Rites of passage

Celebrant work tends to focus on the biggest and most obvious rites of passage – birth, marriage and death are most commonly dealt with ceremonially, we might also mark coming of age and entry into being an elder. However, life is full of rites of passage, or life initiations, as I’ve heard them referred to (Chaos Magician Barry Walker first coined the term, I believe).

The first time I was really conscious of this I think, was when I was heavily pregnant. There is only one way forward from there – by some means, the baby will leave your body, hopefully alive, possibly not. You too could die. Pre-birth it is impossible to realistically imagine what the birthing process will be like. There’s also the huge change of having a child, which again I don’t think anything truly prepares you for. Everything changes.

There are many other life events that you can see coming and know are going to bring the unimaginable. Moving home, changing job, entering and giving up on relationships, the deaths of family members and loved ones, and many other tests and trials. A significant number of the challenges we face come out of nowhere, and it may not be until much later that you get to sit down and make some kind of sense out of what happened to you. These upheavals are dramatic and taking the time to honour and recognise them can help make the process more coherent and palatable. In celebrating, we may also make public, and that can bring the benefit of advice from others who may have gone through something similar. It’s not until you’re an initiate of certain life rites that others will tell you they’ve been there too. The women who also lost babies. The men who were also abused… and the good stuff as well. Once you know, there are things that can be shared because there’s no need to explain, and some things can only be understood once they’ve been lived.

Not everything is event, either. Not all transitions are sudden and dramatic, puberty and aging are not events really, parenthood is a work in progress and so forth. Sometimes it pays to stop and look back to see where you’ve been, because often it’s only then you realise that you have come a very long way, one step at a time.

There aren’t any formal ways of marking these passages, but I think it helps to take them seriously in your own, private practice.

Acoustic spirits of place

Being a singer and musician, I’ve always had a consciousness of acoustics, and it slowly dawned on me that this is not universal. Apparently not everyone automatically does this or grasps it as an idea, so I thought I should share… Every space has its own sound quality. As a Druid, in ritual or just connecting with a place, the sound of a place is easily tapped into and, I feel, really enables you to engage with its spirit. Using the sound resonance of a space really adds to ritual work and performance.

If you listen to a space, you can start to get a sense of how the sounds work. Are there echoes? Is sound bouncing about? Or travelling to you from afar? What makes sound here? If there’s anything vertical, be that a slope, a tree, a standing stone, you can bounce sound off it a bit. The big stones at Stonehenge are amazing for this. Messing about with your voice and listening to what comes back will tell you what’s going on.

In buildings, the height of walls, length of room, shape of ceiling will inform how the sound behaves. Often, some spots turn out to be better than others. If you can stand in the right place, throw your sound the right way, you get to tap into that resonance. The space takes your sound and embellishes it. Sometimes certain notes or pitches work better than others, and if you can hear that, you can play with it, pitching your voice accordingly. It works as well for speech as for song, and puts you into the most magical kind of interaction with your space.

If you can tap into the echoes, into the pitches that suit the space and find the right place to stand to get the best audio effect (that might simply be upwind of everyone else so the wind takes your words to them, and not away) you are in harmony with the space. The space is working for you, you do not need amplifying, your words fly out as if by magic.

I’ve been doing this for lot of years, and I know when I’ve understood the space and worked with it, because not only do I hear the soft echoes supporting my voice, but I notice how much quieter people are. Get this right and an audience that might otherwise have been restless will stand still, silent, spellbound.

Druid magic… bard magic… there’s some science in this, although you have to work intuitively and with your senses to use it. This is the simplest way of adding a magical quality to your words or music, and it works anywhere. Even the deadest room will have places that work better acoustically than others. So, if you see me ambling about a place, staring and the ceiling and humming quietly to myself, this is why. I’m listening to the spirit of the place.

The journey back

Following on from Pathworking with Dunsany, I want to talk more broadly about the journey back. If you don’t die in the process, then the end of every adventure involves a return journey. This is just as true of rituals, pagan camps and deep meditations as it is for wandering Hobbits. At the end, you go home. This is an important part of the process.

