do not ever think that you don’t have the right to claim Cerridwen as a goddess that is valid for you … she is more alive today than she has been for the last four hundred years (pg. 261).
Kris then offers 13 excellent suggestions for ways to develop a non-appropriative practice that will not cramp anyone’s style. He also states clearly that any limitations we face as modern people can serve as opportunities for creative work-arounds:
I cannot see Cerridwen physically–she does not possess a carbon based physical body–so the manner by which I develop my relationship with her must somehow address these limitations. Nothing beats heading over to Bala for an afternoon spent at her lake, for there is a sense there that is different to anywhere else on earth–there is a tangibility to her presence in that location, as if the landscape holds a different kind of lyric. However, Bala is just over an hour from my home, and my schedule does not permit me the luxury of going there every day. Therefore I have re-created a sense of what I feel at Bala at home, and it is centred around my altar … (pgs. 264-5).
This book is rich in suggestion and opportunity, with keys Kris draws from personal experience. Visualization proves difficult for many, and Kris supplies a most helpful tool in the form of sigils — several appear throughout the text. As he notes, “… application of the magic will invariably have a physical aspect to it” (pg. 204). Just like humans need to ground and center, magic needs that grounding too, or it remains a mental head-trip the other parts of ourselves never take.
It is perhaps inevitable that some readers will merely skim the book and zero in on the section “Stirring the Cauldron”, with its wealth of suggestions for practice. But practice often runs dry without roots, which the text amply supplies, and a practice unmoored in understanding and respect for a tradition will soon leave the restless seeker wandering off to the next book. The fulfillment of anything that worthwhile books promise can only come from the same thing such books usually counsel us to remember and put into practice — full immersion.
For us to practice such immersion, the Welsh traditions of song and awen, poetry and inspiration, silence and speech have literal significance and application:
The Awen is active, and to sense its blowing through us, we must actively vocalise and energetically move into its power. We live on a unique world, a place where expression is facilitated by the atmosphere that surrounds and imbibes us. Breath is the bridge between the density of the physical and the lightness of spirit (pg. 246).
Quick take: In his latest book, Hughes gifts us with a marvelous resource. Drawing on native Welsh sources — his first language, his place of residence, his own spiritual practice, and the central Celtic myth of several Druid orders — he writes with passion and profound insight.
In-depth Take: Unlike my other book reviews, this one will have several parts, as I begin to work with and through the rich material Kris provides here and to offer what can only be provisional insights. That is as it should be.
A personal note: I’ve met Kris several times at Gatherings in the States, where he was the special guest and main speaker. Most recently, at East Coast Gathering 2018, he gave a Tarot workshop, with this book already very much on his mind — so much so, that when he spoke briefly but movingly of awen and Cerridwen, several of us begged for him to say more. “That’s another workshop”, he replied. “And another book — this one”, he might have added.
Let’s start with the cover: we see only part of Cerridwen’s face — fitting for a goddess of mystery and initiation. Whatever your stance toward the divine, Kris notes in the introduction,
“This book does not expect you to conform to the manner by which I work with and experience deity. There are a number of ways that people may develop relationship with what some may refer to as god or goddess, and neither is right or wrong. In that spirit, I do not expect you, the reader, to even be a theist, or an individual that works with deity. Cerridwen is flexible enough to be a psychological component to those who may be atheistic or nontheists. The rise of a figure to the status of deity is a process referred to as apotheosis, and this is important, for often the main complaint and criticism of modern-day Pagan practitioners is that they connect to and are often devoted to deities that may not ever have been identified as such in the past. I shall delve deeper into the function of apotheosis in the coming chapters” (pg. xix).
This richness of perspective and detail, drawn from personal experiences which Kris shares throughout, makes the book both a wisdom-meditation and a guide. Often in Druid books we get the distillation of insight, but without the personal component that lets us in sympathetically, imaginatively, emotionally. And “letting ourselves in” — in this case, into relationship with Cerridwen and similar deified energies and persons — is what this book accomplishes so well.
“The journey into relationship with Cerridwen and her myth is not safe — how can it be? For in so doing, one potentially positions oneself at the edge of the cauldron of inspiration and transformation. Your life may never be the same again” (pg. 27).
Of course many books promise much — good marketing is a part of how they sell, after all. But the substance that underlies any promise is where Kris prefers to focus. Issues of cultural heritage, appropriation and authenticity still loom large for much of the Pagan world. Ideally, such grappling will eventually lead to greater clarity and integrity.
Kris notes:
“The difficulties that people face when attempting to move into relationship with mythologies, particularly those that they may be culturally removed from, is the perception that the very words on paper contain the mystery. Modernity has preserved the words themselves whilst simultaneously causing many to consider that only the words themselves matter, and the eye is taken away from the vast space between the lines — wherein lies the magic” (pg. 16).
One key to crossing the river gorges and chasms along our paths is finding useful bridges. Not everything that “takes us across” leaves us where we want or need to be. Kris notes:
“The promise of sweet mystery may well turn sour during one’s exploration, particularly if one cannot make the content applicable in practice … The Pagan traditions work best when orthodoxy, something one believes in, is combined with orthopraxy, something that one does. This book will provide keys to effective and essential practice in order to transform myths from static stories to elements of spiritual practice, illumination and inspiration” (pgs. 13-14).
This core insight is a key that anyone can use, with any mythology — that is, with any story that makes sense of the cosmos. If we love and cherish the story, how do we light it up with life and fire? (That’s what can happen, what Kris wants to help happen for us, when we’re in relationship with a deity.) Christianity excels in orthodoxy, in instructing its communities of believers about what to believe, to the point where recitations of creeds have become the primary identifying feature of different denominations. What Christianity often lacks, and what has led people to find instruction elsewhere, are effective practices that make its teachings something one can actually begin to embody concretely, hour to hour, outside of “church”.
Do people nowadays “know Christians by their love”, as the Christian song lyrics say? It remains an open question. Likewise, do we recognize Druids by a characteristic wisdom and inspiration?
This morning, a post on a constructed language forum I frequent asked how one might go about expressing what we mean by “rights” in English. There’s a lot of talk these days about rights and freedoms, but much less about what these things are. Whenever we use unexamined words in such prominent ways, it pays to take a look at what we’re talking about. We often use words like “rights” and “freedom” to mean something we presume is self-evident, but it seems that much of our disagreement arises because they actually don’t mean the same thing to everyone.
