Druidry and healing

This week I’ve been talking to some lovely people who run a healing space, and they had questions about healing within the druid tradition. Now, I know there are strands in the druid weave where healing is very much the focus, particularly on the ovate side, and that there are druids who work as healers. I also think that in New Age practice, there is a huge emphasis on healing work, and I wonder about this. Partly because healing is what you do after damage. Druidry, for me, is more about the day to day living, and not getting to a place of damage should be part of that.

Relationship within druidry includes relationship with self. We can’t be in good relationship with the rest of the planet if we abuse, neglect and mistreat our own minds and bodies. Lack of care for self opens the way to illness and ongoing damage while care taken will work to minimize risk, and also helps us cope with anything we couldn’t dodge. I’ve been on the wrong side of this, unable to look after my own most basic needs and conscious of the wounding that caused. Good health, bodily, mentally and spiritually, depends on self care. In order to take care of the self, you have to think that’s worth doing, you need self esteem, self respect, a sense of usefulness, some reason to value your own condition.

Druidry is also very much about creativity and inspiration, and I think this is a huge wellbeing consideration too. There’s nothing like being trapped in a situation to push you towards distress and sickness. Inspiration is the tool for escape, for re-writing the rules, reinventing the job, the relationship, the lifestyle, so that wellness can follow.

In terms of mental health, community and a sense of belonging can make a lot of difference. Emotional support and recognition can keep a marginal person sane. Being heard helps to ward off depression. The work we do in ritual, hearing and supporting each other, holding circles of community, helps to keep us well, and upholds the self esteem essential for self-care.

There’s plenty of mainstream science that says being outside is good for you. A little walk relieves stress, and is good exercise. Time in green spaces is good for mental health. A little dancing, meditating, or drumming is good for the body as well. Many of the things that we do as part of our druidry, has beneficial effects in terms of health.

I think when we make healing into an event, focusing on the action of a few hours or days, we do ourselves a disservice. Wellness is not a thing to tag on as an afterthought. It’s not something to do once a week for half an hour. A good life has wellness at its heart. Granted, there are illnesses and setbacks that won’t be triumphed over just by application of regular druidry, but there is no ailment out there that isn’t alleviated to some degree by living well. So for me, druidry is less about healing work, more about not being so vulnerable to sickness in the first place. No amount of magical or new age healing work will save a person who will not change their life. I was unwell for years because my diet was wrong, I was sleep deprived, living with things that made me anxious, and things that caused me misery. No amount of healing intervention would have done more than paper over the cracks. Only a lifestyle change, and a recognition of the need to take myself seriously could get a healing process under way, and take me into a new phase of life where I am not continually being damaged.

I think the move to seek healing can be a way of starting that process, the recognition of problems, and the recognition of self as someone who merits being cared for. But ultimately, being well is a full time job, and the implications of going after it can be enormous.

Jumping through hoops

The desire to belong is, I think, one most of us have. Wanting to be part of a tribe, to be recognised and accepted if not actively wanted and appreciated. This is something I’ve always struggled with. As a child from the only vegetarian family at the school, the only one with brown bread in the lunch box, the only one without a TV, I was not off to a good start. Add in no awareness of popular culture and no aptitude for sport, and my social doom was inevitable. At secondary school, I found all the lone rejects from the other primarys, and life got easier.

That hunger for acceptance has had me jumping through hoops for as long as I can remember. I wasn’t the sort to drink myself to a stupor to try and fit, or any of that kind of trap. Possibly only because no one suggested to me that it would have helped. I learned to trade sexual favours for attention early on, and I learned to do what I was told, in all sorts of situations. As I got older, I found that voluntary work would get me tolerated some places. All someone had to do was hold up a hoop and suggest, that if I could manage a back-flip through it, they might put up with me, and I’d be there. Many hours of my time have been spent this way, to little effect.

I have come to the conclusion that those who hold hoops, are never going to be satisfied by how I jump through them. I have yet to find myself in a situation where the hoop jumping has paid off. It just sucks the life out of me until I crawl off somewhere else.

