Druid camps are a fine example of a sustainable holiday which has a minimal impact on the earth - unless, of course, we are traveling half way across the world to get to one. For me, its less than a hour to the camp site, which is on a secluded field on an organic farm. A whole village is constructed by a volunteer crew out of canvas and poles - with a fully equipped camp kitchen complete with a chugging old gas stove run off calor bottles. Beautiful yurts and benders are the main architectural features, with a shower and sauna in a converted caravan, hot water and heat provided by wood burners and all manner of seemingly Heath Robinson creations made from recycled materials at minimal cost which actually work. Provided of course, that everyone does their bit to make it all work - because this is a sacred process of community - caring for one another's needs at a material and spiritual level - from digging earth closet toilets to cooking for up to a 100 from scratch, to looking after children, to providing first aid to running ritual and meditation sessions. Yes, work is involved, but this is joyful work, it is real, authentic. For me it is what being a human being is essentially about. To experience something so special in this chaotic modern world, is a holiday. And a blessing.

The environmental impact is minimal because a week or so after the camp closes, the field returns to a field again, and no physical trace remains that we were ever there. Even the pit dug for the central fire is carefully replaced, and the turfs allowed to knit back together. The cows come back in, all that is left are the vibrations and the compost provided by the very natural toilet facilities!

Not so flying. I'm not taking the judgmental stance here because I do very occasionally fly. Its a great concern to me that the cheap flights revolution has led people to buy holiday homes abroad, which they then fly to as often as they can, gobbling up huge amounts of precious fuel and polluting the atmosphere. Though not in favour of exploitation by huge oil corporations, part of me believes that the cost of fuel should be high, because it is a precious resource which needs to be conserved - there needs to be a high value placed on it.

Then I read a piece by travel writer Simon Calder in the Independent this week about the insanity of 'slots' - airlines will run 'ghost flights', never published or announced, with no-one or nothing on board but the crew - just to maintain their slots at busy airports! Last winter but one, one airline shuttled 120 such flights between Heathrow and Cardiff rather than surrender their slots. This is utter madness, and as Simon says, "any system that makes it rational for airlines to run near empty planes is in serious need of repair". But will anything change? One suggestion is to sell slots to the higher bidder, and in the short term declare a 'slot amnesty', allowing some airlines to 'park' slots until the industry sorts itself out.

I sincerely hope that it does.

It is entirely natural to experience the fallow time, and to need to rest, re-stock and in so doing be creative by making empty space for new ideas to grow. People who are deeply connected to the flow of the seasons, like Druids, understand this well, and as Samhain and the death of the old year approaches, retreat to their physical and psychic hearthfires for the dark, dreaming time and all the potentiality it holds. There is great acceptance in this, and even some exhilaration, and of course that deep peace that comes when we live in tune with the energy of the Earth itself.

To experience this at a time near to Lughnasadh, the first festival of the harvest, when the Earth is giving up her bounty abundantly, seems very odd. But that is where I am right now. And I am struggling to accept it - so am eating the words I offer to artist friends who complain of it during the winter time! Where is my Awen, the 'holy grail' we Druids seek, the divine inspiration which flows into our souls when we find it?

In the Song of Amergin, the bard Amergin of the mythic Irish race of the Tuatha de Danann, pours forth his Imbas, the Irish word for Awen, when he sets foot upon the shores of Ireland. The words "I am the god who puts fire in the head' (which incidentally are all over the walls of Bewley's tea rooms in Dublin, something I discovered to my delight) describe the creative process really well. When the fire is dwindling, embers, a pile of ashes in the hearth, or just a smoky cloud, the bard feels unsighted, disempowered, frustrated. The sharp sword of the creative flow has fallen from their fingers, and they are lost.

So we must seek to rekindle the fire in the head, the Imbas, the Awen. In preparing to do so, I am categorising old writings - and like all things we make - some things I like a lot, and some is cluttered, uninspired, clumsy, so it is going in the virtual bin. I found a poem I wrote on a workshop at the Druid Camp a few years ago, which speaks to me of the the death-in-life nature of Lughnasadh – whilst the earth is alive and all things are being brought to potential, there is also death and loss. Some things will never come to fruition, they will be forever lost. Just as some of my seeds never germinated, and a good many of my seedlings were given up to the earth in the form of slugs and pests - this is way of nature, and is to accepted and celebrated.

Thistledown on the Wind

Ripe, you break free
from that which holds you
in reality. Seeking truth.
Turning, ready to be reaped
from the body of the Earth.
Turning, struggling to birth,
pulsing, warm in mother love.
Becoming, or losing it?
Ripe, but lost, seeds
scattered in the wind.