Depending on the era and the culture, rights are given to us by gods or culture heroes; or they’re baked into The Mix from the outset; or they’re balanced — and dependent on — our fulfillment of obligations that are paired with each right we desire; or they’re human creations, meaning they’re entirely under our control. When I look at my own understandings, I see flavors of each of these perspectives. No wonder we’re struggling. (If you’ve figured it out, are you running for office? Or do you have a workshop we can attend for more money than we make in a month?)
If you see rights as something given, they’re not up for revision. But if you think we humans created them, you’re more inclined to tinker, and to recreate them to fit your current vision.
In older cultures like that of Vedic India, the cosmic order or rta is “the principle of natural order which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it”. Rta is something to find out, to discover, to align with. It can’t be legislated into or out of existence. Regardless of human law and laws which may come to overlay it, it persists as a foundation — or the foundation — for how the universe works. It takes in physics as well as morality. We can’t cancel gravity, in spite of its behavior. There may be comparable things at work within humans that we’ve overlooked.
There’s a certain Druidic sympathy for much of this view. The natural world embodies a significant expression of the harmony we aspire to. We choose nature as one of our teachers, birds and beasts and trees as fellow-travelers with us, each possessed of their own truths and gifts. Nature, we’re still learning, offers healing and wisdom for many of our ills, if we can learn to re-apprentice ourselves to it.
Many people feel that morality is much less (or not at all) “built into things” but instead more or entirely a matter of human choice, consciousness and active shaping. There are physical laws, but human society is a created thing, a part of human culture. That means, or should mean, that we can make it whatever we want it to be. Any injustice is a human choice, therefore, as are the inequalities of our social order. If we made them, the thinking goes, we can change and improve them. Resist such an obvious good, goes the thinking, and you’re just on the wrong side of history. You’re selfish, wrong, null and void, past your expiration date, hateful and evil, and above all you deserve to be outed and stopped.
One of the ancient insights of established religions is that there is a force, principle, entity, counter-balance — something or Someone, depending on your predilection to personify — that often causes our best-laid plans to go off the rails, turn awry, flounder and founder and crash and burn. Raven, Loki, Trickster, that strange neighbor — take your pick. We readily find reasons to blame some Other for mucking things up, not ourselves. But many ancient wisdoms would point us to tendencies within each of us that we need to face and work with. Gods know we’ve certainly all had long enough to get it right.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings, says Cassius in Julius Caesar. What’s so wonderful about Cassius’ words is that they are both beautifully true in general and evilly true in particular. We want to revolt, but against whom?
“A country without justice is a country that calls for a revolt …” Justice for who? How?
It’s certainly an accurate diagnosis that we often and too readily yield up our sovereignty to others — gods, partners, friends, corporations, the majority, the Party, The Man, the Patriarchy, the evil Leftists/Rightists/Centrists, etc. — and then we complain when they act in their own interests, and make us suffer, whether intentionally or not. We all repeatedly make ourselves “underlings” in amazingly short-sighted ways, then struggle long and bitterly to reclaim our power. Along the way, it seems we have to reinvent the wheel each time, making enough mistakes that at least half the time we’re Part of The Problem we’re trying to fix. Slow learners, every one of us.
Some religions call this tendency in us evil or sin. We might use vocabulary from physics or biology and just as reasonably call it inertia, finiteness, self-preservation and a number of other observable tendencies that carry less judgment with them. As Andy Dufresne says in The Shawshank Redemption, “you get busy living or get busy dying”. How often do we think we know which one we’re doing, only to discover to our dismay that we’ve been doing the opposite. The natural/organic/biologique food we pay more to buy turns out to be slathered in pesticides by an unscrupulous grower. The journalist we abused for critiquing our favorite new governor turns out to have been right after all. Someone oughta pay! Too often, it’s us. And along with us, the planet, the truth and others’ trust.
We’re constantly told to “just be ourselves”. Seems obvious. But do we know how? Why is that apparently so hard? Hundreds of solutions on tap, and not a single one working for everybody. Part of this — THIS — is that we have to find our own path. Though it will — blessedly — intersect many times with the paths of others.
One of the great insights of Druidry is that working with the awen, with our creativity, is a profound and pleasurable way to restore and reclaim much that we have lost. It is not The Sole Solution (though it’s a Soul solution), but it IS a practice that can lead us toward solutions more productively than much else we’ve tried. When we align with Spirit and our own genius and connection to the worlds, beautiful and inspiring things result.
We can always use more of that.
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Welcome to Bangladesh as the newest first-time visitor!
A recent discussion about Atlantis on a Druid forum is the seed for this post. Many commenters reacted negatively to the Romantic image of Atlantean teachers and wise guides fleeing the destruction of the ancient continent and bringing to Europe the outlines of what would become Druidry. Any evidence for such a thing is less than paper-thin, the reasons ran. So why perpetuate a suspect origin-story that distracts from what Druidry is and can accomplish today?
After all, if you’re looking over antiques, or your tastes run to vintage, you may well seek a certificate of authenticity. Value lies in age and pedigree. What it was, who owned it, where it came from, what materials went into it — these things are part and parcel of what it is and means and is worth today. For wines, think terroir, think the year it was bottled. Or if the uniqueness and caché and associations and fame of the original object make replicas a viable trade — and not everything can be replicated — you accept a skillful replica or reproduction as the “next best thing”.
But for anything that can handle daily use right now, you go for practicality. Is it well-made? Will it hold up? Does it do what it says it can do? Is it flexible or sturdy enough to change as needs change?
My suspicion is that some sources and texts in Druidry generally and in the OBOD coursework specifically are often presented not so much to ground Druidry in undeniable fact or documented history, so much as to inspire us with potent images that can help begin to take us to other realms. We may come at first because we “want the facts”, because our modern era has convinced us that data is superior to images and the imagination. We may come to a life philosophy and spirituality like Druidry out of bitter experience with too many “true fragments” of the Grail, too much mythologizing, too much outright deception and abuse by those claiming authority over us and our lives. Our suspicions are trigger-ready, on high alert. To quote The Who song, “We won’t get fooled again”.
But often it seems that Druidry would rather point us toward images to awaken the awen, because inspiration and imagination have often proven to be better problem-solvers than fact alone. After all, we’ve “had the facts” for decades, and look where we are right now in early 2021.
A re-connection to nature is the first key and gift Druidry offers. We re-align our priorities and focus of effort. We listen to where we find ourselves, and find our ways under sun- and moon-light, with birdsong around us, and leaves, land, water and sky among our teachers. Without that, no amount of correct, factual, documentable historical background will help us live in better harmony with the earth, just as no government policy on the right, left or center will do so. Or at least it hasn’t done so thus far, and I’m not holding my breath for it happening any time soon. Only actually living in better harmony with the earth can do that. And that starts with each person who makes a choice today, a choice tomorrow, and so on through our days.
