Archive for the ‘earth-centered religion’ Tag
[Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3]
For a related reflection about selfishness, continue on to the next paragraph. To jump to the next four points in this three-part series, scroll down to the break and the three awens /|\.
Selfishness. The behavior often gets a bad name, but I sometimes forget that survival is always a blend of self and other. In my marriage, my wife and I pursue both couple and individual goals. They needn’t conflict, though sometimes they rub up against each other in challenging ways. We negotiate and compromise. The marriage fails, or endures, on the basis of affection and communication. Self and other is what drew us together in the first place. Blending and balancing them is what sustains the partnership.
Change the scene. In a harsh environment, as human or animal, if I don’t eat so that my offspring can, I may starve, but they may survive. Biologically, this makes good sense — my genetic material gets passed along through them. Personally, of course, it may be disastrous, if I die. But the species benefits. My lines continues, with whatever genetic variants and strengths it may contribute to the whole. But if I don’t act “selfishly” enough to survive in the first place, I will never reproduce. The genetic possibilities I offer never benefit the species.
And this is just a simplistic biological sketch. My wife and I have no children. Biologically, simplistically, we “contribute nothing” to the species. Our species’ old judgments of childless couples stem from biology, and to an extent, they make very good sense. But wait …
What about spirituality? Some have labeled it a maladaptive behavior. From some perspectives it does look useless. For that matter, how do art, music, religion, philosophy, or other kinds of inward searches with variable outward results benefit either the species or the individual?
Humans have developed so that cooperation has begun to balance instinct as a means of both individual and species survival. We definitely haven’t mastered it yet — we’ve managed to kill the equivalent of the population of a large country of our own species (some 200 million) in just the last hundred years. Anger and fear, very ancient companions, still live with us. Each also has a survival benefit, up to a point.
But we’ve also managed to enrich both our individual and species experience immeasurably through beauty, wonder, awe, delight, pleasure, curiosity — you can extend this list yourself. These skills of consciousness make our species marvelously adaptive in unique ways we’re still only beginning to understand. To take just one ready example, ask yourself how often music has seen you through a rough period, or served as the capstone to a time of joy.
As a biological experiment, like all other species, it remains to be seen if we continue to adapt, or die out. But one rich component of our adaptive skill is self-consciousness and an ability to weigh courses of action. How well can cooperation serve us? How well can we manage both to honor instinct and also not let it usurp our chances and choices?
If you’re reading this blog, you presumably feel that spiritual inquiry and awe serve our species better than many other things we also do.
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5. How am I looking for connection in ways that mesh with my practice?
If I use regular physical exercise, for example, as a time to renew, reconnect, and rebalance, I may gain in physical well-being, a priceless gift. But I may not pick up as readily on other spiritual cues and clues that come along and which I can access through other practices. Neither is “better” than the other, but they are choices and practices, each with distinct consequences and benefits.
To continue with the example, some forms of physical exercise allow for a meditative experience as a side benefit. Some don’t. The emptying and easing of worry, care, concern or obsessive thought that can result during vigorous exercise may be just the practice I need — a time away, a refuge on a par with prayer, meditation, silence, etc. On the other hand, if my body has sustained injury, or has survived for several decades, or for a host of other reasons, then other kinds of practice may be more suitable.
One point I’ve learned the hard way: I tend to overlook the gifts of one form of practice and lament that I miss out on other gifts that issue from practices I’m not trying. But I’ve learned that a spiritual practice almost never should be “either-or”. Most practices encourage tinkering and experimentation. If the path I’m on, the religion or spirituality or tradition that I follow, doesn’t urge me to play and explore and find delight, I need to seriously reconsider the path, or at least my approach and understanding of it. I may be serving it, probably mechanically or out of rote habit, but it’s not serving me.
6. How is my practice itself part of what’s inhibiting communication?
By definition, my practice is a choice I’ve made, a seed I’ve planted. All choices have consequences, and will germinate and grow and branch in unique ways. So it’s a given that my practice will inhibit some kinds of spiritual connection even as it sparks others. Rather than seeing this as a “bad” thing, though, I can see it as a measure of change and opportunity. Life is laboratory. Like a hermit crab, I may need to move on to a bigger shell. Tweak my practice, and new connections and communication become possible. I’ve dropped a few yoga asanas that now seem to strain more than they soothe, and I’ve added a daily 5-minute outdoor meditation leaning against the trunk of my favorite hemlock along our northern property line. New possibilities for connection open up I’m only beginning to discover.
hickory to our north, with new growth at the tips
7. What assumptions am I making?
Mind is really really good at assumptions. If instinct doesn’t always kick in, assumptions will. Again, this isn’t a bad thing, in itself. How else do I find a baseline for thought? I have to start somewhere. The large animal running toward me has attacked before. It’s likely to attack again. That food doesn’t agree with my digestion, so if I indulge, I’ll regret it. From good assumptions come “thrival” and survival. Poor assumptions lead to “complications”: death, stress, conflict, indigestion, anger, despair. We learn from “experience”, which is just another name for our set of assumptions constantly being tested, weeded out, replaced, refreshed and broadened. Cling too tightly to assumptions and, sure, they’ll lead to suffering. But hold on too weakly to good assumptions, and I overlook the usefulness of past experience as a guide to present choices.
