A Bigger Picture

(David)

One night last week, I spent the long quiet hours agonising about unfulfilled desires and intentions. My writing is a big part of this, works-in-progress unfinished now and potentially incomplete always. Also, my studies of ancient Irish lore, focused mainly on the Morrigan. In the Irish Pagan School there are several classes and courses awaiting my attention. If only I could beat this long relapse and get back in the saddle.

But intentions and determination won’t break through the brain fog of my chronic illness and pain. The thought is always present that maybe this is it. Maybe this is how it will remain. Relapses have lasted months or years in the past, and also, viewed over the three decades of my illness, a new low plateau can sometimes become the norm. So there’s the fear: that I might leave my time in this skin without fulfilling some promises.

On my altar to the Morrigan, in a corner of the windowsill in my study, I have three cards from the Urban Crow oracle deck: Soar, Preparation, and Sacred Space. Twice last week, the Soar card fell face down. I’d cracked the window open on both of those mornings to enjoy the fresh warmer air. Any breeze coming in was slight, but obviously strong enough to knock over that first card in its path. I’m interpreting this as her message of confirmation that my struggle to fly is on the cards so I should go with the flow and not fret.

I also remind myself that the Morrigan is a goddess of prophecy, planning, and strategy, as much as of battle. That she works on timescales beyond my ken, and her big pictures, her long-term plans, might involve me in ways that I won’t yet see or understand. I accept it. I show up every day to check in, to make myself available to hear her. I do the work, whatever she requires of me. And right now, in my current condition, she isn’t asking anything more of me than I can do.

Revisiting intuition and anxiety

(Nimue)

This is a topic I’ve not touched on for a few years. How do you tell between intuition and anxiety? It’s not an easy question. Last time I was looking at how I feel these things and where they land in my body. What I hadn’t considered then was that the anxiety itself might be as valid and useful information as anything intuitive.

If something rubs up against the edges of trauma triggers and makes me uncomfortable, there’s a reason for that. It’s a good idea to look at the reason. Is it just an awkward coincidence? Usually not. If someone pushes my buttons it’s usually because they’re doing something that isn’t ok – it might only be slightly not ok, not trauma-inducingly not-ok. Even so, acknowledging that it isn’t alright and needs dealing with puts me in a much healthier space.

For anyone exploring a magical path, intuition is vitally important. It’s the basis on which everything else depends. If you can’t trust your subtle senses, how can you possibly interact with the world on magical terms? Anxiety, and mistrust of your own feelings is a real obstacle to overcome if you want to act in a magical way, or even in a spiritual way. You need to be able to trust your own instincts and inclinations if you want to be able to focus.

Reclaiming your sense of self and your trust in your own responses is key to reclaiming intuition. Being able to trust that if something doesn’t feel right, then it’s not right is an essential underpinning for human interactions as well as spiritual endeavours. 

If you’ve dealt with something that was ongoing and traumatic, then the odds are it included denying what was happening to you. Domestic abuse, workplace bullying, abusive cults, state-organised gaslighting – these things all come with a side order of victim blaming. If you’ve been told that you over-react, were making something of nothing, making a fuss, being attention seeking or anything else of that ilk you’ve likely had your trust in your own responses compromised. This is normal behaviour from abusers who will try to persuade victims that what’s happening is fair and appropriate.

Reclaiming the validity of your own responses is an important step towards healing and moving forward if you can’t trust your intuition. Taking yourself seriously and looking at what discomforts you gives you more space to decide how to handle it. Trauma can have you responding disproportionately to experiences, but at the same time if something discomforts you in a way that pushes those buttons, it is well worth considering that it isn’t ok. 

The idea that if it doesn’t feel ok then it isn’t ok comes up a lot as guidance for magical practice. It is often better to back away carefully when you didn’t need to than it is to push through something that feels wrong. That’s as true for a magical working as it is for dealing with a group leader who keeps putting hands on you without consent. If it feels wrong for you and other people tell you that you have to be ok with it, or that it is necessary, that wrong-feeling remains valid. Anyone with your best interests at heart won’t just tell you they know what’s best for you, they will care about what you find difficult and why.

Intuition is about trusting yourself. It’s about claiming the right to do things on your own terms and in ways that work for you. Being at the edge of the comfort zone is good. Being outside of your comfort zone when you aren’t the one choosing that, is probably a sign to back away into something safer.