Rather than primarily feeding the intellect about itself, Druidry (mostly) attempts to ignite the emotions and imagination and sing us into better accord with our own worlds.
Normally I tend to breeze past self-help titles. It’s true they’re sometimes spontaneously (or cynically) fashionable, hitting whatever the current zeitgeist is at its geisty-est. For that reason they can be deeply culture-specific. What resonates in the U.S. may not catch on at all in France or Fiji. It’s also true that the slickest of the titles tend towards the simplistic. Anyone who’s read more than one knows they typically repackage highly useful and applicable age-old wisdom under new headings. Not a bad thing at all — sometimes that’s what we need, especially if the old sources fail us, and we’re looking for guidance. Some titles can serve a deep need very well.
We’ve all had the experience of clicking with a mentor or teacher who gets how we think, how we process the world. With a good match-up between student and mentor, we learn far more effectively and enjoyably. Likewise with a bad match, it’s often just hell for all concerned. Witness the Youtube popularity of good explainers and effective speakers. There’s a reason the best TED talks continue to draw big viewership stats.
And we do love our lists and numbers! Consider film and TV titles: 8 Simple Rules (for Dating My Teenage Daughter); Ten Things I Hate about You; Four Weddings and Funeral; Three’s Company; Twelve Angry Men; A Few Good Men; Five Hundred Days of Summer; Sixteen Candles; Thirteen; Seven Brides for Seven Brothers; Seven Samurai; Eight Crazy Nights; the Ocean’s series (11, 12, 13, 8). Some (or many) of these series and films may not have reached your shores, but you get the idea.
So when online I ran across Jed Diamond’s recent book 12 Rules for Good Men, no surprise, the title caught my eye. A disclaimer here — I haven’t read the book. Ultimately the book isn’t directly relevant to this post. Because after reading the summary of Diamond’s rules in reviews of the twelve things men can do to better their lives (you can see a version of the original list here), I wanted to open it up just a little and make it applicable to everyone — because it is. “Rules for Humans”. Actually, I prefer Practices. Rather than “following” or “breaking” a rule, why not pick up a practice? Try it out, see if it helps. If it does, great. If not, move on. (Who ever says that about “rules”?) Let such practices be things to get better at, one of the reasons we practice. We don’t normally “practice” rules.
Consider these Thirteen Practices of a Wise Druid:
Practice #1: Find a group (or more than one!) that supports and challenges you.
Practice #2: Investigate the various boxes you find yourself in. (Some boxes help give us needed structure! Some are too comfortable, or constricting.)
Practice #3: Accept the gifts of gender and sexuality. (We’re still just beginning to discover what these are.)
Practice #4: Embrace your billion-year human history. (Time, often, is on our side.)
Practice #5: Work with your angers and fears to release their insights and wisdom. (We’ve all got these priceless materials ready to hand. Both store tremendous energy.)
Practice #6: Learn the secrets of love. (Dogs and cats are often our best mentors.)
Practice #7: Undergo meaningful rites of passage. (We all have some in place already.)
Practice #8: Celebrate your true nature as a spiritual being. (Again, you already do. Why not enlarge!)
Practice #9: Understand and grow from your childhood. (Two endless sources of discovery: childhood and dream.)
Practice #10: Grow your nurturer to become more of the nurturer you can be. (Earth, our first nurturer …)
Practice #11: Move through and beyond repeating patterns and the blockage, depression and frustration they produce. (Harnessing the cycle.)
Practice #12: Identify your mission and play your part skillfully and joyfully. (We’re all on a mission. Beta-testing!)
What about Practice #13 — the Thirteenth of the post title? That’s doing these things in our own ways, with the stamp of our unique awen on them — the spiritual creativity that’s the birthright we all possess. (Not feeling especially creative? There’s a practice for that!) That spiritual creativity is what makes my path both recognizably human and also distinct from yours. It’s what makes any worthwhile practices part of a life-long path. It’s what makes them practices rather than rules. (Don’t look now, but it’s also what powers the other practices.)
Now the parentheticals after each practice above are my own provisional notes for where I might go next with them. Already I can feel an itch to rephrase them, personalize them, see which practices might be most beneficial — and most enjoyable. (When was the last time I experienced joy?) To see which practices I’m already doing, and how I can fine-tune them and do them more consciously and creatively and intensely. And to surprise myself with ones I can see in new ways.
It’s interesting to me that with the 13th Practice in place, the very center, counting from either direction, is occupied by Practice 7: Undergo Meaningful Rites of Passage.
This is one of the things Druidry puts before us, urging us to find our own ways to bring such practices into our lives. Some of my previous posts, and some of your comments and site searches, touch on the value and the challenge of ritual and rite and ceremony. “Meaningful” is key. Getting together is friends and family is understandably high on so many of our lists. Often the simplest of these things bring the most joy. My wife and I miss sitting around fires with a neighbor couple, something we’ve done year-round for the past several years. Nothing “huge”, but everything deeply human: the elemental presence of fire, the warmth of company and touch, conversation and good food. This is certainly part of our human heritage for tens of thousands of years (if not our “billion-year history”). This rite of passage is to honor the transient, the fleeting beauty and depth of moments that nevertheless make up most of our lives.
Druidry offers a number of forms, and also training in their use as containers for transformation. Why does transformation need to be “contained”? Often because that helps to build up the temperature, pressure, awareness, power, etc. that catalyze the transformation. Think tea kettle, forge, pump, oven, etc. Scatter or disperse these forces, and the transformation fizzles, stalls, loses momentum, dies down, darkens — pick your metaphor.
Another of the things that Druidry puts before us is a sensitivity to rhythms. So among a range of possible containers, I find myself looking at how I could connect each of these 13 practices to the moon. I think of a 13-day practice centered on a new or full moon, where I place attention on these practices, one per day. Or one per month, for a 13-moon lunar year cycle. How might I honor and explore and deepen them, using moon energy?
Same for a solar practice: either daily, with sunrise, midday, sunset and midnight, or maybe twice each year, at the solstices. Or setting aside one day each month, and meditating on these practices for (parts of) 13 hours, one per hour. A spiritual retreat. Keeping a journal of these things would be a priceless key. So would art and music and other craft that might arise from them. If you have friends, or a grove, that might like to join you, that opens up still further possibilities.