So I start with assumptions. We all do. A “blank slate” means no basis for choice, judgment, taste, preference. The more I know my existing assumptions, the more I can play with them, rather than letting them play me. I can try out a new assumption like I would test-drive a car or a pair of shoes or a new series on Netflix, and see if I like it, see if it takes me somewhere I never imagined, if it builds and grows, or heals, teaches or delights.
8. To what degree is my understanding or misunderstand a matter of semantics?
To some degree — that I already know. Two evenings ago, a monthly study group I belong to spent some time talking about “broken” words and phrases, ones that just don’t communicate what we sense they might, or what others intend by them when they use them.
So we worked with renaming some of them. Instead of surrender, allowing. Instead of God, Spirit or the Way. And there’s the Bardic quest, in a nutshell: to dust off and recall old names, but also to refresh the imagination, to restore and recover and transmute energy. To commemorate, celebrate, innovate. Lots of “-ations”! To find and manifest and honor the elemental sacraments of spirit in fire, earth, water and air. To keep naming, to go on singing, what we need to hear.
We all know the experience of being called or offering the wrong name, the pleasure of someone (ourselves included!) remembering and using the right name. Confucius talked about cheng ming, the “rectification of names” to promote and ensure harmony. This, too, is practice.
“Call on me by my name”, say the gods and teachers of so many traditions. Paradoxically, most gods and teachers also possess and answer to many names. Then we get to play another game: Is Pallas Athena “the same” as Athena Parthenos? Is Coyote or the Trickster the “equivalent” of Hermes or Mercury or Loki?
“The name (ming) that can be named isn’t the real/lasting/eternal name”, the Tao Te Ching slyly reminds us in its second line (“Ming ke ming fei chang ming”.) Wider understanding of that little detail might have saved a few million lives.
Of course my understanding is partly mediated by semantics. Get over yourself, I hear. You’re a lot more than your mind. Use other tools, and your understanding gets mediated in other ways. The trick, I’m still learning, is to choose the tool, and not let the tool choose the understanding. Add a tool, add an understanding. We might ask, wresting to our own purposes the Samuel Jackon-fueled Capital One ad(vert)s, “What’s in your spiritual wallet?”
Part 3 will close this series.
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“… if we could reduce Paganism down to its essentials”, write the Higginbothams in their 2002 book Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions, “we believe its two most central concepts are interconnectedness and blessedness” (pg. 2). I look at the two trees on the cover. Let the left one be connection, I say to myself, and the right one blessing.
I quote this book because it’s on my mind. The Pagan group of some dozen members I’ve recently helped to form here in southern Vermont is discussing it as a way toward building some common ground. We’re Wiccan, Pagan, Druid, agnostic and more, veteran and newcomer, from our 20’s through our 50s.
If we seek connection and blessing, it helps to know where to look for them. It’s no surprise that “current events” offer scant help in seeing and experiencing either one. But then, if I’m looking to daily sensationalist media accounts of human mistakes and suffering for inspiration and guidance, what do I expect? The news that gets reported is commonly bad. Pain and suffering pull in eyeballs, and sell advertising. Most informational media, you can soon conclude, aren’t ultimately here for our benefit at all. To be “informed” commonly means nothing more than to know the bad news in the distance. You could easily be excused for wondering how there’s any world left, after just a week of “current events”. What won’t “go to hell in a handbasket”, if we give it half a chance?
But we also make our own news every day, closer and more important. The only two givens: I was born and I will die. Between those two mile-markers lies everything to make the worst and also the best life I can. Everything begs for our attention, the most precious thing we have. Where to put it?
After a day of rain and cold, morning sun. Outside these house walls, where my wife and I are sorting through a few decades of packrat-dom — simplify, simplify! — the blossoming crab apple in the front yard draws an orchestra of bees.
Connection and blessing. They come like a handshake — the offer’s there, but I need to extend my hand as well, if I want to complete it and bring it home. All the disasters in the world do not negate the possibility of connection and blessing. Like the frame for a picture, they only accentuate its value. The only reason I’m here at all is because of connection and blessing. Pass it on, says the crab apple, the sweet spring air, the buzz of bees. Do your best to pass it on.
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Image: Llewellyn Publications.
Higginbotham, Joyce and River. Paganism: An Introduction to Earth-Centered Religions. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 2002.
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The Hopi of the American Southwest call one of their ceremonial pipes natwanpi — literally, “instrument of preparation”. As words do, this one stuck with me ever since I read it, decades ago now. No wonder: we need markers for passage into sacred time, because otherwise it can burn and blow right past us. Or, to shift metaphors, if we don’t catch the sacred wave, we can’t surf in sacred time. We miss that tidal flow, then wonder why life can seem flat or dis-spirited.
