Healing Work

As a culture we’re passive about healing. We expect to show up at the doctors and get some pills, or some surgery that will make the problem go away. Or we want a magic herb, wand or laying on of hands to the same effect. We say ‘healing work’ when we mean the work that healers do, when perhaps we should be more willing to apply it to ourselves. We all get sick. Many of us will experience mental health problems too. Healing work is something we could all do with paying some attention to.

There are a lot of ailments that can be tackled, and if not sorted then alleviated by lifestyle changes. Diet, exercise and sleep patterns have a lot of influence. A good diet isn’t merely about weight, it’s about giving your immune system some decent raw material to work with.
Exercise isn’t just about weight either, keeping the heart healthy, working off stress, building physical confidence, keeping mobile. We do a lot of healing work when we sleep. If we don’t give time to sleep, how do we expect to heal in a timely fashion? Diet, exercise and sleep all impact on mental health, which in turn impacts our ability to deal with other health challenges.

It is work. It takes effort and discipline to try and change your lifestyle, change harmful thinking habits, and maintain wellness. This needs recognising. People who expect the magical fix (from the doctors or the reiki) will get disheartened by the lack of a magical cure all, and won’t stick at doing the needful work. There are no ‘cures’ there are things that supress symptoms, ways of cutting out problem parts of the body, things that boost the immune system and things that prevent you getting the disease in the first place. Whatever route you go, your body has work to do, healing from the experience and sometimes from the knock on effects of the treatment – as with cancer, or having an operation.

I’ve been trying to fix my head for years now. I’ve had brief stints on medication, had cognitive behavioural therapy interventions (all on paper) had one to one counselling, time with a support group, self help books… and I’m still not there. Depression and anxiety continue to flare, affecting my body as well as my mind, and limiting what I can do. There are days, I confess, when it feels pointless to keep fighting this stuff. Then I stop and look back and think about how much more ill I was a year ago, two years, three… I’ve come a very long way. The effort that went in was worth it, and I remind myself that it’s going to take more effort to go the rest of the distance, and that it can be done.

It doesn’t help that we aren’t really taught to feel responsible for our bodies. We could take huge strain off the health care systems just by learning how to look after ourselves, learning how to work at being well. Maybe not all the time, but enough of the time that we aren’t flirting constantly with disease. That would mean taking stress seriously too. Stress is not good for your immune system, heart, nerves. Stress begets mental illness, makes us sleepless so we don’t heal, makes us feel we can’t stop to take care of ourselves. If we took stress seriously we might have to face the uncomfortable truth that a lot of workplaces are contributing to the ill health of employees in big ways, and then it might be possible to sue, and big business isn’t going to like that. So keep taking the magic pills, and don’t ask any awkward questions…

Whose universe is it?

In the last week or so, a collision of two books has got me thinking about the nature of reality and how we relate to it. (Jack Barrow’s The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil, Jo van der Hoeven’s Zen Druidry, if you were wondering). For the magician, the self is the centre of the universe, and the will / imagination can direct said. I’m a long way from being an expert, but as I understand it, holding that belief is rather necessary if you want to go about doing magic. Now, on the Zen side, Jo points out there is one universe and we’re not the centre of it and if we can learn to see ourselves as part of the flow we’ll be able to get along a lot better.

I find both ideas compelling, and after some serious pondering I have come to the conclusion that these things are probably both true. One universe where you are not the centre, another where each of us the centre of his or her own universe and able to shape it by force of will. The life we live, the way we experience things, the choices we make – come down so often to our perceptions and beliefs. If I believe the universe is out to get me, I’ll see proof of that in every setback, and will resolutely ignore the opportunities that came with the setbacks, potentially to my own detriment. If I believe that I am divinely inspired with a special job to do, I’ll look around me and see proof of that in every rainbow and cupcake that comes my way. We see what we want to see.

What’s probably least helpful is bumbling through life without any deliberate choice about how to engage with the world. I don’t mean a ‘go with the flow’ attitude here, I mean a total lack of engagement with anything. The kind of blinkered view that makes it impossible to connect outcomes to actions, to predict how what we do today might shape our options for tomorrow, and to be able to see how other people’s motives might affect things. I’ve encountered that kind of wilful blindness, that refusal to see how what we do influences what we get, often coupled with an inability to imagine that other people are different from us, want different things and react in different ways.