I’m also conscious that there are plenty of people who do not hold up hoops and stand round expectantly. People who value me for myself, not even necessarily based on what I do. People who do not require me to be useful, or suitably entertaining. People who have not ditched me when I’ve struggled. The holders of hoops tend to announce themselves, trumpeting their own importance, and how much you have to gain from their approval. The people who are worth having in your life are often quieter, asking for less, but accepting, and giving, a good deal more. Those quieter exchanges tend to be the more valuable ones.

Which leaves me wondering what kind of hoops I hold up for other people to jump through. What demands do I make? In terms of organising groups, it’s always been a willingness to be active. If a person turns up and looks interested, I’ll include them, but I don’t run round herding and hand holding. I’m not sure that’s a hoop, just a basic level of willing engagement. I expect honesty, I appreciate kindness and consideration, but I expect also that people with the best of intentions can and will make mistakes. I certainly don’t expect anyone to be perfect.

Holding up hoops to jump through, is, I think, about wanting to control the boundaries. It’s a way of establishing who is ‘in’ and who isn’t and it happens everywhere from playgrounds to adult social groupings. The position of hoopkeeper, doorkeeper, is a powerful one. One of the things about tribes is that to mean anything, they do need boundaries, a ‘them’ to pitch against the all important ‘us’. Conformity can be very much part of what defines the tribe. There’s also the issue that it is comfortable to have people reflect back our values and behaviours, and uncomfortable when they do not.  It’s an interesting question when considering how pagan tribes are formed and held. Looking back, there have been occasions when someone has seemed so unsuitable that I’ve not brought them in. I simply didn’t open the door.  I have never suggested to anyone that the door would open, if they do the right number of backflips first. There are ways of holding boundaries, I think, without hurting or humiliating those who, for whatever reasons, we do not accept in.

No more hoops, thank you. Next time I see one, I shall be walking away, I’m not going to play anymore. Want an exciting somersault through a flaming ring? Do it yourself.

Druid News

OBOD revamp

 

http://www.druidry.org was one of the first website I found year ago when I started looking online for druid content. I remember it back then as being fairly simple, black and white, lots of text, and very informative.

This spring has seen a radical recreation of the site, with a beautiful new look and a lot of extra pages. It’s well worth going and poking about, for the variety of new articles and resources and the sheer pleasure of looking at it. It’s very useable, and offers a portal to a lot of other online druid content. My awareness of this has a lot to do with having been invited to contribute to the meditation pages – http://www.druidry.org/druid-way/teaching-and-practice/druidry-meditation

(Normally I’m going to use Druid News for things that are not about me, but… this is mostly about OBOD)

This revamp comes at an interesting time for OBOD, with the grades having been redesigned in recent years, and the rethinks about history brought by Ronald Hutton’s work. The new site reflects, I think, not only a growing community, but OBOD’s increasing involvement with the wider druid community. There’s a greater offering of resources to not just the membership, but anyone who drops by. It seems to me like a move towards being less insular, more accessible, and I’m interested to see where this new energy within the order takes things.

 

 

Share your news

If you want to get your news mentioned here, mail brynnethnimue (at) gmail (dot) com – short and sweet is good, by all means include links. Don’t send pictures, I have a hard time of it uploading anything big and complicated. I’m happy to include events, courses, book releases, new websites, new groups, things druids have been up to, or things you’ve spotted in the news that seem relevant to the druid community. Arty, crafty, musical or literary people with stuff to sell are welcome to present themselves if they can find a news angle. I’m not averse to personal news. No witchwars content, no conspiracy theories, no ‘I know a bloke who met this guy down the pub who said…’ tales. I’m looking for good news where possible. The mainstream does plenty enough of the miserable content already.

Druidry and money

This week Cat wrote about the relationship between druidry and money in a practical and personal sense over at http://druidcat.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/faith-and-funding/ It’s a good and thought provoking blog about how we value things, time, energy and skill, what we give for free in service, and the necessity of being able to eat.

I’ve been fermenting an idea this week which seems relevant. Cat talks about money as being a way of exchanging energy – a productive notion, I think, that enables us to consider money in a spiritual context. What I want to explore today is the relationship between money, and fear.