Home is where you live. It’s where you come from, where you belong, be it ever so ordinary. Part of the coming back can be seeing the old place with new eyes. Like Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, you may find that the adventure allows you to see what was splendid about what you had all along. It may mean bringing back some of the mystery and wonder to share with those who did not go on the journey. It may simply mean finding a place to nurture the more down to earth part of yourself, because we need that too.

A wonder that you cannot speak of to someone who will appreciate it, turns out to be a lot less wonderful. The making of story and offering of experience to another human is part of the adventure. That sharing puts the adventure into perspective, places it in the wider story, perhaps helps us make sense of it too.

The contrast is important, between the wonderful and the ordinary. A life that was all ritual, or all pathworking would cease to make as much sense. That way, quite literally, lies madness. There’s only so much wonder a mind can take before it needs a rest, and perhaps a nice, mundane cup of tea and time to reflect upon things. We appreciate most stuff better for having a degree of contrast. The inherent peace of the ordinary probably seems a lot more valuable once you’ve trekked into Mordor, or whatever your personal equivalent may have been.

It can be tempting to want to disappear, taking the envisaged road into faerie, and never looking back. In the more profound moments of prayer, in the wilder dreams, in the deepest meditations, that call to just go and never return can be loud and powerful. This drab, damp life, this grey England, this lousy government… if only we could step through a magical portal and never come back. Only the coming back is necessary, and worth doing well. Come back smiling, with fresh inspiration, not reluctantly like a kid being dragged out of a playground to go and do homework. Bring a few shreds of glamour and wonder with you, for the rest of the world has need of them.

Only when we come back, can we reflect on where we’ve been and figure out what it means.

Emerging from the cave

Yesterday I attended the Cotswold Pagan Society Imbolc ritual held in Clearwell caves – Druid led but not just for Druids. It was a really interesting experience. The caves themselves are a mix of natural formation and iron ore mining that dates back into pre-history. Clearwell, in the Forest of Dean is part of an area where coal and iron have been mined for a long time, much of it by surface digging. The landscape is hillocky with leavings from mining efforts such that much of the place has been shaped by ancestral activity.

It is a place of my ancestors. My father’s mother came from the Forest, so I assume given so many people there were miners that I probably have an ancestor or two who worked those caves. In youth, before it was all organised and a centre, my father and his friends wandered about down there, he was clearly a braver and more adventurous soul than I am! I’d be nervous doing that in the dark, it would be so easy to get lost.

I’ve never done a ritual in a cave before. I’d also not previously done anything so formal, planned and scripted, so that was an interesting experience. Despite the OBOD training, I’m too much the bard to want paper in hand. If words need to be fixed I feel a need to learn them – for me that’s part of the bard tradition. Really I prefer to wing it, finding inspiration in the place and the moment. I’m aware that comes from a long history of improvising – with music, mumming, writing, I’m in the habit of doing things in the moment. Many people aren’t, and a lot of life doesn’t encourage us to open up to sudden flows of creativity. One of the things yesterday left me with was a sense of being fortunate in the skills and experiences life has brought me. There must be many people who need the support of the written word, the permission inherent in a ritual script, to make Druidry available to them. Taught as we are to follow and regurgitate, it seems like an act of ego, insanity or self importance to be burbling away off the top of your head. At least, it does at first… Druidry has to start places people can cope with, and sometimes the reassuring bit of paper is needful.

During the ritual I found myself thinking about Stone Age cave painters, mysteries explored in art in the deep darkness of the earth. I thought about the hibernating bear, and also the mystic cave dwellers, the dragons and goblins, and wondered who, traditionally, inhabited those forest caves. I thought about the association between caves and hermits seeking inspiration and closeness to spirit. Inevitably I also thought about the womb of the earth, especially as we walked the steep and narrow path up towards… not rebirth in daylight, but the gift shop. Ah, modern humanity…

I spent so long running rituals, or being at the running end. It’s really good to stand in circle without any particular job or responsibility, to just be there and see what happens. It’s a relearning process for me, in all kinds of good ways. I have no doubt that at some point I’ll be setting up some circle of my own, quietly, but yesterday reminded me of how much work goes into making those big, public circles happen. All kudos to the people who pour their energy and creativity into such events around the world. It’s such a valuable service, connecting communities and letting inspiration flow, but I remember all too well how it used to wash me out.

