Archive for the ‘spirituality’ Category
[Related posts: Shinto & Shrine Druidry 1 | 2 | 3 || Shinto — Way of the Gods || Renewing the Shrine 1 | 2 || My Shinto 1 | 2 ]
In a post from a little over a year ago I wrote about Shinto, the “way of the kami” or nature spirits in Japan. One of the most important national Shinto events takes place throughout 2013 and especially this fall*, the Shikinen Sengu, which is the ritual rebuilding and re-dedication of parts of Ise Jingu, the most significant Shinto shrine in Japan. Shikinen Sengu takes place every twenty years, with 2013 marking the 62nd time the year-long ritual event has occurred. The ritual cycle originated in approximately 690 CE, more than 1300 years ago.
“And all this matters why?” you might ask. Perhaps the most visible reason is the sheer beauty of Shinto. If as a Westerner you want to encounter a foreign culture on its own terms, one of the vivid and memorable ways is through its physical manifestations in objects, tastes, sounds and smells. The atmosphere of Shinto is something anyone can begin to appreciate immediately, because Shinto shrines and ceremonies are so public. And in Shinto we can encounter a distinctive Japanese expression of what I have experienced as the spirit of Druidry, a love and reverence for the natural world, seen through the unique perspectives of an entire culture and nation. Shinto provides one model for doing earth-based religion on a large scale. And I hope you’ll see why I think it’s really cool.
Ise Jingu (ee-seh jeen-goo), the shrine at Ise in Mie Prefecture on the main island of Japan, covers more than 20 square miles of mostly forested land. You pass through the torii gate (above image), sign of a Shinto shrine, to enter. Shinto expresses a sense of the “permanent renewal of nature,” as a Mie tourist guide describes it, and Shikinen Sengu, literally the “Ceremonial Year Shrine Relocation,” renews the shrine quite literally, by rebuilding significant portions on an adjacent location. Imagine reconstructing your own house every twenty years, on the same lot, planning in advance and spending a year to do the job, with song and ceremony and all your family members visiting at some point during the year, with picnics and celebration and parties and priests to bless the proceedings, and you begin to get an idea on a very small scale of what’s involved.
Shinto is more practice than belief: what you do matters more than how you understand and talk about it, though of course that’s important too. Shinto focuses on harmony between people and the natural world. Get out of whack, and Shinto shows you things to do to resolve imbalances and restore the original state. Often it’s a case of not taking ourselves so bloody seriously. If you can’t recall when the last time was that the universe bowed to you, maybe that’s because you can’t remember the last time you bowed to the universe. And the latter is generally better for you than the former. Even if taking a cold outdoor shower under a stream doesn’t appeal to you, for instance, you still get how it might restore a healthier sense of proportion. The practice of misogi or purification gets real, especially when you do it in winter, as practitioners do in Japan and in the U.S., like Rev. Koichi Barrish who is priest at the Tsubaki Shrine in Washington State. Note that I’m not rushing to be first in line for this particular practice.
I’ll be talking more about these things, and why I’m writing about them, in Part 2.
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*My principal sources for the information in this post, beyond my experience of living in Japan for two years in the early ’90s, are this detailed PDF document about Shikinen Sengu, published by JNTO, the Japan National Tourist Organization, and the website for the Tsubaki Shrine in Granite Falls, Washington.
Images: Ise torii (gate); Naiku steps; kazahinomisai
updated: 23 Dec. 2013
With a title like that, you might expect shocking revelations, secret tips, insider advice, or something — anything — designed to titillate or distract a readership. Or perhaps I could offer some variation on “what people want” — if we try to deduce that incoherent impossibility from reports on Google’s most popular search terms.
Instead, I’ll start with the literal. Our west-facing driveway warms up during the day, and on late spring and early fall mornings like yesterday’s and today’s, when we open the overhead garage door, as often as not one or more garter snakes will have curled up on the concrete during the night to warm themselves on the residual heat. Each morning they’re sluggish and need to be coaxed with a toe from their stupor to move and so avoid getting run over by our car. Thus the “serpent under the door.”
But as with all other things (Druids like to claim), coincidences can be teachers, too. Take our power outage yesterday afternoon. I saw a flash of light, heard a popping sound, and our electricity died as I was starting to draft this post. Green Mountain Power arrived a couple of hours later and promptly fixed the problem. With an extensible pole, the line workman loosened something small and dark from the overhead transformer which plummeted to our lawn, and then he apparently reset a surge protector or trip device. Problem solved. When he came to the door to report success — I was watching all this from our living room window and stepped out to meet him — he said a bird had shorted out the line, tripping the transformer. The small dark object that had fallen was the burnt corpse of the unfortunate. Wholly unperturbed, our resident pair of mourning doves resumed their perches nearby on the power line soon after the GMP service truck departed.
Serpents and doves: be shrewd as the former, and gentle as the latter, counsels the Galilean master*. To put it more bluntly, avoid getting fried, or run over — each grisly fate available, significantly enough, through human agency. So it’s fitting that any shrewdness and gentleness I can wring from these two instances should issue from the same animal world.
As I write, goldfinches brighten our feeder, squabbling with the jays and an acrobatic chipmunk for seed. Today’s late morning humidity and temperature already climb toward midsummer highs, just a few days after night-time frost warnings in our area. The serpent under the door is my instinct, the bird on the power grid my arrogant ignorance. No, that’s not it. Something else, something other. Yes, the danger of allegory is its all-too-easiness, its tendency toward glib preachiness. A welcome Buddhist and pragmatic strain in some contemporary Druidry reminds me that sometimes a dead bird is just a bird, a sluggish serpent just a snake. It’s the “and yet” that rears up and insists on making bigger meanings from small ones that is a sometimes annoying blessing.
But why shouldn’t we squeeze every event and experience for all it might be worth? Equipped with overactive brains and growing out of a world we have tried to name and explicate, it’s a natural tendency, one literally native to us, crafted by nature, by natural selection and chance, by the divine at work with these, their alter ego, their personification, their image. Tolkien’s elves, the Quendi, named things and tried to wake them. In this they followed their nature: Quendi** means “those who speak with voices,” the verbal echoes of their name present in words like bequeath and loquacious, query and quest, inquisitive and require. Kweh, kwoh, kw-, kw- … Human deeds, human cries, human needs. The same world that wiggles and flutters in snakes and birds has shaped and turned itself to allow humans to name — and endanger — them. Because we can do something may not mean we should. So we look to our animal kin for direct lived insight into how to thrive in this world, their wordless gestures rich as words. In an early poem, Mary Oliver captures Druidic wisdom:
Sleeping in the Forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
At first we might think it’s death she’s talking about, but as she says in other poems, it’s deeper and more significant than just that particular transition, that magnified human fear and obsession. Death, yes: but there are many more marvelous things in addition to that. We can imagine ourselves different, “better” — what that may mean. “The world offers itself to your imagination,/calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–/over and over announcing your place/in the family of things.” Gratitude to bird and beast; this, my offering.
