A closing announcement

It’s been a long, slow time coming, but I think it is time at last: I’m closing down my blog. Or rather, I’m shifting my content around. When I started this blog in 2006, I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone else in my life to know I was Pagan. I wanted to connect with a community, but I didn’t know how or why or which communities or what I was doing. Now, ten years later, I’ve realized that keeping my life separated out like this is exhausting and counter-productive. I’m out as Pagan to most of my friends and family, so there’s no reason to try to isolate my identity any more. And I’ve become more and more interested in the ways every part of my life ties together, the way being asexual and neurodivergent impact my Paganism and my practice, the way my Pagan practice impacts the way I experience being asexual and neurodivergent, the influence my social communities have on the rest of my life. Having one blog for one thing and a separate blog for another just doesn’t make sense.

So I’m not going to stop blogging about Paganism, I’m just going to stop doing it here. For the time being I’ll continue writing on Livejournal, since it’s still the best social blogging platform I’ve ever dealt with, and I have a longstanding identity there. I’m trying to crosspost that to Tumblr as well, and I’m sure I’ll end up moving again as new communities pop up. (Imzy is looking promising, but it’s very early days there.) I’ll keep my professional identity separate, for now. The rest of the world isn’t quite up for all of my self. But if you’ve enjoyed this blog, I hope to see you over on LJ or Tumblr. I’m working on a new approach to my Paganism that I hope to be writing more about soon, and I think you’ll like it. The archives of this blog will stay here for as long as Blogger exists, which I hope is for quite a while. It was a good space for what I needed when I needed it, and I’ve liked it here.

Summer Solstice

Summer solstice is a weird one for me. I care very much about the winter solstice; it’s a rough time of year, and solstice means it’s getting (quite literally) brighter. But although I have a hard time with the heat of summer, summer solstice in my climate doesn’t mean much of anything, other than it gets dark earlier so I have a slightly better chance of getting to bed on time. Add to that the fact that it doesn’t have a prominent position in Irish lore, and I mostly celebrate the summer solstice to be in solidarity with other Pagans.

Which isn’t a bad thing, really. While I have come to the realization lately that I’m different enough from any particular Pagan group to want to belong to it, I do think that acknowledging the larger community is a part of healthy religious practice, and related to (although not the same as) honoring the ancestors, and I don’t want to pretend that I can adopt a personal Pagan practice and ignore everyone else who’s doing the same thing. So I don’t have a problem with celebrating Solstice because everyone else is doing it, even if it doesn’t mean much to me. It just means that it’s kind of a struggle to get it done, sometimes.

Solstice fell on a weekend this year, but it was a weekend that also happened to be the only one for three weeks in either direction that I didn’t have plans to hang out with other people, and I am the world’s staunchest introvert. Plus I work a public service job. My friend texted me a happy Solstice message on the day, and I still didn’t manage to get the rite done until the following - Wednesday? Thursday? It was several days later, anyway. I used the same Simple Rite from ADF that I’ve been using for a while, and the Crane Breviary prayer to Tyrannis, and it worked just fine. (I’ve never done a rite honoring a sky god before, not since I left Christianity, but the omen I drew was The Hierophant, so I think I did it right.) That’s all it was, fine, but like I said - I didn’t need it to be more than that.

I’m still craving a more regular daily practice, but I haven’t come up with anything that actually works yet. My meditation schedule has been shot for a while now (if I were still planning to complete the Dedicant Path paperwork I’d have to reset the clock on my eight months of mental training, but I don’t think I am), but even so, that wasn’t quite what I wanted. I tried Erynn Rowan Laurie’s Circle of Stones again; that didn’t do it, either. I’m afraid I might actually have to write my own prayers for that to work for me.

an update

I don't know that I have any followers any more; it's been a long time since this blog has been regular enough to have followers. But it works better for me if I pretend I have an audience. So, probably-nonexistant audience: you may have noticed that I haven't posted any updates on my Dedicant's Path work for a while now. To be honest, I'm struggling. This Proto-Indo-European stuff is interesting, but it's not doing it for me.

I joined ADF because I felt out of touch with my religion and I needed some structure to get me back into it; it's done that admirably. It's also reminded me of why I gave up on organized Paganism for so long - the infighting, the inability to manage an organization, the arbitrary adherence to certain sets of rules and complete ignorance of other ones. But today I read through the Gaol Naofa documents, and while I feel more closely aligned with them, there are still some things I cling to that exclude me from membership in a strict reconstructionist organization. Carving out my own path is exhausting, but more and more it seems like it's my only choice.

Here's my problem: I want to live in the religion that would have existed if it had lasted up to the present day. I don't venerate history or tradition and I don't believe that my ancestors had it all figured out. I don't want to live and worship as though I were an Iron Age Irishwoman; I want there to have been Pagan Irish for all of history, growing and changing and flourishing in the world that exists. I want to be Pagan and also me - part Irish, part Scottish, part English, part German, part Dutch, part who-knows-what. American, and also worshiping the gods of my Irish ancestors, because those are the gods who speak to me.

But I just can't with mainstream neopaganism, with the pseudo-shamanism and the appropriation of Native cultures and the generalized woo and positive-thinking bullshit and the exploitative nonsense that goes on there. (Never mind the utter and painful ignorance of history.) I don't think Paganism is actually going to be a multicultural thing, just because Native people are fighting a very different battle (although I think Black Americans interested in their ancestral religions might have interesting things to talk about with white European-descended American Pagans), but I don't want it to be toxic. My solution for that has been to cut myself off from the toxic parts of the culture, but that's so much of it that I'm left with only a very few offshoots, and most of those don't want anything to do with me if I'm interested in both Irish Gaelic Paganism and the long history of folk magic and folk traditions that grew into the modern Pagan movement. So I'm left alone, until I get too lonely and isolated to stand it, and then I dive back in and the whole messy cycle starts all over again.