With a beloved festival like Imbolc calling us, what better time to consider how we can attune to sacred times and sacred tides?
Shinto, that perennially popular topic here at A Druid Way, offers a mid-January festival called Bonden-sai which feels harmonious with Druid practice. Of course it has cultural flavors and overlays unique to Japan and Shinto, but its focus asks for and offers a kind of natwanpi. (Besides, a cold, gray, snowy northern January can use some color and liveliness.)
Bonden-sai, Akita Prefecture
The bonden for which the festival is named is called a “sacred wand”, though as you can see from the bonden in the picture above, “pillar” or “column” better suggests its appearance. (Let the chickens on some of the bonden above enlarge your sense of “sacred”!) A typical bonden, the Japanese National Tourist Organization (JNTO) helpfully informs us, measures
almost four meters in length … [and] serves as a marker for the gods descending to this world. In ancient times, bonden used to be made of paper or rice straw, but in recent years, they are often made by decorating a bamboo basket with colorful fabric. The bonden wands are carried by groups of children, townspeople, or even company employees. Each group entrusts the bonden with their prayers for an abundant harvest, good health for their families and success in business.
Bonden-sai is intimately associated with Akita Prefecture in Northwest Japan. Akita is also famed for its onsen (hot springs) and mountains, and Mount Taiheizan, the symbol of Akita City, is a major site for the festival. Bonden-sai there means a vigorous race up the mountain with your bonden to procure the blessings of the gods.
Shinto and Japanese culture, so long linked, have celebrated the sacred in so many things that the secular West allows to pass unremarked. Whether it’s drinking tea or sake, or bathing, or marking the calendar with a plethora of festivals, Japan models practices the West and particularly western Paganism learn from, build on and delight in.
Because when the gods are dead, the human heart also dies a little every day. You certainly don’t have to “believe” in them as any kind of prerequisite, any more than you have to believe in anything in particular to celebrate Halloween or Christmas or MLK Day. The gods themselves can serve as a kind of natwanpi, a means of preparation. Belief, like so much else, is a tool, a strategy, a technique for connecting to things other than ourselves. Use it skilfully, delicately, consciously, I’m learning, and it repays the respectful treatment.
Nyuto Onsen (hot springs), Akita Prefecture
Ultimately it’s the impulse to celebrate that’s the flame to cherish. And if it chances on occasion to be gods that help it happen, as one of the forms the sacred can take, why exclude them out of hand, just because they’re gods?
As for me, I try to take advantage of any natwanpi that comes my way. And if I succeed and connect only 30% of the time, well, isn’t that a very respectable baseball batting average?!
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Images: Bonden in Akita; Nyuto Onsen.
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Our bodies already know the Goddess – this is our oldest magic.
I relied on this insight in planning for the workshop at this year’s East Coast Gathering, whose theme was “Connecting with the Goddess.”
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Goals and plans I had for the workshop:
The heart of the workshop is a hands-on look at various ways to make a physical book/scroll/altar object that explores/invites/incorporates ritual, ogham/runes, art, prayer, poems, questions, magic and daydreaming into a concrete “link” to the Goddess as we experience Her — or desire to experience Her. Think “book” as “portable paginated/folding/roll-up ongoing altar-in-process.” I’ll talk about inspiration, nudges, hints and ways to listen, inviting and hoping for participant sharing and input! The seed for the workshop comes out of the fact that I’m a prime example of somebody who doesn’t have a consistent Goddess practice (though She’s seeing to it that’s shifting, too), but when She wants my attention, She gets it, like with this book, and workshop.
It’s probably a good thing we don’t always hear how ambitious we sound. Young or old, you eventually learn to deal with the inevitable gap between vision and manifestation. If you’ve managed to hold on to any of that original and wonderful idealism of youth, you also realize that the gap isn’t a reason to despair, or to dispense with vision, but rather a sign of just how important vision is.
The physical world, so important for manifestation, by its nature tends to lag behind the swiftness with which vision can appear. But that lag is precisely part of this world’s immense value: its inertia and density allow for greater permanency and resistance to change, so that we can experience the results of vision over time — and fine-tune it if we choose. Unlike in dream, where the subtle stuff of vision or imagination can wisp away so quickly, physical manifestation tries to linger.
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The Goddess is generous. Or alternatively, if you prefer the cynical version, I belong to the OCD Order of Druids. Creativity, as the saying goes, is messy. I over-planned for the workshop, ending up with far more material than any mortal could begin to do justice to in a mere hour, and this post is my penance, or confession. Or further indulgence. And maybe — in the way it often arrives when we’re not paying attention, even in spite of ourselves — a spark of awen.