I’m not sure it entirely matters what your relationship with the universe is. I am utterly convinced of the importance of having a considered approach to living and being. Even if that doesn’t fit into an existing idea about how to do things. But then, I’ve also seen so many human relationships conducted with no consciousness of cause and effect, or the implications of difference, too. Things work better when we pay attention to them, think about them, and do not take them for granted.

I am the centre of my own little universe. I am also aware that everyone around me is the centre of their own little universe too, no one of these any more important than any other, all of them able to influence how my bit of reality functions for me, all of them potentially influenced by what I do. Perhaps it could be a lot simpler than that, but I find this perspective works enough for me, so it’ll do for now.

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil

Yesterday’s interview with Jack Barrow leads me neatly to today’s pondering of his book, which I have read. I had no idea how much I wanted this book until it turned up, but it turns out that I’ve been craving this kind of thing for a long time. Our Mr Barrow is a magician, he knows his stuff, and thus when he sets out to write comedy magical fiction, he does so from a basis of understanding, and the results are kickass.

Most fiction writing about magic, occult people and Pagans comes from the outside, and it’s usually there to be a plot device, spice the story up or cover a plot hole or five. Often this depresses the hell out of me, especially in the paranormal romance genre.

The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil features four guys who I know I’ve met, somewhere along the way. The geeky, overweight, slightly intoxicated ones who might be totally ridiculous, or might, on the other hand, be all that stands between us and certain doom. This book is full of chaotic magic that is all about the power of your will and imagination, not at all about having the right coloured candle. The insights are so on the money, and so funny… I laughed out loud a lot.
Furthermore, this isn’t just excellent magical writing, its damn fine writing. Mr Barrow has a self conscious narratorial style (Not unlike Robert Rankin) and plays with the nature of fiction and reality in a seriously effective way. It is a clever, clever book. I rarely find a book that both surprises me and holds together, but this one does. Most of the time I had no idea where it was going, but it went there, and I followed along, alternately giggling and being impressed.

Now, The Hidden Masters have the potential to be a series, which would be splendid, to which end, lots of copies need to wing their way out into the world. The publisher, Twin Serpents, is not big. However, I’m a firm believer in small publishing, and in getting more good stuff out there. If you like Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin, if you like clever, knowing, very funny writing, and if you’ve been aching for the kind of magical realism that comes from inside the English magical tradition, this is your book. Seek it out now.

Jack Barrow interview

Jack Barrow came to me through one of those random online connections. I read his book blurb, thought this sounds fun and grabbed him for an interview. As he’s not yet famous, I thought I should do some of those ‘who are you?’ questions, and the results were fascinating…

Nimue: Hello Jack! Let’s start with an enquiry about the nature of your path…

Jack: What can I say? I tend to call myself a pagan these days but only really because that’s the community that I belong to. Back when I started on this path, in the early eighties, I described myself as an occultist. I suppose magician is the definitive category. My background is probably best described as ceremonial magician, mostly derived from cabalistic or Thelemic sources. I have an interest in Crowley and Spare but not to the exclusion of other sources. I believe that the foundations of paganism lie in the time-honoured symbol systems, particularly the Tarot and astrology. If a practitioner can master those then they have a foundation that can take them anywhere. I once went through a stage of describing myself as an eclectic/comedic magician because I steal from anywhere but don’t take anything seriously. After a while I changed that as I realised that I do actually take the practice of magic quite seriously, at least in terms of my understanding of the mechanisms involved in making magic successful. I’ve been described as a chaos magician but I’ve never liked the term.

Nimue: And in the rest of your life?