Like all life, I suppose.

This is really a problem of form. My relationship with the Gods, when I am able to cut through all the mess and anxiety and do ritual or meditate and reach the Otherworld somehow, is fine. I've even had some revelations through my work with the ADF materials: good ones, that will see me through a lot in the future. But I've always believed that my Paganism is a religion of praxis, more about what I do than what I believe, so form matters. Finding the right form matters.

I'm just starting to think that how I feel matters, too. Right now I feel torn, rent and bleeding, like an animal caught in a trap. I can imagine what kind of work I'll have to do to get myself out of it, and that's terrifying. But I also feel like I'm coming to chew-off-my-own-leg-or-starve, and that maybe it's time to cowboy up and dive right into the hole in the middle of my life. I'm six months on new antidepressants, now; I'm less mentally ill than I have been in years. It hasn't solved anything. It's just made it clear what I actually need to do to solve things.

The Nine Virtues: Vision

Vi"sion (?), n. [OE. visioun, F. vision, fr. L. visio, from videre, visum, to see: akin to Gr. &?; to see, &?; I know, and E. wit. See Wit, v., and cf. Advice, Clairvoyant, Envy, Evident, Provide, Revise, Survey, View, Visage, Visit.]
4. Especially, that which is seen otherwise than by the ordinary sight, or the rational eye; a supernatural, prophetic, or imaginary sight; an apparition; a phantom; a specter; as, the visions of Isaiah.
The baseless fabric of this vision.
Shak.
No dreams, but visions strange.
Sir P. Sidney.
5. Hence, something unreal or imaginary; a creation of fancy. 

Vi"sion*a*ry, n.; pl. Visionaries (&?;). 1. One whose imagination is disturbed; one who sees visions or phantoms.
2. One whose imagination overpowers his reason and controls his judgment; an unpractical schemer; one who builds castles in the air; a daydreamer.

Vision, contrary to wisdom and piety, actually seems a fairly straightforward virtue to understand, for me. Vision is the ability to see things both as they truly are and as they might be: a combination of what Terry Pratchett called “First Sight” (seeing the things that are really in front of you instead of the things you want to see) and the ability to imagine a better world and the path toward it. Vision requires wisdom; I can’t imagine one without the other. Seeing much doesn’t matter without being able to understand it, and wisdom requires that understanding be applied to reality, not to a convenient fiction. I’m not sure if I’m comfortable calling them two separate virtues, though; I’ll definitely be going back over this list when I’ve finished the DP to examine everything as a whole.

Who is visionary?

The most visionary people I know of are activists - people who have looked at the world the way it is, said, “That is not acceptable,” and dedicated themselves to working for change. Mikki Kendall, Andromeda Yelton, Nikki Haley, everybody running Black Lives Matter and SlutWalk and everyone who fought for gay marriage when no one thought there was a chance in hell that it would happen.

And - in another realm entirely - look, I get really emotional about the space program, and I’ve never entirely understood why, but I think now that it’s because it’s made up of pure distilled vision. We want to know what’s out there, we want to go there and see it ourselves, and it’s hard-to-impossible (but it keeps turning out to not be impossible) and people have sacrificed their lives to the human desire to know, to see, and to grow. To the dream that some day we could go further from home than our ancestors ever knew was possible. If that’s not visionary I don’t know what is.

Who is visionary in the lore?

Ah, and here’s Fionn again, who touched the Salmon of Wisdom and ever after made decisions by putting his thumb in his mouth to think. (That’s such a delightful image in so many ways.) But vision is particularly important in Irish mythology - seers and poets are practically the same thing, and poets are tremendously important. Manannan Mac Lir is the keeper of wells, a source of knowledge and foreseeing; I’m inclined to put Dian Cecht in the tradition of visionaries as well, for his solution to the problem of Nuada’s kingship.

When have I been visionary?

I feel like I’ve been doing nothing else this past year and more, attempting to find and make my place in the world. I’ve always had a difficult time figuring out what I actually want - I’m inclined to follow the path of least resistance and make myself happy within that. It’s worked, for the most part, but last December I walked face-first into something that would have made logical sense for my career and long-term goals and would have made me miserably unhappy. I have since been trying to figure out what to do instead of the logical thing, envisioning a future for myself that is not the usual or expected one. It’s exhausting work - but important, for myself and for the world generally, I think.

Your understanding of the virtue.

Vision is more than wisdom, but it has something in common with it: the ability to look at the way the world is and see it slightly differently. Where wisdom deals with things as they are, vision deals with things as they could be. True vision must be grounded in reality - it’s easy to dream up castles in the air, but much harder to build them. But it can’t be constrained by reality, because so often the things we think of as natural laws are nothing more than walls we’ve built up around ourselves. The visionary is able to see over the walls to what’s on the other side, and to know when they can be knocked down.

Hail the Queen of the May

I did my Bealtinne rite on Saturday morning, April 30th, since I was expecting guests at noon and knew I’d be too busy through the rest of the weekend to dedicate the proper energy to it. I used the Simple Rite I practiced with for a month after the disaster that was my Ostara ritual - which I did mean to write up, and I’m sorry, I’ll get to that eventually - with prayers and invocations taken from the single Irish Beltainne rite on the ADF website. (I really thought there’d be more.) I looked at using the Crane Breviary rite again, but it was a little too proto-Celtic for my tastes.