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“Creating A Goddess Book,” with focus on “book” in order to free it from the psychological shrine many Druids, and Pagans generally, tend to put books in. Instead of paper, a book of leather, or metal, or cloth — individual sheets, or a single longer scroll. A nudge to try out the qualities of other substances than paper, than the admittedly inviting blank books on sale in chain bookstores, or even Ye Friendlie Lokal Paygan Shoppe.
Each workshop participant received a packet to practice with, consisting of a rectangle (approx. 3″ x 4″) of vegetable-cured leather and a similar-sized rectangle of .019″ aluminum, wrapped in a larger swath of canvas cut from a shop drop-cloth from Home Depot. A wood- and leather-burning tool, a few screwdrivers, some markers of various kinds, a few words about inspiration and the importance of working to manifest things on the physical plane as one powerful way to connect with the Goddess. Suggestions for inscribing/writing/ incising a short prayer, vow, magical name, etc. Reference tables of Ogham and runes for those who wanted to inscribe words with some privacy, as a personal meditation. I pointed out that you could cut all three materials with kitchen scissors. Besides the wood-burner, no fancy tools required. Then I shut up and let participants have at the materials. Done!
Hex Nottingham’s leather and metal “pages” — photo courtesy Hex Nottingham
Except for the next flash of inspiration in the planning process, which would not let go: a “Nine-Fold Star of the Goddess” you can try out here at one of several websites that illustrate the steps.
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A sampling, with some commentary and additions, from the workshop handout:
“Spirit must express itself in the world of matter or it accomplishes nothing. Insights of meditation and ceremony gain their full power and meaning when reflected in the details of everyday life.” — J. M. Greer, The Druidry Handbook, p. 138.
This world, here, is the realm of mystery. Spirit is simple — it’s this world that’s so surprising and complex in its changes and ripples, its folds and spirals and timings. Make something, I tell myself, labor with the body, and then I can often approach the Goddess more easily, dirt under my fingernails, sweat on my face. She likes bodies. I’m the one who keeps forgetting this, not her.
“Work with a Goddess long enough and you learn to hear Her call. You learn to pick her voice out above the noise of contemporary society, above the words of teachers and friends, and even above your own thoughts and feelings. Sometimes what you hear is not what you expect.” — John Beckett, “A Rite of Sacrifice,” Mar. 4, 2014.
“Shaper, you have made and shaped me. Honor and serenity are yours. I am your garment, you the indwelling spirit. Work with me in everything I do, that all may know you. Energizer, quicken me. Measurer, clear my path. Protector, guard me safely. Initiator, take my hand. Challenger, transform me. Savior, be my help. Weaver, make my pattern bright. Preserver, heal me. Empowerer, make me wise.” — adapted from Caitlin Matthews, Elements of the Goddess, p. 118.
Rilke’s fragment, a whole meditation in itself, or a daily morning prayer.
Oh, I who long to grow,
I look outside myself, and the tree
inside me grows.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
And Larkin’s poem “Water”:
Water
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
— Philip Larkin
After delighting in this poem, make an exercise of it. Choose one of the elements. It can be water, as in the poem, or one of the others. Finish the sentence: “If I were called in to construct a _____, I should make use of [element].” Keep going: a series of statements, a meditation on the one you just wrote, a free association. Whatever gets you putting words down. You can try this over several days with all the elements, or at a different pace, if you’re working with the elements on your own.
The ECG schedule this year put the Goddess Book workshop immediately after Thursday’s Opening Ritual, so people arrived still bubbling from the ceremonial jump-start for the weekend.
“In every world, in every form, in every way, I am near you, I uphold you, I comfort you, I guide you, I deliver you from each limitation until my freedom is yours. Your body is my chalice, your heart my echo, your form my shadow, your pulse my footstep, your breath my passing.” — from my own Goddess book.
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1. Once you hold the Star of the Goddess in your hand, write the names of the four elements and Spirit, one near each of the points. Complete this step before reading further.
2. Which elements sit on either side of Spirit? Contemplate on their positions there. Are they elements that help support your spiritual life? Are they especially active? Are these the elements that need extra attention and balance?
3. Consider a section in your Goddess book for vows: experiment with them, not as harsh, unyielding obligations, but as tools for studying resolve, testing experience, practicing manifestation of your intent, and so on. They need not be “public” – write them in ogham, runes, etc. Start small and easily achievable.
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Dedicating a Goddess Book: Blood, sweat, tears, spit, etc. can mark our books with our earthiness: a commitment to be honest with the Goddess about our path, its ups and downs, to remember her presence with us, and to acknowledge what we need, what we doubt, what we’re willing to work for – whatever feels right to include. Make a ritual of it. Do it quietly, simply, without fanfare, with silence making its own ritual. Or call out all the stops, bells and whistles. Then dance, feast and celebrate.
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Allow a Goddess book — it could be a single sheet or “page” specifically intended for this purpose — to return slowly to the elements on an outdoor altar. Or bury it in the Mother’s good earth. Thus is the vow fulfilled that the Mother takes into Herself, as She will take all things back in time, and return them again.
