Searching for Imbas

Samhain

2009-10-19T02:17:00.001-07:00

The year fades into rain and mist and early darkness as Samhain approaches in the Pacific Northwest. There's a sombre beauty about it that leaves me restless and, paradoxically, wanting to curl up by a fire with a good book. My body responds to the weather changes with more aches and less energy, yet I do enjoy some aspects of the season.

This year has been particularly hot and dry throughout the summer and the return of the rain has been welcome, bringing more green with it even as the trees turn and the leaves fall. Soup shows up more often on my stove, warming me for the longer nights.

And my friends and I are preparing for our upcoming Samhain vigil. Every year we get together and create an altar for our ancestors and beloved dead, bringing photos and mementos of those who have gone before us, bringing platters of food and cups of drink for them, offering food and drink to the spirits and deities into the fire as well. And we sit through the night reading traditional tales.

The stories get sillier as the hour grows later. Catalogues of names and repeated phrases take on a call-and-response element as they occur again and again. "You do not rule me! Clouds of blood will come to you!" becomes a wonderfully funny element in the story of Da Derga's Hostel when Chris reads it. Burnishing swords from a tale in the Mabinogi is transformed into a risque double-entendre fit for a drag queen, complete with lascivious gestures. "Oh, burnish it like you burnish your own!"

Some groups hold a silent dinner, but this isn't our tradition. Samhain is the night when the season of storytelling begins -- the Otherworlds enter our own on this night, and we make our visits into them as well. It is fitting that we dedicate the night to song and story, to feasting, to carving tiny lanterns of turnips and setting them on the altar to blaze with tealights inside.

It is the time of the night-watch; those within the ring of light from the fire are safe as the Otherworlds break through. We can touch that reality without being pulled in permanently, against our will. To stay up the whole night is a sacrifice for most of us. We'll have been up all day, going about our usual business, but the night we give to showing our dedication to our spiritual pursuits and to our small shared community.

Our vigil is not an ordeal -- it can be a lot of fun -- but it is a sacrifice. Certainly about four in the morning, most of us wish we could be home in bed. To commit to an all-night ritual is unusual for most people in our society, but the people in our group do find value in it. We continue, holding together before the fire as we face the changing of the year, seeking the blessing of our deities and our ancestors, expressing our desire as generations have before us to be here again, at this same time next year, in good health and prosperity.

It's a good feeling.

PantheaCon 2010

2009-09-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

I've just finished up the process of submitting a couple of proposals for PantheaCon 2010, for February next year. One is a discussion of the basics of creating Celtic Reconstructionist ritual. I'll have examples of the rituals our local group has done as well as solitary work that I do, with some thoughts for folks about using source materials in developing on-the-ground practice.

This sense of how to develop ritual is something that is a much-lamented lack in many parts of the CR community. People rarely talk or post about their or their group's rituals, so examples are few and far between. Many people don't even try, for fear of "doing it wrong." I'm hoping that by opening up the process and showing how our local group goes through its own trials and errors, its own successes and evolutions, it will help others find ways to allow themselves space for both research and creative innovation.

The other submission for this coming year is a panel discussion on Warrior Return rituals, focusing on the ritual that was done for me earlier this summer and that will be done for one of our members recently returned from Iraq. One of our panelists will be an ADF member who is both a disabled vet and a veterans advocate and social worker.

We'll be addressing issues of ritual reintegration of warriors into their communities when they return home, as well as giving a very nice example of a ritual brought together with texts from original Gaelic sources and innovative research. As someone who has experienced the ritual, I can speak to its effect on my own perceptions of self and community.

Taken together, a workshop on CR ritual construction and a panel on how one of these rituals was performed and how it serves the community will be a powerful statement of what CR can be.

Ecology, mythology, and psychology

2009-08-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

This week I finished reading a manuscript that was sent to me for a cover blurb. The book is about Celtic (and specifically Irish) myth seen through an ecopsychological lens. Jason Kirkey, the author, does a fine job of separating and respecting the varying strands of Celtic spirituality and making clear that the essence of his book is about creating a new, ecopsychological interpretation of Irish myth as a potential antidote to some of the poisons of modern techno-obsessed and eco-destructive society. I was very excited to read this book, due out sometime around Samhain from Jason's new press, Hiraeth, based out of San Francisco.

The book, The Salmon in the Spring: The Ecology of Celtic Spirituality, doesn't fall into the traps that so many other modern books on Celtic spirituality tend to. There is a recognition for and a respect of the native traditions as they were historically and as they are expressed in folk practice today. Jason's account of Celtic spirituality is not overlaid on a Wiccan blueprint but acknowledges the views of cosmology and holiness that are expressed in the texts and the tales themselves. He has spent time actually living in Ireland and has come to know the landscape and the people there, having had some profound experiences that he carried home to the US with him.

As an ecopsych author, he is familiar with the leading names in the field, from Theodore Roszak to Gary Snyder and beyond, and has a deft touch with both his quotes and his interpretations. His goal is not to go back to the iron age or to (re)create a Celtic spirituality, but to reinterpret Irish myth, primarily the Second Battle of Mag Tuired, with a modern ecological eye. My personal feeling is that he gives a little too much attention to 2MT as a seasonal myth, but it is in line with his contention that more things should be interpreted with a view to helping us understand once more that we are part of the world rather than separate from it. He offers exercises at the end of several chapters that are based in his understanding of Buddhist practice but phrased in ways that will resonate and be understandable to those of us working with a Gaelic paradigm.

Jason doesn't talk down to his readers but invites them into his worldview, opening doors and offering views from unusual perspectives. His understanding is spiritual at its heart without losing sight of scientific, social, and ecological realities. His treatment of CR, modern druidism, and the living folk traditions is consistent and even-handed and he makes it clear throughout the text where he is speaking of the tradition and where he is coming to his own conclusions and offering his own interpretations. Most of the "Celtic" spirituality authors out there today could take some serious lessons from Jason's honesty and openness.

When I originally printed out the manuscript for a read, I was a bit concerned at the abundant references to Frank MacEowen Owen and Tom Cowan, both of whom in my opinion tend to push their own modern views of Celtic spirituality as historic truth. I tend to avoid their books for this reason. Jason studied with both of them but manages to move beyond them in separating opinion from historical fact and for this I applaud him and have a great deal of respect for the work he's done here.

When this book comes out, I can definitely recommend adding it to your list, particularly if ecopsychology and a spirituality of place are important in your own practice. Five hazels out of five.

Why write about entheogens?

2009-08-02T15:17:00.001-07:00

In my earlier post about ritual failure, an anonymous person took it upon hirself to suggest that "you don't need" entheogens and that I should look to the work of RJ Stewart and John and Caitlin Matthews for all the techniques of "the old bards" that I would ever need. Anonymous isn't opposed to entheogens per se and I don't disagree with this. Yet there are reasons one might experiment with such things.

Kenneth talks in the comments about working with the spirit of the entheogenic plant or fungus as a part of the ritual. This is absolutely one good reason why someone might work with entheogens. It is, in fact, one of the reasons that I do so as well. Touching the living spirit of such a powerful being is an profound experience when it works. And yes, once you've got to that state, you may or may not ever need to actually use the entheogen again to re-experience it or to have a good, solid contact with that spirit.

This, though, was immaterial to the point I was trying to make in that post. My point there was that failure of ritual can help us learn a lot of different and useful lessons. Failing means retooling the work and trying again, or repeating the experiment to see if something about the set and setting were problematic. Failing means reevaluating where you are and where you're headed. Failing means dealing with disappointment and losing the sense of being a special snowflake whose every action is fraught with spiritual significance. Failing means recognizing we're human and that we make mistakes, or that even if we haven't made a mistake, sometimes things just don't work the way we expect them to. Failure offers us chances to grow and mature.

What really rather gripes me, though, is anonymous's assumption that I've never read either anything by Stewart or the Matthews' (I have a great deal of their stuff on my foo-Celtic shelf) or anything from the original Gaelic and Welsh source material. I've read a lot of sources on Gaelic pre-Christian religion and culture. I've read a lot of the medieval manuscripts in translation. I've even done translations of materials from Old Irish myself, for my own understanding. Hell, I've had my translation of the Cauldron of Poesy published at least twice. A lot of my work has been translated into other languages.

Much of what the Matthews' reprint is 19th century scholarship, outdated in the mid- to late-20th century. While there are occasional useful nuggets in their reprints, I've already read the vast majority of what they're offering. And I disagree with a lot of their interpretations and uses of the material. I don't find RJ Stewart's ceremonial magic approach to the materials very useful for my own work either. While the Matthews' do a somewhat better job of dealing with Celtic spiritual material than, say, DJ Conway, Edain McCoy, or Douglas Monroe, it doesn't mean they are presenting the source material without their own particular filter -- in their case, usually, Celtic "shamanism", which is a rant in and of itself.

Certainly neither the Matthews' nor Stewart talk about deity in any polytheistic fashion. The Matthews', in their Western Mystery Tradition books, refer to the Celtic deities as "unregenerate godforms," whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, and warn against working with them. Perhaps this is their way of saying the deities are dangerous. If that's the case, so is fire. So is the sea. So is walking out your door every morning to go to work. Should we stop heating our houses, cooking our food, and going outside because it might be dangerous? People are dangerous, too. Even our closest friends and the people we love might hurt us from time to time. Do we stop having friends and family because of this, or do we learn to deal with their rough edges and accept them for who they are?

Ultimately, I write about entheogens because I find them useful in some ritual circumstances. I write about them to show that there are many ways to define and practice rituals. I discuss my experiences, both successful and failed, in order to demonstrate that effects vary and that not everything is going to work every time. In modern US culture it's hard to find people openly discussing that kind of work. Discussions go on in closed fora and between friends in private. There are books out there but the good ones can be hard to find. And to neglect such an ancient source of access to ritual states of consciousness and such powerful potential spiritual allies is to cut oneself off from the potential for powerful learning and spiritual experiences.