And this was the first time in a long time I’d done a really Irish-Celtic rite, and that was amazing. I’d forgotten a little, I suppose, that I got into doing ADF and the Dedicant Path in order to deepen the practice I’d already had, not to turn my practice Proto-Indo-European. Generic rites are well and good, but speaking to the gods and spirits I already knew was wonderful.

I tend to visualize the space beyond the open Gate as a stone circle - I know they’re pre-Celtic, but I also know they were considered magical places by the Celtic peoples, and I’d be surprised if they were never used as ritual sites. This time, at the center of the circle stood a tree in flower. I genuinely don’t know if they had dogwood in ancient Ireland, but that was the tree at the back of my grandmother’s porch that always said spring to me when it flowered.

The rite invokes Aine and Aengus Og as Queen and Consort of the Sidhe, something I’ve never tried before but which seems obvious now that I’ve done it. Bealtinne is the transition from winter into summer, after all, and transitions in particular belong to the Sidhe. The rite I was adapting also included the Bealtinne Fires, but I just couldn’t find a way to do that in a solitary rite without feeling silly, so I skipped it. I did decorate my Tree as a maypole, though - great fun, and a fitting offering to the Sidhe.

I used oil with lavender blossoms steeped in it for the offerings to the Gods, and that was where modern technology and apartment living went all wrong. I’ve been using incense charcoal and candles together for the Fire - using incense offerings most of the time, but oil every once in a while. I’d made the first offering and scraped off the charcoal to keep it burning for the rest of the rite, and the smoke that created set off my fire alarm. And of course my building has hardwired fire alarms, so I had to stop, turn on the fans and open the windows wide, and run down the hall to turn off the alarm before it set the whole building going. I swear I could feel Aengus Og laughing over my shoulder the whole time. So at least he didn’t mind his offering being delayed? It shook my focus a little bit, of course, but once I got the alarm turned off I was able to drop back into the rite without any trouble at all.

The omens I drew were all wands, perfect for a holiday of growth and energy - the Ten of Wands, for hard work almost done; the Two of Wands Reversed, for difficulty starting something; and the Queen of Wands, who could be no one but Aine, beautiful, powerful, sexual, passionate, energetic, and bountiful. One piece of work finishing, another one starting (even if the start might be a little rough), and the blessings of the Queen of May herself. It was a profoundly satisfying rite, heartening and fulfilling, and I’m excited for the summer months to come.

Beltainne

Beltainne is a weird holiday for me. I love that it’s a holiday about sex and debauchery! But I am asexual - I don’t experience sexual attraction - and so that part of it doesn’t connect with me personally at all. I’m glad other people have it, but it’s not for me. (I accidentally had a long weekend over Beltainne this year, and I was half-planning to go to a festival until I remembered - oh, right, I do not want to go to a Beltainne festival at all.) And on top of that, I seem to be weirdly unstable around the seasonal changes at Beltainne and Samhain - every year this is the time my mental health takes a downturn. It’s better when I’m prepared for it, but it’s always a little rough.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a wonderful holiday. It’s the beginning of summer, which in my climate really means the beginning of the season when you don’t need to wear a coat everywhere. It’s the beginning of outdoors, when it’s too nice out to sit inside, when it seems easy to go out and meet people, old friends and new, to learn new things and take on new challenges. It’s a season of incredible growth, spontaneous and sometimes too fast for noticing. I swear yesterday there were no leaves on the tree outside my window, but today! Everything is green and growing and exciting.

Beltainne for me, then, is bringing that energy into my life - hopefully without it overflowing and leaving me strung out and exhausted inside a week. With all that extra energy going around, it’s easier to pull myself up and out and re-dedicate myself to the goals and projects I started with the return of the sun at the Solstice but which have gotten a little tattered and dingy through the end of winter. And it’s a time for celebration. New energy is always something to celebrate - and this year I’m having friends over for the weekend, and there will be wine and games and - well, probably not dancing. We’re not really dancing people. But there will be joy, which is the point, after all.

I think I may have had a breakthrough (Ostara in review)

I’ve been feeling a little bit like I don’t have enough of an emotional reaction to these rituals. I know that emotional dulling is a side-effect of the antidepressants that keep me functional, but I was still hoping that ritual would be able to reach through that. Well, I had an emotional reaction to my Ostara ritual, and it was well, that was a total disaster.

It probably wasn’t quite that bad. I was trying something new for the fire - I’ve always wanted a proper fire bowl for my rituals, but I’m stuck doing them inside in a no-smoking apartment, so my options were limited. I saw someone mention epsom salt and rubbing alcohol as a good indoor fire option, so I tried that (without any prior rehearsing). By halfway through the fire was almost out, and I had to light some candles just to make sure I wouldn’t lose it completely before I was done. (And it left a lingering alcohol-smell I wasn’t fond of, either.)

The offerings went all over the place, too. I wanted to do an Anglo-Saxon rite, and I found a script from Sassafrass Grove on the ADF site that I was able to modify to a solitary ritual, but there were *lots* of sacrifices in there, and silly me, I decided to go ahead with all of them, even though I was doing it all on my own and on a small table to boot. The shrine was a mess by the time I was done. I had moved the shrine to a new location - partly because I’d been planning this for a while and partly because I didn’t want that much open flame right next to the curtains - and I didn’t have a representation of the World Tree. I’d read somewhere that the druid’s body may serve as the Tree, so I thought, sure, I can do that, but my focus was shot all to hell and it was not a success. And the omens…well, one of them was the Nine of Swords, which I think says it all.