Everyday Druidry and divination

(Nimue)

Divination can be a really good choice if you’re looking for a way to bring small amounts of Druidry into your everyday life. Divination doesn’t have to be about trying to predict the future. You can use it as an opportunity to contemplate what’s going on in your life, to seek inspiration or to just open a little door that might allow some magic into the day.

I favour oracle cards, although any sort of divination tool can work this way. For Druids, I think Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm’s plant and animal oracles are a particularly good choice. I don’t have their Druidcraft Tarot but I’ve heard good things about it. I’m also very fond of the cards from the Matlock the Hare folk, and the Hedge Guild Otherworld Oracle.

Drawing one oracle card, contemplating the image and then looking up the meaning doesn’t take very long. A few minutes to read and reflect, and then you’ve got a dash of inspiration to carry with you for the rest of the day. It’s a good way of making a little patch of calm and reflectiveness. Contemplating a card can be a meditative thing.

Oracle cards can be quite small and easy to carry, so they can be there to dip into when you feel a need for inspiration or to reconnect with the spiritual side of your life. 

Magical discoveries

(Nimue)

I’m currently working on a nonfiction book about spirits of place (follow me on Patreon for the WIP). It’s brought up some surprising things, as book writing often does. 

I’m not the sort of Pagan who does a lot of spells. At this point I’m not doing rituals – although I have in the past. I continue to have a prayer practice, but I have tended to think of myself as a non-magical person. However, writing this book is making me think about all my experiences of spirits of place over the years. There’s been a lot, and I know a lot and I’ve done a lot. But not spells – and perhaps I prioritise those too much in my thinking about what magic is and means..

I’m not dedicated to a deity, although I find deities interesting. Most of the time they seem far too grand and distant for it to make any sense to try and bother them. Spirits of Place however are very much part of my daily life – both the very physical presences around me and the other beings I’m aware of.

It’s not an approach to magic that gives me much scope to change things by will. Most of the time it’s more like being in a conversation, where things might happen as a consequence. It’s work I find comforting, and that grounds me in my surroundings and gives me a deep sense of place, and of belonging. 

It’s not an easy thing to pitch as a practice compared to the kind of magic that Gets Stuff Done. At the same time it definitely does get stuff done, but in quiet and understated ways. I am sometimes the person who has to do the getting done of stuff, what with having opposable thumbs and a corporeal presence and the means to impact on my surroundings. 

I’m discovering a sense of self that has more room for magic in it, and I’m enjoying that as a process. Writing is such a great tool for consolidating thoughts, finding patterns and bringing together what you know. It’s often an adventure in its own right to embark on a book project.

Crafting and magic

(Nimue)

This is the first rag rug I’ve made in a while, and the first one made specifically for the living space I share with Keith. It provides a second life for worn out socks, dead t-shirts and a dress I was very fond of but that was falling apart. It’s a mixing together of our lives, our histories and our old clothes. There’s a certain amount of magic in that. It’s also an expression of intent about the future, and a life together. 

Magical practice is very much about focusing your intent. Crafting takes a lot of time and intention, so the two can go together rather well. This rug is not a spell exactly, but it is willful transformation of worn out things into something new. It’s an act of keeping fabric out of landfill and a commitment to living responsibly.  It’s an expression of love and joy that will sit around in the living room being happy and joyful for some time to come.

I like having unique items, and this kind of upcycling is a way of doing that. The fabric in the rug is full of stories and memories. The colours are the colours we wear, so it reflects us and suits the space. I worked on it with life going on, with documentaries on in the background, with music, so it carries the resonance of all sorts of things that happened around it during the making process.

Making anything creates change and possibility. There is magic in crafting and creating. It’s an enchanting process. I find crafting to be good for my mental health, it soothes me and clears my head. Making is magic, and making magic can involve making other things.

The power of positive thinking

(Nimue)

I don’t subscribe to the idea that positive thinking will solve everything. Excessive belief in the power of positive thinking can be really harmful. Unfortunately one of the side-effects of popular but toxic ideas about positivity is that doesn’t allow much scope for nuanced discussion of what a positive mindset can and cannot do.

I’ve been thinking about this of late in relation to my partner’s cancer treatment. There are people who will try to convince you that you can cure cancer with the power of your thoughts. This can put an enormous burden of shame and misery onto people who do not appear to manage it. On top of that, too much faith in your own positive thinking may get in the way of doing things that are necessary – I’ve heard stories to this effect about other people.