Yes, there are dangers inherent in the path. People have averse reactions to entheogens just as they do to any other substance they may put in their bodies. For some people, being in the vicinity of onions is a life-threatening experience. Strawberries have killed people.

Important things to remember are to research thoroughly, to exercise due caution, and to understand that these things will not always work as advertised. Sure, you don't "need" to use entheogens in a spiritual practice. One doesn't "need" a lot of things that are or can be useful. It doesn't mean they should never be used by responsible adults. And it doesn't mean that non-entheogenic practices can't get you where you want to go as well, depending on your goals. Humans are curious creatures. We are interested in new experiences and are prone to experimentation in all fields of life. Ritual is like sex, in the end analysis. Different things work for different people and my kink may not be your cuppa. The important thing is that we all try to get to our goal, by whatever pathway pleases us best.

Thoughts on Ritual and Homecoming

2009-07-30T13:19:00.001-07:00

On July 18th the local CR schmooze held a ritual. The focus of this rite was a vigil of return for a warrior who has returned from duty. As most of you probably know, I was enlisted in the US Navy from 1979-1982. I was 17 when I enlisted. After leaving the service, I tried to pick up the pieces of my shattered life. It was hard and while I've been dealing with things as best I can, I'm living on a veteran's disability pension due to what happened to me during my service and afterwards. That pension is how I can write books and articles and still keep a roof over my head.

Because I was thrown out of the Navy (I tried for almost three years before they actually did it, so that was my intention), I'm not the kind of vet the military likes to talk about. Not only am I queer, I was a "disciplinary problem" and stood for captain's mast (non-judicial punishment) three times in my enlistment, as well as once being court maritaled. Needless to say, there was no recognition of my service and no one to welcome me home despite the fact that I'd given a goodly chunk of what passed for my sanity to the service of my country.

Over the last year our local group has been working with one of our members who is an active duty military man, currently serving in Iraq. We sent him off with a ritual last August and will welcome him home this August when he arrives. We've talked with the larger Pagan community at PantheaCon about the sending out ritual. This, the companion ritual, is a vigil for the warrior's return. For me, the ritual was a profound experience of welcome into a community that I have never had before. For Arlen, we hope to give him a welcome to the same community he left and hope that he won't have the same kinds of problems reintegrating with the civilian community that I've had over the years.

Our experiences of the military are very different. Arlen intends to re-enlist for another five-year hitch with an eye toward becoming a warrant officer. I hated my time in service and tried desperately to get out. Yet both of us have served, both of us have done what had to be done under the circumstances -- me during the nuclear terror of the Cold War, him under fire in battle.