Based on experiences to date, there are no problems that are not reliably exacerbated by poverty, while many problems can to some degree be alleviated by throwing money at them. Even if you can’t fix the underlying issue, being in comfort while you deal with it is a hell of a lot easier than if you don’t have a roof over your head. What can you not buy, with enough cash? The news is full of the kinds of breaks and advantages enjoyed by the super rich. Who wouldn’t look at those lifestyles, and the freedom great heaving loads of cash bestow, and want a piece of it? Who wouldn’t imagine that kind of life as being far preferable? Life is full of uncertainty, while money seems like the great insulator.

Of course the money itself doesn’t do anything, it’s the way in which you deploy it that gets results, which is where the money-as-energy concept comes in. Then there’s that interesting question of ethics, so important in druidry. With enough money, a person can buy an advantage over those who have less. Be that the better lawyer, the goodwill of a government, someone to walk in front of you with a big stick… or anything else. Somewhere out there is a line, a shift between what is fair and reasonable, and what is downright corrupt. How far can we fairly use money as energy and a means of getting things done to our advantage, and at what point does that become oppression, corruption and abuse? I don’t have an answer to that, but I think it needs asking, all the same.

What my druidry encourages me to think about money is this – that there is such a thing as sufficiency. Not an idea of wealth that can smooth every bump and grease every wheel, but enough. Beyond that, I feel a degree of duty to act in ways that are not just about me. Or at least, I envisage that with suitable degrees of security and resources, I would then start using what was left with an eye to others more than myself. Of course the measure of ‘enough’ will be mine, and will undoubtedly represent far more than many people in this world enjoy, but also far, far less than might constitute riches by a lot of standards. The trick will be, holding that notion in face of changing circumstances. Power, after all, corrupts, and what is money, if not power? Although I could also argue that poverty corrupts too, and desperation is just as likely to make us feel like relinquishing a belief or a moral stance, as excessive ease is.  You can’t eat the moral high ground, and it won’t keep you warm at night.

I suspect that there is no amount of money that cannot be taken from a person, and nothing that will reliably protect us from fear.

I’ve suggested to reality that it really ought to test me on this, and see if I can hold my good intentions in face of gratuitous success and wealth. That’s not going to happen this week, at a guess.

Writing Druidry and Meditation

When I started leading meditation groups, I was the most experienced person we had at meditation, but that didn’t mean a lot. While I’d done a lot of solitary meditation, I had never led anything quite like it before and started hunting around for books and pointers. It was long enough ago that I didn’t just default to searching the net! I got a copy of Pete Jennings book on meditation, which was useful for inspiration but didn’t give me everything I was looking for.

Last winter my emotional state was such that I couldn’t write fiction. I couldn’t tell stories about what was happening to me – it was all too immediate and raw. I also couldn’t think about any kind of emotional narrative that was separate from my experience, for all the same reasons. But writing is what I do. It’s a big part of who I am. Not to be writing is to be lost and miserable. That was the critical prompt for deciding I should shift from fiction towards non-fiction. I knew about meditation than anything else, so it was the obvious route to go. It worked, and the words poured out of me.

The call to be creative, and to use that creativity in service of my community, is a big part of my druidry. The bard path is central to how I live, and the bardic oaths I have sworn were all about the soulful, productive use of ability. I’ve always wanted to create things that made a difference to others, so the need to share what I do is very important to me. If I’m not being creative, I get depressed. So to a certain extent, Druidry and Meditation was a way of coping when I couldn’t do much else. I had no idea if anyone would want it, but to my delight, O Books did, and I’d landed at the right moment to catch the arrival of Moon Books.

When I write fiction I don’t tend to plan a great deal. I may have an overall shape for the narrative, or a sense of how it ends, but not always that much. I like making things up as I go along, and get bored easily with too much structure. For non-fiction work I tend to plan the chapter headings, and sketch the content before I start, but that’s about all. One of the consequences is that I can get a fair way into a project and then realise I need to do extra research. For me, that’s part of the fun, but it also means there’s no way I’d commit to a deadline before the book as finished. I find it hard to predict how long the work might take. In the past I’ve worked to very tight deadlines – I used to write custom fiction where stories had to be created in about two weeks. I once wrote a novel to meet an eight week deadline, but it nearly drove me mad. I could do it, but would prefer not to where my own work is concerned. Pressure and creativity don’t mix well for me.