And another was the Page of Swords Reversed, which I think of as “all talk and no action.” Which was appropriate for this rite, because that’s exactly what I was doing. I went through the motions of the ritual, but I wasn’t feeling it, and I wasn’t putting any of my own energy into it. More than once I caught myself reading from the script with no memory of having spoken the words. Partly this was an issue of timing - I had plans on Sunday, the equinox proper, so I did the rite on Wednesday evening, the following full moon. But this meant doing a rite after work and before dinner, and I was already tired, cranky, and unwilling before I started. I was even more miserable when I was done.

I sat down to write up my notes afterward, still in a sour mood, and realized that I wasn’t the only one I’d disappointed with this rite. If ritual and sacrifice are about building a relationship with the gods and spirits, I’d just done the equivalent of showing up to a date and spending the whole evening looking at my phone. It wasn’t enough to admit I’d done it wrong, I had to fix things.

So I did it again. Thursday morning before work (I work the evening shift on Thursday) I downloaded the text and narration of the Simple Rite from the ADF website - they offer a basic rite that is designed to be done by a novice with a more experienced practitioner narrating guidance as you go along, and provide an audio file for the novice who doesn’t have a more experienced practitioner to help. I didn’t try to get fancy, sticking with the text of the rite as written and the basic offerings, ale, oil, and incense, that the script recommends. It still wasn't perfect - the narration gave out about two-thirds of the way through, and I had to refill the fire bowl twice, and the second time I lit the bottle of rubbing alcohol on fire. So much for the fire bowl. I prefer the scent of candles, anyway - burning wax smells like ritual to me.

And then on Friday I did it again. And on Saturday. And Sunday. In my frustration on Wednesday night, I said that I’d do it every day for a month if I had to, and if I’ve learned anything from the lore it’s that oaths sworn in a fit of pique are still binding. I’m hoping that after a week or so I can dispense with the narration (which does indeed only go as far as the first two-thirds of the ritual, but that works enough to get me into the right mindset that I can usually wrap it up pretty well on my own), and that after a month I’ll know the Core Order of Ritual well enough to be able to elaborate again for Beltane. Already I feel my relationships with the Kindreds are stronger; more practice, more sacrifice, can only help. And I’m finding a daily rite helps the day feel complete. Who knows, I might keep doing this daily after the month is over, too.

I feel like I've had a bit of a breakthrough, like I've been going through the motions and only now have seen what the point of it all is. A recurring lesson of this year has been understanding that there's nothing that really "doesn't count." I've always been a person very driven by external success - good grades, good performance reviews, good reputation. I've never gamed the system, really, but I'm very good at finding the loopholes in it, at finding ways to bend the rules that don't really hurt me. But when the rules are only between me and the gods, there's no amount of bending them that doesn't count, no loopholes that don't hurt. It's been difficult, but it can only help in the long run.

Ostara

Some holidays have a more complex cultural context and ritual motive, but the spring High Days have always seemed pretty self-evident to me, and Ostara most of all. No more snow! No more ice! No more blizzards! Hooray!

Granted, in the midwestern United States, Ostara usually isn’t all that spring-like, but it’s a start. This year, global climate change has given us a damn pleasant Spring Equinox. I’m uncomfortable being wholly pleased about that for a variety of reasons, but I can’t deny that temperatures over sixty make my life a much nicer place to be.

When I was observing a pretty strict Irish religion, I neglected the Spring Equinox (and its partner in autumn) because there’s not really much evidence the Irish did any damn thing about it. Ostara has a new connotation for me now, though - it was the first High Day ADF ritual I ever attended, with the local grove whose rituals I can’t usually make it to thanks to my work schedule. I wish I could make it more often, but I will be forever grateful for their invitation and the very welcoming and illuminating experience I had there.

Since I’m celebrating Ostara properly this year as a member of ADF, and not just attempting to shoehorn it in to an Irish ritual calendar, I’m planning an Anglo-Saxon rite. Alaric Albertsson, in his book Travels Through Middle-earth, points out that even if we don’t know much about her, Eostre must have been a tremendously important goddess to the Anglo-Saxons. After all, in most of the other European languages, Easter is called something along the lines of Pasch, from the Hebrew. I met Eostre for the first time at that grove rite last year, and I am looking forward to meeting her again, and letting her know that I am still here. I was in a bad place last Ostara, in a great deal of pain, which has greatly lessened now, and I get the feeling she’d be glad to know that.

Personal Religion

I’m coming at this whole training at a different angle from the Dedicant Path guide; I joined ADF because my personal paganism was already Celtic and Irish, and therefore druidry seemed like a logical next step. I’ve always had a broad range of interests, but Irish mythology has been an abiding one since I was a child. I still have some of the books of Irish fairy stories and legends from my childhood, actually - although I’ve been supplementing them with better-researched, more historically accurate versions for a while now. In college, I spent a semester abroad in Ireland, and I took the opportunity to visit all the sacred sites I could find. (I still want to climb Croagh Patrick one day.) It’s always seemed to me the perfect combination of knowable - the archaeological record is rich, and there are a number of written legends - and mysterious - so different from the Classical mythology I learned first, its deities so complex and difficult to pin down! So choosing a hearth culture for my ADF practice is pretty simple - Irish paganism it is.