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Image: garter snake
*Matthew 10:16.
** encyclopedia of Arda
“The god Lugh is honored by many at this time, and gentle rain on the day of the festival is seen as his presence and his bestowing of blessings.” — Wikipedia entry for Lunasa (older Irish spelling: Lughnasadh)
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Assembly of Lugh
Rain this afternoon your omen,
your day the spear in me to know my Tribe,
to learn their ways, to choose from them
what holds value: metal of truth, gold of our past
cast into refining fire, cauldron of time,
everything molten. Now, always, for forge:
the mold ready for each life streaming
from its pool of glowing metal,
from its pool of cool water
where my people drink.
I look across time’s circle to where it begins
anew with each life. You cast the spear:
our Lunasa dancers grasp it, fling it toward the center
where it lands, quivering. From it lifts and streams
the banner of summer sky: I will take flame
and run with it: your August,
moon before dawn this morning
slender as cupped palms,
ready to receive water, quicksilver,
fire in the sky dipping down
on us all.
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“[F]rom France we have evidence of a Druid calendrical system in the Coligny calendar, although scholars are divided as to the degree we can consider it purely Druidic, since it is engraved in Roman letters, leading some to believe it represents the product of an attempt to Romanise the native religion. Dated to the first century AD, it consists of fragments of engraved bronze which have been carefully pieced together to show a system which reckoned the beginning of each month from the full moon … The names of the months are wonderfully evocative of a time when humanity lived closer to nature:
Seed-fall: October-November
Darkest Depths: November-December
Cold-time: December-January
Stay-home time: January-February
Time of Ice: February-March
Time of Winds: March-April
Shoots-show: April-May
Time of Brightness: May-June
Horse-time: June-July
Claim-time: July-August
Arbitration-time: August-September
Song-time: September-October
… Horse-time indicates the month in which people went traveling — in the good weather, and Claim-time indicates the month in which the harvest festival of Lughnasadh falls, and at which time marriages were contracted and disputes presented before judges. The following month, Arbitration-time in August-September, represents the time when the disputes and claims have been adjudicated and when the reckonings were given. At Song-time in September-October the Bards completed their circuits, and chose where they would settle for the winter season.” — Philip Carr-Gomm, Druid Mysteries. London: Rider Books, 2002, pp. 118-119.
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images: Lughnasadh; Coligny calendar
[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5]
Daily you call me to pray — not the prayer of asking, of importunity, but the prayer of communion, of celebrating blood flowing through veins, of life moving in lungs and belly. In the cool of dawn this morning I slip outdoors for air plush with oxygen, newly breathed out from the green lungs of the trees. I gaze on the mist-shrouded pines and maples and scrub oaks, hear the neighbor’s rooster break into the sheared metal cry that is his morning’s call. The other birds are already about, the jay chicks now big as their parents, and noisier, in their cries to be fed. A fox bitch slinks back into the woods, cat-footed and deft as she threads her way through tall grass and brambles. Dampness clings to my skin. Life-prayer, what the birds and wind and water and morning light are saying.
I say “you” call me to pray: there’s a presence I address, though it’s not a person. I could call it the echo of listening, the ambit of my attention, some kind of answer or reverberation to the pressure of a human walking the land and caressing the world with hominid consciousness that wants to talk, to name, to engage, to encounter as a person, to bring down to size a world that resolutely will not yield to whim, or whimsy. But that’s not quite it, either. “You” is the best I can do, to honor and salute the world I encounter, particularly when it glows or sparkles or hums or burns. Others have called it god or gods, Spirit or numina. We know a little better, in some places at least, how names can trip us up. But names can be good talk. It is awen, too: that Welsh word for “inspiration” that is also the presence of Spirit.
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Wadin Tohangu comes unbidden, unless it’s a prayer to the universe which alerts him as well that I’m actually paying attention again. Fallow time has “done it,” though merely “going fallow” as I mentioned in the previous entry doesn’t cause a change to happen, but it often accompanies it. Something about the will is involved. Sometimes the greatest magic is to set aside the will and be open to change. I don’t like surrender because I can’t claim credit when the change comes. I want it to be under my control. Stereotypically to surrender is a male difficulty and a female strength, but there are plenty of strong-willed women who find surrender difficult, and weak-willed men who need to work on self-assertion. So that’s not it altogether either.
“Are you finished talking to yourself about this?” Wadin asks, his mouth crinkled in a smile. I realize he has been sitting there for some time now as I swam and splashed in my thoughts. I smile back, unable to respond right away — or rather, my mind spins over a thousand responses, none of them particularly graceful or useful or true. But I do know I’m glad he has come. That’s something I hold onto in gratitude, and the whirling of thought slows enough that I can say it.
“It’s good to see you.”
His smile widens — he seems perfectly at ease in the moment, as if he came expressly to do nothing else than sit and listen to me think. Not in an obtrusive way, not eavesdropping, but simply how he is, awake to what goes on around him.
“You’re struggling,” he says, “with how to talk about the will, and that’s also been a focus for you for some time.”
“That’s definitely true,” I answer. “I guess inner and outer worlds do line up from time to time.”
“What happens when they do?” he asks.
“I’m freed up to write about it, for one thing,” I say. “I get unstuck.”
“The stuckness often comes from pushing with the will,” he says. He leans forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees. “It’s a common confusion to think that will involves strain.”
“Sometimes we push through, and we can accomplish a lot. And athletes push against fatigue all the time,” I say.
He nods. “That’s true for the physical body, of course. Muscular effort moves objects.” He pauses before continuing.
“We feel pain and can push through it with the will. Sometimes that means we ‘win.’ And of course sometimes that means we end up with a sprain or torn ligament or some other injury, too.”
He gazes at me. “So what causes the difference?” he asks.
“I’d say, listening to the body. Not fighting it, but working with it.”
“Good,” he says. “Certainly listening can spare you injury or tension or strain.” He runs a sandaled toe over a design on the carpet, and I realize we’re sitting in my living room. I write “sitting in my living room,” and look up from the keyboard, and of course there’s “no one there.”
“Come back to our conversation,” he says, reaching to prod me with a forefinger. “There’s more to talk about.” He looks at me with interest. “What did that feel like just now, when you returned from ‘no one there’ to our meeting?”
“I could feel an energy shift,” say. “I got interested again. And I wanted to keep going.”