There are a lot of days when I prefer writing non-fiction – this blog being a significant manifestation. I find making up characters, scenarios and plots easy enough, but that’s increasingly insufficient. I have to feel that a story is for something. It needs to be more than a way of killing time or a stab at earning some money. This represents a cycle of changes for me. When I started writing, I was full of aspiration, a desire to make change, and more importantly, a belief that I could do something meaningful through my work. Years of rejections and the attendant frustrations shifted me towards a desire to get something, anything published. I think a lot of authors go through this. The balance between following your muse and being sellable are not always compatible things.

As I moved into more commercially viable genres – chiefly erotica- I gave up on the idea of writing something that would change the world, and settled for writing something that would allow me to earn a living. Over the years my inspiration waned and the joy I took in my work decreased. I kept finding that the kinds of stories I felt driven to tell just were not the ones people apparently wanted to buy, and I started to feel lost and demoralised. Tom and I came under a lot of pressure to turn our work into some in of shiny blockbuster box ticking exercise, and I got to the point of wondering if I should give it all up and go and stack supermarket shelves.

In this last year, I’ve found Moon Books as a home for my druid work, and we’ve found Archaia as a home for the comic. Both publishers have been lovely, and inspiring to deal with, supporting what we do. Finding a readership here, and for the webcomic has given me the confidence to think that I can write something that matters. I can tell soul stories alongside the non-fiction.

The mainstream is full of pressures to conform and dire warnings about how doomed you are if you don’t do all the same things as everyone else. Fighting that is hard. But it is possible. If you like what someone does, tell them, it will help sustain them. The feedback on this blog has made a world of difference to me. Fighting alone is grim, but when you know there are kindred spirits out there, it gets that bit easier to keep going. I’ve come full circle to a place of thinking there is a point to all this after all.

Fighting trousers or bending reed?

I’ve just read Jo’s excellent post http://octopusdance.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/meh/ where she talks about achieving detachment so as to be more in control of our emotions, and our lives. She makes some very good points about the ways in which our desire to be in control of things and people we have no control of, can prompt really unhelpful emotional responses. I’m sat here nursing a bucket load of those – fear, anger, resentment, fear, more fear. I’m not good at situations where I feel entirely unable to control what’s happening in my life. I’m very tired of facing situations where assorted official bodies have the power, at least, to strip me of every last thing I care about for reasons that have a lot to do with their subjective views and my failure to be quite normal enough. Meh indeed.

In my teens I explored Tai Chi and a little Taoist philosophy. One of the ideas I encountered was of yielding rather than resisting. It underpins the Tai Chi discipline. We bend, and by doing so, overcome the force and aggression of others. In not fighting, we triumph. Now, compare that with what we get in the Celtic myths, full of strident warriors out doing crazy heroic things. Cu Chulain tied to his rock and fighting until he dies. Macha running the race that kills her. And even Rhiannon, offering to carry all comers as she takes punishment for a crime she never committed, doesn’t seem to be yielding so much as enduring. My impression of the Celts is of a proud people who, when challenged by life, faced it down or died trying. Often the latter. Assuming the mediaeval tales are any kind of insight into Celtic mythology, they suggest an ethos all about doing what honour demands, and dying if needs be. On the whole that’s easier to do when your enemy is also holding a sword, or happens to be a wild boar. Trickier when you are fighting against the hideous tides of paperwork, red tape, crazy laws, kafka-esk systems, a society that doesn’t have room for you, or any of the myriad other things a modern druid can wind up banging their head against.

The scope for going out into the world and fighting injustice with a big weapon, is not what it used to be.

While I’ve said before that I don’t consider myself a ‘druidry and something’ druid, there are other influences. Aside from the Taoism, there’s existentialism in my head, and post modernism, green politics, a fondness for rationalism, a profound respect for humanist and atheist thinking and probably a lot more. Inevitably I am to some degree a product of my own times, and my own reading.