Jack: I’ve been making a living out of writing, in one form or another, since the late eighties. In that time I’ve done most sorts of corporate writing (which is what you have to do to survive) including copywriting and technical writing as well as some journalism. I’ve written on all sorts of subjects from advertising features about BBQs (there’s not much you can say after about 200 words) to technical manuals for helicopter engines or photocopiers. I started writing about ideas in 1989 when I heard of an astrological event that caught my imagination. I say ideas because that’s what I write about, paganism or magical concepts are just some of those ideas but my writing back then was as much about politics and philosophy as it was about astrology, and that was mundane astrology which is the astrology of global events. Later I found I could write stories about the sort of people I knew at the time, people involved in the magical scene, and the fiction came from there. Eventually it occurred to me that writing fiction is a better way to communicate those ideas and it gives the opportunity for a few jokes at the same time. I found myself writing about the kind of magic that members of the community practise and I enjoyed getting away from the sparks from the fingertips magic portrayed in the Harry Potter stories.
Otherwise I’ve studied psychology for which I got a very poor degree from a relatively good university. I like African percussion and early blues music (as well as most things in between). After watching a Horizon programme I’m fasting two days a week in an attempt to not turn into my father. I like red wine, and Top Gear, often at the same time, and I have an over romanticised ambition to throw a tent and backpack in my car and drive off into the wilderness with a tablet computer to write my next novel in splendid isolation.

Nimue: Now, when I read the blurb for The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil, I got a strong feeling of comedy, so, you’re writing about wizards, and you come from an occult background, how does the juggling of realities, personal, mainstream, fictional, work for you?

Jack: I would say I’m writing about magicians (rather than wizards) because that’s my tradition (although I try not to push a link between myself and the characters too much). As far as juggling realities goes, I find it comes pretty much second nature. When I perform an act of magic it’s usually in some magickal scenario: in the temple, robed up, after long preparation or some other factor that divides it away from everyday life. The act of dressing a temple, the clouds of incense or candle lit room with shadowy corners; that all creates an atmosphere of magic and changes that reality, generates gnosis if you like.
Being a practitioner of magic (for me) is suspension of disbelief and when I do it just comes naturally. I don’t actually believe that waving a stick around and chanting in some ancient language is going to cause an outcome but I have an expectation that it will generate results, so long as I give it a chance.
In terms of fictional realities, I’m not sure there is any difference to the real world. My characters live in present day England, have day jobs, get drunk, fall over, etc. Their reality is the same as ours. They perform magic in the same way as we do, the only difference is that they get to save the universe at weekends. Otherwise they are just like you and me.

Nimue: Ah, suspension of disbelief, that’s a powerful thing in writing and in being an audience. The ability to choose what to believe.

Jack: I wouldn’t call it choosing what to believe as much as role play. However, I think there are only some roles that will work, or perhaps only some roles (or alternate views of reality) that I’d want to get involved with. It’s difficult to pin down and I don’t want to analyse that too closely as analysis is the province of a different approach to the world from the magical approach. It’s not so much belief as expectation. I really don’t think I believe in magic. I’m a rationalist at heart. However I do use magic and use divinations systems, that sort of thing. Rationally I can’t believe that they can possibly work, however I’ve used them so many times and found them useful that I have an expectation that it these practices will work out for me. Don’t ask me how magic can possibly work because I really don’t believe in it.

Nimue: So would you say that a Pagan reader will find something familiar about your characters and their lives? Might these be the people you run into at the local moot?

Jack: Yes I hope so. When I started to write the book I didn’t really know how the magic was going to work out and I was writing it sequentially, originally publishing a chapter a month on an obscure pagan web site. When it came to describing the first major act of magic I just described it as I would have approached it. Well, okay, I wouldn’t normally try to start a car with magic but you have to put your characters is different situations from people in everyday life. So I was left with the dilemma of how to resolve this and decided that I’d just have the car start without too much explanation, as if by coincidence. Isn’t that how magic works for pagans?
There are one or two completely impossible things that happen in the story but when I realised how the rest of the magic was working I decided I wanted to keep the obviously supernatural to a minimum. Therefore there are no Potteresque sparks from wands or people flying on broomsticks, apart from that one major obviously impossible event in the first half of the book but I’m not going to give that away as it’s got a fairly significant gag attached to it.
Could Nigel, Wayne and Clint be at the moot? Most probably, if they know about the moot but I’m not sure how much they get out, perhaps Wayne does as he spends a lot of time in pubs. They are certainly not some special breed of hero that never mixes with the public. They tend to meet in Nigel’s house on a Tuesday night to drink dark rum, or whatever they can get hold of. You might think of it as like a coven meeting but they are not witches, I’d just call it a group meeting. That’s all explored in The Esbat, that’s the title of the first chapter and a chapter title that will probably appear in all future stories featuring the Hidden Masters.