“All of these are important,” he says. “The shift is something you ‘do,’ but it’s not a strain or a push of what we normally call the ‘will.’ And your interest and curiosity also matter. They draw you in, rather than you pushing against resistance.”
I say nothing, waiting for him to continue.
“Imagination is effortless. You can ‘try to imagine,’ of course. Or you can simply imagine. This is the difference between will or imagination, and strain, which is what most people mean by ‘will’ or ‘willpower.'”
“What about people who say they ‘can’t’ imagine?” I ask.
“They’re usually telling the truth. Fear blocks them, or their straining against their habit or desire keeps them from accomplishing what they ‘try’ to do. That’s what they’re imagining instead. Imagination runs ahead of ‘will’ in that sense. It’s already ‘there,’ at work in the ‘future,’ long before ‘will’ arrives. While ‘will’ is still waking up, imagination has already constructed a palace or dungeon for you to inhabit, according to your focus. Not everyone imagines in pictures, of course. For many it’s often feeling instead. We already feel a certain way about something, and that ‘colors our experience,’ as we say.”
“But where’s the element of choice in that?” I ask. “It sounds like will or imagination is just a reaction to circumstances, rather than a conscious decision to focus on what we choose. Isn’t that the will? What we choose, rather than what we simply let happen?”
“Discipline of the imagination is the key to life,” he says, looking at me steadily. “What you attend to, what you look at or focus on, and how you look at it, determine your experience to a great extent. That’s the actual ‘will,’ not the strain to do something against our intention.”
“Would you explain that?” I say.
“Remember your own experience a short time ago,” he answers. “As you looked where I was sitting, you ‘realized’ that I ‘wasn’t there.’ Then your attention shifted, and our conversation continued. I’m ‘here,’ though I’m not ‘here.’ Which do you focus on, my presence or my absence?”
“You mean both are true?” I say.
“Yes. Though ‘true’ is a distracting word. You activate one or the other with your attention. That’s will, or intention.”
“But what about human suffering?” I say. “We don’t choose to suffer or experience hardship or disasters or …”
He was smiling at me again. “The challenge is that our habitual attention gives lasting reality to our imagination. ‘As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,”* goes one way of expressing it. ‘What you do comes back to you.'”
“But what about people born into horrendous circumstances? You can’t say they imagined them into being!” I could hear the hint of outrage creeping into my voice. “The circumstances happened to them. They certainly didn’t choose them. Who would choose pain and suffering?”
“That’s an important question,” he says. “Do you know anyone who keeps making ‘bad choices,’ as they are called? And keeps getting painful results? That’s a fairly severe example of such choices at work. Of course we often face the accumulated consequences of long imagining. Lifetimes of imagination can solidify into exceptionally firm and unyielding circumstances. In such cases, an hour or day or even a year of change and effort may bring only surface alteration. Deeper transformation can take longer.”
“Aren’t we blaming the victim in such cases?” I say.
“You see, there is no blame here. We are talking about growth. You may know the story of the Galilean master who is questioned about the man born blind. “Who sinned?” his followers asked him. ‘The man himself, or his parents — what caused him to be born blind?’ And the Master answers them and says, ‘Neither one. All this happened so that the work of God might be shown in his life.’** A circumstance can be destiny, and we can lament limitation, or it can be opportunity, and we can move and build from there. It depends on which direction you look. One way to understand it is that a disciplined imagination is one that is ready to accomplish the ‘work of God.’ Imagination is a powerful tool of Spirit.”
“But where does it all start?” I say.
“Often the fledgling falls from the nest and learns to fly the ‘hard way,'” he says. then pauses at my expression.
“But gravity is not ‘evil,” he continues, “though it may hurt, if the chick tumbles onto a branch or onto the ground. But when the eagle has mastered using gravity to move through the air, it can soar.”
“Is that the price we pay?” I say.
“You hoped it would be painless, I see,” he says, smiling again. “Pain does get the attention in a way nothing else can. Maybe that’s why it’s still useful as a spiritual tool.”
“Pain as a tool? I’ll have to think about that some more.”
“You think a lot. Everything can be a tool,” he says. “You just need to decide how to use it, rather than getting stopped by it.”
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The first post in this series looks at kinds of knowledge. The second shows how wanting to know leads to discoveries about our real selves. The third looks at daring and how it is a kind of freedom.
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Images: Waitomo Dawn by Richard Tulloch; athlete; toolbox.
*Proverbs 23:7
**John 9:1-3
Updated 30 Sept. ’14
Awen* comes on me no matter, air heavy with summer, my wife at the papers as she sits in the recliner beside the desk where I type this, and awen comes, the great flow pierces me head downward, like a run of honey pain from crown through the heart to the feet. Sometimes the rush runs so loud I can hear only it and nothing else, a music like thunder roaring in my ears. Other times it’s spiderweb on the skin, slightest sense of presence, fruit of dreaming, the daring comes. Aaaaah-ooooo-ennnn.
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The song bodies make moving through times, through spaces is awen. The note in deep silence, life’s own soundtrack. What the stars say when no one’s listening, the whispers between the trees as they breathe out oxygen after dusk, the wind in their branches. The quiet sigh you didn’t know you sighed till someone asks you about it — these are awen. Awen trips me forward into fullness, catches me breathless just before great beauty, or after. And beauty opens more — and more often — the more I listen for awen.
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I sit to write and words must make do for Spirit. In the interval between one in-rush of awen and the next, I wait. In the trough between expectation and fulfillment, I rest. On the hilltop between cloud and cloud, blazing with late afternoon sun, full of golden mystery constantly moving, shifting, I stand, watching. Just before sleep, in the cradle of stillness and warmth, the darkness sweet, I hear it still.
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*”Awen is the wisdom, truth and most of all the inspiration. Awen is Nature, the universal power behind life, yet it is never born and shall never die. Awen is a force or energy forged from an indivisible source that is the power behind the physical and non-physical or spirit forms. Existence, and distinction between the natural and the super-natural becomes meaningless, as both are the personification of Awen. Every link which is a part of nature, be it a man, animal, plant or elemental force, each holds its own little piece and together make up the whole chain which is Awen. Awen is the spirit of Druidry itself, it is knowing, sensing and feeling it in your essence and true being, it is the freedom to accept one’s nature” (“Awen”; minor editing).
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Image: Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. At the right moments when no wind disturbs the surface, the very shallow lake can hold a near-perfect reflection of whatever the sky is doing. The illusion of the human figure walking on water illustrates just how shallow the lake is.
[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 4 | Part 5]
This is the third in a series of posts about magic. The first looked at two kinds of knowledge. The second showed how, once we start really wanting to know, we run smack into uncomfortable discoveries about our real selves, not the glossy selfies we post like signposts to our most glorious dream of ourselves. But self-knowing, a most valuable and prickly, disconcerting kind of knowledge. This post is about the second of the four powers: daring.