This is my account of the vigil.

~~~

Dusk came slowly that day, as it does so often at this time of year. I'd set up my tent in tall grass beyond the back gate. Last time I'd done a vigil there, I'd been eaten by mosquitos -- over 20 bites all over my body, even through thick jeans and a sweater. The tent was a blessing because there would be no fire.

After I was sent out to take my place beyond the hedge, the night was filled with loud, thumping, percussive music, punctuated by occasional cheering. Somewhere nearby, there was a concert. It continued until late into the night, but was distant enough to be little more than background to my thoughts. I'd have preferred silence but, when one does vigil ritual in the burbs, even the heavily-wooded burbs of semi-rural Redmond, one has neighbors to consider.

The questions came at small intervals, presented by people who were attempting to affect floating, disembodied heads. Dark clothing, lit features. Between the focus of my headspace in ritual and their sometimes awkward attempts, it was effective enough. At one point Phil looked like his eyes were glowing. I'm told that at several points I didn't look much of anything like myself, either; a strange silhouette armed with spear and sword, leaning forward, overshadowed by something Other.

I felt that overshadowing. Each time I rose to exit the tent, alert and armed, it covered me. There was a hyperawareness, a sense of stretching beyond the boundaries of my body to encompass the area surrounding me, knowing where everything was despite the darkness. I was on guard, taking care of the community I'd sworn so many years ago to protect.

Thirty years ago, I took an oath. I swore to protect and defend the people and constitution of the United States of America. Twenty six years ago, I "came home." Since that time I have lived on the edges of my ability, broken by my experiences in the military. I had been thrown out, by my own design. There were no ceremonies, no welcomes, barely a word beyond "thank God that's over." I don't remember the exit interview, just that I know I had to sign my DD-214, which read that I was discharged under "General, Other Than Honorable" conditions. I walked away, too numb to try to make sense of it all.

I'm not the sort of veteran the services are proud of. I fought the whole time I was in. I hated it desperately and passionately. Nobody wants to hear about the broken ones, especially the ones who were broken between shooting wars, the ones that could never fit in to begin with. The ones who weren't properly military enough. I was good at what I did -- good enough that they didn't want to get rid of me until I'd made myself such a nuisance that they had no other choice. The few times I was working in conditions I found tolerable, with people who would give me a chance, I was moved to new conditions within weeks. My reputation for trouble preceded me.

During the vigil I sat with questions that brought me face to face with who and what I am, what I did, and what it all meant. There are not adequate words for most of it. I wrote a couple of notebook pages for most of the questions. One particularly stuck with me, because it had a two-sentence answer:

What will you do if you don't get what you want?

Keep trying, just like I always have. The alternative is death.

In so many ways, this sums up my relationship to the military and to the Veterans Administration. Keep trying, or die. When they beat you down, stand back up. When they refuse you, return with a new set of forms. When they ignore you, shout down the walls. When they break you, pick up the pieces. To do otherwise is to suffer annihilation.

In my life, I have rarely gotten what I want. Often I've had to be content with other things but, in most contexts, that's okay. When it has come to the military, even the idea of compromise has been deadly to my soul. There are some things that cannot be accepted. They must be struggled for, even if that becomes the defining theme of a life.

One of the things I've struggled for all these years has been community and acceptance. I've tried to understand my place in the context of others as groups and individuals. I've stood outside so much of my life, even before I formally signed my enlistment contract. It's part of that kshatriya thing I was talking about last week -- the military displaces families. We don't belong anywhere because we don't stay long enough and when we do try to stay, we have tall barriers to surmount; being the new kid (eternally), being an unknown factor (because no one bothers to get to know you), being different (by background and by temperament).

In a small group of people last week, I found community. I am no longer outside the fence. I may walk the edge and be able to traverse it and live in the wild but I also, for once, belong inside. Welcomed in and given a place of honor, my history and my differences were accepted for what they are rather than rejected as a mark of unacceptable severance.

Good ritual changes something inside you. Those changes may not be obvious for a long time afterwards. I can feel them moving, though. This acceptance was very different than the superficial "thank you for your service" that I sometimes get these days when I note that I'm a veteran. I've never really known how to cope with that phrase. It brings too much back, and in a bad way. To be brought inside the gate, to be cooled and tempered in the waters and purified in the smoke of holy herbs, and to be placed at the head of the table for the feast in a place of honor is a distinctly different thing.

Sleep-deprived after a long night of intense focus and meditation, I was in a very different space than I usually am. Doing a vigil ritual brings it home much more deeply than a ritual that might take an hour or so, even if the content is essentially identical. The time and the effort involved intensify the effect. They separate us from the mundane much more fully. They emphasize the importance of what is happening.

Do I still identify with the geilt? Oh, yes. Yet I know I'm welcome inside the gates. My skills and talents are valued and I am valued, despite the problems I still -- and may always -- have.

Am I "cured" of my PTSD, my nightmares, my triggers? Not by a long shot. But I know how far I've come along that road and I know that I can go further. I have friends and a community who have demonstrated with their efforts and their bodies that what has happened may have marked me, but I am capable of change.

Twenty six years after the fact, I've come home.

Failures

2009-06-06T18:26:00.000-07:00

Last month I set out to do another session in the incubation chamber. I've done a few now, mostly meditation but a couple of vision-seeking/journeywork sessions as well. I had high hopes when I set out, as I'd been wanting to work with some psilocybe and amanita muscaria I'd had on hand.

I set up the space, invoked the spirits and deities, went through all the processes I go through to set the stage for the work, and waited.

There was an immense sense of presence. It was so strong it woke my roommate, who had been sleeping in his room. I felt a sense of the room breathing around me. I waited more. I sang and prayed and watched.

Yet beyond that sense of presence and breath, "nothing" happened.

I've worked with LSD a couple of times before and had some very powerful experiences with it. One I would even describe as profound. I've had some very good success with smoking salvia divinorum, though that was an entirely different quality of experience than the LSD had been. After all the accounts I'd heard and read about different types of fungal entheogens, I'd been expecting something big and consuming.

Sometimes, things don't work. They flop for whatever reason. Maybe the dried fungi were too old. Perhaps they weren't going to work with my body chemistry. Maybe there was nothing the deities or spirits wanted me to do that day beyond spend four hours in meditation and ritual. Maybe I was expecting the wrong things and was too focused on what I'd been told rather than on being in the experience.

Yet our failures teach us just as our successes do. The lessons of failure can be very valuable if we are willing to accept them and work with them. When I posted about the issue in my LJ later that day, I got several responses from folks who were glad to hear that they were not alone in having rituals that didn't work out as planned.

When ritual fails, you're not alone. It happens to all of us, from the veriest noob to the grizzled grey elder. I can't think of anyone who has never in their entire life had a ritual poop out on them at least once; some have even been spectacular in their fail. Failure, though, is a part of the human condition. We all experience it sometimes and how we deal with it is important.

In failure, we learn that the universe isn't all about us. The spirit world isn't a giant wish-granting machine where you put in your ritual and out pops the result you wanted. Life, the universe, and everything is a big place and we're just tiny motes within it. We have our roles to play, but that doesn't mean we're at center stage.

We learn a certain amount of humility in our failures. We may do everything right and still not get the result we wanted. Approaching spirit with humility and knowing that we're only a part of the greater whole is important. Pride may be a value of CR Paganism, but it should be properly placed pride and not hubris.

Failure encourages us to be resilient, to be creative, and to keep on trying. If we don't get it right the first time, perhaps something needs to be changed. Maybe we need to readjust our expectations. Maybe the conditions weren't right. Maybe we were using the wrong tools or the wrong symbol set. Maybe spirit or deity was busy elsewhere. Some things have to be worked for much harder than others and ritual is no exception to this general rule in life.

Patience comes with failure. Learning to bide our time until the next opportunity is an important lesson when dealing with not just the Otherworlds but this one as well. Planting a seed in midwinter is unlikely to be as successful as planting it in the spring, in its proper time and place.

Failure also teaches gratitude. Success won't feel like much when it's your only experience. Its value tends to decline emotionally in proportion to how routine it is. Failing shows us that success is a possibility, not a guarantee, and encourages us to make the most of success when it comes along.

When we examine the reasons for ritual failure we learn to think clearly and systematically about how we design ritual and how we understand its purposes. Taking things apart afterwards is a very helpful practice whether the ritual succeeded or not. Most of the folks I know who do public ritual have debriefings with the ritual team afterwards to discuss what went well, what didn't, and what could be improved. Examination, ideally, leads to growth.

In the wake of this particular experiment I've determined that I'd like to try again, but with fungi that are fresh rather than dried. This may have some effect on the outcome. I know I have more luck with salvia, so I'll be doing more in-depth work with that in some of its forms other than dried, unenhanced leaf to see if that will change the ritual results.

I'll pay more attention to what is happening than what I wish for, as well. There were currents I could have ridden in that ritual that I failed to because of my preconceived expectations. Rather than doing the work, I expected to be carried along.

The session was a failure in terms of what I had hoped for, yet it taught me a number of things about myself and the process of the work I'm doing, and for that I'm very grateful.

Poetry month

2009-04-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

April in the US is National Poetry Month. As a fili, this is something near and dear to my heart. Over on my LJ, I've been posting a poem a day. Some of them are short. Some of them are bad. Some of them are actually pretty good. When at the Altar of the Flame is one of the poems that has resulted so far.

I'll admit that I don't always keep up my poetic practice. My prose writing looms large in my life -- essays for anthologies, writing on my LJ about my life and about activist interests, and trying hard to get things done for my books are all important to me as well. Yet poetry, even when I'm doing it badly, gives me a way to reach more deeply into my spiritual life and helps to refine both my personal practice and my philosophies about how I see CR and what I do both privately and in community.

A month or so ago I wrote lyrics for a song for the local group. I posted those on my LJ, along with a link to the original tune I wrote them to. We've used the song a couple of times as a group and it seems to have been well-received. It's a song for acknowledging the three realms of land, sea and sky and for the three fires of the land spirits, the ancestors, and the deities. Much more remains to be done within the CR community in terms of songs and ritual poetry that doesn't have to be borrowed from the Neopagan community or from modern Druidic groups like the ADF. There's something important about creating our own liturgical materials and sharing them within our communities. Shared liturgy helps create a shared sense of community, particularly when we're all so scattered around the globe.

A lot of the secret of writing poetry is found in sitting down and writing it. Technique is important. Emotional impact is important. Rhyme and rhythm are important. But none of that matters if you don't sit down and put your pen to paper.

The music doesn't happen if you don't sing.

When at the Altar of the Flame

2009-04-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

burn juniper

plucked by your own hand

sung over with spells and charms

with the water of wells and of rasps

wash your face and hands

singing "gabhaim molta bride"

the flame is passed from hand to hand

rough, calloused fingers

used to work of forge and pen

of weaving and ploughing and toil

her hand the hand of sister

of brother

of uncle and aunt

of cousin and parent and child

her hand the hand of the world

sing to the spark between your palms

light your lamp

In Other Tongues

2009-02-28T14:33:00.000-08:00