Do I bend in the gale to avoid breaking, or do I make like a Celtic warrior and fight to the death? Nothing I am up against will give a poo either way. It’s a case of do as you’re told, or be harassed, threatened, and legally forced to comply. There are a lot of situations in which a person has no legal right to decline, or to hold an opinion. There is yielding, or being flattened. The pragmatist in me does not see a great deal to be gained in being flattened. The powers that be are indifferent to heroic gestures, or principles other than their own. I know of people who have given their lives for causes they believed in, and I have a depressing sense of how much difference that makes. Being alive, and continuing to make a nuisance of yourself appears to be more productive.

Being a druid is of course not entirely the same as being a Celtic warrior. There’s the whole peace angle to consider for a start. Usually there are other paths aside from direct conflict. Sometimes conflict is the only way. All I can hope for is the wisdom to figure out when to be a Taoist and yield before the unstoppable forces, and when to be a Celt, and dig out the fighting trousers and refuse to go quietly.

I owe the idea of Fighting Trousers to an excellent chap called Professor Elemental, who you can find on youtube, and, should. Today is not the day for donning the fighting trousers. Tomorrow, who knows?

Finding the good

There are days when my sense of all that is wrong in the world overwhelms me. From the small, everyday cruelties through to the epic injustices, there is so much to grieve over. I’ve had too much contact with sadists and sickos, people who hurt and use others, and feel entitled to do so. Any contact would be too much. The perception that the bad far outweighs the good, can be crippling. To keep going in any positive way, requires hope.

Looking for the good in things is a choice. It is about holding optimism in the face of experience, and the more crap life throws your way, the harder that gets. Refusing to be beaten allows me to stave off both cynicism and despair. Apathy and a defeatist attitude are not good tools to work with, even if lapsing into them may seem easier. Sometimes optimism is a full time fight, but the alternative is a loss of self, a loss of belief in the future, and a loss of belief in the humanity of others.

Sometimes you have to be looking hard for the good things, to spot them. The worst people I have known in my life had their moments, even. One, who went to prison, had a deep and abiding love of dogs. That doesn’t redeem him in any way, but I make a point of remembering that. Sometimes entirely selfish motives will push a person towards doing the right things anyway.

Sometimes the good in a day is small and subtle. It’s a burst of birdsong, or a smile from a stranger. It’s seeing the little plant that has managed to break through the tarmac, or the way the sunset catches the water. When you’re paying attention to these small things, they start to seem a lot bigger. Getting away from what is solely human to find the good in other things can be a great help. The trees are not thinking about the economy, only about budding and spring. The hills do not care for our laws and troubles, they just are. There are different perspectives to find, and solace to be taken from them.

Making a conscious effort to find the good in a day takes practice. However, there are aspects of misery and despair that are all about cutting ourselves off from everything, retreating deeper into the self. It may seem like a protective move, to disengage, but it also deprives us of the connections we need. Seeking the good is also about an attitude shift, because it assumes there is good to be found. Often it’s easiest to find what you’re looking for, and expecting the worst brings it into focus.

When you find something good, share it. Celebrate it. Even the smallest gestures towards making better, are precious. A kind word, a tiny gesture of compassion or friendliness, a joke shared. These are all ways of fighting back against the forces of misery and apathy.

When something or someone seems impossible, you can still change how you think about it. Every set back, every new problem, is a challenge to rise to. Every idiot and asshole making your life difficult gives you opportunity to be a better sort of person. Every difficult thing is an opportunity to prove something, and to shine. Often no one else will notice, but in singing your own triumphs you can get something useful out of the crap. And sometimes, when you voice the little wins, the things faced, the idiots well handled, someone else will share that with you in a good way.

Today I am ill, but when I looked up from my editing job, I saw an egret fly past my window, its form a magical, ghostly white against this dingy sky. It looked so pristine, like an emissary from the otherworld. And yes, it is cold, but I have a man who has brought wood in and made me a fire. I’ve lived in far harder conditions than this, having to build a reality out of crumbs. It can be done, and often there are more than crumbs to work with, especially once we start passing them around. Good things have a habit of growing and expanding, if they are given the chance.