With a nor’easter building to the south of New England, and a forecast of several nights with temperatures in the single digits, I turn to Thecu Stormbringer. It feels like a good point to draw from today, because while the solstices (like the weather) are objective physical events anyone in the world can observe, celebrate, or ignore as they choose, one person’s subjective experiences, like mine of a goddess, simply aren’t. Even after you read my posts about Thecu, you may think nothing more about the matter. But enter “solstice” in a search engine and you’ll get a range of sites, some offering “all you need to know”. Inviting as that may sound, I tend to shy away. If I can find out everything I need to know from a website, why pay any attention to the actual event? But “knowing about” and “knowing” are two different things. One’s a head experience, the other we feel in our bones and blood.
One link between the objective and the subjective is awen, inspiration, the flow of spirit, which lets us evoke in others an echo of our original experience. Let the echo be strong enough, let our understanding of this thing called being human, and our skill in working with it, run equal to the task, and music, image, voice, story, object of craft can all serve to unite us in the experience of mystery. An echo from outside awakens a resonance within us.
Many things can open to the awen. Our inner awareness hums in sympathy with it, and the skill of our hands, the deep yearning of our hearts, rise to answer its call. Mystery, unlike mere obfuscation, only deepens as we explore it. We don’t exhaust the “meaning” of a forest by walking through it once or twice, any more than we do with a piece of music. Yes, I can obsess over a person or a fiction or a place, and in doing so lose much of the freshness which was so inviting at the outset that my obsession took shape there. But that doesn’t “use up” all mystery, merely one piece of it I’ve temporarily drunk dry. Time-walkers, awen-workers, we’re given capacities we’ve just begun to explore.
Solstice is one interval when can hear the original, after the echo has drawn us closer. Many religions offer a rule, or rules, for this. Initially the rules seemed designed to help this happen, to catalyze a connection. What I love about Druidry is that it sets out a rhythm, a melody, instead. Hear that Song, feel its rhythms as you move to them, and you’ll begin to follow it back to its source, to yearn for more of the original music.
The late Medievalist, theologian and fantasy author C. S. Lewis delivered a series of radio broadcasts and included a chapter in at least one of his books titled (more or less) “Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe”. At least as interesting and significant, to my mind, is relationship as a clue to the meaning of the universe. Right and wrong ultimately serve relationships, rather than the other way around. The former are means, the latter’s the goal. Hear the Song, learn how to work in increasing harmony with it, and these things start to fall in place with less struggle and effort. What we are relating to, and that music “on the edge of things”, begin to converge. Praise the Mystery!
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“We are wise”, John Beckett writes about the process of discernment,
to focus our attention on our actions rather than on our beliefs. But our actions generate experiences, and in our attempt to interpret and understand our experiences we form beliefs. Our experiences may be so strong or so frequent we are certain our beliefs about them must be right, but if we are honest with ourselves, we can never be completely sure they are right.
But we can ask ourselves if our beliefs work, if they conform to known facts, and if they help us lead better lives. If we can answer yes to these three questions, we can be confident that they are as right as they can be.
So I return to experience, to relationship, to that Song behind all things.
The ogham alphabet, which some contemporary Druids and Pagans use in divination, served writers of early Irish for about half a millennium, starting in the 400s. The writing system consists of mostly straight lines, well-adapted for incising letters on wood and stone, which keep saying “we don’t do curves”.
You can read scholarly speculation about ogham’s origins here on Wikipedia and elsewhere. Accounts in the later medieval Lebor Gabala Erenn (“The Book of the Taking of Ireland”) and the Ogam Tracts variously attribute its origins to the god Ogma/Ogmios and to wise Celtic ancestors.
Among other modern writers, Robert Graves (1895-1985) launched the ogham into the modern world in his book, The White Goddess. Did he know what he was doing? Well, it’s subtitled A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. Depending on your point of view, that’s utterly contradictory, or an image of our common human reality. Things rarely have a single “cause” but instead are part of a web or network of beings and energies, each aspect or person or deity contributing its portion.
Whatever you make of its origins, as a proven divination system the ogham can open doors to insight.
But as a friend of mine recently discovered, it has some practical disadvantages in non-magical use. For one thing, it has no letter to represent p, in part because Irish had no need for a letter to represent this sound, which disappeared over the course of its development. Historical linguistics offers examples: Proto-Indo-European *pater “father” became early Irish *athir; PIE *pisk– “fish” became (modern) Irish iasc, and so on. (With Christianity, Irish came to adopt the Latin alphabet, convenient for all the words beginning with p that it eventually borrowed from Latin.)
I find in these things some helpful reminders. Sometimes what works — works well, works wonderfully — on one level of reality may not fit well or at all on another level. Deploying the gift of a magical alphabet like ogham, I might discover something profound about my purpose in this life, but not be able to write the word “purpose” using that same alphabet.
Though a p is a possible sound, you might say, I may not need it in particular — there are other sounds, a whole spectrum. (Arabic, for instance, doesn’t have a p either, and gets along fine. From the perspective of many other languages, how can English speakers possibly have a language without the “raspy throat sound” in Bach or Ḥanukkah? [That’s a velar or pharygneal fricative, if you want to show off.] English used to have that sound — the evidence lies in all those archaic spellings with -gh- like “night, light, sought, though, bright, laugh” etc. And the way languages keep changing, we could one day have that sound back again.)
I fall into a ready trap if I expect the cosmos to line up obediently according to my partial understanding of it. (Don’t ask me how many times I’ve had to re-learn that lesson. And by the looks of things, I’m not yet done, either.) When I asked Ogma for help with a constructed Celtic language, I attempted to align with an energy connected to language and words. The results reflect both the blessing the god was willing to offer, and also my human effort. Centuries from now, if someone attempts to “explain the origins” of “my” language, could they even come close to the muddy, messy reality of human interest, a spiritual door opening, a gift of inspiration, some experience with Celtic languages, time dedicated to manifestation, and who knows what else in the mix? I may want my magic pure and my life comprehensible, but they refuse to cooperate.
(Because when I pick up what I think is just one thing, a whole universe comes with it … Most days, that’s a good thing.)
You can of course find Proto-Celtic songs and their lyrics on Youtube. (What you do when you find them is another matter.) I say “of course” because if someone’s thought it, it already exists in some form, waiting for manifestation. A magical rule I keep forgetting.
Sometimes we inherit an instrument, sometimes a longing, sometimes an echo of the words or the tune. / Me with a reconstructed Anglo-Saxon hearpa or lyre.
“The three pillars of achievement”, as the old Welsh triad goes: “a daring aim, frequent practice, and plenty of failures”. Can I “fail” in a search? Only if I “give up”. And that’s the past — it says nothing about what I may do in the future. “Work in Progress” is the only t-shirt I need …
Tolkien’s metaphor of the tower — may it live forever! — fits here. It first appears in his seminal 1936 essay Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics*, and he was one of the critics, so he should know. You can sense it already: he was gazing at something others simply did not see. Because of him, now we do. Anyone who works in a tradition (or wants to found one) confronts these challenges.