“All things are holy to you. This book like all things lies among the faces you show to me; may I learn from you daily, drink deep from your well, and body you forth as your child.” — from my Goddess book.
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A small ritual. Take a few deep breaths. Sing the awen, or other name or word that grounds and focuses you. Holding your cupped hands in front of you, say: “I make this altar for the Goddess, a space where she may act in my life.”
Holding the Star, or your journal, or other ritual object meaningful to you, or nothing else at all, ask yourself: What specific space or doorway exists in my life for the Goddess to manifest or to act in? Pay attention to hints, images and answers as they come.
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And again: Our bodies already know the Goddess – this is our oldest magic.
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Images: ogham; star.
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Not responsible for spontaneous descent of Awen or manifestation of the Goddess. Unavailable for use by forces not acting in the best interests of life. Emboldened for battle against the succubi of self-doubt, the demons of despair, the phantoms of failure. Ripe for awakening to possibilities unforeseen, situations energizing and people empowering.
Catapulted into a kick-ass cosmos, marked for missions of soul-satisfying solutions, grown in gratitude, aimed towards awe, mellowed in the mead of marvels. Optimized for joy, upgraded to delight, enhanced for happiness. Witness to the Sidhe shining, the gods gathering, the Old Ways widening to welcome.
Primed for passionate engagement, armed for awe-spreading, synchronized for ceremonies of sky-kissed celebration. Weaned on wonder, nourished by the numinous, fashioned for fabulousness. Polished for Spirit’s purposes, dedicated to divine deliciousness, washed in the waters of the West, energized in Eastern airs, earthed in North’s left hand, fired in South’s right. Head in the heavens, heart with the holy, feet in flowers, gift of the Goddess, hands at work with humanity. Camped among the captives of love, stirred to wisdom in starlight, favored with a seat among the Fae, born for beauty, robed in the world’s rejoicing, a voice in the vastness of days.
Knowing, seeing, sensing, being all this, you can never hear the same way again these two words together: “only human”!
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Images: three from a sequence taken yesterday, 3 Oct 14, on a blessed autumn day in southern Vermont two miles from my house.
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Camp Netimus path — photo courtesy of Carolyn Batz
[Here are reviews of ECG 12 and ECG 13.]
East Coast Gathering (ECG) ’14 just celebrated its fifth Alban Elfed/ autumn equinox in the wooded hills of NE Pennsylvania. Along with this year’s theme of “Connecting to the Goddess,” 114 people reconnected to each other and the land, the lovely land. New participants and old remarked on the kindness of place, the welcoming spirit of Netimus, a flourishing girls’ camp founded in 1930 that now plays host off-season to other groups, too.
[For another perspective on this year’s Gathering, visit and read John Beckett’s excellent blog “Under the Ancient Oaks.”]
After a wet summer in the Northeast, the camp showed richly green — mosses, lichens, leaves and light all caressing the gaze wherever you looked. And keeping to our tradition of inviting guests from the U.K., we welcomed Kristoffer Hughes of the Anglesey Druid Order and returning guests Penny and Arthur Billington, this time accompanied by their daughter Ursula, a mean fiddler with Ushti Baba (Youtube link).
For me what distinguished this year’s Gathering, my fourth, was the pure joy in so many people’s faces. And it just grew over the weekend. Over and around travel fatigue, colds, tricky schedules and stresses and waiting commitments — everything — they didn’t matter: the tribe was together again. To you all (from an interfaith week I participated in): “Thank you for the blessings that you bring. Thank you for the blessings that you are.”
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Dana’s Goddess Shrine in a tent on our ritual field was also a wonderful addition and a focus for many of us.
Goddess Shrine — photo courtesy of Nadia Chauvet
Natural offerings accumulated over the weekend — mosses, lichen-streaked stones, acorns, leaves, a small sun-bleached animal skull — were returned to Netimus, and the other items packed up for next time. A workshop I led, on making a Goddess Book, drew me back to the shrine several times for reflection and inspiration. (Here’s the link I mentioned at Camp to a video on making the “Nine-Fold Star of the Goddess” — seeing the steps in 3D should help make my hand-drawn images on the handout easier to read once you practice a few times. A series of divinations and meditations were to follow which I never got to in the workshop — though over-planning is usually better than under-planning. Material for a subsequent post!)
I continue to meditate on a surprising goddess experience during Penny’s workshop, which I may be able to write about in an upcoming post. One of the potencies of such gatherings of like-minded people is the spiritual crucible that can form and catalyze discoveries in ways not always easily accessible in solitary practice.
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Our fire-keepers outdid themselves this year, building enormous pyres (one with an awen worked in wood) to provide the centerpiece of each evening’s gathering after supper, workshops and initiations had concluded.
Awen bonfire ready — photo courtesy Nadia Chauvet
evening bonfire — photo courtesy John Beckett
As always it’s people who carry the spirit of Druidry. Here as they tour New York City, just prior to the camp, are Kristoffer, Renu, Ursula, Penny and Arthur.