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A solstice gift from our front yard — four nestlings, blind and nearly featherless, born on the solstice in a nest the mother built between layers of fencing around part of our garden. Still identifying the species (eggs look like a cowbird’s, but the mother is approximately sparrow-sized, dull brown and as a ground-nester, quite understandably shy and hard to photograph — a kind of thrush?). You can just make out one remaining brown-speckled egg, unhatched, to the left, below the beaky fellow. Any ideas, those of you who know birds well?
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I’d drafted a third post in this series, about daring, several weeks ago. Problem was, it had no spark, no daring at all. No juice. Ya gotta know it to show it — or to show it well, at any rate.
Then along comes the inner whisper I’ve learned to listen to. Rarely does it disappoint: All beginnings are sacred. Does that mean daring can embody holy force, blessed by the gods and equal to the risk? Well, isn’t this one of our earliest lessons?!
An example: Oh, the Places You’ll Go! was the last book Dr. Seuss published before his death in 1991, and it bears a youthful energy and excitement. He hadn’t exhausted himself at all over the course of his career. Was this premonition (as well as a final gift for us all)? Death itself, one more adventure, a change, a beginning. Daring. You can watch a fine Youtube video of the poem recited by various attendees at the 2011 Burning Man. Something more to light a fire under us, set to burning that inward itch that can never quite be scratched.
The German poet Goethe said,
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Daring means looking large, but also sometimes looking small, right underfoot. OK, got the lesson. Birth at the Solstice, time of greatest light, the position of due south on the Wheel of the Year, the place of fire — and daring. These nestlings hardly seem daring — too small and helpless — and they’re not the traditional media image of Stonehenge and various camera-eager painted faces and eccentrics.
And along with them, those hungry for something they haven’t figured out yet, but which stalks and seduces them at times and places like Stonehenge at the Solstice, because — or in spite of — the crowds and muddled energies moving every which way at an old sacred site. Now the Henge is beginning to get a little more care from English Heritage, which administers and tends to such locales, and will be re-routing the A344 motorway, grassing over its current nearby transit, and constructing a more distant visitors’ center to restore more of the atmosphere and quiet to the place. Those of us with a sea between us and the Enclosure of Merlin, as Britain was once called, can view Stonehenge here with a 360-degree panoramic viewer at the English Heritage website, placed so that you stand and look outward from the center of the Henge. No people present in the images — just you and the stones.
What takes birth in us during this time of light and heat and sun? (And moon — the recent “supermoon,” which is just the largest moon of each calendar year, when our companion planet looms a little closer in its ellipse around the earth.) The planets themselves prod me monthly, yearly, to dream and act.
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Daring to question may seem easy. Americans claim it almost as a birthright to “question authority” — at least if you believe the bumper stickers. Daring to question others matters, if it’s not merely mindless — there are plenty of self-styled authorities these days who deserve challenge. But what is more excellent and harder is to question what we ourselves think we know, but may never have actually tested. The Queen in Alice in Wonderland admits, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” and she was just getting started. The second step involves daring to follow through on the answers, the consequences. What’s on the other side? What am I most afraid of? What don’t I even know enough to fear? How can I use fear to motivate me and move me where I want to go? “Fear it and you’re near it.” Stare down a single fear, and you can often uncover remarkable energy to be released. Fear takes work — work is energy — face the fear and recover the energy it grabs.
Then comes daring to make the most of this life, because it’s worth daring. One of our greatest powers is to imagine, so much that I often feel that to imagine should be among the four powers, or included if five were listed instead of the love affair with fours found in so much of Western magic.
Too often we think of daring as what we do when we’re young and stupid — we feel that daring is fine “until we know better.” Do we know better? Or have I just given up on daring like I have on much else, not because it’s stupid — or I am — but because it asks too much of me, it’s easier to sit back, let others, rest on my laurels — be that older-wiser-sadder person.
Daring keeps me from resting easy once I get bored. Those are two great guides: fear of change and boredom with the same-old, same-old. Daring works equally well with either, prods me to move beyond both.
“Everything is permitted, provided you accept the consequences of what you do.” Imagination is fuel for daring, both for a glimpse of a step off the beaten path, and for a vision of what stepping off will mean.
Dare well, and I am free. Can I live in that new open space, or do I run back, slam the door behind me? Do I dare to love my freedom more than my pain?
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Updated 30 September 2014
A couple weeks ago I read a blog post I’ve been carrying around with me ever since — it pops up at odd moments, because it touches on a profound experience of the divine familiar to many Druids and other Pagans. But it goes deeper than that, too, in its perception of the nature of divinity. You can find it over at Banshee Arts, courtesy of blogger Morpheus Ravenna. She reflects on her patron deity, the war goddess Morrigan, and receives wisdom from her that we need to hear and contemplate.
Here’s Morpheus’ post for March 22, 2013, “Voice of the Sacrificed,” which I cite verbatim in its entirety, so you can read it all here. The italics are original with her post:
This week brought my 37th birthday, and with it the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq.
Yes, it was my good fortune ten years ago, to watch as my country preemptively invaded another and lit its skies on fire with “shock and awe”, on my birthday. I remember it vividly. Though I knew the war wasn’t launched on my birthday for any reasons to do with me, somehow that coinciding still did make it more personal and even more unsettling to me than it already was. My oldest friend had recently joined the army and I knew she would soon be deployed there; I’d been worrying about that all winter as the war loomed inevitably closer. And then it launched on my birthday.
That war felt terribly intimate, as though it had attached itself to me; as though by inaugurating on my name-day it had taken my name and was ruthlessly marching its destructive way in my name. Well, it was. Not just me, of course. It was destruction in all our names, all American citizens.
And I suppose it also felt intimate because I was eyeballs deep in a personal moral struggle over my devotion to a war Goddess. As the country stomped its bombastic way toward war, I had been engaging in a series of deep meditations communicating with the Morrígan. I was confused, scared, disturbed. I had always felt some unease about my devotional relationship with a war Goddess – had wondered if on some level I was condoning the brutality of war by worshiping Her. Now those questions haunted me irrepressibly as the war began. I went to my altar and prayed, chanted, begged for answers. She spoke.
I recorded my memories of those conversations in my journal (to the extent that direct nonverbal communications with a divinity can be translated into words). Here are a few fragments:
Why have I been chosen to have this connection with you? You know I am ill at ease with your warlike aspect.
It is in your blood. You are descended from invaders, violent warring Celts. Warfare and violence are part of who you are. You cannot run from this. You must understand it, and it is through me that you can understand this part of your being.
I am troubled about this war, about the justice of it. How can we tell a just war from an unjust war?