A man inherited a field in which was an accumulation of old stone, part of an older hall. Of the old stone some had already been used in building the house in which he actually lived, not far from the old house of his fathers. Of the rest he took some and built a tower. But his friends coming perceived at once (without troubling to climb the steps) that these stones had formerly belonged to a more ancient building. So they pushed the tower over, with no little labour, and in order to look for hidden carvings and inscriptions, or to discover whence the man’s distant forefathers had obtained their building material. Some suspecting a deposit of coal under the soil began to dig for it, and forgot even the stones. They all said: ‘This tower is most interesting.’ But they also said (after pushing it over): ‘What a muddle it is in!’ And even the man’s own descendants, who might have been expected to consider what he had been about, were heard to murmur: ‘He is such an odd fellow! Imagine using these old stones just to build a nonsensical tower! Why did not he restore the old house? he had no sense of proportion.’
But from the top of that tower the man had been able to look out upon the sea.
That’s the measure I want to use: does it let me “look out upon the sea”? On the face of it, that seems quite a modest goal, nothing like the “daring aim” that the triad describes. But in a world where some people seem intent only on pushing over towers, such an aim becomes strikingly subversive — even dangerous. Look out upon the waters for yourself, and you no longer need a “secondhand sea”. You’ve seen the waves yourself, heard the crash of surf on shore, felt the spray on your skin and the billows lapping at your bare toes, tasted its metallic salt.
About “restoring the old house”: sometimes that’s not possible. Sometimes what we’re restoring isn’t anything “old” at all. Or if it is: reviving a (nearly) extinct language is an enormous undertaking — a daring aim indeed. It can be done: Cornish, Hebrew, Manx — we have evidence before us. “Is the juice worth the squeeze”? Sometimes we won’t know till afterwards. Sometimes the deed itself is enough.
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If I look at some of my own UPG, my unverified personal gnosis, like my experiences with Thecu Stormbringer, how does any of foregoing apply?
With Proto-Celtic we have considerable evidence from six Celtic languages. We have a science of historical linguistic reconstruction, tested on an increasingly widening sample of languages. We have a community, albeit small, interested in the results, whether they’re able to take part in the process or not.
The few words associated with Thecu that I’ve recovered — imagined — invented (can I always tell the difference? Can anyone?) are hardly enough to base an entire language on. Or are they? I have a friend who follows a different path, and who’s recovered? — received? — imagined? a language of several thousand words over the course of a few weeks. He uses it as a religious tongue, writes rituals in it, prays through it, writes about some of his most valued experiences with it. It continues to develop — or he keeps working at it, expanding and discovering it. For him it’s a living thing, part of his “tower”, to pick up Tolkien’s image again. The “sea he can look upon” exists in part because of that language. Validity? Authenticity? For him any answers lie in results. Such questions, he says, are theoretical beforehand, and irrelevant after. (In the process, their usually just distractions.)
Ireland — abandoned tower. Frans van Heerden / Pexels.com
“Of the old stone”, Tolkien counsels us, “some has already been used in building the houses in which we actually live, not far from the old houses of our fathers. Of the rest we can still take some and build towers …”
If we meet only silence in the face of our need, we can listen. If we listen with intention, knowing everything we bring to the moment, we may gain lyrics. From the deep I bring it, sings Taliesin. Words, after all, are one abode of the divine. And the melody? For the music, we have what awen and the gods open up for us. Where after all did our ancestors find their songs?
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Sometimes we inherit an instrument, something the longing …
*Tolkien, J. R. R. The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays. Harper-Collins, 2007.
When I realize it’s not “about me”, my sense of “me” can often enlarge, and — paradoxes teasing us and breaking up our rigidity as they do, gift of the gods to ease us open — I may know myself a part of all that is. Most humans, if we judge by interviews, polls, sociological surveys, etc., have experienced such moments. Consciousness expands, barriers drop away, and we re-connect. The ecstasy that can accompany such moments underlies a surprising amount of experimentation with altered states of consciousness — through drugs and alcohol, ritual, chant, jogging, yoga, dance, and so on.
Caitlin Matthews’ Celtic Devotional offers a “Threshold Invocation for the Festival of Samhain (to be said at the front door of the house on the eve of Samhain, 31st October, in the evening)” that begins:
Grandmother Wisdom, open the door, Grandfather Counsel, come you in …
This sense of living ancestors, of cultural guides and totems, of others with us who simply join in “without their skins on”, still flourishes among many traditional peoples. It’s one of the things much of Druidry has also striven to reclaim and re-animate in our lives.
Part of our experience of these things lies in any welcome we give or withhold. Last night I joined a Zoom discussion on inner guidance. We talked about trusting what we receive, about learning to recognize its signs, those nudges that aren’t merely fear or ego or desire, about staying alert for the confirmation that often comes in outer circumstances that we’re on the right track.
For Christians, Jesus says “I stand at the door and knock”. As far as we can tell, there’s a lot of knocking going on in our lives. Yes, sometimes the message is urgent enough we may receive a visit uninvited. But in either case, what we do or don’t do in response often forms a core part of the significance of the visit. My listening, my acceptance, my questioning or doubt — in sum, my engagement in some way — is a good half of most experiences of contact and connection. In the language of his day, Winston Churchill remarked, “Men [i.e., humans] occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened”. In Heather Hughes Cullero’s The Sedona Trilogy, one character says, “This is the gift of Spirit to you. What you do with it is your gift to Spirit”.
East Coast Gathering, 2017. Spirit may take any form to reach us.
If you’re fortunate to know the names of your ancestors, particularly beyond your four grandparents, you may more readily gain an intimate sense of the curious timelessness of forming part of an immense ancestral line. Though my wife and I don’t have children of our own, we stand in the middle of just such a Long Line, like everyone does. As I mentioned in a previous post, live to 70 or 80 and that puts us squarely in the lives of five to seven generations within our living memory and connection. I recall my late grandmother who died at 81 in 1977, and I know her living descendants down to her youngest great-great-granddaughter Ashley — five generations already.
Try out the implications of reincarnation, and you could easily be one of your own ancestors. Take stock, look at family patterns, and it can often help clarify things: who I was then is part of who I am now. Step outside this world and its particular laws, and others come into play. Lifetimes like beads on the string of spirit, linking this brief span of decades to others, backwards and forwards. (Do I want to know the future? I’m building it day by day.)