Nimue: Speaking as someone who would like some Paganish fiction to read, it sounds to me like a very promising balance. Harry Potter is fun, but it’s too much fantasy, I hanker after something a bit more like magical realism, things I can almost believe.

Jack: I think my fiction might be described as magic realism, just I don’t use the term. And of
course there is that one major event in the story that couldn’t possibly be true.

Nimue: Who are your influences, on the writing side?

Jack: Influences, definitely Douglas Adams and Robert Rankin. Otherwise I have very eclectic tastes and I’m as much into non-fiction as fiction. In the last few months I’ve reread The Hobbit, a few books by Bill Bryson, Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and I’m currently reading Gandhi’s autobiography. When I’ve finished that I’m planning to read Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails as research for my next novel which starts on a mountain top with an end of the world cult. Otherwise I’m just not sure what my influences are, the Open University perhaps.

Nimue: Where can people find you?

Jack: http://www.jack-barrow.com/books/unspeakable_evil.htm

(Book review to follow, because I’ve now read, and loved Jack’s writing… watch this space…)

Druidry and magic

There isn’t a great tradition of spell working in Druidry. Much of the magic is about inner transformation and the natural consequence of ritual and communion with nature. Magic is a process that happens to us as much as something we might instigate. Mostly. There’s the magic of captivating and inspiring people – a big part of the business of being a Bard. There’s the magic of experiencing the world in a profound and awe inspiring way. We request the presence and blessings of spirits, or deities sometimes, but we don’t command or demand.

Part, if not all of the reason this is so, is philosophical. If you go through life trying to disappear all the bumps and challenges, where is your scope for heroic virtue and learning? You can’t be heroic if everything is easy! The Celts had a heroic culture, they celebrated the characters who faced up to challenges. We are here to learn, and to live, and much of life is challenging, awkward and less than perfectly comfortable. In learning to love what is imperfect and being open to not getting our own way, we learn how to do a better job of being people.

I know I don’t really know what’s for the best. Sometimes what I thought would be really good doesn’t happen, and it opens the door to something I would never have dared to imagine. Being open to what comes from outside, rather than trying to control every aspect of our lives, can often take us further and give us more. Most of the time I would never even consider trying to magic an outcome that I really wanted, in case it caused me to miss something that would have turned out better.
I’m interested in the ‘magic’ of positive thinking and inner calm, as day to day issues. There’s often a fine line between magic and psychology (as Terry Pratchett fans will know, Headology rules.) While I don’t believe we entirely create our experiences, we have a lot of room for manoeuvre in how we choose to interpret and understand. Additionally, what we bring to a situation will heavily inform what we get out of it.

The other reason to leave magic alone is that it’s a messy and unruly thing (assuming you believe in it, and I admit that I do.) The more complex a situation, the more variables, people involved, possible outcomes, the harder it is to work out what would need to change in order to give you what you want. Ethically speaking, seeking the outcome without considering the consequences is totally off limits, for me. Magic is generally understood to require focus and precision, so the woollier and more confusing the situation, the less scope you have to begin with.

Now and then though, life throws up a situation where the issues are pretty simple, and there’s only one tolerable outcome. I would imagine that finding you have cancer would create one of those. Most of the time life does not hand over such clear cut win-lose scenarios, but when it does, perhaps that is the time to dust off the wand and start composing the demands you need to make of the universe.

My mother always said that magic is what you do when you can’t do anything else. It’s also what you do when you absolutely cannot afford to have anything else happen. If nothing else, there’s a bit of Headology here, holding the belief that you can win gives you a better shot at winning than falling into a pit of despair does.

Sometimes, the universe seems to conspire to make things work out after all. I don’t generally believe that the universe is an inherently benevolent place that has our best interests at heart, but I think sometimes it might be persuaded to act that way. And when you get to that sort of point, there’s little to lose in trying.

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.