I added a new sidebar to the blog today titled In Other Tongues that has links to CR articles and texts that I authored or co-authored. It includes translations of work into Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Russian. It also includes a poem I composed that has proved quite popular among folks interested in Brigid.

My thanks to the many translators around the world who have undertaken such a difficult task, for getting not just my work but the work of other CR authors out there and making it available so that people in other parts of the world and who speak other languages can explore this spiritual path. It warms my heart to know that the work we're all doing being is shared with so many.

I'm hoping that soon I can add another link to this list, as the local CR schmooze has received a request to translate our warrior ritual into Spanish. Since I'm not the author, it has to be passed by everyone who did write the ritual at the next meeting in March. I have every expectation that the request will receive approval.

Just for the record, if you are interested in translating any of my work into other languages, please feel free to contact me to discuss the idea. If you have previously done a translation of my work that isn't listed here, please let me know where so I can link it. Thank you!

CR and personal syncretisms

2009-02-24T15:11:00.001-08:00

Originally posted on my LiveJournal, I felt this essay dealt with enough CR material and was important enough to my view of my life as a CR that it warranted posting here. In this post, I talk quite a bit about some of the other practices I follow in my life and deal with questions I've been asked about how I can be CR while also following other paths. I know others in the community sometimes struggle with these issues as well. Please take this as my own personal approach -- nothing here implies that anyone has to do as I do or think as I think. If you're also struggling with multiple paths and self-definition, please take this as encouragement along your way and perhaps as cause for further meditation.

Over the next week or so I'll probably be doing a short series of posts about some of the things I did at PCon this year. I wanted to start with the Ekklesía Antínoou Lupercalia ritual. There were vasty numbers of people in attendance -- 60 or so, in contrast to the smaller numbers last time, and the tiny rituals we do here in Seattle with usually 10 or fewer people.

Part of the ritual had been a Communalia, a drawing of formal alliances between the Ekklesía and other Pagan and polytheist traditions, most especially between our group and AMHA the polytheist tribal Hebrew group represented by Elisheva Nesher. Eli is a wonderful older woman, wise and forthright and delightfully funny. She's one of the people who regularly attends the con and who hangs with Diana Paxson's group when she's in town whom I find both priceless and irreplaceable. I adore her beyond all measure and bless the day when Diana and Lorrie Wood introduced us.

Phillipus has described his feelings of accomplishment and happiness for this alliance in light of the Roman emperor Hadrian's role in the Bar Kochba war and the repression of the Israelites during his otherwise reasonably enlightened reign. He is of Jewish extraction himself and so felt that it was extremely important for the Ekklesía to make strides toward building bridges between our group and those that one of our exemplary figures and deities had wronged. The other groups represented were a Dianic group led by Rabbit and a local Heathen community represented by Ember.

The ritual itself was, as is usually EA's nature, heavily liturgical with much singing and recitation. I do think that some of this could use a little more group involvement as it currently is primarily the lead ritualist and a few assistants doing most of the work. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, though I know that PCon attendees tend to expect more personal involvement in big public rituals rather than sitting on the sidelines as spectators for big chunks of it. I read the Hymn for Hecate and the Prayer Against Persecution as well as carrying two of the lotus lights as one of the Mystai in the processional.

This year Lupa ran as one of the Luperci as I did a couple of years ago, carrying on the fine EA tradition of including women as wolf-warriors in the ceremony. The race was exciting and fun, though Eli stepped out during this portion, as it involved some symbolic flogging and she has some combat-related issues with people raising a hand against others in even symbolic violence. All the ritualists did a lovely job, I think.

Some time after the ritual, Ember approached me and talked about some cultural dissonances she felt as a Heathen at a Roman-based ritual. She wondered aloud if I had been there representing for CR or was there just as myself, as one of Phillipus's friends. At the time I said I had been there just as myself but, being so tired after everything I had been doing, I hadn't thought to give her a more in-depth answer so I'm going to explore that here. It has great resonance for my practices in other non-CR religions and may help to explain some of my views on how and why I am still primarily CR in my life and self-identification despite my other allegiances. I'll also talk a little about the syncretic nature of my life, as this is an unavoidable adjunct to the discussion.

My attendance at Lupercalia was not merely as an individual or as Phillipus's friend, though my interest in Antinous started as the curiosity of a friend who wished to explore another's spirituality. I attended in my ritual function as both Mystes and Luperca. I am, if you will, what passes for an initiate into the cult of Antinous and, hopefully, only the first of many women (or people in women's bodies) to hold these titles within the group -- so Ave Lupa, Luperca Secunda!

While some people wonder if the cult of a "Gay God" has any place for women within it, I see myself as living testament of that inclusivity. Antinous to me does not represent just "gayness" but affirms all forms of queerness, however that might be defined. That queerness is not strictly about gender and sexuality, although it includes it. Antinous is a liberator not just in terms of one who liberates from death but as one who liberates from all negative forms of constraint. In this he works to free us from our preconceived notions of ourselves. He liberates us from the chains of dualistic, binary thought. He liberates us from unwanted roles into which we have been pressed in the service of conformity. He liberates us from illusion and self-deception. He liberates us from fear.

When I stand before the obelisk, a citizen of Antinoopolis, I do not enter the gates specifically as a Celtic Reconstructionist. I enter as myself -- with all that means -- as Mystes and Luperca of the Cult of Antinous who also, first and foremost, honors Celtic deities. I bring my allegiances to my Celtic deities with me, but in that space and for that time, they are part of the work being done within those sacred precincts. When the Pantheon is opened in Antinoan ritual, I install my own deities to be honored as equal to all the others within that temple according to Roman tradition, just as all others present do if they so choose. In our sacred city, there are no foreign Gods, no holy strangers; all who come are given reverence and acknowledgment.

As the old saying goes, "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." Therefore, when I am within the precincts of Antinoopolis I act as one should act within the Ekklesía's unavoidably and deliberately syncretic Greco-Roman-Egyptian framework. When I stand before my Brigid altar and light my flame, I am acting as a CR within a CR context, interacting with a specifically Celtic deity and following a specifically Celtic tradition. One does not invalidate nor compete with the other. When I go to the Shinto shrine, I am there to honor the Kami and ask for their blessings. I make the expected offerings and go through the expected motions of purification, bell-ringing, bowing, clapping, and sipping sake at the appropriate times. In this I am in no wise different from any other Shrine member, nor should I be. And in the time-honored cultural and spiritual tradition of Shinto, I follow multiple paths without feeling any particular conflict within Shinto space. I don't keep a Kamidana in my home primarily because the purity/house-cleaning requirements are rather above my current physical ability to fulfill. It is not because I would in any way feel uncomfortable with a Kamidana in my space. I also understand and respect Raven's lack of resonance with Shinto due to her own spiritual commitments and do not feel this is in any way a contradiction for either of us -- the Celtic deities she works with as her primary devotion are not the same as mine and they deal in different territories and energies. It is natural we would have different reactions based on these differences.

My life is larger than any one tradition, no matter how much I love and identify with that tradition. There are places that, by its inherent limitations, that tradition cannot take me. This doesn't make it a bad or inadequate tradition. It does not make me love that tradition or my deities any less. It doesn't make me any less dedicated to that tradition. My practice of multiple traditions doesn't somehow magically rob me of my knowledge, my experience, or my ability within any of those I do practice. It does not negate my history with other traditions that I no longer practice. It does not close a gate to future practice of further traditions, or worship of and work with other deities and spirits. I am a polyamorous polytheist -- I love and give my adoration to many Gods and Goddesses, to many spirits and ancestors.

And so I am a CR fili. I am a bangeilt. I am a priestess of Brigid and a flamekeeper. I am an Ekklesía Antínoou mystes and luperca. I am an initiate of Alexandrian Wicca and NECTW Witchcraft. I am a Shintoist. I am an animist. I am an astrologer and a tarot reader. I am a student of Ulchi shamanism. I am an informal devotee of Sarasvati and Hanuman and Ganesha. I am a disabled veteran. I am queer. I am a feminist. I am a peace activist. I am more than all of this.

I am human.

As Whitman said:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Meditations on a Year

2009-01-13T23:03:00.000-08:00

This week marks the first anniversary of the local Seattle CR Schmooze. We started meeting last January on second Mondays of every month and in that time we've developed a pretty solid core of about ten people who show up regularly, even if not every month. We've had several rituals outside of the monthly meetings as well. The group is composed of folks from a number of backgrounds, from people new to the Pagan community as a whole to folks who have moved on from ADF to a couple of what pass for "big names" in the CR movement. One of our number is a Ph.D. in Celtic Studies, which helps us immensely. We have people interested in Irish, Welsh and Scottish material and cultures. One of our number, the woman who had no previous exposure to the Pagan community, has become so enthusiastic for the culture and the material that she's joined a local Scots Gaelic class to learn the Gaidhlig language.

We are working on pieces of ritual for the group as a collective effort. We've done a vigil and blessing ritual for one of our number who was shipped out to Iraq last year and will be doing a welcoming home ritual when he returns late this year. We have explored different ritual formats and tried some guided meditation work together. We've shared book recommendations and meals together. We've held night-long vigils together and read stories from the corpus of traditional texts and tales. We head for a shared dinner at a nearby restaurant every month after our meeting for socializing. We've had a few incompatible people come and go. We talk on LiveJournal and on our yahoogroup together from time to time outside of our formal times together. We have running in-jokes and repeating themes in our meetings.

Our group still has a long way to go. We have a lot of work to do in developing ritual and in working with Welsh deities, as most of our work has been with the Irish material so far. We're still at a very elemental level in sharing our private work together. But we have a schedule for the year so far that runs to Samhain, with topics to work on, ritual elements to write, and discoveries to make. We're getting together later this month for a Burns supper and looking for ways to grow closer to cultural traditions that aren't strictly spiritual as we explore our interests.

In February, three of us will be presenting a panel discussion at PantheaCon in San Jose about the warrior ritual we performed, as a way to expand the dialogue with the larger community. Two of us will be participating in another panel discussion on mysticism in reconstructionist religions. I'll be teaching two workshops down there; one on advanced topics in ogam, and the other an experiential workshop on meditative techniques derived from some of the filidecht materials. This will include the guided cosmological meditation created by one of our members who won't be able to attend, but who is working on a book on CR and the Gaelic warrior tradition.

I'm excited and very proud of our small group, not just for surviving the first year -- a milestone for any Pagan group -- but for how everyone is contributing to discussion and feedback, and how we're working to create community out of a small group of disparate individuals.

I'm looking forward to the coming year. I hope that we're blessed by continuing development in our work as a group, and in our own lives.

Amanita article finally available

2008-12-23T05:14:00.000-08:00

Back in the mid-90s I was doing quite a bit of research into the potential links between mushrooms and filidecht. One of the results of that was my 1997 article, co-written with Timothy White, titled Speckled Snake, Brother of Birch: Amanita Muscaria Motifs in Celtic Legends. For a long time, I've wanted to be able to make it available online, as it has been rather influential and cited in a number of books over the years. Until this point, it's only been available by ordering the back issue of Shaman's Drum in which it appeared, or in a French translation that was previously available on my Preserving Shrine website. While the front page and the article page have not yet been updated, the article itself is available for viewing from the link above.