This is all about belief. We can choose what we believe. If we choose to seek the good, to believe in the existence of silver linings in clouds, and frogs who turn into princess, and wool that turns into gold, then perhaps we can make it happen. The only thing I am certain about is that the person who keeps striving has a little hope of success, but the person who gives up, has none.

 

And it’s a bit of an irony, having written that this morning, and sat here the recipient of yet another slap from reality, and wondering how not to give up. But life goes on, somehow.

The Gorsedd Prayer

There is a prayer commonly used at druid gatherings. When I first encountered it, I had no idea where it came from or how it might fit in the history of druidry. I learned it, and intoned it, although I found that people vary the endings and some of the words. Deity, and spirit words are often interchanged to fit the nature of the gathering, and at Bards of the Lost Forest, we never quite agreed on what order the end came in. But the gist of it is something like…

Grant, oh spirits, thy protection

And in protection, strength,

And in strength, understanding

And in understanding, knowledge

And in knowledge, the knowledge of justice

And in the knowledge of justice, the love of it,

And in the love of it, the love of the gods and goddesses

And in the love of the gods and goddesses the love of all existence, and all goodness.

 

I’ve done a lot of deep contemplative work with this prayer, both before knowing that it’s probably Iolo Morganwg’s work, and after. I’ve meditated on the connections between ideas and the implications of each line. In short, I have tried very hard to come to a proper understanding of its significance, and I’ve never got there. For some months now I’ve been entertaining the idea that I should re-write it, taking the form of the original as inspiration, but coming up with a line of progress that makes more sense to me. Yesterday, I woke up with a fire I my head, and what happened, was this…

Grant, oh spirits, thy protection,

And in protection, insight,

And in insight, understanding,

And in understanding, compassion

And in compassion, rightful action,

And in rightful action, the love of it,

And in the love of it, the love of all existence,

And in the love of all existence, a sense of the sacred

And in that sense of sacredness, peace.

 

I feel I’ve focused more on engagement and action than the original does, not imagining a flow that entirely comes in from the outside, but a space in which we can be opened to opportunities for our own development. The causality in this works better for me, and I’ve tested it on my bloke and child to good effect.

I’m a huge believer in evolving tradition, in taking what we have and doing it over so that it suits us better and makes sense for where we are. On the folk side it’s called ‘folk process’. If anyone likes what I’ve done and wants to make off with it, then please do so. Or if you like some bits of it and not others, take those and folk process them until you get what you need, or write your own from scratch and send that out into the world. Or keep the original, because I’m guessing there are people who do understand the deeper currents within it  and for whom the language works perfectly.

Druid News

This week has seen a lot of drama within the druid community, with a debate sprawling across forums, facebook, blogs and probably other places too. The initial gist of it revolved around how much Celtic inspiration you need to have any right to call yourself a druid, but this developed a second debate about who has the right to assert what about druidry. The case for Celtic druidry was made passionately by Welsh Druid Kris Hughes on his blog –  http://www.kristofferhughes.co.uk/1/post/2012/01/dilute-to-taste.html He has some very valuable points to make about identity and the relationship between druidry and the Celts, although some of us – me included, do not agree with his interpretation of history.  My favourite response so far is http://bloodandbone.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/cultural-dilution-in-druidry/ which tackles much of the emotional complexity other druids may feel in facing Kris’s words. I also recommend taking a look at Bish – http://www.rosher.me.uk/wordpress/?p=776 and Red http://theanimistscraft.wordpress.com/2012/02/01/druidry-ancient-and-modern and also Damh the Bard – reflecting on his own relationship with druidry and celtica http://damh.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/proof-and-faith

I have no doubt there are other excellent posts on both sides that I’ve missed, so don’t hesitate to add links in the comments section.

While this has produced uncomfortable feelings all round and ruffled some feathers, I think it’s critically important that we are able to challenge each other and debate issues of identity and discuss the nature of druidry. However, we shouldn’t let this swamp us either, what we do as druids in our day to day life is far more important than arguing over who has the right to call who what.