Renu with our UK guests in NY — photo courtesy Renu Aldritch
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[Related posts: Shinto & Shrine Druidry 1 | 2 | 3 || Shinto — Way of the Gods || Renewing the Shrine 1 | 2 || My Shinto 1 | 2 ]
Below are images from our recent visit to Spirit in Nature in Ripton, VT, some eight miles southeast of Middlebury as the crow flies. An overcast sky that day helped keep temperature in the very comfortable low 70s F (low 20s C). At the entrance, Spirit in Nature takes donations on the honor system. The website also welcomes regular supporters.
As an interfaith venture, Spirit in Nature offers an example of what I’ve been calling Shrine Druidry, one that allows — encourages — everyone into their own experience. Everyone who chooses to enter the site starts out along a single shared path.
The labyrinth helps engage the visitor in something common to many traditions worldwide: the meditative walk. The labyrinth imposes no verbal doctrine, only the gentle restraint of its own non-linear shape on our pace, direction and attention.
Beyond the labyrinth, a fire circle offers ritual and meeting space. Here again, no doctrine gets imposed. Instead, opportunity for encounter and experience. Even a solitary and meditative visitor can perceive the spirit of past fires and gatherings, or light and tend one to fulfill a present purpose.
Beyond the circle, the paths begin to diverge — color-coded on tree-trunks at eye-level — helpful in New England winters, when snow would soon blanket any ground-level trail markers. When we visited, in addition to the existing paths of 10 traditions, Native American and Druid paths branched off the main way, too new to be included on printed visitor trail maps, but welcome indicators that Spirit in Nature fills a growing need, and is growing with it.
The Druid Prayer captures a frequent experience of the earth-centered way: with attention on stillness and peace, our human interior and exterior worlds meet in nature.
The trails we walked were well-maintained — the apparently light hand that brings these trails out of the landscape belies the many hours of volunteer effort at clearing and maintenance, and constructing bridges and benches.
A bench, like a fire pit and a labyrinth, encourages a pause, a shift in consciousness, a change, a dip into meditation — spiritual opportunities, all of them. But none of them laid on the visitor as any sort of obligation. And as we walk the trail, even if I don’t embrace the offered pause, the chance itself suggests thoughts and images as I pass that the silence enlarges. I sit on that bench even as I walk past; I cross the bridge inwardly, even if it spans a trail I don’t take.
Sometimes a sign presents choices worthy of Yogi Berra’s “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
Perhaps it’s fitting to close with the North, direction of earth, stone, embodiment, manifestation — all qualities matching the interfaith vision of this place.
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This is the 200th post at A Druid Way. Thanks, everyone, for reading!
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[Related posts: Shinto & Shrine Druidry 1 | 2 | 3 || Shinto — Way of the Gods || Renewing the Shrine 1 | 2 || My Shinto 1 | 2 ]
The continuing interest among visitors here at A Druid Way in the posts on Shinto says hunger for the Wild, for spiritual connection to wilderness and its rejuvenating spirit, and potentially for Shrine Druidry, remains unabated. No surprise — in our hunger we’ll turn almost anywhere. What forms our response to such hunger may take is up to us and our spiritual descendants. Spirit, the goddesses and gods, the kami, the Collective Unconscious, Those Who Watch, your preferred designation here _____, just might have something to say about it as well.
What we know right now is that we long for spirit, however we forget or deny it, papering it over with things, with addictions and with despair in this time of many large challenges — a hunger more alive and insistent than ever. And this is a good thing, a vital and necessary one. In an artificial world that seems increasingly to consist of hyped hollowness, we stalk and thirst for the real, for the healing energies the natural world provides all humans as a birthright, as participants in its “spiritual economy” of birth, growth, death and rebirth.
As physical beings we live in a world where breathing itself can be a spiritual practice, where our heartbeats sound out rhythms we are born into, yet often and strangely have tried to flee. Even this, my sadness and loss, can be prayer, if I listen and let them reach and teach me, if I walk with them toward something larger, yet native to blood and bone, leaf and seed, sun and moon and stars. Druidry, of course, is simply one way among many to begin.
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If you know Kipling‘s Just So stories, you’re familiar with “The Cat That Walked By Himself.” The cat in question consistently asserts, “All places are alike to me.” But for people that’s usually NOT true. Places differ in ease of access, interest, health, natural beauty, atmosphere — or, in convenient shorthand, spirit. Shrines acknowledge this, even or especially if the shrine is simply a place identified as Place, without any sacred buildings like Shinto has — a place celebrated, honored, visited as a destination of pilgrimage, as a refuge from the profane, as a portal of inspiration.