Early this month I spent some time scanning it and turning it into a pdf file so that the original English version is openly available to anyone wanting to read it. Please note that it was co-authored and that Timothy's position on "Celtic shamanism" is somewhat different than my own, but I felt that getting the research out there was more important than worrying about exact definitions of shamanism. I expect to also make the French translation available again sometime soon.

I think it's also important to note that the article only deals with Amanita muscaria due to space limitations. My feeling is that other fungi could very well have been involved in the seeking of knowledge, but there was no way to include everything in the article that either of us wished to present. Psilocybe species certainly do, and did, grow in Ireland and Great Britain at the time. At some point, I may expand on this material, possibly as an appendix to the book I plan to write on filidecht. That, however, is something for the future and I can't really project too much about it at this point. My research on the geilt material is occupying a great deal of my attention at the moment.

I'm pleased to be able to make the article available online, finally. I think the research deserves a much wider distribution than it has previously received. It'll be interesting to see what comes of its new availability, and the dialogue that could potentially develop around it.

Results, thoughts and meditations from Monday's work

2008-12-16T01:11:00.001-08:00

I am firmly convinced that "discipline" does not have to mean getting up at the crack of dawn. The only reason I should ever see the sunrise is because I'm getting ready to go to bed. In fact, I find that the earlier I get up, the more miserable I feel, hence the desperate unlikelihood that I will ever become a monastic in the tradition of "discipline = misery".

Getting up at 10 am, for me, is kind of a challenge. I can do it but, for the most part, I honestly don't see why I should have to put myself through that kind of pain. I'm lucky enough to live a life where I mostly only have to get up in the ante-meridian occasionally and/or because I genuinely want to. This morning I rose promptly when the alarm went off and proceeded through the shower/dress/purifications/dog-walking routine right on schedule. The fact that I was shambling like a zombie should be swept under the carpet and left unremarked, but there are no carpets in my house. More's the pity.

I got out and walked around the lake (and, incidentally, dropped off things at the post that urgently required mailing out this morning) in freezing, crisp, bright clear daylight. It was gorgeous, but the sidewalks and much of the roadways were still slicked with ice anywhere that wasn't extremely heavily trafficked. This means that crossing streets was a bit dicey. There weren't many people out during my constitutional given that most adults were at work, most kids at school, and the rest of the world was sanely inside -- unlike me.

I kept warm during the walk though my mind, like my body, wandered rather a bit during the course of my excursion. Between paying attention to my footing and soaking in the rare winter sunlight, my eyes were occupied constantly. At intervals I tried to focus my mind on songs and some chanting, though with only minimal success. I'm used to better footing when I do this sort of movement meditation and that broke my concentration frequently. Despite this, it was a lovely walk and I had a delightful time. It did help me make a complete break with my usual complacent morning routine, particularly in waiting until after I'd returned to the house to have my morning herbal tea.

By the time I got home, I was ready to sit with a hot beverage and meditate for a while until my face rejoined the land of the living. During this time, I read some excerpts from Celtic Theology: Humanity, World and God in Early Irish Writings by Thomas O'Loughlin. This belongs to my roommate but it's on my Powells wishlist of books I want to get at some point. The chapter I read was on "The Litanies: Petition, Procession, Protection" and in fact had some relevance to the ideal of walking as meditation that I was pondering while out in the snow and ice around the lake. I found the reading quite fruitful and will be pondering it with a mind to creating a litany for myself for while I'm out walking, to help introduce more formal meditative techniques to my exercise and incorporate that physical activity deliberately into my spiritual life on a more frequent basis.

Right about on time, I finished up my mint tea and the chapter and got to the cleaning up portion of the day. In addition to the sweeping and dusting of the chamber, I swept the floors in bedroom and bathroom, and in the hallway as well. After that I put fresh water and candles on all my household altars and lit them up as a meditation on allowing the sanctity of the everyday more effectively permeate my consciousness as I went about my work.

I found this was a really useful exercise because it meant that pretty much everywhere I went, there was a flame in or at the edge of my field of vision. It was a very effective reminder of my intentions and of how I try to surround myself with the memory that everything is sacred.

I sat down a little after 1 pm on the couch to decide what I wanted to do for the ritual purification and consecration. Over the next few hours I brought together some of the tropes I frequently use in ritual -- muir mas, nem nglas, talamh cé, the five rings from Scéla Éogain, and the five provinces, four winds construct from The Settling of the Manor of Tara. I also wrote bits for Manannán, Brigid, and Airmed. Given that I'll be doing some plant-based work in the chamber, it made a great deal of sense to include her in as the patron of herbal medicine and magic.

I'll admit that I napped fitfully on the couch off and on during this process for about an hour or so, given how groggy I was feeling after having got up at what is, for me, a very early hour. Unfortunately, afternoon naps often leave me feeling crankier and more creaky than not taking them, but my eyelids were at half-mast through a lot of the composition of my ritual and I didn't want to fall asleep while I was in the chamber trying to work, so napping was the better part of valor here.

By the time I got started with ritual in the chamber itself, it was about 4:45. This wasn't too much later than I estimated for a start time, so I felt I was doing well. I went into the chamber and did the ritual work of the purification and consecration, which included the prayers and some ogam sonic work. In invoking the energies of the five rings of protection, I used sonics for h-úath as a hedgerow to keep the space protected, and gort within that ring for fertile work.

Taking a leaf from some accounts of the initiation of poets with imagery of graves and rebirth, I invoked the chamber as the grave of every ignorance, the spring of every vision, and the womb of every wisdom and followed that with sonics for ailm and coll.

The ogam oracle for this part of the work was the oceanic current of Nin -- networking, connecting threads, and building bridges. This was very much in line with the intentions I was putting forth so I felt good to go on.

I should note that next time I do this, I'm not starting ritual before at least 10 pm. Trying to work when you live below people raising elephants upstairs is a bit challenging. It was at this point that I really would have given my left arm to be able to be doing this somewhere in the woods where it's quiet. Between somebody running a bath, people shouting (at dogs or kids, I wasn't sure) and galloping children, it took me a while to really get into the swing of the rest of the ritual and my concentration got jarred from time to time throughout the process.

Thus, not worrying about getting up at 10 am and not starting incubatory ritual in the chamber until 10 pm is going to be my order of the work from now on. *grumble*

I did some work with stone on the belly stuff pretty much as described in my ogam book. This was good and steadying, as well as energizing and focusing to a certain extent. It did help as I tried to push through the distractions later in the ritual.

The cauldron breathing work was nine breaths of fire in each cauldron with one deep breath between each to raise the flame up a level to the new cauldron. At the end of this I slowly let the warmth suffuse through me and felt prepared to try the next step.

The oracle for this part, concerning whether I had done enough preparatory work to continue, was chthonic edad. In this case it was about creating the tools for the journey, which was literally what I was doing in making the incubation chamber, so I felt this was a confirmation and moved on to the meditative work.

I smoked salvia (dried leaves) and kept a few of the leaves under my tongue, then lay back and let myself go into the mist. The tealight candles lit earlier in the day literally died out into darkness as I finished the pipe and set it down to go into the incubatory part of the work. Perfect timing.

The first thing I noticed was a sense of vines growing along the walls of the chamber. This lasted for a while as I contemplated the presence of Airmed. It felt very comfortable and welcoming, growing and green and protective. She's been a presence since the beginning of my explorations of Irish and Celtic spirituality and has been a guiding hand, though a much more subtle one than that of Brigid or Manannán. I was very glad to include her specifically and work with her this closely in something that was so manifestly a part of her being.

Eventually I began to feel encapsulated in a chrysalis. This seemed to generate a new stage of the meditation. I felt very safe in there despite a physical feeling of some constriction and being lightly wrapped within a winding of some sort. At that point all I had was a small blanket over my legs, so the feeling was not reflective of physical reality. The imagery of enclosure and transformation here is very significant. The creation of this space and the first meditation and journeying within it are only a beginning. It's fitting that I felt enclosed within the chrysalis, but did not get further than that during this meditation.

During this time I had a very brief flash of airships of some sort, then equally quickly flashed momentarily to skeletal images of fish and other aquatic life. This was too brief to really get more than an impression. I'm including it here in case something rings bells later.

After this, the sense of being cocooned faded and I felt more like a seed that had been planted in the ground. The chamber itself manifested as the soil I was buried within and there was a sense of sprouting and hidden growth below the ground. This led me to thinking about embodied theology, how theological discourse needs to be grounded in bodily experience and wondering about how to articulate a Gaelic-based Pagan theology of the body drawing from all the rich bodily imagery in the tales and the traditions.

Eventually this slow feeling faded and I lit another candle to make some notes. The oracle for this point was h-úath, which said I wasn't finished, so I offered prayers of thanks to the deities and to the ancestors specifically along with the spirits I usually work with. After that, the oracle was chthonic fern, a physical shelter and protection -- the goal of the work for the day.

Emerging from the chamber, I checked the time. It was about 6:15, so I'd spent nearly two hours in ritual. I think that's pretty good for a first time working this solo. I'm pleased with what I got and am thinking about what happened and what I perceived, as well as the warning to remember to thank everybody at the end. This, I suspect, is a persistent flaw in my approach to ritual that needs to be corrected.

My general feeling is that I'm on the right track. I feel I need to add a few more layers to the work I did in consecrating and dedicating the chamber itself as I do more work with it, but it does seem that places worked with consistently build up a charge of ritual energy that increases with time. I also felt that I should be working in there at least once a month at minimum for the moment. This doesn't seem to be too unusual with the other folks I know who are following similar paths. There is a lot more work to be done, but I expected this to be a bare beginning, so I'm content with my day's efforts.

I was ravenously hungry when I got out. Experience told me I should eat rather than waiting until midnight to break my food fast. Electronic communications could wait until midnight, though and I was okay with that. I used those hours to get some more reading done on topics relating to the project and to my geilt book, some of which was quite useful. A couple of the books had only an article or two that I needed to look at, so I got two of them crossed off my list and finished up Mac Mathúna's Imram Brain.

Some of the questions I have now regarding body and theology:

How is the body used as a symbol in Gaelic texts?
How is it transformed and how are those transformations experienced in age, gender and species?
How do mutilation (Bóann), monstrosity (Cú Chulainn, Suibhne, et al), and artificiality (Nuadha) inform what might be theologies of Gaelic Paganism?
How are bodies both as wholes and as parts perceived spiritually in practices of contemplation, transmission of wisdom, and presentations of spiritual and magical power?
How does an individual practitioner identify with these bodies?
What devotional practices do these potential theological theories suggest?

Food for thought. Don't expect answers anytime soon.

Incubation chamber dedication tomorrow

2008-12-14T19:09:00.001-08:00

Since my roommate will be away tomorrow and not coming home until Tuesday morning, I've decided to use that day/night to do the dedication for the incubation chamber. Today I'll be doing some work on the ritual and putting together the order of activities for the work itself. It's been a longer, much slower process getting here than I'd expected -- or wanted -- but the time has finally come to take the plunge.

Some of the hesitation has been uncertainty, I know. There are no models in CR for this at the moment, but that's not at all unusual for us. What little we know about incubatory practice describes meditation in the dark, but nothing about how or even if the spaces were prepared in any particular way beforehand or what the meditator had to do before going into the meditative state. This is where we have to experiment and create dialogue, taking some inspiration from what we might find in closely related cultures where it's available.