Away with the fairies

There’s a hide not far from the canal – private land being developed as a mini nature reserve, with tree planting and a small pond. We regularly see badgers, foxes, rabbits, buzzards and garden birds there, having permission to visit as we please! The badgers are the main attraction, because they generally aren’t easy to spot other places. However, the hide owners tend to put down peanuts to attract them. Last night, there were no nuts. A lone badger of the dozen or so from the set came round to check, and that was the end of the matter. Still, seeing one badger is a joy, and we also had an encounter with a huge, unidentified moth.

We were just getting up to leave when Tom spotted lights amongst the trees. We all saw them – a cluster of small lights that could only be seen from one angle, and that all went off at once. It was nearly dark by then. The nature area does not adjoin any gardens, ruling out fairy lights, solar lights, anything gardenish – there’s a thick hedge and a grass walkway and another hedge between what we could see and the nearest garden.

There were glow bugs in the area, but we haven’t seen any in weeks now. There is a guy who studies moths, we pondered moth traps. Much work went in to looking for a perfectly rational explanation for what all three of us had seen. Increasingly aware that none of us were entirely at ease with the rational explanations, I eventually got round to saying ‘could have been fairies.’

It’s an interesting one for me. I’m a druid and a pagan, I believe in the idea of magic and otherworldliness, but at the same time I pride myself on being a rationally minded creature, willing to consider the evidence as dispassionately as I can. I’ll always look for the banal explanation first, rather than seeing everything in terms of gods, hobgoblins, aliens, Atlanteans etc etc. But there are times when the sense of wonder, the feeling of encountering something numinous is too strong for the rational explanation.

The last time this happened to me I was in Portland with Tom, and we both saw a tiny little whirlwind spinning leaves around. It was so small, so localised, the rest of the air so still that whatever the logical explanation might have been, the sense of seeing something otherworldly was powerful indeed.

Often it’s about the language we use. Thunder and earthquakes have perfectly sensible explanations, we know what they are, and yet at the same time the power of them, and other regular, natural and universally recognised phenomena is breathtaking. Spirit and science do not need to be at odds here. It may be tempting to call things we don’t understand ‘magic’ but there’s no reason not to recognise the known as magical, too. That first rainfall after days of dry heat. A full moon haloed by mist. There’s no reason for the experience of magic to be irrational.

We saw something last night. We don’t know what it was. Any speculation is just that, no version any more evidenced than any other, despite our best efforts. Of course I want to know what I saw, but for me, that knowledge would in no way reduce the feeling of wonder, awe and delight that the moment inspired.

And they all lived happily ever after

I wonder how many people’s lives have been significantly impaired by that unfortunate fairy tale belief? It implies that once the lovers kiss and the wedding date is set, all will be well. It’s the end of the story, folks, adventures over, happiness guaranteed. And they all lived happily ever after, as though that would be the natural, magical consequence of true love. I’ve met too many people along the way who imagined that finding the right person would fix all their problems like waving a wand. They would be happier, fulfilled, inspired. They would write the best song, the novel, become able, and so forth. What a burden to put on a potential partner! Not only do you want their love, they have to set your world to rights and fix all those thing you couldn’t, or wouldn’t fix for yourself. Not so long back, someone commented here that if I’d found the love of my life, that should cure me of depression. This is the kind of madness I’m talking about.

Relationship is supposed to be a core concept for Druidry. Relationship can be magical, it can bring to us a sense of awen, of divinity, and all manner of other wondrous things. But it is not wise to assume that relationship will sustain itself as if by magic. Love alone is not enough. You need to be paying attention, listening, responding, taking note. People change, and over years people change a lot. Children, status shifts, jobs and other life experiences alter us. The relationship where it is assumed that the all living happily ever after process is under way, is the one that risks losing everything in face of change.

It’s easy to become careless in relationships if we assume they are in the bag. I know of people who invest vast amounts of time, energy, money and attention in setting up relationships, but once they think the other person is secured, they stop making the same effort, imagining that such attention to detail is only necessary at the start. Did they ask if the courted one felt the same way? I doubt it. Will the courted one come to feel ignored and uncared for a few years down the line? Probably. Too busy living happily ever after to do much living, or happiness.

What’s true of our love lives is equally true in friendships, and familial connections. Taking for granted is highly destructive and eats out the roots of whatever you had.