Of course it’s not that simple. I’ve also been interested, on and off, in Anglo-Saxon and Norse paganism. I admit, sometimes because the Norse religion is just better attested in history than the Irish, and it’s similar enough to get me through. But there’s a lot of cross-pollination between Ireland and northern Europe - Dublin was a Viking city, after all - and between Ireland and Britain. Welsh mythology has never quite done it for me, for some reason, but the Anglo-Saxon stuff I find interesting. Well, all that and a lot more - but those are the pantheons I feel drawn to, the gods and spirits who seem to speak to me.

When I was a teenager I dedicated myself to Macha with a blood sacrifice - just a few drops, but that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re a teenage Pagan. Still, it’s not a relationship I can abandon. I haven’t felt connected to Macha in some time, but in truth I am working on some emotional blocks right now that I feel could use the touch of a war goddess.

My more abiding patron has been Brigid, goddess of the fire and the well. I’ve always been a creative person, and Brigid’s fire has meant much to me. My relationship with her has waxed and waned; it’s feeling a little weak at the moment.

But I think my closest, friendliest relationship with a diety has been with Ogma, an Irish god known as both a warrior and as the inventor of the ogam script. I became intrigued by Ogma when first learning ogam, and quickly found him to be a welcoming, protective, encouraging force. I think of him as akin to, and possibly also a patron of, Bikers Against Child Abuse. He’s also one of the few deities who seem wholly embodied when I interact with them. His strengths are those of the world, and he still lives in it.

I plan to use ADF’s teachings and practices to deepen my knowledge of and connection with these deities and the Irish Pagan culture generally, and to learn more about Norse and Anglo-Saxon traditions so that I can incorporate those into my own practice instead of just thinking about them. Reflecting on the First Oath I took at Samhain, I’m pleased at where I am and the work that I’ve done. I may not be matching the onward march of the guidebook, but far from abandoning the work as I’d feared, I’ve carried my practice forward and I’m excited to see what I can still learn to do. We’re coming up on a year since I’ve joined ADF, it has been a fulfilling, challenging year. I can’t wait to see where the work takes me next.

The Nine Virtues: Piety

1. Veneration or reverence of the Supreme Being, and love of his character; loving obedience to the will of God, and earnest devotion to his service.
2. Duty; dutifulness; filial reverence and devotion; affectionate reverence and service shown toward parents, relatives, benefactors, country, etc.

I have been inclined in myself to say that piety is only the second of those definitions, but I think the first is implied in it: duty without love is empty and indeed damaging to the dutiful, and it undermines those to whom the duty is done. Still, I’d swap the priority, for me at least. Duty comes first, but it comes out of love. Love in itself is not enough. (I was raised Protestant, but you’d never know it. I’ve never believed that faith without works amounts to anything at all.)

Who is pious? This might be the toughest question in the bunch, because pious to me means righteous, holier-than-thou, hypocritical. Who is pious in a way that I see as virtue? The people who protest the abuses of the Church, both large and small c. Mother Teresa. Monks, nuns, and others living a purely religious life. My grandmother was pious, even if not faithful; she went to church every week no matter what. I have not, particularly recently, been especially pious. A lot of things in my life fell apart in the past four or five years, and my relationship with the gods was one of the first things to go.

What is the definition of piety? The DP guide defines it as "Correct observance of ritual and social traditions, the maintenance of the agreements (both personal and societal) we humans have with the Gods and Spirits. Keeping the Old Ways, through ceremony and duty." This matches with my instinctual drift toward the second dictionary definition, and feels more right to me, although the American in me bristles at “correct.” I’m also inclined to edit “maintenance of…agreements” into “maintenance of relationships.” It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. Relationships, to me, implies something long-running that both parties have a certain investment in, above and beyond whatever short-term contractual arrangements might have been made. A relationship is something you work for and on, both individually and on a larger scale.

The whole thing is complicated, of course, by the fact that we’re taking what was once the religion of an entire culture (or, you know, set of cultures) and trying to do it in a pluralistic society with virtually no official support, which is not unheard of (see: ancient Rome and its territories) but is an unusual position for these kinds of relationships to be situated in. Which is a big part of the reason I joined ADF. I can’t always make it to group rituals; I’m fairly nomadic and haven’t been able to settle down into a single real-world Pagan cultural group. But by paying dues to ADF I’m helping to support group, public ritual, done in my tradition or something close to it, for the good of all.

Huh, seems like I think paying tithe is piety. Well, that makes a certain amount of sense; sacrifice is part of the exchange economy we share with the spirits, and tithe is one step away from sacrifice.

Who is pious in the lore? Now this one is harder. I don’t know of anyone off the top of my head from Irish mythology; the Irish relationship with the gods is so tense. I’m tempted to call out True Thomas, who kept his bargains with the Sidhe. (Impiety is more common, I think, particularly where the Sidhe are concerned. And punished accordingly.) And there’s Patrick, of course. I will have to do my research.

When have I been pious? I have wracked my brains and what I have come up with is that period of time when I was in college - possibly a little earlier, possibly a little later, possibly as little as a year or two, I honestly can’t remember - when I was celebrating Imbolc regularly and devoutly, with a fresh loaf of bread and some charms and a ritual. It was immensely fulfilling and reassuring, and I miss it terribly. I feel like it also coincides with the last time I wasn’t depressed at that time of year, which… all my relationships fall apart when I’m depressed, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that my relationship with the gods does as well.

I wonder what it would be like to bake bread for Brigid when it isn’t Imbolc. I think it would be good.