Rather than being that flaky guest at parties who insists he was Julius Caesar or Rasputin or Charlemagne — that she was Cleopatra, or Madame Curie or Queen Elizabeth I — why not explore the major themes at work in life today, and link them up to nudges and hints about “who we were before”, to help map out a larger spiritual purpose and vision? (It sure beats the hell out of watching and worrying over current headlines — though that has its place, too, if we choose — if it doesn’t choose us.) Even as a purely imaginative exercise, it can open up perception and awareness — which seems to be one of the purposes of reincarnation anyway. (Is everything a metaphor?!)
Grandmother Wisdom, open the door, Grandfather Counsel, come you in …
Yes, you can purchase Matthews’ book — it’s a good one. You could also use this as a prompt for your invocations. Grandmother Wisdom, what message do you have for your descendants? Grandfather Counsel, how can I best move through the next year? Among other things, Samhain is about tapping into the larger Selves we all are. The rest is often “just” holiday bling, Halloween decorations. But like the family heirloom or old metal toy or yellowing photo, such seemingly small things can loom large, and offer a link between generations.
We hear about ancestors of blood and also ancestors of spirit. If I have a difficult family, or one divided for any reason, my ancestors of spirit, and the current family I make out of friends and loved ones — families of choice — matters just as much. Mentors, supporters, our own cheering section, school classmates, colleagues, “chance” acquaintances who become beloved, spiritual ancestors whose art or music or books matter deeply to us — all of us gather such ancestors in addition to the people in blood relationship to us. These too are our ancestors at Samhain, and can form part of remembrances and prayers and invocations.
Bard initiates with Kristoffer Hughes (left, back row) at East Coast Gathering. What is the awen saying?
Samhain is not, or not primarily, “darkness and death”, but the realities deeper than these, which may wear them as masks. (The masks themselves can be fun, depending.) One measure of our lives is how and when spirit works to get our attention, whether it can keep it this time around — and what we choose do next.
The Morrigan personifies the challenges that prove and test us all. Photo courtesy Wanda Flaherty.
Tuesday morning as my wife and I were returning with the rare indulgence of take-out breakfast from a local cafe we love, we saw a morning walker on the back roads wearing a fluorescent yellow vest with the black lettering “I own safety“. All I could think was, Wow! Really? Could I please borrow some from time to time?
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Steve writes in a couple of recent comments:
… set(s) the truth right side up again …
I have long thought one of the primary functions of the modern druid should be to keep truth on a firm foundation, both for oneself and one’s “tribe”. Truly a worthy task in a time when truth has often been a subjective commodity, sold to the highest bidder.
A worthy task indeed. Far too many people in this era seem confused about truth, even about whether it’s possible. I keep attempting to present on this blog an experimental knowledge anyone can test and duplicate for themselves, as one reliable way of getting to truth. That’s why I keep writing about practice, practice, practice in as many ways as I can. Practice helps keep me honest, and also gives me plenty of material.
Words about truth can resemble what remains after a fire.
The Roman poet and satirist Horace (Horatius) is my bard today. Si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti; si nil, his utere mecum. “If you can better these principles, tell me”, goes one translation. “If not, join me in following them” — Horace, Epistles, Bk 1, 6, 67-68. But that tame version takes the snarky edge off Horace: “If you have come to know any precept more correct than these, share it with me, brilliant one; if not, use these with me”. Or as we might say, “OK, genius, you got a better idea? No? Then let’s try this one”. (I let people like Horace be snarky for me, so I can pretend to claim higher ground.)
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Y gwir yn erbyn y byd, goes the Welsh tag: “The truth against the world”. This British blog attributes the words to Iolo Morganwg. Some claim them for much more ancient Druids, some for King Arthur, and some for Boudicca (Wikipedia | History.com), queen of the Celtic Iceni, who died in the year 61 fighting the Romans. (If the words do originate with her, they’d have first appeared in a much earlier form of Brythonic than the modern Welsh quoted above.) Amazon, no surprise, sells a black t-shirt emblazoned with them, accompanied by the awen /|\ symbol. (The Amazon page for the shirt airily notes, “Show your support for culture, history, tradition and peace”. Oh, where’s Horace when you need him?!)
The Gorsedd of the Bards has adopted the words as their motto, and there’s a bardic chair with them carved into its back for winners of the Welsh National Eisteddfod. (The words appear on the larger chair to the right, just below the /|\. The glare of the camera flash obscures part of the line.)
creative commons/Wicipedia (Welsh Wikipedia)
Strangely, or perhaps not so strangely considering we’re human, we want our truth boxed and bubble-wrapped and tamely waiting for when we deign to grant it our attention. We want to own it, defend it, and — gods help us — buy and sell it, like anything else. Fortunately, truth isn’t like “anything else”. I know it in its purest form when I serve it rather than try to possess it. And maybe it’s not a moving target: I am.
Christian, Pagan, humanist, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and so on — if you pray, meditate, study, struggle, do ritual, and pay attention, you too know these things from experience.
Rather than a list of principles straight from the mouth of deity, or set of ultimate equations about reality scrounged up in a Silicon Valley lab, truth seems to be a function, which Google obligingly tells me is “an activity or purpose natural to or intended for a person or thing”. We can live from it, in other words. We can express it through our lives and actions to a greater or lesser degree, but we’ll always find it hard to put into “words now and forever”. Words don’t do that kind of thing well at all*, and neither, the accumulating evidence of human history shows, should we.
So I can sing and dance the truth better than I can profess it from the soapbox of this little blog in the early decades of the 21st century. (You need to know I sing and dance quite badly.) And if it’s true that a person can experience deep realization gazing into the heart of a flower, as I noted in the previous post, any “truth” in that moment isn’t coming through words. It’s a function of the prepared individual and the flower and the moment of attention. It’s “an activity or purpose natural to or intended for a person or thing”. And so to the degree that I stray or get distracted from “the activity or purpose natural to or intended for me”, I lose the ability to serve truth.
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The “truth against the world” often means conflict and struggle. The “world” in this case seems to signify a human form of inertia and resistance to time’s change. The desire to box and bag the perfection of a moment effectively kills it, leaving me with a dead thing, a mental photograph that doesn’t show the living being that’s its original. The “world” doesn‘t seem to mean the tree outside my office window, the woodchuck nibbling the tender clover in the back yard, the sunlight blessedly falling all around, the “Time of New Talk”, as Rudyard Kipling called the springtime returning to India in The Jungle Book.