There are no just wars. For each individual who experiences it, war is an injustice. It is an injustice to those who suffer and die when they should have lived; it is an injustice to those who find themselves doing violence to their human kin in the service of war. War is always an injustice. The Gods cannot tell you whether your war is right or wrong by the standards of your justice; you must count the cost and choose, though you are blind. And sometimes it will come on you without your choosing, and that too is an injustice. Your task, when you do choose to make war, is to pursue it swiftly and strike with certainty. You must recognize that every life destroyed is in your hands and it is up to you to make that sacrifice worth something.
The reason your ancestors revered their enemies so much is this: when you slay your opponent in battle, the spilling of their blood is a sacrifice to your sword. It is required that you honor their sacrifice by dedicating it to a worthy purpose.
The law of human life is that you are only capable of solving your problems within the set of ways your culture contains. I arose in the form you know me among the old Celts. Their culture was shaped and defined by tribal warfare. You, and your culture, are the inheritors of this in many ways. When you alter your culture to contain a different set of possible actions, then you may be able to solve your problems without bloodshed. Until then, I will always be present. My role in war is to make it swift and terrible, and effective; to carry for you the knowledge that you could learn from your actions if you choose to listen; and to mourn the cost.
Unlike most gods of monotheism, the Pagan gods specialize (though often enough Jehovah gets his war on, so we can be excused for thinking he’s principally a war god, too). But what wisdom Morpheus (and the Morrigan) offers here: “The law of human life is that you are only capable of solving your problems within the set of ways your culture contains.”
Or to paraphrase so apparently unrelated a thinker as Muslim reformer Irshad Manji, “There is nothing wrong with a culture that cannot be corrected from what has been historically right with the culture.”* Or to go to the Qur’anic source that inspires Manji: “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (Qur’an 13:11). But I would add that the change may alter the culture sufficiently so that many feel uprooted, or even perceive that their culture has “died.” All things are subject to change, and human creations like cultures don’t stand exempt. Certainly we walk today in the midst of deep change in many of the world’s cultures. This is a time rife with change, and also ripe for change and possibility.
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*Check out a half-hour interview with Manji by Canadian talk show host and Conservative pundit Allan Gregg on Youtube — the line cited above is paraphrased from Manji’s comment around 13:00 in the video.
Most spam to this site gets deleted without me ever seeing it. Some slips past the filters and I manually delete it after scanning it. The following piece that arrived earlier today felt like I could squeeze it for something bloggy:
“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow upon ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate…When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
We like things to be easy. We don’t want to have to think or commit too much to anything. We want to get the most reward for the least amount of effort. We expect it from our technology, our education, and from our God. “I went to church and I even put money in the offering, so we’re cool, right, God?” We did the minimum and we think that should be good enough. Yes, you’re still saved through grace; grace that is a free gift. But that grace is hollow, because you didn’t put yourself on the line for it. For years, our experience of church has been safe. Sit, stand, sing, bread, wine, Jesus loves you. Being a follower of Jesus is mainstream and acceptable. In most cases, we don’t risk anything by being a Christian. We proclaim a cotton candy gospel (that is, mostly sugar and air) and nobody gets stoned to death, crucified, or drawn and quartered. Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m not saying you have to defy the Roman Empire to validate your faith, but if you’re not willing to stand up for it, what is it really worth? What are we worth if we let intolerance and injustice rule over us without a fight?
The message intrigues me. (Learn wherever you can, I tell myself. Don’t turn away from a teacher just because you don’t like the color of her skin or the accent of his voice or the flavor of her wisdom. You might pass up something valuable.) It also spurred a set of responses.
One is how contrary to much preaching, but how common-sensical, it is: ya gotta work at anything worthwhile. Salvation in Christian terms is a gift, unearned, but this post tells a deeper truth. Salvation isn’t enough; it’s just the start. In eco-spiritual terms, Christians may get saved, but Druids get recycled.
The second probably arises out of the time of year. A good number of us are halfway into hibernation mode right now. Yes, we often want the easy path, because we’re lazy. Why expend energy pointlessly? Laziness makes good animal sense, up to a point. Devote your hours and muscles to acquiring food, finding a mate and — later — protecting your offspring. Anything else is likely not worth the effort. If you’re human, add in a few comforts you may have come to expect, if they don’t cost you or the planet too much trouble. Beyond that, it’s almost always diminishing returns for your efforts. OK, that’s one view.
Another is the universality of suffering, as Buddhists like to remind us. It’s not like Christians have any corner on resisting intolerance and injustice. To point out just one example, can anyone say Arab Spring? Any person can reach the tipping point of disgust with tyranny or suffering or despair and rise up to fight it. It need not be a specifically religious struggle at all — though it can be a profoundly spiritual act.
A fourth response (in case you’re counting): plenty of Pagans and Druids are also easy in their practices, just like the “cheap-grace” Christians in the spam above. And we can opt to let them enjoy a space and time where they may practice undisturbed. But others, depending on what part of the world they live in, may face considerable daily risk. Does that make them “better” Druids and Pagans — or Christians? Not necessarily. Maybe more careful, or stronger, or more committed. But these are character traits, present in some practitioners of all spiritualities and religions — and none.
A fifth response: the natural world calls Druids and Pagans to live consciously in it. We all die and are born, along with everything else. We’re compost after just a handful of decades. When the path of Druidry calls, it says wake up to the world we’re in right now. Whether or not it’s the only one, it’s this one, and our lives here, as long as we’re still breathing, are our answers every day. Figuring out what the questions are — well, that’s a task for a lifetime.
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updated 22:15 EST 11 Feb 2013
I’m a fake Druid. So is everyone else who names Druidry as the path they walk. And I’ve come to love it.
In a guest essay on the ADF website, J. M. Greer notes,
The very last of the ancient Druids went extinct in the ninth century, and the surviving scraps of their teachings and lore are so fragmentary, diffuse, and contradictory that they don’t form anything like a workable system. All modern Druid groups—OBOD, ADF, and everyone else—were invented in the last three centuries by people who used some mix of scholarly writings, personal spiritual insight, speculation, and sheer fantasy as raw material for their concoctions.
Thus if “real Druidry” is defined as the sort that was practiced by Druids in Celtic countries before the arrival of Christianity, all modern Druids practice fake Druidry. That can’t be avoided, since “real Druidry” hasn’t existed anywhere for more than a millennium. What differentiates one modern Druid tradition from another is the particular kind of “fake Druidry” each practices.