Druidry outside

As a modern Druid, you may well be drawn to doing your rituals and celebrations outside. I’ve read descriptions by fellow Druids of getting soaked and frozen, being out all night, covered in mud and so forth, and I find myself wondering, is this what the ancients would have done, or is it actually both a reaction to, and a consequence of modern life?

Oddly enough what started me down this line of thought was a blog post about the archaeology of homelessness, and a dig in Bristol. Homeless people were invited to get involved, but most didn’t want to do any actual digging because they had nowhere to clean up and dry off, and so couldn’t afford to get wet and filthy in a hole in the first place. Our ancient ancestors had roofs and fires, but they didn’t have hot showers or tumble driers. Get a garment absolutely soaked, especially if it’s a wool garment, and then try to dry it, with just wringing out, and fire heat. It takes a while. Now, if you have lots of other clothes, this may be no big deal, but if you don’t… it’s a crisis.

I know runners who go out in all weathers and get soaked to the skin, and are fine with this. But they have places to dry their clothes, are not running water from a water tank for that hot shower, and I think this makes a lot of odds. I’ve been soaked to the skin a few times this winter. I have towels and changes of clothes, but what’s at a premium is drying space, and so I don’t get wet voluntarily. Not even for ritual. I can’t afford to.

I’ve also found that, since taking up residence on the boat, I’ve not felt the same need I used to, to reconnect with nature at regular intervals through the year. I’m living in such intense relationship, day to day, with the outside, that this has changed me. Light levels, weather conditions, visiting wildlife all impact directly, so there is no ‘reconnect’ issue. I’m here. Nature is all around me. I don’t especially need to sit on a hill all night to remind myself of the realities.

Our ancient ancestors owned a lot less than we do, lived far closer to the land than we do, and did not have anything resembling tumble driers. Did they go out and freeze their ancestral bottoms off, and get themselves soaked, for the sake of the Gods?

Maybe they didn’t.

Which does not invalidate our doing so, if we feel the need. If mud, cold, wet and the immediacy of living reality are not a normal part of life, those acts of reconnection are very important. You could do it by running just as well as by ritual, with the right intent and consciousness.

I’ll finish with a half remembered quote from Good Omens, in which it is observed that the female heroine, Anathema, had a mother who spent six months living in a field in order to get back to nature and understand why humans had spent thousands of years trying to get away from nature in the first place…

By peace and love to stand

We swear, by peace and love to stand, heart to heart and hand in hand. Mark, oh spirits and hear us now, confirming this, our sacred vow.