So if I want to serve truth, to practice “an activity or purpose natural to or intended for me”, I find I’m working with a kind of electrical circuit, with resistances and poles and a definite direction of flow. The more I struggle to own truth, to box it and lord it over others as if I finally “have” it, the more I forfeit the “spark” of my electricity — the metaphor’s a useful one — the very thing that keeps me alive and vital and rooted in what is “natural to or intended for” me.
The word “world” has a whole set of specifically Christian associations I’d like to glance at here. Be of good cheer, says Jesus at one point in the Gospels. I have overcome the world. To me one big takeaway of that is a priceless unspoken corollary. I have overcome the world, and so can you. The Galilean says to me, I have overcome the resistance in myself to serving truth, rather than owning it. Do that, and you too will be able to say of your holy experience “I’m the way, the truth and the life. Nobody gets to the Source, or stays centered in it, except like that”.
And I hold this out not as an “opinion”, or worse as some kind of dogma, Druidic or otherwise, but as a potential truth to try out, to test, to practice till I know it from my own experience and can live it more fully. Or prove it inaccurate, say so, and look elsewhere. And maybe you will, too. You can be my Horace: “if you can better these principles, tell me”. Because as one current meme suggests, I can hold all kinds of opinions without evidence. But as soon as I present them as “truth” to others, untested in my own experience, I’m guilty of lying and fraud.
To repeat Greer’s words from the previous post, “at the human level, the individual Awen for the first time may become an object of conscious awareness. Achieving this awareness, and living in accord with it, is according to these Druid teachings the great challenge of human existence”. The world (not the world that the truth is “against”) seems to manifest this out of the same awen, but without human conscious awareness. It’s what we’ve labeled instinct, though that doesn’t account very well for plant energies that manifest leaves and branches and fruit and roots. That’s one reason why we find the natural world a restorative presence when we walk in it, savor it, apprentice ourselves to it. Notice that you don’t have to believe nature is restorative. You know this from your experience in it, and any belief — more accurately, trust — comes after.
And so I return to words that are “holy” to me, because I keep discovering ways they prove worth my ongoing time and exploration. They’re also holy because the principle behind them can be rediscovered by anyone who does what they describe:
Druidry means following a spiritual path rooted in the green Earth … It means embracing an experiential approach to religious questions, one that abandons rigid belief systems in favor of inner development and individual contact with the realms of nature and spirit. (Greer, John Michael. Druidry — A Green Way of Wisdom, qtd. in Carr-Gomm, Philip. What Do Druids Believe? London: Granta Books, 2006, p. 34.)
May your practice and path bring you into contact with what is deepest and most worthwhile within you.
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*Ursula LeGuin says it well: a writer attempts to “say in words what cannot be said in words”, as she puts it. And so a writer resorts to story, getting at the “truth” through imagination.
In what follows, among other things I’m setting out elements from my own peculiar spiritual journey. So if what I write irritates or angers you, that’s probably a good signal to stop reading and go do (or eat) something else. When it’s not to your taste, any more than a mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwich, there’s no need to take a second bite. Or even a first one!
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A recent comment on an old post asking “What’s the spiritual meaning of X?” is what launched this post. In some ways, the question asks, “What’s appropriate action in this moment?” Or maybe, “How might I respond to this appeal to my attention?” or “Should I even bother to pay attention?” (Maybe we should start with “What’s the physical meaning of X?”)
The X in the question above isn’t the main point (Yeah it is! shouts the seeker in me), for though it’s what snags my attention and draws a lion’s share of the drama, the meat of the question is about meaning, about how and where my attention is focused, and about what if anything happens as a result of that focus.
One of the discoveries we can slowly make in worlds of time and space is that few things have a single meaning, spiritual or otherwise. At the most literal level, a good dictionary will list several meanings for almost every word. Even deceptively “little” words (“Those? They’re the absolute worst!”) like English a, an, the have numerous meanings, as learners of English discover to their dismay, and writers have attempted to catalog. (Alan Brender’s Three Little Words: A, An, The lists 52 meanings and uses for ’em — one for every week of the year.) What to do with a universe so perverse? says the rationalist in my spleen. Hey, you rhymed! says the bard at my elbow.
Meanings are almost always plural. OK, but does that in turn mean that it’s just “Pick a card, any card”? Well, it’s true that some days, or some whole lifetimes, can feel that way.
Usually if I’m noticing something, it’s communicating to me, and further, I usually already have a hunch or suspicion of some possible meaning(s) of that communication. These two go together, usually so intertwined I can’t separate them. We’re trained to sift and sort all the input from our senses and select only what we need to notice. If something’s already risen to my conscious awareness, the “meaning filter” has let it through. The “Ten Thousand Things” can fade into background. The particular thing or event or person now stands center stage.
My right shoulder and forearm have been bothering me on and off for over a month. Exercise helps some, but I’m still fine-tuning which exercises. As we age, the cartilage in the shoulder and spine, the facet joints, start to deteriorate, says my wife, with her physical therapy training. In fact, the shoulder is often the first to go.
And I can leave it at that. But I can also choose to listen how my experience opens up insight, including insight about the experiences of others.
If something’s already communicating to me, how can I respond?
Meaning-bearer, I greet you. Thank you for arriving in my world with your messages. As they unfold with my intention, may I honor and fulfill them with my life.
“Wait just a minute”, says another of the selves I wear. I can hear the outrage grow in his voice. “Do you mean I should be grateful for shoulder pain?!”
That’s not what I’m saying. Pain sucks. But like the X of the opening question, pain isn’t the final point. “If the world were only pain and logic”, says Mary Oliver in her poem “Singapore”, “who would want it?”
One of our great skills as humans is to bring the hidden into manifestation and to clothe the non-physical with form and shape. We do it throughout our lives, constantly. No surprise, we’re pretty good at it. (Wedding planners, investment bankers, gardeners, contractors, parents, janitors, children, athletes, generals, lovers, daydreamers, cooks, doodlers, singers … OK, you get the idea.) We bring into existence something that wasn’t there before. It’s also how we fall in love.
That spark of attention that events kindle in us also ignites our attempts to put them into words. For this reason many cultures consider speech a holy thing — words as spiritual objects are not to be lightly disrespected or misused. The Queen of Faerie tells Thomas the Rhymer to hold to silence in her realm, “so that his speech might store up power” for his return. In many cultures, songs and stories tell how speech is a divine gift, how creation happens through words, and knowing the right word, the true name for a thing, is a key that opens many doors.