One of the things depression does is fills you with apathy. When you are depressed, you see only the bad outcomes and it can be hard to persuade yourself that there’s any point trying. Depression saps energy, steals confidence and undermines hope, and is also often a consequence of those things having happened via external pressures. Basic self care is a lot harder in face of this. Having to really work at self care might be impossible.

I’ve commented before that there’s been a startling amount of work created by Keith’s cancer treatment. There’s a huge amount to do every day to offset the side-effects of radiotherapy. I read up on the side-effects and the interventions early on, and it was clear to me that if you do what you’re told to do, you are going to have a better time of it than if you don’t. We were told at the beginning to expect this would be so bad that Keith would need morphine by the end of it. He’s got into the final week of treatment without using any painkillers.

When you think you can make a difference to the outcomes you are more likely to take positive action. If you don’t believe you can make a difference, you won’t act. If you give up with something the odds are very much against being able to win. I’m a big fan of picking your fights and knowing when to quit, because that’s also essential for success. Some fights you don’t get much choice about,

Positive thinking on it’s own won’t necessarily do anything. If you can hold enough of a positive mindset in order to take meaningful action when you get the opportunity, that might well get things done. If you make the best of things, then regardless of the ultimate outcome, you still get to have had the best you could along the way and that’s worth a lot.

I now from personal experience that being positive is hard as a solo project. It is depressing to struggle alone against issues of any sort. In community and mutual support we can find far more strength and courage. We can lift each other, and help each other stay focused on whatever is most important. Like so many things, positivity needs to be a shared effort for best effect.

Dogs, dreams and deregulation

(Nimue)

On the other side of the River Severn from me, near a place called Lydney, are the remains of a temple to Nodens. He’s a godd associated with dreams and healing, and a number of small dog statues are associated with his site. That’s the factual stuff – what follows on the Nodens front is speculative.

I have been thinking about the idea of temple dogs in a healing context. Plenty of modern people find dogs to be good emotional support, so it’s hardly a wild idea to consider. If a healing temple has dogs in it, how might that work? It struck me that dogs are of course warm, so sleeping alongside them might be soothing and beneficial. 

Some years ago I was blessed with a cat who was good at getting people to sleep – she enabled me to nap which I can’t normally do. The warm softness of her little body resting on mine was a healing thing and I know she had that impact on other people as well.

One thing I’ve been seeing a lot about recently is the idea that trauma and illness can disregulate our nervous systems. That can have us experiencing things in weird and unhelpful ways, including how we experience pain, dissociation and how we respond to what’s around us. Hypervigilance is a kind of deregulation. How we regulate temperature, blood pressure, digestion, our immune systems – any of this can potentially be disrupted if our bodies are thrown into chaos.

I’ve also seen recently that there’s evidence for gentle time in nature helping us grow the parts of our brains that enable us to deal with stress. We’re very responsive lifeforms and our bodies are deeply affected by our environments and our experiences – both in terms of taking damage and being able to heal.

In myself I have observed over months now that being held takes the panic down. With enough gentle, physical contact, my whole system calms down. In the last nine months or so my blood pressure has improved, I can can digest things more easily, my periods have calmed down, my perimenopausal symptoms have  calmed down, I’m less prone to panic attacks, my tendency to hypervigilance has dialed down, and I’m in dramatically better shape. I’ve established beyond any shadow of a doubt that when I get into trouble, being held through it will get me through it quickly and effectively.

There’s a lot of trauma in my history. It might be fair to assume that my system has been pretty disregulated.

So I imagine a healing temple where you go to sleep and dream. In the healing temple there are dogs – sweet natured, affectionate dogs who love to snuggle and who want all the belly rubs and cuddles. Dogs who won’t mind at all if you sob into their fur, and who will sleep alongside you. Our soft mammal bodies can, I think, be greatly influenced by proximity to other mammal bodies that are calm and gentle. Closeness and warmth can be emotionally healing. Lying next to a calm and healthy mammal might help your own body remember how to regulate itself properly again. In the peace and safety of the temple, comforted and protected, a person might have a better shot at healing themselves. That’s my feeling, anyway.