Of course, Greer writes here as an outsider might see it, to try on a truth many still feel uncomfortable to admit. As Archdruid of AODA, he obviously doesn’t habitually dwell on his particular flavor of Druidry as “fake.” And when I practice my Druidry, it doesn’t feel like a “concoction” at all. It coheres, because like anything used — steps, coins, dishes, skin, planets — the edges get smoothed, a few chips and dents show up, and everything takes on that “lived-in” look, that patina that makes antiques look antique, that gives worry-stones their shine, and faces their habitual smile or frown lines. I make an offering at an altar, I join my Druid brothers and sisters at a festival, I sit for an hour in moonlight meditating, and whether a group of people 300 years ago rediscovered things most traditional peoples have long known doesn’t really concern me. Clearly, the moment itself offers me better things to do.
Greer continues:
The Druid community has on occasion been racked by squabbles between traditions, caused as often as not by simple misunderstandings that could have been quickly cleared up by people familiar with more than their own tradition. Since none of us have any right to claim possession of the One Genuine Real Live Druidry, a willingness to share the world with other Druid traditions, and to participate with them in celebrating the cycles of nature and the miracle of the living Earth, is a virtue that may well be worth cultivating by Druids of all kinds.
Ah, “One Genuine Real Live Druidry” — Ogreld, I’ll call it. My new tradition, founded right now as you’re reading this. Here we go … unlike every other practice and belief on the planet, Ogreld sprang into existence full-grown and perfect, without parents or kin. To get that essential temporal edge over other faiths and practices, Ogreld is the original “source faith” of humanity, practiced when people first became human. In fact, to top it off, it was Ogreld that made them human. Now we’re cooking! … This is faking with a vengeance. “I’m faker than you are. Na-na-na-na-na!”
In the Egyptian afterlife, the human heart is weighed against the feather of Maat, who personifies truth and justice. The Wise among us understand that whether I acknowledge three elements of earth, water and air, or four elements of earth, air, fire and water, or a god whose elements are bread and wine, my rituals will still work in accordance with the reverence and love I bring to them, and the holy presences that empower them. Whether I have helped or hurt the earth and its inhabitants will matter a lot more than the color of my robes, the rank I’ve achieved, or the number of gods I pray to. The only real Druidry is a “path with heart,” a way of walking the earth that wisely honors all paths with heart. I’m busy faking that wisdom, practicing till I get it “righter” than before. Insofar as faking is doing something, it’s generally better than not doing anything at all. So yes, I’m a fake Druid. Have you met any other kind?!
What follows are brief notes from a short talk I recently gave on magic.
Dion Fortune’s definition of magic: “the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will.”
“… most of us, most of the time, are content to use the imaginations of others to define the world around us, however poorly these may fit our own experiences and needs; most of us, most of the time, spend our lives reacting to feelings, whims and biological cravings rather than acting on the basis of conscious choice; most of us, most of the time, remember things so poorly that entire industries have come into existence to make up for the failures and inaccuracies of memory” (J. M. Greer, Circles of Power, 52).
We can, however, choose to imagine – & remember – ourselves differently. When we do so with focused attention, changes happen, both subjectively & objectively.
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Magic stems from an experiential fact, an experimental goal, & an endlessly adaptable technique.
The fact is that each day we all experience many differing states of consciousness, moving from deep sleep to REM sleep to dream to waking, to daydream, to focused awareness & back again. We make these transitions naturally & usually effortlessly. They serve different purposes, & what we cannot do in one state, we can often do easily in another. The flying dream is not the focus on making a hole in one, nor is it the light trance of daydream, nor the careful math calculation.
The goal of magic is transformation – to enter focused states of awareness at will & through them to achieve insight & change.
The technique is the training & work of the imagination. This work typically involves the use of ritual, meditation, chant, visualization, concentration, props, images & group dynamics to catalyze transformations in awareness.
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Magic is also “a set of methods for arranging awareness according to patterns.”
We live our lives according to patterns. Some patterns are limiting & may be unmasked as restrictive. Other patterns can help bring about transformation. “[T]he purpose of magical arts is to enable changes within the individual by which he or she may apprehend further methods [of magic & transformation] inwardly.”
“… [O]ur imagination is our powerhouse … certain images tap into the deeper levels of imaginative force within us; when these are combined with archetypal patterns they may have a permanent transformative effect.”
– R. J. Stewart, Living Magical Arts
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Image source: sunset.
Much of my learning before and during the Bardic grade of OBOD Druidry has been about listening. I’ve walked different landscapes here and abroad over the last couple decades, and almost always when there are negative energies, they seemed to issue from human presences that felt negative to me, or disrupted the native energy. The land itself is simply the land, with all its other lives and forces and history and presences. It may not always feel comfortable or easy or familiar, but it has an integrity that asks me to pay attention. And yes, I’ve done that with varying success. But the human is always an overlay, unless the place has been inhabited for a very long time, and the humans there learned to attend to and respect the place they lived. Which is sadly not often enough, though places exist here and there which are dearly loved and cherished, places in which the land spirits dance their joy.
California Druid Gwynt-Siarad tackles this directly in his blog entry, “The Curious Case of American Land Spirits.” I’ve taken the liberty of reposting the whole of his short entry here (Druids are always talking to beings they can’t see):
Recently I was involved in a discussion about land spirits. As the discussion progressed it touched on what I feel is a very important issue to us druids living in the Americas. That being, land spirits are more often then not, tied to the land and thus couldn’t come to us from Europe, and thus how do we treat with the spirits of this “new” land? The natives of this place have a long and good history of working with the land spirits here. Sadly, in most places, and certainly here on the west coast of the lower 48 the natives are almost completely gone. This is a very sad thing, but not the focus of this post. The question is, can those of us of European descent summon, honor, call, and treat with American land spirits? It was suggested that the spirits here are used to being summoned with certain type of ritual, that being those of the local natives. That the land spirits here have native names, and should only be addressed as such. ok…what if the name is not known, and can’t be learned? And what of the idea that they can only be summoned with native American style evocations? Where does this leave the modern druid? Even if I were able to learn, say the dances of the Umpqua Indians to summon the spirit of the Umpqua river, that would most likely be considered cultural appropriation and that’s just not P.C.
I have been tumbling these thoughts over in my head for several days now, and here is what I have come up with. First off, spirits are as individual in personality as people are. What might be ok with one spirit won’t be ok with another. How do we find out? I vote for good old fashioned trial and Error. Go out there and do what druids do in the way druids do it. If the spirit doesn’t like it, I am sure it will let you know, if you bother to listen. Let the spirits be our teacher. I think and feel with but a few exceptions so long as the spirits are approached with offerings, respect and love they are not going to be over critical if you said the right name, pronounced in the correct native dialect or be upset if you didn’t dance in the native way. Using a name the spirit is familiar with would be very helpful in treating with it, but not critical. So those druids that are inclined to work with such spirits, I say do your homework and get out there and get to know your spiritual neighbors!