Insofar as I think with words, then, I can hallow thinking through conscious intention. My attention and my intention, my noticing and the shaping of my consciousness in return, can be choices. (They’re also a deal of work, as anybody knows who’s tried.) They can be gifts to myself and to others around me, because they change me. Such holy things are never in vain. Even this much, just the attempt, although the fullness of meanings may not yet have come clear to me, takes me into sacred territory. With the sacred in my heart, I start to become a holy meaning maker with the materials of my attention and intention. These are among my return gifts to the sacred within and around me.
Stranger on earth, thy home is Otherworld. Pilgrim, thou are the guest of gods.
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The Céile Dé, Celtic Christian heirs to older teachings I mentioned in a previous post, offer on their website this article “Advice at the Threshold“, including the questions below, as a gauge to some of the challenges of conscious awareness of the awen:
In the course of what would be a typical week, would you say that you are very likely to experience one or more of the following?
+ hurt feelings
+ feel offended or insulted
+ lose your temper
+ act or react on impulse and regret it soon afterwards
+ complain about your lot
+ blame others for your inward state
If you want a clear account of my recent emotional geography, look no further than the list! (That unfriendly planetary virus that’s currently making the rounds doesn’t help.) But if I move beyond that threshold into realms of awen, I’m no longer a passive recipient of someone or something else’s meaning, floundering and struggling to figure out “what it all means”.
Oh, she meant well, we sometimes say. Or he didn’t mean it, we remark. But we usually offer these as excuses, rather than opportunities. J. M. Greer, citing the Barddas, that 19th century compilation of Druid Revival teachings, notes:
… a unique Awen is said to be present in each soul from the moment it comes into being, and guides it on its long journey up through the Circle of Abred — the realm of incarnate life in all its myriad forms — to the human level of existence. It is at the human level that the individual Awen for the first time may become an object of conscious awareness (Greer, The Gnostic Celtic Church, pg. 12)
As above, so below: we share in our humanity as individuals precisely because awen is present within each of us, but in each of us it’s a unique awen. To be a person is to be “awenized”, but also to be an awenizer. The Welsh call this awenydd, one filled with awen, a poet or bard.
Wait, you say. I’m not a poet or a bard.
Greer continues:
… the individual Awen for the first time may become an object of conscious awareness. Achieving this awareness, and living in accord with it, is according to these Druid teachings the great challenge of human existence.
Another way to approach it: You might say “awen isn’t just for poets anymore”.
When something comes into my awareness, catching my attention and seeming to signify s o m e t h i n g, “does it mean it”? One way to answer: Only if I respond and make meaning along with it.
Things “mean”, and “have meaning” for us, because in some way they are pointing us toward greater awareness of our awen, prodding us to become more conscious of it. Human existence provides a spiritual opportunity to make our awen a mode of consciousness — our prime mode of consciousness.
If I and my life could mean anything right now, in addition to whatever they already mean, what do I want that to be?
One way to grapple with this enormous question is to reply with a question: How and where — because I can’t know it unless I’m already in touch with it — is my awen already emerging and appearing?
For me, oddly enough, resistance is a key component. (Like so many people with mixed motives, I’m often working against my own destiny — a brutally efficient way to discover what it is when it smacks me in the face.)
“What are you rebelling against?” asks a character in The Wild One.
And Marlon Brando’s character Johnny Strabler replies, “What have you got?”
Johnny’s point underscores how rebellion or resistance is reactive — it takes a mechanical response to meaning-making, rather than a creative one. That is, the event, circumstance, or other person is still in control of what I do.
But once I get even some glimmers of my own awen, I start to know what’s right for me. Of course we can still confuse “what’s right for me” with ego, impulse, reactiveness and so on, but it’s a big step. Yes, I can cherry-pick meanings from the events in my life and miss larger beneficial meanings — we witness each other doing this all the time, while remaining half-blind when we do it ourselves.
But I sometimes think our resistance helps us from capsizing our lives with too much change all at once. The sailor’s strategy in heavy weather of deploying a sea anchor can stabilize a boat, keeping it pointed in the desired direction even as it slows forward movement. A little resistance can be a good thing, a way to try out the meanings I’m making, giving them a test drive.
“Find and follow your own awen” eventually becomes the foundation of each of our individual ways of life. That’s what gives them their integrity, power and beauty. And in the words of that wonderfully ambiguous expression current when I was in secondary school and still heard occasionally today, “It takes one to know one”.
Sometimes it takes one very far indeed.
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Can anyone identify either of the flowers above? The first is from a tree in our front yard that eventually produces a firm reddish-brown berry about the size and shape of a small olive. They remain on the boughs through the winter. Cedar waxwings come through in February and devour them all, usually in a single day.
The second, I’ve been told, is some kind of hyacinth, but I haven’t yet found a variety that matches. (Same color alone isn’t enough for identification!) Any ideas?
The Céile Dé, sometimes Anglicized as Culdee, is one current revival of an ancient and largely monastic Celtic Church of the British isles. If you’re looking for aids to meditation and a means to reduce anxiety, gain focus and know your own core being, a fonn of the Céile Dé may be for you.
[Link takes you to sub-page of three recordings: “Tar a thighearna … Tar a thi”; “Sireadh Thall” and “Mar a tha … moladh do Dhia”, with translations of the titles.]
I was privileged to attend a Céile Dé presentation at Solar Hill in southern Vermont several years ago, and to experience a demonstration of several fuinn (pl. of fonn). As part of a spiritual practice, you too may find these chants potent for healing and balance.
salamander, Camp Ashby, MA
The Ceile De website notes:
The fuinn (plural) are said to bring the three parts of us — Spirit, Psyche and Physical, into harmony. They offer a powerful practice that can help us sink into a deep meditative state … or enflame the heart.
Most of the fuinn are short and repeated over and over. Fuinn can also be “prescribed” as anam leighis (soul medicine).
The three free chants on the website clock in respectively at about 6 minutes, 3:20 and 2:45. Once you’ve listened a few times and harmonized to the energy and rhythm of the chant, you can begin to adapt the form to passages from other poems, songs and prayers that uplift you. A slow, meditative chant works, as the website observes, “because we always have our voices and hearts with us”.
Using the previous sentence, “our voices and our hearts together” can form a group chant.
“The awen … I sing … from the deep … I bring it” serves equally well as an individual chant, which can be effective in alternating periods of silence and chant. Try experimenting with where you divide up the line, into three or four parts, or one longer slow chant.
You can read an OBOD article on the Céile Dé here.
I invite you to post about your experience with these chants.
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As of today’s update (18 Nov 2020), nobody’s shared experiences with the fuinn so far, but site stats show that you keep coming back, so I hope they bring you peace and comfort, which is after all my intent.
Among other modern writers, 
A Druid Way 