I'll spend some of today and probably a good part of tomorrow searching for appropriate texts from the Gaelic traditions to use as blessings and protections for the space. There will be a purification with juniper and fire. I'll do invocations of the particular deities I'll be working most closely with in that space and asking their guidance and protection for the proceedings.

Once I feel the space is properly consecrated, I'll be doing some shorter meditations in the chamber; mostly breathwork and feeling out the space in trance. I'll likely do some sonic stuff as well -- chants and songs intended to aid the process of meditation and trance.

During the day after I get up and take care of morning devotions, I'll be doing a fast of everything but liquid so as to focus my attentions and energies on the purpose of the work. I'm also considering being incommunicado online and turning the phone off for the entire period as well. Obviously I would not have the phone on during ritual proper, but removing myself from all distraction and maintaining silence aside from ritual song and speech will likely be useful as well. This means no music being played during the day. I'm just hoping the elephants upstairs will be marginally cooperative, but doing this on a Monday should mean the kids aren't there through much of the day at least.

A lot of this has been brewing in the back of my mind for the past year, though it's been difficult to set any of it down in firm terms. I'm hoping that it will feel more settled once I get into the work itself tomorrow. Tonight I'll be doing some outlining and will probably do a walk around the lake tomorrow after morning ritual in preparation for the internal focus. I need to get some contact with the outside world and with nature before I close myself up in a dark, quiet space to provide some psychological contrast, I suspect.

After I finish up the ritual work, I may let myself back online to journal a little about the process and the results. It's difficult for me to write longhand for more than a few paragraphs because of the pain it causes, so if I'm going to get the insights down about what worked and what didn't, and about what happened, it will need to be with the computer. That said, I may just write in a doc file and post on Tuesday evening, depending on what feels appropriate. For me, online activity is so much an everyday activity that separating myself from it during this period is important as a part of the fasting, though when I break the fast I may break the communication fast as well, given that they're of similar import.

Wish me luck!

The Life of the Poet

2008-12-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

The process of writing a poem represents work done on the self of the poet, in order to make form. That this form has to do with the relationships of sounds, rhythms, imaginative beliefs does not isolate the process from any other creation.

-- Muriel Rukuyser, from The Life of Poetry

Muriel Rukuyser's words express, in my opinion, one of the great secrets of filidecht. The poet and the poem are intertwined. Every act of writing undertaken with intention creates some subtle change within the body of the writer; it sows the seeds of evolution in mind and spirit.

Using writing to create deliberate change is an act of magic at its root. Words change the world and so by their nature they also change the self. When we look at the concept of the "connecting thread of poetry" found in the early Irish laws texts we find the rationale for how that change may be seen to take place. Tug on a thread and the rest of the web will feel it. As writers and poets, we cannot help but shift and change within ourselves as we find the words to express what's in our hearts and minds. To write, to recite, or to compose is to incubate the images we store within us and ripen them into expression.

When we contemplate the images as we work toward a poem on the page we are learning to understand them. Writing, like teaching, so often forces me to confront my knowledge so that it can be enumerated and expressed. To leave it unwritten or unsaid in some sense leaves it incomplete and untried. This is part of how writing the poem changes the poet; it creates within us a matrix for understanding that may not have previously existed.

Rukuyser speaks of how she took eight years or more to write a particular poem, starting from a brief note taken of an image, and living with that image in the course of her everyday being. As time went by, it became more nuanced. It gained accretions of experience and resonance. Eventually, words began to take form on paper, slowly thought over and edited, opened out and explored. The poet who produced the final poem was changed by that process, no longer the same person who had noted the initial, sparking image that grew into the finished piece.

What we turn our thoughts to in our writing will, in many ways, influence who and what we become. As we brew those images and experiences in our internal cauldrons we extract nourishment from them. They grow like reefs within us, changing our internal landscapes and structures. They wound us or heal us as we carry the shadows of them within. The best of our poems and our other writings recreate us and make us anew. We are reborn.

I'm Not Dead Yet!

2008-11-24T23:47:00.000-08:00

No, really.

I've been busy with a lot of different things, from a trip to Arizona to teach a couple of brief classes at the Irish Cultural Center in Phoenix to working with the CR group that we started here in Seattle back in January. Political and other concerns had a lot of my focus this year as well, though I'm a little calmer now the elections are over.

That said, my work has been moving on apace toward my writing on filidecht and geilt, with my writing plans being slightly revised to work on the geilta book first in accordance with a suggestion from Phil. Given that a lot of my focus in filidecht is about the material surrounding the geilta, this made sense for me on a lot of levels. To get the materials on madness and trauma and how poetry works as a healing methodology in that context frees me to write more clearly about the rest of the traditions surrounding filidecht in books and articles after that.

Writing for anthologies has also taken a lot of my time and energy this year. I've got two essays coming out in an anthology due in December about cultural appropriation and Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism. After that there's another essay in an anthology on animist practice, taking a CR perspective. I have yet another essay in progress for an anthology on sacrifice in Neopaganism that's based on a lengthy email on Nemeton back in the day. All three of these will be from my publisher, Megalithica. A non-Celtic short story will be coming out next year sometime in an anthology dedicated to Thoth from Neos Alexandria.

The incubation chamber is finally ready for dedication. I had planned to do it around Samhain, but events caught up with me and I've been too overwhelmed, though I hope to do the dedication in early December after several other obligations have been dealt with. This week I'm reading a manuscript by Alf Siewers that my roommate is doing editing for, on landscape and the Otherworld in Insular Celtic imagination. It's a fascinating read and has been very useful in some regards, though I'm having to wade through a great deal of postmodernist jargon. It is, however, saying a lot about the kinds of things I believe about deity and immanence, about how the Otherworlds and the landscape interpenetrate in my spiritual consciousness, and giving me places to look as I ponder what may have been the practices of the early filidh.

In keeping up my LiveJournal, I've rather neglected this blog. This has partly been due to a lack of emotional energy on my part, though not from any lack of interest. I will admit that there have been many days when I've been driving from Seattle back to Everett thinking about something and telling myself I was going to write about it here, but my energy fled me when I got into the house and I've collapsed on the couch and grabbed a book instead. This fall has been both difficult and rewarding, given how successfully the local CR group has been going while I've been facing some of my own personal demons on a deeper level.

I do have a post in progress about deity that was sparked by a friend on LJ which I'll likely post in both places, as I think the content warrants posting here as well. I only hope I'll do the question justice in my answering.

Thanks for your patience.

Incubation Redux

2008-07-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I started clearing things out to turn a closet into an incubation chamber. After many months of delay due to weather and other issues, I've finally finished the painting that was necessary. The space is now nicely done in a darkish green, somewhat sagey, and very nicely relaxing. I'm letting the space air out now as I contemplate the layout of the space and what to place within it on the altars and for the work.

I've used the time since I began work on the chamber to do more reading, do more thinking, do more meditation about incubation and its processes. I feel more ready now than I did when the project began and so I also suspect that this was part of the reason for the delay -- integrating new ideas and some growth into the process.

Another good sign is that I've started at least a bit to write poetry again. For me, this is the heart of so much of my practice. It's slow right now but that's all right. I find it difficult to push against the ebb and flow of that tide and I probably shouldn't try to anyway. So much of the work of writing and poetry happens like the germination of a seed, unseen and underground. It isn't a conscious process but a slow, imperceptible unfolding. Given time it touches the surface and becomes words to be sharpened and honed.

I have cushions for the chamber, blankets for comfort. I have candles and places to put them. I have objects and images for those parts of the work that will take place in the light. I have ideas for ways to proceed. The time has come to write the framework for the rituals themselves so that vision can flow forth.

Ritual

2008-05-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

Filidecht is a path not just of contemplation but of action. It's important to remember this as we walk along the path. Like everyone else, I have to keep reminding myself sometimes, but beyond daily practice this spiritual path demands action in other ways as well. As a solitary practitioner I know that I often face a sense of emptiness when I contemplate the thought of a ritual alone, particularly given that the major festivals are primarily oriented toward families and social occasions -- feasting doesn't have quite the same panache when approached alone, certainly.

Yet it is action that makes a spiritual path a practice. There's no point in a path if no feet follow it, and path implies necessary motion. It helps to remind myself that what I'm doing is not just for myself, but for the deithe agus an-deithe as well, for the deities and the spirits with whom I share my life and whom I serve. Even if I'm the only physical body at the feast, I still have company in the form of deities, ancestors, land spirits, helping spirits. They deserve my recognition and my offerings and it is for them that I perform the actions of any given ritual.

To go through the physical work of preparing the food mindfully, laying out the altar, setting out the offerings, speaking sacred words aloud; it is this that marks a spiritual practice. Belief has some importance to me, absolutely. But practice is a primary part of what distinguishes a spiritual path from a passing fancy. No matter how splendid one's words or how high one's thoughts, if there is no action then there is no proof that those words or thoughts genuinely mean anything outside of one's own head. Ritual enacted, the actual cultivation and practice of our virtues, bringing one's life into physical harmony with community and environment, and acting mindfully in each moment are all necessary parts of creating a life that is poetic.

I know it's too easy to slip into complacency, too easy to make excuses of being too busy, too tired, too unprepared. And with CR there is so often no real pattern set to follow for personal, solitary ritual. Even groups often face challenges of what to do together if everyone follows different deities or works within different Celtic cultures. Yet the act of taking up the cup of welcome, of offering each person a taste of the drink that is shared with the Gods, is an excellent place to start. Pouring out a libation to the beings who are to be honored, speaking words aloud and calling upon their names, telling the stories of their deeds -- this is ritual.

Habit

2008-05-08T16:25:00.000-07:00

An article from the New York Times titled Can You Become a Creature of New Habit addresses something that I think is very important in the practice of filidecht, and in spiritual practice generally. The article speaks of creating new habits as a method for cultivating and maintaining creativity, particularly as we get older, when our minds might begin to fall prey to Alzheimers and other diseases or problems that affect the memory.

In a quote from the article, author Dawna Markova states, "The first thing needed for innovation is a fascination with wonder." The mind of filidecht is about that fascination with wonder. It's a poetic need in the human soul, an identification with the ever-shifting, always miraculous kaleidoscope of the universe in its glory.

Filidecht demands that we create habits of exploration. We explore language through poetry and meditation. We explore the world around us through wilderness vigil. We explore culture through song and storytelling and ritual. Imbas comes through openness and receptivity to change and it is cultivated through the development of new habits -- new rituals, new ways of thinking, new points of view based in the understandings of Gaelic language and culture.