More often, I’ve felt impious, when I realize it has been weeks or months since I’ve done a ritual, said a prayer, offered anything in sacrifice. Relationships are fuzzy things, and I’ve never been particularly good at them. It’s far too easy for me to let something slide as not terribly important - as each small action is not terribly important in the grand scheme of things - until the accumulated weight of the actions I didn’t take is bearing down on me.

Your understanding of the virtue. I do think piety is a virtue, although it’s a difficult one for me. It’s related to the virtue of - I don’t know if there’s a single word for it, the ability to get along with others and to occupy a place in the social web. But piety is less about the social web (although it’s connected to it) and more about the cosmic web, occupying a place that is connected to the Midrealm we live in and to the gods and ancestors and the Good Neighbors, and paying your dues to each of them in turn as well as receiving the support and sustenance from each of them in turn. Piety is understanding that no man is an island, and acting accordingly, on a cosmic scale.

I still can’t shake the association of piety with obnoxious hypocritical people, so I wish there was another word, but I can’t find one right now. I’m willing to try to do the work of changing the associations in my mind instead.

Home Shrine (again)

I see last time I wrote I mentioned that I was moving. Well, I wound up not moving after all, and so my shrine is still the slapdash temporary thing I set up while expecting to be uprooting my life far too soon. I’m putting down roots now instead, and I’m not thrilled with my shrine. There isn’t enough room for it where it is, so there isn’t really space to add much to it - I have to clear off the rest of the table for ritual. My plant as the Tree was a nice idea, but the scale is all wrong; it doesn’t hold much meaning for me at the moment. And I liked the idea of putting it by the window, but it turns out that, living on the ground floor of an apartment building, there’s too much traffic just outside my window for me to be totally comfortable doing ritual there.

I think I know where I want to move it to, though - to the wall that separates my living room from my kitchen, just about in the middle of the living space in my apartment. I have a cabinet I’ve been meaning to move there for a while, and if I can clear off the stuff that currently lives on top of it, it’d be a nice place for an altar. (A good height, too, to stand at.) And I know what to do about the Tree, too - I’m going to make a gem tree with some old malachite and coral I have lying around.
I’m excited to start work, but it’s a long process. First I have to clean out the sewing cabinet that’s currently where I want to move the larger cabinet to, then I have to clean out the large cabinet, then actually move it (which will be exciting on its own, as it’s MASSIVE), then make sure I’ve got room to store everything there. Fortunately I have some vacation coming up this weekend, and I plan to spend some time on this project.

I’m sorry to say I’ve still not been spending much time in nature. The weather’s been poor (as it will tend to be, in Chicago in February) and when the weather’s been nice I’ve had to spend all day at work, which has frankly been making me a little resentful. Meditation has been going well, when I can sit down to do it - I missed three days this week, but I’m still finding that my average meditation session has stretched to over ten minutes at a time of silent meditation, which used to seem impossible.

I’ve also been saying a prayer from Ceiswr Smith’s Book of Pagan Prayer after I finish my meditation. I flip through until I find something that appeals to me, but I can tell that there are a few that are going to become regulars, and a few more that I can make regular with a little editing.

Also, a reminder to myself - I actually finished my first required book about a month ago, but I haven’t written it up yet. I’ll try to get on that this weekend, too.

Nine Virtues: Wisdom

ADF lists nine Virtues which they ask their members to understand, if not necessarily to endorse as their primary ethical system: wisdom, piety, vision, courage, integrity, perseverance, hospitality, moderation, and fertility.

Wisdom. n. 1. The quality of being wise; knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it; knowledge of the best ends and the best means; discernment and judgment; discretion; sagacity; skill; dexterity. 2. The results of wise judgments; scientific or practical truth; acquired knowledge; erudition. (Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1913)

Wisdom is the toughest one for people to grapple with, says all the documentation; I’m definitely feeling it. It’s tremendously hard to pin down because nothing seems to get at the whole concept. Which is appropriate, I think, but still frustrating.

I also feel obliged to point out that the recommended reading for this Virtue was The Velveteen Rabbit and The Little Prince, which made me laugh and then, when I read them, made me think.
The DP docs suggest a list of questions to help you work through the idea.

1. Who is wise? Gandalf and Granny Weatherwax. Writers, generally (at least good ones). Odin, Brigid, the Cailleach. In real life… I have this tendency to attribute wisdom to people in authority and then withdraw my generosity completely the first time it’s abused, which I’m aware is not the best or most productive response but which I also can’t seem to stop doing. I think my boss is wise, actually.

2. What is the definition of wisdom? The Dedicant’s Handbook defines wisdom as “Good judgment, the ability to perceive people and situations correctly, deliberate about them and decide on the correct response.” I’ve listed a dictionary definition at the top (from Webster’s 1913, my favorite dictionary). I like the dictionary definition better because it seems to get more of the aspects in it. Perception and action is discernment, which is a component of wisdom, but not the whole thing. “Knowledge, and the capacity to make due use of it” is as close as I can get to the core of wisdom, but that’s not the whole of it either. I keep coming back - I often do - to Terry Pratchett, and what he describes as the core skills of a witch in Wee Free Men - First Sight, the ability to see what’s actually in front of you; and Second Thoughts, thinking before you move. That plus Granny Weatherwax’s pronouncement that sin is treating people like things pretty much sum it up.

Actually, now that I mention it, I think Granny’s statement there is more central than I previously thought. Wisdom has to take into account people, real people and how they really are, or it’s just knowledge and reason. Wisdom has to be as organic and messy and complicated as real people to be true wisdom.