I was out with the Sapling Bards today for a mistletoe rite. It was a lovely gathering and I had the pleasure of meeting a great many excellent people, putting some faces to names I already knew, and reconnecting with some dear friends. It was a lovely day in a lovely space, and the rainbows were more than compensation for the rain.
We used the Druid’s Prayer, as above. It’s a common feature of Druid rituals and I have said it many times in the past, in the company of many others. I found myself reflecting during the prayer – it’s repeated three times so there is time for a fair bit of thinking – about people I’ve shared that prayer with in the past. Good friends I’ve not seen in too long. People I met once and have not seen since. And those other, more troubled connections where peace and love did not get much of a look in, when it came to the crunch. I wondered, as I often do, what I could have done that would have been better.
I care about peace, especially the sort that comes from cooperation, restorative justice and compassion. Retribution is just a way of extending the suffering all round and that never struck me as being a good idea. But when people fall out in extreme ways and become unable to tolerate each other, where is there room for compassion or gentleness? What happens when one heart is so closed, impenetrable or incomprehensible to another that no amount of ‘heart to heart’ seems to help? What happens when the peace and love we swear not only to those in circle, but to anyone we want to be in honourable relationship with, is betrayed? I don’t have any answers.
Sometimes its not within the gift of a given individual to make everything right. We are beings of finite power, and seeing the wrong does not means being able to fix it, and wanting to fix it isn’t always enough either. We have to forgive the people who are not able to be what we want them to be. I know, that to move forwards I have to forgive myself for the things that I had no control over and no means to repair. I think its when we start to imagine that we *should* be able to set all to rights that we can start driving ourselves mad with a sense of inadequacy, or having to lie to ourselves to make us seem like we’re better than we are. Worse still is what happens when someone is so desperate to seem right that they lie to everyone to hold that illusion, wreaking emotional havoc as an inevitable consequence rather than admit to being human. I’ve seen what that one can do and it isn’t pretty.
People of integrity and good heart make mistakes. Often for the best of reasons and with excellent intentions. I’ve had some horrible things done to me by people I know thought they were acting for the greater good. I don’t feel good about that, but I’ve tried to understand it. I’ve been on the wrong end of self importance, and power gaming, and people driven by fear and all manner of tricky human things. I have misunderstood things in ways that caused pain to others, I have been rash, inconsiderate, short sighted, I have made a thousand and one tiny errors of judgement that will have caused unnecessary suffering. As do most people. The trick is to try and learn, and not beat yourself into an ineffectual pulp in response. We all mess up. It’s the point when we choose to believe that we’re on opposite sides to some fellow human being that we’re really in trouble. When there are sides, you make losing inevitable and no one really wins at all. Where there’s cooperation, there is also hope, and scope for improvement.
Today I swore peace and love to a group of people I mostly don’t know. The odds are that will never be tested in any significant way. But when it is, you find out whether your oaths were strong enough to hold, and sometimes they won’t be. But without the hope that I could offer those bonds of love and peace, I could not get into circle with anyone. I have to be able to say it and mean it and trust that those around me are meaning it too, even though I know that sometimes those words are not upheld.
Mark, oh spirits, and hear us now…
And never let me become complacent about what any of this means.

Handling the evil ancestors

Thanks to a prompt on yesterday’s blog, Evil Ancestors, I realise I need to keep going with this issue. Some of it is in the book, but I shall avoid replicating material, as much to stop me from getting bored as for any other reason.

By whatever means, we’ve identified one or more ancestor we’re not okay with. Now what? Knowing is an important personal issue, but when you step into a ritual space and say ‘hail blessed ancestors’ what happens about the not-so blessed and the total bastards? As I said yesterday, odds are, we all have them.

The easiest wriggle is to just assume that when you’re talking about the blessed ancestors, you’re talking to the nice ones. The trouble with people, though, is that tendency to be complicated. One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist, and all that. People can change, and do. One act does not necessarily define the whole of a person. Often, the worst things people do can be motivated by a belief that they are doing the best possible things for the best possible reasons. Look at every religiously inspired act of violence, each one rooted in a belief that they’re burning /stoning hanging/ you for the good of your own soul. Think of the parents who try so hard to protect their children that they end up crushing all the spirit out of them. And of course there is the issue that we would not be here at all were it not for those direct ancestors, no matter how awful they were.

Silverbear made some lovely points in the comments yesterday, (do go and read them). Holding our own separateness, knowing what we are not responsible for – these things all help when it comes to dealing with the legacies of the dead.

I think that we can honour the ancestors in the sense of recognising that we would not be here without them. I begin to feel that if we’re inviting people into circle, there’s something to be said for qualifying that a bit. I wouldn’t want all of my immediate ancestors in the same circle – they don’t all get on, the same might be reasonably assumed of the departed. Perhaps it would make sense to call upon the peaceful ancestors, the kindly ancestors, much of the time. Blessed ought to be a good start. I’ve never tried to do a ritual approach to the unquiet dead or the troubling dead, but it strikes me as being an interesting idea. One for a closed group though, not a random public gathering!