Daily ritual practices help open and set new patterns and new habits. Such things require both discipline and generosity to oneself. We're human and as we develop these new habits and patterns we'll inevitably muck things up from time to time. The key is, like riding a bicycle, to get back up and get back on when you've fallen off.

To many Pagans, discipline is a dirty word. Yet discipline is a part of magic. No one would expect a martial artist to develop perfection of form without discipline. A fili's poems take on beauty in shape and sound with the exercise of discipline. Staying at things, doing them again and again until a habit is grounded in the mind and body, is a necessary part of filidecht and of all deep spiritual practice. Habit is essential to creating ways of doing things that become effortless through knowledge and repetition.

When the basics of practice are felt in the body, the mind can be freed to explore new dimensions and new points of view, giving the fili a place to stand that can serve as the springboard for journeys of exploration within the Otherworlds or for doing serious work in this one. Ritual habits and knowledge of lore can be a buffer zone of safety when we encounter new things. They give us an understanding of the potential behavior and expectation of Otherworldly beings. They ensure that we'll do things properly even if we're distracted, because our bodies know what to do even if the mind is engaged elsewhere. The development of steady ritual habit and pattern in order to create freedom of action may sound paradoxical, yet even the freest improvisational jazz musician needs to know the basics of musical form and function.

Cultivate new habits of ritual and beauty. Set yourself free.

Uncertainty

2008-05-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

One of the things that I encounter a lot in my practice is uncertainty. Filidecht as a formal modern CR practice is still being created and the hints about its place as a mystic and magical practice in the past are few and far between. We have bits and pieces but those pieces need to be examined pretty carefully as, even though we can see some of the ways the filid operated, we can't be certain of exactly how rituals were done or what was said.

With material like the Cauldron of Poesy text, we have some statements about cauldrons in the body and what they do, and we can infer about where they were situated. But when it comes to actual operations and getting those cauldrons to do what they're supposed to, the only thing we can really do is look at comparable systems from other cultures and do some experimentation. Will what I come up with be exactly what the pre-Christian practitioners of the art were doing? No. Will it have the same or similar results? Well, if it results in imbas as an upwelling of poetic inspiration and magical and spiritual power or enlightenment, then yes, I think the results are similar to what was intended. And if it works then this is the direction in which we should be moving.

Within CR there are a lot of branches that people find of interest. Within any given culture you're going to find householder paths, warrior paths, magical paths, healing paths, storytelling paths, and more. And each of the various Celtic cultures adds another layer onto that complexity. You're much more in luck if, for instance, your interest lies in Irish material about household traditions than if it lies in the deities and practices of Gaul. It will be much harder to understand and reconstruct Gaulish practices because of the lack of easily available material. There is no extant Gaulish literature that describes deities and myths. Most of what is known is from archaeological sources, with a few inscriptions on altars or on spell tablets. A little more is added from references to Gaulish people by Greek or Roman writings.

A lot of Irish household tradition has survived into modern folk practice, though very much changed and buried within Christianity. It is by no means a fully realized polytheistic Pagan practice at this point, but it's a good and necessary basis to grow from. For Irish Pagan mystical and spiritual practices the material is rather less plentiful and so more has to be reconstructed or created by reference to other things. It's regrettable, but it's how things are.

So what's a person without a lot of sources to do? Here's where our uncertainties lie, and this is where a lot of people get discouraged. But comparative work helps in many cases. Nearby cultures can be examined, of course, and the field of Indo-European studies has a lot of useful material. Offerings are a practice common to every culture I've ever heard of, so that's always a good place to start -- and the archaeological record often provides fairly good material on what kinds of objects and foods were offered by any individual culture or people in a given area.

But ultimately the words of our practice will always need to be our own. We can base them on material in sources like the Carmina Gadelica, but that text, wonderful as it is, doesn't cover all contingencies or address every circumstance for which we might need a ritual text. And if filidecht is about the creation of poetry, then always using someone else's words is a violation of that tradition.

We know that the tarbhfeis ritual of Ireland involved a fili who was surrounded by four people chanting truth spells, but we have no idea what the words of those spells were. We don't know if the same one was used each time, or if they were extemporaneous compositions created by each of the chanters. Imbas is what helps us to create appropriate words for situations like these and experimentation can tell us if those words work or not. We can't know until we try it.

Practice is about what works. We can theorize all we want, but until we commit something to physical ritual, until we commit words to speech, theory is all that we'll have. Uncertainty can be frightening, but it can also be fertile. In a practice involving extemporaneous poetry we won't know the words until we speak them. Without the uncertainty there's no room for spontaneity, which is the heart of poetry created in the moment. The words come out on our breath -- anál -- and vanish into the universe. We look at what happens to see if there is an effect. And we note what happens (or what doesn't) and try again.

There's no escape from uncertainty, but we can embrace it and make it a friend.

Root and branch

2008-04-17T21:11:00.001-07:00

Every so often I get email from someone asking if I'll teach them about filidecht. I do teach, so this isn't an unreasonable request. Most of the time, though, people drift away after a few weeks or a couple of months. There seem to be several reasons for this that fit into general categories.

Usually folks that wouldn't get along well with me don't make it past the first exchange of emails. I don't want to promise people anything I can't deliver, and I don't want to work with people who would grate on me and leave me frustrated and angry. I don't want to work with someone I would annoy and upset rather than inform. I don't see this as an issue. Sometimes people just don't fit together and there's no shame in that.

Sometimes it's a case of our beliefs being incompatible. I can't see teaching someone who wants to learn Celtic Wicca when that's not what I'm offering. I'm pretty up front about the actual existence of deities and spirits and don't really blend well as a teacher with folks who see deity as a higher self or an archetype. Some of the practices and exercises that I assign work from the assumption of the reality of spiritual beings and don't make much sense outside of that paradigm.

Time is a reason given by some. I understand that people are busy with their lives. We all need to put food on the table, keep a roof over our heads, and take care of any children we might have. We have responsibilities and needs that must be met. Yet one thing that, more than anything else, strengthens a person's spiritual life is a daily practice. Finding room for that might be a challenge, but it's not usually impossible. Foregoing a few minutes of television, getting up a little earlier, going to bed a little later -- these are things that can carve out more than sufficient time in a day for a regular spiritual practice. Twenty minutes or half an hour a day really isn't that much time to spend developing a relationship with your spiritual life and your deities and spirits, even for a busy person.

Others are looking for a place where they feel at home. This is a legitimate and healthy desire. However what some folks are actually looking for is a spiritual "love at first sight" experience. They want a feeling of instant belonging and while some people do find that in the spiritual paths they practice, for most people it doesn't happen that way. I know people describe finding Paganism as a sense of "coming home" but after that there's often a long search for the type of Paganism that feels like the best fit. A few weeks isn't really enough time to decide whether or not a practice is right for you, though it's certainly enough to let you know if it's desperately wrong for your life and your worldview. Instead of sticking with something for a year or so to see if it will grow on them, they head off for the next thing along the road to see if that will give them the instant feeling they're looking for. I might feel they'd benefit by giving it more time, but I'm not going to tell people they have to stay if they don't want to. That's not my task.

There are people who are enthusiastic about the idea of practice but who aren't willing to read suggested books or articles or to do research that doesn't involve a google search. Filidecht has a strong scholastic component to it and it always has. In order to practice poetry, one must read both poetry and prose to understand the context of the practice and build up a strong style of writing and speaking for personal and spiritual development. Sometimes this goes back to the time factor but in other cases it seems to be rooted in a distrust of scholarship and intellect. Our society has a very strong anti-intellectual streak in it and this often seems even stronger within Paganism, even though, as a rule, Pagans read more books than most other Americans. It's hard, though, if the only books being read are flawed sources and elaborations on yet another Wicca 101 text. Discernment is important, as is intellectual development. Being in print is no guarantee of a source's veracity and telling the wheat from the chaff takes practice.

Some folks want a fully developed path with prescribed rituals and activities that they can fall right into. Filidecht isn't at that stage of development. At this point everything is experimental, and the path demands a lot of creativity, self-motivation, and the ability to develop ritual and extrapolate from discussion, practices and reading. It's certainly not wrong to want a fully developed path. Traditional Wicca is one form of Paganism that offers exactly that. But those of us reconstructing filidecht haven't been at it long enough to have everything laid out that can then be handed to the student in bite-sized packages once a month at the full moon ritual. People who are interested in filidecht are going to have to be willing to put forth the effort to help develop the path so that some day we'll be able to offer something more complete to a new generation of students. The right people will find that an exciting adventure and be interested in helping to build toward that future.

A lot of people want a safe, comforting path. Filidecht, especially where it touches on the geilt phenomenon, is not safe. This is a path that will break you down into your component parts and reassemble you. This means that a student has to either be in a place where they have no choice but to push through it, or be willing to go through some radical transformations with no guarantee of results. Sacred madness isn't safe. Satire that calls attention to social and political folly isn't safe. There are no guarantees that you're going to come through the process whole, or even recognizable. Madness isn't a pretty thing, so generally only those of us who are already there are willing to do the work to get through it. You don't invoke it casually. Letting go of control is frightening. What are you willing to let go of?

If you're interested in filidecht, before you write to me, think about these things. Decide what it is that you want spiritually: where you are and where you want to go. What are you willing to risk? How are you willing to change? Can you be articulate in discussing your spiritual life? Are you willing to study? Are creativity and innovation important to you? Can you live with uncertainty?

I do a lot of my teaching not through set curricula but through conversation. There are some standard exercises and practices that I ask my students to do, and I need to get feedback about how those exercises and practices are progressing. I'm not condemnatory if people miss a day or are having trouble. We're all human, after all. I miss days sometimes too. That's why this is called "practice" and not "perfection." I'm certainly willing to go to great lengths for people who are genuinely working on the path. I've spent hours in instant messaging answering questions and engaging in dialogue with students. I've driven hundreds of miles to facilitate important personal rituals. I've answered the phone at obscene hours during emergencies. I demand a lot of myself as a teacher, just as I demand a lot of a student. It's a reciprocal relationship.

Some of the things I ask of students are willingness, open-mindedness, diligence, intelligence, discernment, honesty, vulnerability, courage, adaptability, and patience. While filidecht is a path of poetic nature mysticism, it is also a path of rigorous scholarship. It's a path that demands focus and attention as well as kindness and self-nurturing. We have to be willing to go down into the dark before we can let ourselves burst with bright poetry. We have to be willing to set down roots in our practice before our branches can bear fruit.

Buried

2008-03-26T17:48:00.001-07:00

Back in January I was working on a project to get the bedroom closet cleaned out for creating an incubation chamber. Everything has been moved out into the garage now, though I'm still waiting for somewhat warmer weather so I can do a second coat of paint with the windows open. The time it required to air out the bedroom after the first coat was an abject lesson in proper timing. Best to work on this kind of thing when the weather is cooperative.