Dream Interpretation

(Nimue)

For years I’ve had recurring nightmares about the sea. They’ve featured flooding, tsunamis, and suddenly rising water that traps me or threatens me. The obvious interpretation would be fear around climate crisis.  I had another one recently where I was walking a costal path and the sea came in – further and faster than it should have done, washing over my path. A dear friend appeared in the dream and while I was trying to get away from the water, my friend kept telling me that I needed to just brave the shallow floods and go back because I was getting lost.

Not all dreams seem significant to me, but this one certainly did, so I sat with it for a while. I don’t think universal dream symbolism is a thing so I didn’t look it up. I thought about what tise friend means to me and what my unconscious might use them to embody. What was I trying to say to myself? 

This friend is an intensely emotional person who in the past signposted the way to me rethinking a lot about how I feel and deal with my feelings. So I considered what it would mean if the person in my dream was there to point to my emotional life. I have been afraid of my feelings for much of my life – afraid of my own intensity and how keenly I feel things. This hasn’t always played out well with other people.

As an aside something I’ve encountered repeatedly is people who want to make use of what my passion, devotion and care will get done while not liking at all the there is passion, devotion and care involved. I’ve seldom been comfortable with my own emotions, nor with what they’ve left me open to.

I do not have to be afraid of my dream sea. I am not going to drown myself in my own emotions. One of the things I’ve learned this year is to see my own feelings as valid and reasonable. If I get a little out of my depth sometimes there are people around me who will guide me back, just as I would guide them back if needed. Feeling welcome and wanted as the person I am has made a lot of odds to me. I’m increasingly sure of who my people are and where I genuinely fit.

Having sat with the dream for a while, I decided that I don’t need to have any more of these nightmares. I think that very likely means that they won’t come up in the same way and that my brain will move on to something else.

If you are the sort of person who is fascinated by dreams doesn’t get on with dream dictionaries, I have a book about dreaming that may be relevant. During January 2024, it’s on sale as an ebook with the code JANSALE24 https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/pagan-dreaming

The magical violin

(Nimue)

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about finding I could play the violin again. I said that I’d need to manifest a violin, or the means to buy one. It wasn’t an idle thought, and I mentioned on Facebook that I was looking. Within half an hour a friend put up a hand to say he had an electric violin that had been sat in a box for ten years and did I want it? I’ve always fancied playing an electric, so I said yes, and then it took a couple of weeks to arrange to get it. My father very kindly funded it as my Christmas present.

I know a lot of musicians, the odds were always good that someone would have a violin they weren’t using. It’s an important point around magic and manifestation. Trying to nudge the universe for things it would be likely that you can have is more realistic than any kind of longshot. Making something manifest can also just mean asking for it in some really uncomplicated non-woo-woo ways and it’s always a good idea to start there. If there’s something real you can do to make something happen, do it, and do your magic alongside it.

Being able to play again feels miraculous to me. I had so many years when that wasn’t possible. There is magic tangled up in this – in the forms of the love and inspiration that got me to this point. I see both of these things as ways in which magic manifests in the world.

Once I get back up to speed with playing, the violin will also be a tool for magic. Music has a huge impact on mood, and you can shape a space with a tune. This is something the bards of old knew about, and there are stories of musical magic that could make people dance, or weep, laugh or sleep. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to make people dance, and in my busking days I was always delighted when my playing had that effect on a child.

I have no idea where this violin will take me or what new things it will bring into my life, but I’m excited to find out.

A home for the Godds

(Nimue)

I’ve made a physical home for a powerful, transformative spirit. I invited this spirit to live in the home that I made for it, and to work with me. Generously, this spirit has helped to heal and nourish my body. It’s an experience that has had me wondering about how we invite Godds into physical forms.

The spirit in my home is yeast, a mighty being that has transformed human life and without which we probably wouldn’t have settled civilization as we know it. Whether you are brewing or baking, if you work with wild yeast as most of our ancestors did, you have to make a place for the yeast to live. You have to feed it and take care of it, and if you do, it will take care of you in return. 

Every time I work with my sourdough starter, I think about the ways in which humans from different cultures make representations of deities for the deities to inhabit. And I wonder if we learned to do that from the wild godds of fermentation who very much need us to make homes for them if they are to work with us. I wonder what it must have been like for people in the past who worked with yeast without knowing what it was exactly – this magical entity that will take your grain and help you turn it into bread, or take other things and turn them into alcohol. The more I learn about yeast, the more wonder and awe it inspires in me.

(Godds as a term is something I picked up from Irisanya Moon and I really like it as a more gender-inclusive term.)