Here’s a local (to me) example of a place in Vermont I’ll be visiting soon and reporting on, one that sounds like an excellent direction for a Shrine Druidry of the kind people are already starting to imagine and create. It’s called Spirit in Nature, and it’s a multi-faith series of meditation trails with meditation prompts. Its mission statement gets to the heart of the matter:
Spirit in Nature is a place of interconnecting paths where people of diverse spiritual traditions may walk, worship, meet, meditate, and promote education and action toward better stewardship of this sacred Earth.
Spirit in Nature is a non-profit, 501 (c)3 tax-exempt organization, always seeking new members, local volunteers to build and maintain paths, financial contributions, and interest from groups who would like to start a path center in their own area.
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So much lies within the possible scope of Shrine Druidry it’s hard to know where to start. Many such sites (and more potential sites) already exist in various forms. Across Europe, and to a lesser degree in North America (public sites, that is: private Native American and Pagan sites exist in surprising numbers), are numerous sacred-historical sites (some of which I’ll examine in a coming post), often focusing around a well, cave, tree, waterfall, stone circle, garden, grove, etc. Already these are places of pilgrimage for many reasons: they serve as the loci of national and cultural heritage and historical research, as commemorative sites, spiritual landmarks, orientations in space and time, as treasures of ethnic identity — the list goes on. Quite simply, we need such places.
Lower Falls, Letchworth St. Pk, NY. Image by Wikipedia/Suandsoe.
The national park system of the U.S., touted as “America’s Best Idea” (also the title of filmmaker Ken Burns’ series), was established to preserve many such places, though without any explicit markers pointing to spiritual practice. But then of course we already instinctively go to parks for healing and restoration, only under the guise of “vacations” and “recreation.” And many state parks in the U.S. extend the national park goal of preserving public access to comparatively unspoiled natural refuges. Growing up, I lived a twenty-minute bike ride from Letchworth State Park in western NY: 14,000 acres of forest surrounding deep (in places, over 500 feet) gorges descending to the Genesee River. Its blessing follows me each time I remember it, or see an image of it, and in attitudes shaped there decades ago now. May we all know green cathedrals.
I’ll talk more about shrines on other scales, small and large, soon, and tackle more directly some of the similarities and differences between Shinto and Druidry. I’ll also look at some of the roles practitioners of earth-centered spiritualities can — and already do — play in connection to the creation and support of shrines.
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Images: spider web; Lower Falls at Letchworth State Park, New York.
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You may know some of “them.” (What’s it say about us that we say “them”?) They’re often wonderful people, they raise families, they “contribute to society,” they’re fun to be around — and they may seem not to have a religious or spiritual bone in their bodies. And that’s not only something to “tolerate” or “accept.” It’s just as it should be. “I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father’s or his mother’s or his neighbor’s instead,” says H. D. Thoreau.
Two couples whose company my wife and I delight in and seek out certainly qualify as non-religious: you can see their unease or discomfort if the topic happens to come up in conversation. An innocent question, or a comment in passing. “What’s that pin you’re wearing?” or “What did you do last month when you were in Minneapolis?” And hearing our answer, a kind of stiffness, a change in expression, a wilting, or wariness. “Oh no,” you can practically hear them thinking. “We’re going there again.”
And my wife and I laugh about it afterward. You get it, right? So often we’ve been the defensive ones, either avoiding the topic altogether, or passing off our beliefs with a quick, casual acknowledgment and then turning the talk in another direction, or (sigh) girding ourselves to explain, justify, account yet again for our non-mainstream practices and events and perspectives. The lesson for us continues to be this: if the opportunity opens up, find a way to talk about day-to-day benefits rather than beliefs, seek the common ground we all know from living on this planet, demonstrate it as a part of our lives, which they do care about. Then move on. Build trust, keep the lines of communication open, share your vulnerability and — as needed — shut up. You know: basic relationship stuff.
On our recent car trip, which I’ve touched on in the last several posts, we managed to reconnect with colleagues from over 25 years ago, a couple I worked with during my year of teaching in Changsha in the People’s Republic of China in the late 80s. We’d fallen out of touch: the first of their three children arrived, three of the four of us were back in school, several of us were patching together jobs out of already unconventional work histories, and both of our families moved at least a couple of times to accomplish these things.
We joked about our reunion later, over a dinner of home-made jiaozi. Making and eating them had become a lovely family tradition for them after China. The four of us and their youngest daughter, now 19, stood around their dining room table, filling and wrapping and talking, brushing the jiaozi wrappers with the cornstarch-water mix to seal them, then watching as the plump crescent dumplings steamed. Earlier we’d met for lunch in a restaurant, in case any of us had become raving loonies in the interim, and a convenient escape was needed. Eight hours later, we all knew we had nothing to fear. And the best demonstration, in the moment, of spirituality in all of our lives? Friendship, hospitality, a shared meal, simple pleasure in each other’s company. A touch of nostalgia didn’t hurt either.
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Image of jiaozi steaming: me. Actual kitchen, steamers, stove, etc., courtesy of S. T.