3. Who is wise in the lore? The archetypal example from Irish mythology is Fionn, who tasted of the Salmon of Knowledge and grew wise. The salmon gained its wisdom from the hazelnuts that fell into the Well of Wisdom that is the source of all rivers; Fionn was meant to be cooking the salmon for his master, but burned his thumb on it and, after putting his thumb in his mouth, gained the wisdom instead. He was thereafter asked by his men to pass judgment, and when he did he would put his thumb in his mouth to think. His wisdom allowed him to become the leader of the Fianna and the doer of great deeds.

4. When have I been wise? Oof, this is hard. I had to take an extra day and think about it for a while. I have been wise, I think, in supporting my sister and my friends through their hard times: I think very hard before offering advice or words of support, to avoid accidentally making things worse, and the responses I get have been very positive. I have also been unwise with my friends (most often, honestly, with my roommates), when frustration and exhaustion have overpowered my good sense.
I want to call my decision not to take the job that was offered to me in December wise, but I honestly don’t know if I can say that. There was so much emotion involved, and I never know how heavy to weight that. My feelings are important in making decisions that impact my life, of course, but how important? (And how many of them are my feelings and how many of them belong to the mental illness that possesses me sometimes?)

Wisdom is a difficult virtue, both in practice and in concept, and I think that partly stems from the fact that it’s so rooted in experience. What feels wise at twenty may look foolish at thirty, but the twenty-year-old just plain didn’t know enough to be wiser. Wisdom can certainly be taught, but it must be by example, because wise decisions by definition cannot be made by following a set of rules. I think of Nero Wolfe’s instructions to his assistant Archie: “Use your intelligence guided by experience.” It’s as good as summation as any.

The Three Kindreds: Ancestors

I’ve never been good at ancestors. I was never terribly fond of my grandparents’ stories when they were alive - they all died when I was young. I regret that now, although I also remember listening to my mother’s father telling stories and being bored to tears. I might not be as bored now, I suppose.

My mother does the family genealogy, though, and she knows all the stories. I should ask her about them sometime. I should take notes. I know the story about her great-grandmother who put off getting married so she wouldn’t have to stop teaching. I know the story about a multiple-greats uncle who was an Irish revolutionary and became a union activist in New York after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. I know the story about how my uncle, my mom’s little brother, was born, and my grandfather told off the priest who told him that if they had to choose, the mother or the baby, he had to save the baby because the baby was without sin. And I know the story of how my parents went on their first date, when Mom came to ask if Mike could come out to play, and my grandma sat on the porch cackling with laughter.

And I know some other things too, not stories but facts, that my grandpa on my father’s side was a mechanic, and my grandma a farmer’s daughter from a small, small town that barely qualifies as a town. About how my mom’s side of the family were from Kansas, and belonged to the Grange, once they got out of the cities. Prairie is in my bones and blood, which is maybe one reason why I found the thought of moving west so terrifying. The ocean is great, but I need all these grass roots to hold me together.

I almost remember my great-grandmother, who was just one generation removed from the old country (not that anyone in my family’s ever called it that). We’re all immigrants - before the prairie, we were from the Netherlands (Friesland, specifically, although I don’t know how I know that) and Ireland, Germany and France and England. Northern European, all of us. But it was that Irish ancestor, the union man, who always stuck out to me. I need to find out his name. I’m not sure I want to take over as the family record-keeper, but I want to learn the names and the stories, see if I can make them hold together.

I also can’t (shouldn’t? Won’t) forget that the great majority of my ancestors were Christian, that Christianity was very important to them, and that they would not approve at all of this thing that I’m doing right here.

There are the ancestors of my spirit, too; those who Newton referred to when he said that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Yeats and Maud Gonne and Lady Gregory; everyone who taught those damn Dutch Day Camp classes when I was a kid; Isaac Bonewitz and Alestair Crowley and McGregor Mathers and Scott Cunningham and Starhawk and Selena Fox. Everyone who built this religion that I’m working in right now. But also Malinowski, and Clifford Geertz, and Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict. Without them we wouldn’t have this religion.

And all the nameless women of history, all the women whose names and contributions have been forgotten, all the women who made history and linguistics and anthropology and the theory of religion possible. All the voudou priestesses who inspired Northern Europeans looking for their own past; all the occultist’s wives who were never really equal; all the women raped by anthropologists looking for a little excitement in the field. Them, too. My ancestors are numberless, vast, and they know things I will never know.

It’s easy to think “ancestors” and think “grandparents” and discount them as smaller, less powerful, less important than the other spirits; I know I do that sometimes. But they are not. My ancestors - all our ancestors - number in the millions, and between them they know everything, and they live on in those of us who still walk the earth, in our memories and our sacrifices. It is possible that they are the strongest of the three categories of spirits, or at least the wisest.

Imbolc

I've been struggling with these rituals since I started the Dedicant's Path, requiring me to do every damn high day ritual or face starting the whole thing over again. The doing them is fine - the doing them is soothing and fulfilling, even when not entirely transporting. But the getting around to doing them...well, that's much harder.

I keep thinking that this isn't the right time, that if I just had more time to prepare, more time to spend on the work, it would be so much better. This is a flaw in my psychology I'm very aware of; I always feel like now is not the right time. And I always feel so much better when it's done anyway.