No matter how longstanding a relationship is, or what shape it has, don’t take it for granted. Nurture it. Give it time and attention. Do all the things you would have done when starting out, and things stay fresh and immediate rather than becoming tired and banal.

Also, don’t imagine that love will fix everything. Be prepared to put in some work yourself. Love will not pay the bills, and love will not cure all ailments. What it will do, if you’re lucky, is give you the support and belief of another human being who is willing to work with you, dream with you, share the triumphs with you and cry over the disasters with you. Love can be healing, but only when we let go of old pain. Love can be reassuring, but only when we’re listening to reassuring words from a loved one, or carrying those words with us. There are a great many ways to sabotage what love can do. Asking too much, and putting nothing in are the most reliable.

I have, along the way, been in some good relationships and some lousy ones. I’ve seen a great deal of other people’s love lives, and their hopes for what romantic involvement will give them. I’ve seen people throw away what they have because they’ve lost sight of the value. There may be true love, but refusal to believe in it or nurture it will eventually kill that love off. I also know that where there is mutual support, care and listening, where time is invested in actually having a relationship with another person (or a place, or an art form or whatever else you invest yourself in) good things come. What we get out depends so very much on what we put in. When both people are putting in their hearts, souls and energy, so much more is possible. I spent a lot of years without that, I have it now, and am conscious of the difference of dedication underpinning things.

And they all lived happily ever after is not the end of the story, it’s where a whole new thing has to begin.

Community Cursing

I’ve just read Melusine Draco’s fascinating book By Spellbook & Candle: Cursing, Hexing, Bottling & Binding. (Recommended). It’s a very interesting piece of work which includes all sorts of information about the history of cursing. The one thing that grabbed me particularly was the idea of community cursing. The general image of cursing is more of the solitary, perhaps shameful act of malevolence against another. It’s done alone, in darkness, the evidence carefully hidden so you don’t get burned as a witch. A clichéd image, I know, but I think that’s the more normal association.

Community cursing is a whole other thing, and this book flagged up a number of times and places when its known to have been carried out. The best know example would be the Catholic excommunication, the accompanying language for which is tantamount to cursing somebody. And what could be more damning than removing a person from the presence, and care, of god? When a community gathers to publically throw a curse at someone, this has a totally different vibe from the private cursing image. For a start, normally the one who curses would be the one to face punishment in the event of discovery. Communal cursing, especially religion sanctioned, perhaps even undertaken by your priest or some other figure of authority, keeps power with the majority. It begs the question of why you might choose a curse in that scenario rather than more conventional, physical responses to a problem person.

If the intended recipient of a communal curse is an outsider, perhaps they will never know. It makes sense to curse the enemies of the tribe, and sociologically speaking, I suppose that’s as much about group identity and making up for a sense of lost power as anything else. When the majority undertakes to curse the lone individual from inside the community, there have to be other reasons, and I am not sure what they are. Punishment by public humiliation? A method for controlling behaviour, akin to the rough music used in some communities to shame those who do not conform to shared standards? Is it an implicit threat that next time action will be more direct? It probably varies across places and times. In the case of Catholic excommunication and other curse exiles, it is about publically removing the person from the community. For a lot of history, being outside the fold was probably a death sentence.

The whole issue flags up for me how contextual most things are. If someone with power, sanctioned by religion, curses another, that’s not evil, it may even get you saint status. When the curse is the only means of revenge or justice available to someone who is largely powerless, then the discovery of it will likely lead to further disempowerment.

Of course some, if not most of the cursing evidenced by folk practice, was all about greed and malice. Much of it won’t have had any decent justification. Cursing is just another way in which humans have sought to get advantages over each other, score points, and get our own way. It’s neither pretty nor excusable. But then there are the curses of the starving beggar, turned away from the rich house in the depths of winter, empty handed and powerless. I’ve encountered a few witch trial stories that start from just such a point. The wronged one powerless to get justice by conventional means, and invoking poetic justice, the wrath of God or their own anger in a quest to balance the books. And oddly enough, as Melusine points out, when someone poor and powerless curses in this way, and the curse comes to pass, no one seems to consider that this might not be evil at all, but a bit of divine intervention on behalf of the aggrieved one.

It had never before occurred to me that curses could be such a loaded, political issue!