No surprise that the spiritual world resembles this one — the spirits wish to be treated as individuals, because that’s what they are. What of spirits of a species which was transplanted to the New World by Europeans? Is it the “same” plant or animal? The best way to find out, as Gwynt-Siarad observes, is to start the conversation.
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image credit: http://www.etsy.com/listing/59674255/fall-autumn-photography-new-england
(Check out their gorgeous prints.)
[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9]
In our last conversation, Aithne had said nothing about needing my help. All this stuff about ancestors and bloodlines, and now I was wondering about that piece. Had she forgotten? But even if she did need me in any way, how could I really help? After several decades of living, I have a pretty clear sense of my talents and abilities. It wasn’t false modesty that told me both Rosmert and Aithne could certainly handle challenges and obstacles I couldn’t. Wasn’t that why they were teaching me, and not the other way around? There’s an innate order to things that we ignore at our own peril but that we can also learn to our advantage — that’s one of the foundations of my worldview. I guess when I thought about it that I saw helping others along the path is a form of payback, or maybe paying it forward. It’s a way to show gratitude, a way to keep the heart open. Gratitude feels good. Just do it.
So it was when all of this was still spinning through my brain that Aithne appeared again. It had been more than a few days since I’d tended to my Sacred Grove. The excuse doesn’t matter; it’s a poor one. But shortly after I returned, there she was. But she certainly was not dressed the same this time. Biker chick was all I could think: leather jacket, torn and faded jeans, bandanna, dark glasses, snake tattoo on her neck, even chains. Again she was gazing off into the distance, and when she turned toward me she took off the sunglasses and winked.
“You ready?” she asked.
“For what?” I replied. That was Aithne, I was beginning to understand. Small talk rated low among her priorities. And it was rubbing off.
“A ride,” she said. “I’ve got an ’86 Harley Sportster, 1100 cc’s. Want to try it out?”
And that was how, maybe an hour later, Aithne and I were roaring down a little-traveled country road that arrowed flat and straight toward the western horizon. After a series of lessons, practice runs, one spill and a bruised right knee, I felt reasonably confident handling the heavy machine. I wasn’t ready for a lot of traffic yet, but the basics were coming along nicely.
“We’ve got clear road,” she said. “Let’s open it up for a couple miles.”
The big bike still ran smooth when we topped 80 mph. I eased back on the throttle, listening to engine as it lost the high-pitched whine of speed. A few minutes later we were sitting on the side of the road, sipping Gatorade. Aithne was studying a ladybug on a blade of grass she held in both hands.
“You can help me, you know,” she said. “We need you healthy for the work, and for your part which only you can do. That’s your focus for now. Get healthy, and balanced.”
“I wanted to ask you about that. What can I do?”
“You can begin again.”
“Begin what?”
“You’ve completed another spiral. The next months may look familiar, but they aren’t the same thing that’s come before. Pay attention to what they can show you.”
“But what am I supposed to be looking for?” I asked.
Aithne paused and looked at me for a moment.
“You’re thinking about quitting your job after this academic year. You’re wondering how little you can live on if you do, how much food you can grow for yourself back in Vermont. Those aren’t bad things by any means, but your principal focus needs to go beyond that. Those aren’t ultimately pathways to the next two decades. You’re looking at surviving. I’m talking about thriving.”
“After the last couple of years, surviving looks pretty good to me.”
“And it is,” she said. “We had to work with your wife to get you to that surgeon in Baltimore. You weren’t listening when you most needed to. Fortunately, she was. So you survived the shift, you kept this body through the turn. You’re still here, and the ancestors aren’t finished with you in this life yet. You’re on commission. Did you know that?”
“Commission for … for what?” I stuttered. “Can I have some clarity just once about what I’m supposed to be doing?”
“You’re confusing clarity with looking back on a path you’ve already walked,” she said. “So often you can know by going. And for as long as you’re here, you’ll find that’s one of the things time’s for.”
And then I was back in my living room. The clock said 9:48 pm. It had been a long day, and I had much to think about.
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Updated 23 April 2015
[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9]
“The Blood of Veen is a key to new insights for you,” said Aithne. “Your ancestors reach you through the body — your body. You carry them with you wherever you go, in your cell memory, your DNA, your genetic coding, and the energy signatures scientists are just on the edges of discovering, which are part of the bonds that link the physical body to the other worlds.”
“So how does the Blood of Veen connect with me personally?”
“If you visit a place where your ancestors lived, you may have a dream or vision that teaches you something you need to know.” Aithne stood gazing a little above my left shoulder, or head, as if she was watching something move there. “Veen is in the province of Brabant.” She paused, apparently studying empty air. “And some of your mother’s ancestors came from that region,” she added. Aithne’s knowledge startled me. One of my mother’s aunts had traced much of the family line back to medieval France and Belgium. Some of her ancestors came from Brabant, including a noble named Joscelyn de Louvain, when Brabant was a Duchy. (Don’t get the wrong idea here. I have my full share of black sheep in the family, too!) And Louvain is a city in Brabant — its capital, in fact.
“But I can’t just pick up and visit Brabant or anywhere else in the world at the drop of a hat! Most people don’t have the time or money to track down their ancestors in other countries or take some sort of reincarnation tour.”
“You don’t need to,” said Aithne, ignoring my flash of irritation. “Pictures can help. And there are online forums where you can ask questions and find out detailed information about almost anything you want to know. Let your curiosity work for you. After all, how much time do you waste online as it is?!” Her sudden smile was teasing. “Make the first move, and the ancestors will respond. You’ll have a dream, find a book, ‘happen’ to meet someone, make a connection. They will guide you.”
Somehow it surprised me that Aithne knew these things. While I’ve come to expect my inner experiences to bring me general insights and hints and nudges on occasion, whenever I receive specific information it still surprises me. A few years ago in a dream I got the name of a small British town in Devon where some of my father’s family originated. I’d never heard of it before, and it no longer exists today. For that reason I know that no one in my family had ever mentioned it. But there are archaeological records and mentions of the town in chronicles and censuses of the period showing that it once did exist.
That was the outer confirmation of an inner experience. Such validation doesn’t always come, but when it does, I feel a shiver of awe and wonder. These things are real. The worlds link however briefly, and lives change as a result. I know this, I’ve experienced it before enough time to silence any doubt, but my inner doubter doesn’t care. He’s achieved pro status by this point, and just goes about pointing out sly new possibilities of self-deception. I guess my ancestors have to be pretty patient with me to get through at all. I often think they must find other descendants more worth their time. Then I remember they’re working outside of time — at least outside of my time. They can afford a little patience with the stubborn and half-deaf ones like me.