Edited: 2 Aug. 2014
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Margot Adler in 2004. Picture: Wikipedia OTRS, by Kyle Cassidy
Quietly, steadily, Margot Adler helped Paganism gain wider understanding and respectability. Her passing at 68 from cancer this last Monday, 28 July ’14, also leaves a gap on the airwaves. Often people seem to know her either for her work as a veteran reporter and correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), or for her seminal book on Paganism and her involvement in Wicca, but less often for both. Yet the combination is a key to her life and significance, and helped to give her and what she had to say particular impact, harder to ignore because of her reasoned and thoughtful public voice over the decades.
The NPR website provides a couple of short audio segments acknowledging her work and her passing. This one includes brief mention of her involvement in Paganism toward the end, around the 3:40 mark, and includes a link to the other segment. Both segments include written transcripts as well.
Adler’s signature book, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, to give its full title, was first published in 1979 by Viking Press. The Amazon page for the 4th revised 2006 edition enthuses:
Almost thirty years since its original publication, Drawing Down the Moon continues to be the only detailed history of the burgeoning but still widely misunderstood Neo-Pagan subculture. Margot Adler attended ritual gatherings and interviewed a diverse, colorful gallery of people across the United States, people who find inspiration in ancient deities, nature, myth, even science fiction. In this new edition featuring an updated resource guide of newsletters, journals, books, groups, and festivals, Margot Adler takes a fascinating and honest look at the religious experiences, beliefs, and lifestyles of modern America’s Pagan groups.
A 2005 article in the Religion Journal of the New York Times, “Witches, Druids and Other Pagans Make Merry Again in the Magical Month of May,” observed that “the book is credited with both documenting new religious impulses and being a catalyst for the panoply of practices now in existence.”
My 1981 Beacon Press* paperback edition has begun to yellow with age. Paging through it as I write this post, I remember how I read and re-read it, fascinated by practices, perspectives and beliefs that variously called to that 20-something me from a place both familiar and strange, echoed my own experience, or surprised me with their outright oddness.
If modern Druids and Pagans more generally have relied heavily on books to launch and sustain them, that’s because it’s often principally or solely through literacy, books, and reading that many Pagans learn they aren’t alone after all, that others like them really do exist, and that the spiritual energies they finally must acknowledge are at work in them deserve expression rather than repression — that the way opening before them is possibly even worth the risks and hardships that may come with it. The brave Solitaries in their personal practices, and the Pagan groups that have formed and continue to form, resemble those of many other new religious and spiritual movements that coalesce and arise, and have arisen historically, within cultures typically oblivious, resistant or actively hostile to the opportunities, perspectives and critiques such movements offer. Where else, after all, would you expect Pagans to begin?! Where and how else do any new spiritual and religious movements begin, but by those with a shared experience or vision recognizing each other, and drawing nourishment from the common ground between them?
That original book cover of Drawing Down the Moon looks tame today, but it made me want to hide it from casual view, even from my parents who were very accepting of whatever their bookish son was currently reading. So what happened next with me? Very little, outwardly. But the book and its many voices, together with its author’s reflections on the Pagan movement, fell onto fallow ground. I can trace its impact directly to my involvement in Druidry now. And from what I’ve heard, I surmise this proved true for many others as well. Roots and branches of many lives.
So all this is to say thank you to Adler for her book and also for the questions she raises in it, most of which remain valid. While various streams and strands in Paganism have grown and strengthened since the time of the first edition of Adler’s book, the challenges she perceives for Paganism persist. I’ll close with an example:
Neo-Pagans, Adler asserts (pp. 385-386*)
have so many different visions that together they seem broad enough to sustain the human need for beauty, freedom, and growth. They contain a vision of the earth that is a noble one, a reverent one. I am still inspired by it. These ideas seem capable of stirring great ferment; they seem capable of ending human alienation from the planet. But will they?
… It also seems clear that those who choose to be Pagans do so to nourish and sustain a Pagan vision already inside. This vision exists as a painting exists, or a piece of artwork. And Neo-Pagans are the artists. But the relationship of artists to living on the earth has always been uncertain. Perhaps it is important to emphasize the visions of Pagans rather than the realities of their lives, the poems they write rather than the jobs many are forced to keep, the questions the movement asks rather than the goals already attained. The goals sometimes fall short of transcendence, and Pagans are often imprisoned by the very civilization they criticize.
Of course, that’s partly WHY they criticize it. Plant a dream, and it may well take time to germinate, if conditions are less than welcoming.
“You’re much too journalistic,” Michael told me again and again as we walked around Craftcast Farm in the winter of 1976. “I want to know what people feel like in the circle. That’s what I want your book to tell me. That’s what I want to know.”
Along with her good thinking, and the words of many who have become our Pagan elders, Adler’s book definitely conveys both that atmosphere and the challenges Paganism continues to grapple with.
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Images: Margot Adler; book cover of Drawing Down the Moon, first edition.
*Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. Boston: Beacon Press, 1981.
Edited 4 Aug 2014
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A Druid Way 