I find what I want to face the evil ancestors with, is compassion. This is easier for me because none of my most immediate and nameable ancestors were total bastards, so my evil ancestors are more hypothetical and distant. I don’t have specific identities and actions to work with. For someone who does – I don’t feel qualified to make any suggestions beyond do whatever makes sense to you. I think one of the biggest reasons people mess up, is they act out of fear. Hanging on to what should be let go of, taking things they aren’t entitled to, doing things for which there can be no justification. You can’t be in a truly good, happy, healthy mental state and be out there abusing. With the safety of distance, I can respond to that with pity, towards both victims and aggressors. Victims who became aggressors. People who were so frightened they did terrible things. People who believed they were doing it for all the right reasons. I can honour the fact that we are all flawed, and there but for the grace of… what? Good teaching? A decent sort of culture? Sheer blind luck? There but for some kind of grace, goes any of us. How few choices different would have turned me into one of the dark ones, a skeleton for future closets?

Wish them opportunity to learn and heal, wish them a chance to redress the balance or to do better. And as Graeme pointed out this week, if you believe in reincarnation, we were some of those ancestors, and odds are at some point we were the evil bastards, so spare a bit of compassion for yourself as well, because that way lies healing and hope.

When to celebrate?

This question came up on one of the Druid groups I’m on – when do you celebrate festivals? Does it have to be on the day? Is the nearest weekend good enough? Or something else?

As I see it, the calendar has been mangled a few times, so that dates, the 31^st October for example, may be more about the tradition of a number than an exact time of year. Solstices and equinoxes present their own challenges too. When, exactly, do they happen? When is that moment of balance at the equinox? And at a solstice, are you celebrating the night, or the day? The dawn? Midday? There’s plenty of choices and clearly no one right answer. If you can’t celebrate the exact moment, does it make sense to celebrate the gist of the changing times at the nearest convenient date? I think, if it works for you, then the answer to that one is ‘yes’ and if it feels wrong, the answer is ‘no’.

What are we celebrating, with the four non-solar festivals that turn up in so many calendars? Are we celebrating a specific date, or the state of the seasons? If it’s the latter… seasons are not fixed and often don’t tie in to dates. With Druids in the southern hemisphere these days as well, the dates and the seasons are in mirror image of each other, and that calls for some proper consideration.

I think there’s a lot to be said for figuring out what seasonal cues in your immediate environment you associate with traditional festivals. For a start, that takes you out of standard format and into thinking about your locality, and what is meaningful to you. The arrival and departure of migrant bids might be a consideration here. The appearance of seasonal flowers or leaves on trees might be another. The shedding of leaves, the first snow, or other things may present themselves.

If you’re living somewhere that doesn’t have four seasons, why not consider what you do have, and make up your own ritual calendar to reflect it? You may feel that nature as it exists around you is more resonant than sticking to dates that relate to another place entirely. And then again, the ancestral connection might be more important. There are no right answers, but, think about what works for you and why, don’t just take a ‘one size fits all’ ritual calendar and adapt your own feelings to fit it, that’s about the only wrong way there is!

There are still green leaves on the trees here, so for me, it is not yet Samhain.

A personal wheel of the year

I spent a number of years celebrating the 8 standard wiccan/druid festivals. It gives the cycle of seasons a shape, and for people new to the idea of engaging with the wheel of the year, this is important. The ‘Fire’ festivals have all kinds of history and folklore so are also a way into a lot of traditional material, stories and ideas, making them a great teaching tool. They’re also rather a blunt instrument. The precise date of the equinoxes and solstices vary, and in practice most groups don’t celebrate the event. They celebrate the weekend most convenient to the event, and the idea of the event. As for the other four, they may be tied to natural events, but in any given year those events don’t all correspond to the dates. Arguably they are festivals of ancestral connection more than fertility festivals or part of the cycle of the seasons.