 

 

Share your news

If you want to get your news mentioned here, mail brynnethnimue (at) gmail (dot) com – short and sweet is good, by all means include links. Don’t send pictures, I have a hard time of it uploading anything big and complicated. I’m happy to include events, courses, book releases, new websites, new groups, things druids have been up to, or things you’ve spotted in the news that seem relevant to the druid community. Arty, crafty, musical or literary people with stuff to sell are welcome to present themselves if they can find a news angle. I’m not averse to personal news. No witchwars content, no conspiracy theories, no ‘I know a bloke who met this guy down the pub who said…’ tales. I’m looking for good news where possible. The mainstream does plenty enough of the miserable content already.

Intellectual fraud

I’ve run into this issue in a number of places – in books, and when dealing with professional people who should know better. There is a form of intellectual fraud called circular logic. It occurs to me that one of the reasons it happens is that people using it do not realise it is inherently fraudulent as a way of thinking. It is a fraud because it so readily supports wrong answers, and if you employ it, you can run off down the wrong track without even knowing your are committing a fraud against yourself. My other thought is that if I share the method, it may help other people recognise books and authorities that are trying to manipulate them with circular logic, and thus defend against it.

As soon as we move from observation to asking what it means, we shift from fact to speculation. There are always multiple interpretations available for anything. Some may be more right than others, some may depend on circumstance or the observer. Good thinking holds the possibility for lots of interpretations. If more evidence comes in, it may be possible to see patterns or trends, or a balance of probability. There may even come a time when it is sensible to assert an interpretation as proven, or as fact. However, if you start with a theory, and interpret all of the information in the light of that theory, all you can ever get is ‘proof’ that supports the initial theory. You cannot be proved wrong, and you cannot perceive other interpretations. This is intellectual fraud and it is very dangerous.

For example, we dig up a body from the Celtic era where there is evidence of violent death. We assume sacrifice. We then look for reasons as to why that person would have made a good sacrifice, and whatever is a feature of them becomes a reason. We look at why their location was relevant for sacrifice, and we see some kind of feature and latch onto it as being relevant. We look at the manner of death and interpret it as being sacrificial, and then find something to associate it with that makes sense. We then take all the results of our work and present them a proof that the chap was sacrificed. There is no reason why he couldn’t have been murdered or executed, but we never looked at that.

I wish I was making this up, but I’ve just read the Ross/Robins ‘Life and Death of a Druid Prince’ and it’s like this all the way. When it comes to unpicking history and getting a realistic view of the past, this is bad enough.

It also happens in our day to day lives. We assume that someone is getting at us, so we interpret everything they do and say in this light, and thus we always feel threatened and offended by everything they do and say. We cannot hear the possibility that we’ve got something wrong. We assume we know a person’s motives, interpret accordingly, and never move from our initial assessment to true understanding. If we start out by thinking we know, and making the facts fit, it is impossible to learn. There is no way of seeing something we hadn’t thought of, of making real discovery or of having proper relationship.

What is most frightening, is when someone in a position of power and authority settles on a theory and will not let it go no matter what the evidence. When you watch everything being twisted to fit the other person’s story and are powerless to stop it. I have no idea how you fight that, but it looks like I am going to have to learn. I’m reminded of something I heard on the radio, years ago. A woman who had been diagnosed with severe mental health problems, and sectioned. When she told her doctor that she thought she was making progress and might be able to recover, this was written down as further proof of her being delusional. For people dealing with mental health issues, fighting this kind of intellectual fraud in the circular logic of authority figures, is terrifying and really hard.

I would imagine that if the medical profession, police, or social services, or any other such body make an assessment and then will only interpret new information in the light of it, your life rapidly becomes a nightmare. I’ve been lucky on that score, doctors, police and social services have been open minded, receptive and supportive in my life. But some years ago I dealt with teachers who had decided that bullying was not happening, and made themselves blind to all evidence. Some years on one boy is in a special school, one has an autism diagnosis and one needs a lot of help to rebuild self esteem and social skills. A willingness to look at the evidence objectively would have spared three families a lot of grief.

Sometimes the cruellest and most destructive thing we can do is cling to the idea that everything is fine and normal. By bending all evidence to fit that belief, we distort lives, keep victims powerless, support mistreatment, remove the scope for change, healing or progress and fail to uphold our own honour.