Guest Blog: Folk Magic and Folk Religion

By Nukiuk

In folk religions respect is of the utmost importance because everything has a vitality, every thing has a life and so any action will have an impact on another soul which has its own powers and its own ability to impact the world. Thus a person’s interaction with the magical world must be about seeking to have respect for one’s fellow humans, for nature, for objects, and the spirits, fairies, kami, etc that inhabit all of these.  With this in mind there are three fundamental types of spells and prayers which people use in Folk Religions.

1-Respectful Actions.
Not so much spells as a way of interacting with the things around a person to ensure that they have good luck, while avoiding bad luck. In Celtic lore such respect meant asking permission before moving a stone or cutting a tree so that the fairy within wouldn’t be offended. In Japan such respect included warning the spirits that live within the earth before peeing on the ground so that they could move out of the way and wouldn’t grow angry and curse the one who had wronged them. To utilize respect people would think about what might be offensive to nearly every object/spirit and try to mitigate it. This doesn’t usually mean not doing something, rather it means giving fair warning that one is about to do something, while apologizing and or asking permission to do it. Such respect keeps a person safe while making more likely that their spells wills succeed.

2-Charms or Spells
Charms utilize a person’s own abilities and powers as well as those of other spirits in order to achieve a goal. There are two things one must keep in mind when crafting charms and spells. First that Celtic lore states that humans are related to the fairy, thus the Celtic Folk Religions tells us that we can potentially have great abilities and knowledge. Second one must keep in mind that everything has certain powers and so these powers can be used to enhance the impact of one’s own powers.
Thus charms involve a person utilizing certain objects, herbs and or short chants in order to gain help from other powers as well as well as a short set of words or actions designed to draw out a person’s own powers (such as sympathetic actions and poems). For example, one Cornish charm used to remove corns from one’s feet called for a person to show their bare feet to the moor while telling the corns to vanish nine times.

An interesting charm of Finnish origin to prevent wasp stings is as follows;

O Siilikki, woods’ daughter-in-law, pray discipline thy wee ‘winged bird,’ hide away thy ‘feathered chick,’ bind up its wings, confine its claws, to prevent it stabbing with its pike, to prevent it sharpening its steel. Kuutar, conceal thy children now, hide, Päivätär, thy family, and follow not a wizard’s wish, don’t be made jealous by jealous folk.

This charm is interesting because in not only makes a request of a nature spirit to keep wasps away, it makes a request of two other magical beings to keep wizards from using their magic to make wasps from stinging.

3-Closer Relationships and Contracts
The most complex of all three forms of folk magic involves both the development and utilization of a relationship with spirits which in many ways can be likened to a contract. Sutras, prayers, songs, offerings and similar things were done either to create a contract between a person and spirits, deities, fairies, etc; or to honour a pre-existing contract. Songs, feats, celebrations and sutras are useful to this end because they attract spirits and fairies to a place and allow these beings to enjoy the company of humans. This is a large part of what Samhain, Beltane, Yule and similar holidays were and are.
In many cases such celebrations involved things specifically designed to invite fairies to come among the people. Yule and Beltane both involved bringing trees and greens into the village and home so that fairies and similar nature spirits would have a place to reside among humans during the festivals. Other celebrations involved actually building figures out of straw or similar materials for the spirits to reside in so that people might dance with them or make offerings to them directly.
Not all contracts are so simple to honour as creating beautiful music and celebrating an event. Often such contracts require that those humans honouring them follow a very specific set of instructions involving; chants, songs, movements, specific offerings, and formulas which must be followed to the letter. It is these more complex contracts that required druids to learn for years, even decades to learn to fulfil.

Because folk magic is about relationships rather than formulas the exact nature of any contract, charm or respectful action is based not only one what a person is trying to accomplish but whom they are requesting help from. This is why understanding the nature of fairy and deity as well as the personalities of specific fairies and deities is the most important part of folk magic.

 

 

Nukiuk is a folklorist who has been studying the relationship between Eurasian Folktales and beliefs in order to better understand the ancient religions. You can find more of his research of fairies at http://www.zeluna.net/fairies. You can review many of his resources at http://fairies.zeluna.net/p/resources.html