Whatever we do in terms of public and collective ritual, there’s also scope for creating a personal calendar. Our own responses to the seasons can create personal cycles. It’s autumn, and I can see the winter people getting all excited and gearing up joyfully for the dark while the summer people face SAD and feel out of sorts. People whose season is autumn are of course in their element just now. We’re all different. For some, autumn means returning to school or the education cycles. This time of year is very different for a student, teacher or parent, than it is for someone not connected to the education process. For many, this is a time of new beginnings. For others, the tax year commencing in April will be more significant. Many forms of work will have their own seasons too, and we’re all affected by those. Times of quiet, times of industry, not all of them connected at all to the solar year.

Historical events can be a big part of the personal calendar, too. Birthdays, deathdays, anniversaries of rites of passage. Over time, some fade away and don’t need re-celebrating, while others acquire greater significance.  Today is the third anniversary of my landing in America for the first time, and along with the date of Tom’s coming to the UK, and our wedding day, has become part of the calendar. Those kinds of dates can be powerful in affirming relationship, and also give an opportunity to reflect. Where are we now? Where have we been? Where do we want to be, three years hence? Where personal dates are forgotten or ignored, it can be a symptom of an ailing relationship. Where too much money is spent on anniversaries, too much attention paid at the few key points it can flag up how threadbare things are the rest of the time. I’m glad to say this is nothing like that!

Sometimes personal events become meaningful to a whole community. An annually reaffirmed handfasting can become a regular party and get together. The date of an event can become a definitive moment that stays in the local calendar, or the national calendar. Armistice day. Columbus Day. Martin Luther King Day.  Or at a more local level, strange remnants like Hunting the Earl of Rhone or the one about finding a mediaeval lady’s hood – something lingers on even when the meaning gets a bit vague. These rituals and rememberances can become part of a communal identity.

The moral of this story is, don’t be afraid to add new things. The day of the founding of your grove might be an event to reflect on every year. The day of your becoming a fully fledged OBOD druid might be one you want to earmark for druidic reflection in years to come. There are no wrong answers here, it’s just a way of being alert to the resonant things in your life and making a space for them, honouring what they mean. It’s also important to let them go when they cease to have resonance, moving on to new ideas, new celebrations.

The sacred loaf

I used to always make bread for rituals. Creating the loaf was a big part of my preparation work, often happening the day before. I got increasingly into creating breads that were fun, tasty and decorative, it became an art form for me, an expression of love for community, a moment of connecting with my breadmaker ancestors, connecting with land, grain, the essential stuff of life. I also used to make all of my own bread for home consumption, but that just doesn’t work on the boat – issues of storage space, kitchen size and other hassles have made it too awkward to do. I miss it though, and it’s one of the things I’m looking forward to having back, after the boat.

I always used to make a loaf for harvest festivals, too. My son’s previous school was Church of England and closely related to the local Church, so they celebrated festivals there. He’s never been Christian, but I think a grounding in tradition is good for a person, so he always participated in these. I learned how to make a traditional harvest loaf – they look like a wheat sheaf and are decorative rather than edible, they are loaded with salt and slow cooked so as to last, but not good nomming. The vicar always loved getting them, and used to take the loaf round to show older parishioners, who remembered the tradition and enjoyed remembering. It’s nice to do something that reaches out into a wider community. Said vicar knew perfectly well I was a Druid, but we had a good mutual understanding and both of us cared more about community and making good stuff happen than anything else. It was a good situation.

This year, I was once again able to make a harvest loaf, thanks to a lovely friend with a lovely kitchen. We were a bit time pressured, but we got there. It was wonderful being able to share the method with someone else, and initiate another child into the idea of traditional bread! Today, the loaf is heading to church, where there will no doubt be a lot of children who haven’t seen a real harvest loaf before.

I’ve said before about how, sometimes, being a Druid means not going round overtly being a Druid. I’m off to church today, and my loaf will be there. Maintaining traditions matters to me. Supporting the local churches matters to – they are an integral part of villages, focal points of life, history, tradition, and surrounded by the bones of the ancestors. It’s not the religion that draws me, it’s the lives and histories of my own people, the call to community service, the making of bread.