Incubatory practice is still on my mind, though. It shows up again and again in hints and pieces through the literature of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Today I read an article by Patrick K. Ford from the Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies titled The Death of Aneirin about the Gododdin poem that probably originates in 7th century Wales. The article involves references to being imprisoned or buried under the earth as a potential reference to initiatory and/or incubatory ritual.

The ogam fid úr is soil and its word ogams refer to the grave and to burial and death, but this metaphor is taken up in so many places as one of incubation and initiation. Whether the poet is buried in the ground, lies within a darkened chamber with plaids over her eyes or a stone on his belly, whether she is bound up in a bag and set adrift for forty years, the themes of darkness and restriction of movement appear over and over again. Aneirin lies under the earth with a chain about his knees. Taliesin was found in a bag in a salmon weir. The poets in Scotland lay within windowless huts seeking inspiration.

What is apparent is that illumination comes from within. External objects of meditation -- images, fire, the stars in the sky -- are not a focus in this particular practice. Blindness is its metaphor. To be blind in one eye is to see into the Otherworlds, those places that can't be seen with the physical eyes in this realm. Darkness opens a door.

When we look at what the filidh sought when they went to sit on a burial mound we see the same thing -- poetry, madness, death. Madness is what pursues us, death transforms us, poetry arises as the fili arises out of the darkness of the incubatory chamber of the symbolic grave. The search for poetic inspiration brings death to our old life, our old personality, and a new spirit, alive with imbas, is born.

Clarity

2008-03-11T17:57:00.001-07:00

My last post generated some confusion and a number of comments and I wanted to be very clear about what I was saying.

There are apparently some folks out there who would insist that CR can only be practiced by itself and that a CR person can never honor any deities from any other culture. I think this is bullshit, pure and simple. I believe that, as polytheists, it's our responsibility to properly honor any deities or spirits who come knocking, in their proper context. In some cases, if your home is small, you may only have space enough for one altar, and in those cases, it's okay for deities to share space even though you're honoring them separately. If all you have is a windowsill for your altar, that's all you have, and it doesn't make you not-CR if you have Thoth on that altar beside Lugh and Epona and Dian Cécht. We all know they're not the same deity and they aren't approached in the same ways or with the same ceremonies and offerings.

Eclecticism and syncretism are kneejerk words for a lot of people, myself included. This is because a lot of us have seen them used as an excuse for the worst possible mashing together that ends up with things like thinking Kali and the Cailleach are the same Goddess because they're "crone Goddesses" (which is more bullshit) and their names sound similar. This is right out of the Barbara Walker school of confused monism. This is not eclecticism or syncretism being done properly. It's laziness and self-delusion.

If we look at the definitions of eclectic and syncretic, we can see that both are necessary if we're going to reconstruct, recover, or otherwise (re)create a group of modern Celtic paths that are full and workable in our time and for our lives today. The little hints we have about the internal cauldrons that are a part of Gaelic filidecht are going to be nearly impossible to reconstruct without some reference to Hindu understandings of chakras, despite the fact that the cauldrons and the chakras are obviously not the same thing. We don't have enough in the Gaelic material to go on without those outside references. People on a CR warrior path inevitably seem to end up studying eastern martial arts at some point because that's where most of the information is. This is slowly changing as more information becomes available about western martial arts, but it's still a basis for a lot of the modern CR warrior path and serves as an important point of comparison.

CRs can legitimately and happily be a part of religions other than CR. Polytheism recognizes all the deities and spirits, even if any given polytheist doesn't honor all of them. Honoring all of them would be impossible because there are so many, even within just the Celtic cultures alone. Remember that historical syncretisms occurred -- we have Romano-British deities, we have Gaulo-Roman deities. We have Epona who was honored by Romans. We have the mixing of cultures in Ireland and Scotland where the Norse/Germanic peoples came in and shared space and families and cities with the Gaels. Celtic cultures extended from Iceland to Spain to Anatolia, and ignoring all of that in favor of some sort of Gaelic purity movement simply does not make sense.

Pay attention to context. Pay attention to the deities who come to call on you. Respect each of them for who and what they are. Don't turn your back on one just because it's not "Celtic enough." Live your life with honor, and have fun.

You say "eclectic" and I say "syncretic" -- let's call the whole thing off!

2008-03-04T19:41:00.000-08:00

Eclecticism and syncretism are a couple of words that tend to generate a lot of heat in reconstructionist social circles. Sometimes they're used interchangeably while other times eclectic is taken to mean a much looser form of intercultural exchange while syncretism is offered as a more measured, thoughtful alternative.

We can take a look at dictionaries to help us a little. Merriam-Webster's 11th Colligiate has eclectic as:

"1. selecting what appears to be the best in various doctrines, methods, or styles."

Syncretism is defined as:

"1. the combination of different forms of belief or practice."

Both of these practices were found in the ancient world. Both were practiced by our ancestors, whoever they were and wherever they lived. It isn't eclecticism or syncretism that are, in and of themselves, a bad thing. Far from it. What a lot of us are actually concerned about is not eclectic or syncretic practices, but sloppiness and disregard for context.

Context is an extremely important part of any reconstructionist process. Language and culture influence religions and spiritual practices deeply and they help to determine what types of practices develop in different regions and for different deities or spirits. Sincerity is fine, but when you're looking at culture and custom, a sincere mistake may still be an insult and can have some serious consequences. Culture and pre-existing practice determine things as important as acceptable offerings, how one approaches deity or spirit, and often the forms used for prayer or propitiation. What is acceptable in one practice may be strictly forbidden in another, and if you are inviting deities or spirits from many cultures to your table, knowing these rules can make the difference between success and failure in your relationships with them.

In spiritual practices that regard deity or spirit as something strictly internal, this is obviously not going to be all that much of an issue. If it's all in your head, from what I can see, it doesn't matter that much what you do so long as you get the results you're looking for. But from the viewpoint of someone who believes in the external/Otherworldly existence of deity and spirit, small things can make all the difference in the world. Effort is important. History and custom are important. This doesn't mean that nothing can change, but it does mean that knowing the road signs is useful and can often keep you out of troublesome spots along your path. If the mountain is an illusion, the map doesn't matter, but if it's real, you'd best not ignore the place where it says there's a five hundred foot cliff. It makes all the the difference between whether you bring a day pack or your mountain climbing gear.

Both eclecticism and syncretism can be legitimate parts of CR and other reconstructionist religious practices. It's best when those things are approached carefully and allowed to grow organically. Time and depth of both study and practice are necessary in understanding how to enlarge a practice or invite a new deity or spirit into your life. Sometimes they come pounding at the door while at other times they approach quietly and subtly. Often this will depend on the personality of the deity or spirit in question. Sometimes it happens that we decide we need new energies in our lives or wish to cultivate new relationships to help us with goals and areas that are challenges. Like people, each spirit or deity is going to have its own areas of expertise, and sometimes going to a deity from a different culture may be the best answer for us.

It's helpful in these cases to remember that not all our deities have to get along, in much the same way that not everyone in our family or among our friends gets along with everyone else. Uncle Fred's favorite pot roast might upset your vegan best friend Clara's sensibilities. It doesn't mean you can't invite them to the same party, but it's a good idea to have things that they can each enjoy when you're feeding them if you want both of them to be happy at your table. Remember that a favorite offering for one deity might be unclean or an offense to another, and keep those things as far separated as necessary -- different altars, or even different rooms in the house might be a good idea.

Eclecticism and syncretism aren't about cooking everything together in the same pot. They're more like creating a satisfying, multicultural meal that includes favorites and harmonious dishes from many lands, with many ingredients. It takes great skill and a strong knowledge of ingredients to have it all come out right and be satisfying for everyone joining you.

Sometimes the experiments fail pretty badly, but that's a part of what it takes to create a working practice that involves deities and spirits from more than one culture. Be prepared to offer apologies if you've unintentionally offended. It goes a long way with humans and with spirits.

When it works, it can be glorious.

At the table of many Gods

2008-03-03T23:17:00.000-08:00

I practice a polytheistic path, one that recognizes and celebrates a wide variety of deities and spirits. My path recognizes that there are historical methods of interacting with these beings that we can discover and work with today. Those methods and newer ones based on fragments of older ritual and thought are centered primarily on insular Celtic, primarily Gaelic models.

I consider my practice to be primarily Celtic Reconstructionist Paganism. This, however, does not in any way prohibit me from worshipping other deities or working with spirits outside of the insular Celtic world or its paradigms. I am a polytheist. I believe that all the deities and spirits exist somewhere, that they are all real and can have an effect in the lives of their followers. There are deities and spirits that I'm not particularly interested in, but this doesn't mean I don't think they're out there.

As a polytheist and someone who does a good bit of Otherworld work, I find myself in a place where the doors are often open. Sometimes the spirits ask things of me that I expect. Other times, their requests bring me up against difficult choices and take me places that I never expected to go. A Cherokee teacher who lives locally once said to me that spirits talk to people who listen, and that our bodies and our ancestry are not of particular concern to them. This helped me immensely with an issue I struggled with for about twenty years, but it also has bearing on European and other Pagan paths.

As someone who does Otherworld work, who speaks to spirits, and who treats with deities and the dead, I often find myself in relationships with deities who are not a part of the families of insular Celtic deities. I honor Gods and Goddesses from several continents in my home. I have shrines for Sarasvati and Ganesh. I offer honor to Buddhist entities. As a child I was fascinated by the deities of Greece and Egypt. Spirits of the land -- animals, plants, places -- have no "nationality" or "race" and they are simply what they are. When I do healing or visionary work for others, it is right and necessary to speak to and honor the deities and spirits that they honor, for they often will approach me and teach me how to help the person in a way they understand.

No culture and no religion has ever sprung from a vacuum. Each spiritual path that exists in the world today -- that has ever existed -- has been influenced by its neighbors. As a polytheist, this becomes an important part of my spiritual reality. And as someone that listens to the spirits, sometimes someone new and unexpected drops by. As a good Celtic Pagan it would be a violation of my practice to refuse them hospitality, just as it would be poor form to turn away the friend of a friend who came to my door unexpectedly with an introduction and a request.

It's important for us to remember that we have room for more than one culture's deities at our table. Joy and wisdom can be found in the cross-cultural pollination of such conversations and relationships. When Garuda sits down with Exu, surely something interesting is about to happen.

By this I'm not talking about randomly inviting deities from multiple cultures to a ritual and expecting them to work together and cooperate. But if they show up at the same time unasked, perhaps there's a message there for me. The universe is a very big place, and attempting to place limits and conditions on it from my particularly small human point of view is, perhaps, an act of hubris. I'm not going to sing a chant that equates all Goddesses with one singular Goddess, but if I have relationships with Brighid and Sarasvati the fact that they have similar interests means they might be willing to come and visit at the same time. They might even be willing to share altar space if there's very little room where I live.

Polytheism, done with respect and due caution, can be a freeing way of approaching deity. If someone's knocking, don't be afraid to answer the door.