Aithne seemed to be following my thought. She was nodding slightly, and then she said, “Sometimes the act of inquiring leads you to new people and experiences that are beneficial for everyone involved. You know this,” she said.
“I’ll return one more time,” she said. “We have a few more things to discuss.”
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Updated 23 April 2015
[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9]
Rosmert returned again today, but only briefly, and only, he explained, to introduce Aithne. At first I could not see her clearly, except to note she was only slightly shorter than Rosmert. Then it seemed the space around her sharpened somehow, or — I had the distinct feeling now — she was letting me see her. She wore the hood of her robe up, and it shadowed her face. Freckles dotted her nose, and a few tendrils of chestnut hair slipped from her hood. Then all I knew was her eagle gaze. Two green eyes of startling fierceness regarded me. She grabbed my half-extended hand, shook it vigorously, then promptly pointed out a problem.
“Greetings. You do realize you left the gateway open? Magically careless. Let’s close it immediately. I’ll show you how. But first, let me take a quick look around.”
From her brisk words and tone I could tell that today at least there was no such thing as Druid-business-as-usual. Or maybe this was usual, for her. As she studied the trees and stones, she began to describe one way to seal a grove more effectively against unwanted presences and energies.
Then I saw Rosmert winking at me just before he disappeared. He made a sweeping gesture that seemed to say “You’re in her hands now.” I laughed in spite of myself.
At the sound, Aithne turned from her survey of my grove and regarded me with a frown. “You have made a beginning, but you need practice at defense,” she said. “Now expel me from this space.”
When I hesitated, she exclaimed, “Do it! You did not invite me like you did Rosmert. I came at his bidding, not yours. So you can rid this grove of me quite easily. Do it. When you are quite satisfied I am gone, you may choose to invite me back, or not. But secure the gateway first, whatever you do.”
I centered myself in my grove and sang the Word of Protection. One instant, Aithne stood there, her head tilted to one side, listening. In the next, she vanished.
I walked the inside perimeter of the grove, singing. I walked it three times. I played with the thought of not inviting her back. At length, when I was satisfied with the wards and had formulated the triple seal, I called her by name, just once. A second later she appeared a few meters away.
“Better,” she said. “I tested the gateway several times before you called me. Much better.”
She turned slowly again to take in the trees. Over the past months it had been a fallow time for me while outer things made their demands, and I needed to do some inner work. The space certainly reflected this. It looked, quite frankly, unkempt and overgrown.
“But I did not come to critique your grove or your training,”she said, “or to sight-see. Whatever you might think.” She clapped her hands, and sat down on the same tree-stump Rosmert had occupied when he and I talked. “I need your help.”
Nonplussed, I stuttered, “Well, OK, with wh- … uh, how can I help?”
“It’s a matter of the Blood of Veen.”
“Who — or what — is Veen? Like it sounds? V-E-E-N?” I asked, spelling it. Goddess help me, I thought I could hear capital letters when she said Blood and Veen. It sounded, well, cheesy. Like hack sword-and-sorcery writing.
“It’s a town in the Netherlands. You have an ancestral connection to the region.”
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Updated 23 April 2015
To “winter over” has always sounded encouraging to me. It may be a matter of full-on hibernation …
or merely that human sleep of cold weather that lingers through the darkness, drives us to seek out heavy, fat, rich foods in ancestral echo of our animal heritage, and longs to do nothing more strenuous than curl up and dream. There is animal “faith,” if you want to call it that, built into our bones and blood: the world will not turn away from us while we sleep, and we shall wake again to life.
The dormouse in the picture has it about right: sleep with food half your size (hazelnuts, in this case), wake up, snack, pee, then back to sleep again. Drowsing comes much more easily now, especially after daylight savings time has shifted our days and brought evening creeping into the afternoons. With that extra jolt of possible light (this IS November, after all), mornings may be brighter and better, if you’re a morning person, but let 5:00 or 5:30 pm roll around and it feels like late evening already. Then today, with snowfall along the east coast as the winter storm makes its way along the same path Sandy took a short time ago, and you have hibernation mode with a vengeance.
May New York and New Jersey find their hazelnuts, their winter store of energy and life. A prayer to the South, where the people are cold in the dark, and my living breath upon it. A prayer to the west, where the frozen time has come, and my living breath upon it. A prayer to the north, warmer than many places closer to the equator: my living breath upon it. A prayer to the east, with winds cold and damp: my living breath upon it. Let all that breathes move its prayer with each inhalation and exhalation.
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Image: dormouse.
Updated 8 Nov ’12
“And all this matters why?” you might ask. Perhaps the most visible reason is the sheer beauty of Shinto. If as a Westerner you want to encounter a foreign culture on its own terms, one of the vivid and memorable ways is through its physical manifestations in objects, tastes, sounds and smells. The atmosphere of Shinto is something anyone can begin to appreciate immediately, because Shinto shrines and ceremonies are so public. And in Shinto we can encounter a distinctive Japanese expression of what I have experienced as the spirit of Druidry, a love and reverence for the natural world, seen through the unique perspectives of an entire culture and nation. Shinto provides one model for doing earth-based religion on a large scale. And I hope you’ll see why I think it’s really cool.
Ise Jingu (ee-seh jeen-goo), the shrine at Ise in Mie Prefecture on the main island of Japan, covers more than 20 square miles of mostly forested land. You pass through the torii gate (above image), sign of a Shinto shrine, to enter. Shinto expresses a sense of the “permanent renewal of nature,” as a Mie tourist guide describes it, and Shikinen Sengu, literally the “Ceremonial Year Shrine Relocation,” renews the shrine quite literally, by rebuilding significant portions on an adjacent location. Imagine reconstructing your own house every twenty years, on the same lot, planning in advance and spending a year to do the job, with song and ceremony and all your family members visiting at some point during the year, with picnics and celebration and parties and priests to bless the proceedings, and you begin to get an idea on a very small scale of what’s involved.
Shinto is more practice than belief: what you do matters more than how you understand and talk about it, though of course that’s important too. Shinto focuses on harmony between people and the natural world. Get out of whack, and Shinto shows you things to do to resolve imbalances and restore the original state. Often it’s a case of not taking ourselves so bloody seriously. If you can’t recall when the last time was that the universe bowed to you, maybe that’s because you can’t remember the last time you bowed to the universe. And the latter is generally better for you than the former. Even if taking a cold outdoor shower under a stream doesn’t appeal to you, for instance, you still get how it might restore a healthier sense of proportion. The practice of misogi or purification gets real, especially when you do it in winter, as practitioners do in Japan and in the U.S., like Rev. Koichi Barrish who is priest at the Tsubaki Shrine in Washington State. Note that I’m not rushing to be first in line for this particular practice.
A Druid Way 