This is the first Imbolc I've celebrated in several years; that small victory is not enough, but it is something. While my first favorite pagan holiday was Samhain, once I settled into my practice a little more, Imbolc took pride of p
lace. It's perfectly timed: a month after the secular bustle of late December holidays have settled down, but well before actual spring, it gives you something to look forward to in the dead of winter. It's a promise, that it will get better.

(I never understood Imbolc as First Spring until I was in Ireland in the winter of 2004/2005. It really is spring in the beginning of February in Ireland. Everything is green. Tiny flowers are blooming. Lambs are, there is no other word for it, gamboling in the fields. We don't have the same climate here in Chicago, but the slow brightening of the sky is - well, it's not nothing.)

But more importantly, Imbolc is the feast of my patron goddess, Brigit, Lady of the Flames, keeper of the hearth and the forge and the poetic fire. She is one of the greatest teachers I have ever had, and a source of unwavering support through the darkest times in my life. I have been feeling her presence in my life very strongly of late; I've been creating in new ways, feeling the fire of inspiration like I haven't felt in years. So it felt right and good to honor her, this unnaturally warm February evening.

I burned a painting I'd done in sacrifice to Brigit. It was one of the most powerful sacrifices I've made, because I didn't want to do it. The painting came out much better than I'd hoped and I liked it, but I knew it was hers by right. I had meant to have some other Work in my ritual, something else to honor her, but I didn't have everything ready and I knew that if I didn't do the ritual tonight, I'd let it slip away and miss it entirely. And after all, the painting seemed enough. (And I could not have asked for a better blessing in return - as my omen from the gods, I drew the Ten of Cups.)

I felt a connection in this ritual that I had been struggling for when I started this practice, back in Samhain. It doesn't feel like I've done enough; I haven't done nearly what I usually do for Imbolc. But it is something, and it is more than the nothing I've done so far this year. I think I will stretch out the holiday with a good spring clean this upcoming weekend, and a loaf or two of fresh bread as well. Poetic fire is all well and good, but it's the hearthfire that keeps us alive.

Catching up

It's been a while since I posted about my dedicant's path progress, and it's true, I've fallen off the wagon a little bit with the work. I think I got thrown off kilter around New Year's, and I haven't completed one of the weekly assignments since then. It's not looking good for this week, either...but I'll get back to it next week, I promise.

That doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything. I've been meditating pretty much every day. It's amazing what it does for my stability - it used to be that if I had a bad evening, that spoiled my whole day, and probably the next one too, because I'd stay up late trying to get something to balance out the bad evening to happen. (Spoiler: it usually didn't.) Now, I meditate every night at 10:00, and all the crap just goes away. It's sometimes there waiting for me in the morning, but it doesn't ruin my whole evening.

I've played with the Two Powers meditation as well, ADF's particular variation on the grounding-and-centering exercise. I like it, but it doesn't yet feel like I'm connecting to something real more than it feels like a particularly pretty set of images. I expect that will come with time.

I have not been good about getting out into nature - but it's January in Chicago, and I'm sorry, nature is not hospitable in this climate at this time of year. I'm starting to think I should have chosen something I can do from indoors for this particular aspect of the work - tracking the phases of the moon, maybe, or feeding the squirrels who live right outside my window. I suppose there's nothing stopping me from doing that now.

But this Sunday is Imbolc, my favorite holiday, and the one I keep missing due to inattentiveness. I just finished painting my altar decorations (which also may become sacrifices; I'm not sure yet) and I'm planning on doing some baking later in the week. I'm excited. And this should help get me back in the swing of things.

It is always the same step, but you have to keep taking it.

As I mentioned before, I've been using the Stop, Breathe and Think app to work on my meditation practice. I've tried meditation lots of times in the past, but I was never able to stick with it - but I was trying it with just plain old "sit and think of nothing" meditation, and I kept getting frustrated that I couldn't, well, think of nothing. Then I read The Mindful Way Through Depression and finally understood that that was the point; then I started working on my Dedicant Path in earnest, including the required mental training practice. 

For years I thought that I couldn't meditate before bed, because surely I'd fall asleep. Since I always complain about how long it takes me to fall asleep I don't know why I thought that. A couple of weeks ago, faced with the requirement not only to meditate but to document my progress, I realized that if I didn't set a regular schedule it wasn't going to happen, and I added meditation to my bedtime ritual: after the shower, but before that last hour or so of reading. Turns out that works beautifully. I'm more relaxed and better able to fall asleep, I know I'm not going to be interrupted, and my mind has begun to fall naturally into mindfulness later in the evening (which also helps keep me from accidentally staying up past my bedtime).

And then, last night, something weird happened. I sat down to do my evening meditation and I didn't want to listen to a guided meditation - I wanted quiet. I wanted to sit quietly alone with my breath. I'd never actively wanted this before, so I was conservative and set the timer for four minutes, which is about how long I usually spend, but it wasn't long enough. I did another four and felt fully settled, but also like I could have sat there for much longer, watching thoughts go by, breathing. It was outstanding. 

This is one of those Mysteries, the moment of understanding something that you've been told countless times that finally makes sense in your bones. I love those moments. The more of them that happen to me, the more I understand that they only happen after you've spent time with something, and that by definition that means I have to spend time with things I don't really understand before I can reach them.

Something I haven't mentioned, either in this blog or out loud to myself just yet - I've been feeling very disconnected from the gods, since long before I started this Path. Doing ritual gives me a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, but that connection is still missing. I'm starting to see a glimmer, though, not of the connection itself but of the possibility that it's out there, if I keep spending time with the possibility. Is this faith?