At Midsummer Gorsedd this year, I had many adventures.  The first happened within half an hour of arriving with my friends Nigel and Caryl from Wales.  I took them out on the bluff path to see a rock that juts out over the cliff side and overlooks the great lake below.  It is called, in Dakota, In Yan Teopa, which they say means "Rock with a Hole in It" but that simple name barely suggests the mythopoeic significance of such a rock.  Its natural setting, before being surrounded by manmade state park and campgrounds, would have itself inspired awe.  A great spur of limestone with a round hole through it meant that here stone was peirced by wind.  The air could enter the earth and the hole act as a doorway for spirit (breath).

Well, we had a look at the rock and Nigel got some photos, then we walked further down the path to an offshoot that led to another overlook.  At the junction, an ancient linden tree stood and called to me at once.  We saw each other coming and I looked closely at this old tree.  I like lindens.  I live in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis, after all.  This one had a dead half and a living half.  The dead trunk was perhaps two feet in diameter.  I noted later that it was big enough to have made a dugout canoe.  The living half was a sucker that the main old tree had put out once upon a time, as lindens do.  They send up suckers from their roots and this one had grown into a whole new tree – perhaps ten to twelve inches in diameter.  I touched her and asked her what her story was and she told me that here to the right was her old life and to the left her new life.  I took this message philosophically.  After all, one of the things I had been discussing with my friends was the re-opening of Avalon Center after a year of hibernation and re-organization.  I was at that sort of a juncture, a place where my old life needed to be returned to the earth and the new shoot take over.  Old ideas, new ideas.  Old plans, new plans.  You get the idea.

After we had admired the lake and the trees, we turned back to the main path and passed the linden again and no sooner had we turned out backs and started back toward camp than we heard that archetypal sound: a tree falling in the forest.  We turned to locate the cracking sound, probably following some ancient instinct of our kind to locate a potential danger behind us.  There the old linden was, giving way, toppling over right across the path behind us.  The path we had not taken.  When it had fallen with that drumlike thud upon the earth, I could see what had before been hidden – that the old dead trunk was hollowed out all along one side.  Its base was rotted away to pulp.  So, the old life had fallen away to give fertility to the soil of the forest and the younger half of the linden carried on.  Its new life was now free to grow and spread.

It was like seeing death and rebirth in action, like a vision of our immortality.  And it was extremely uncanny.  It felt uncanny in its timing and in its metaphorical power but thinking back on it there were some other things that were odd.  The bluff path follows a very steep drop and this tree did not fall downhill but uphill.  Not unheard of in that forest, of course.  It also did not fall towards the rotted hollow side, but away from it.  Simply laws of mass and inertia perhaps?  Maybe.  But to the poetical mind, this linden dropped away her old life across a path we had not taken and had done so in a way to expose to view the hidden hollowness that had resulted from that dying away.  She had already fed generations of termites or ants, fungi, and woodpeckers.  She had been living there doing so in life and death for perhaps my whole lifetime so far.  And that was the moment in my presence, when she made the transition to let go of the past and carry on with the future.

Some of my friends are skeptics and object to anthropomorphizing nature and they would probably disapprove of my taking this episode so personally, as if there was an intentional message for me and for my druid friends.  I would not argue the point.  It is a matter of my being there and interpreting meaning in the workings of Nature.  That is the only "supernatural" – nature layered with meaning that we give to it or take from it for our own edification.  This too was among the lessons of the linden.

King Matjaž was a just king whose throne sat at Krn castle. His rule was the golden age, and always was he ready to help those in need. But other kings were very envious of his power so they united their armies against him and with the battle that followed only King Matjaž and a hundred of his men survived. They retreated to Mount Peca which protected from their enemies and shelters their sleeping forms to this day.

Around a stone table they all sit and it is said that when King Matjaž’s beard circles it nine times they will again awake and the golden age of Slovenia will be renewed.

The Farmer and the King

www.thezaurus.com/webzine/king_mathias

A farmer was transporting wine to Carynthia. On the way he comes through a dobrava, a great wooded plain, to a high mountain. On the mountain he sees a small hut, half buried in the ground, so that little more than the roof is visible. In front of the doorway he sees a stalwart warrior, with his sabre hung at the waist.

As the driver approaches with his wagon, the warrior begins to speak: “You are, friend, from our highlands. Tell me, do the ants still crawl onto the three peaks: St. Christopher, St. Magdalene and St. Urh?”

“They still crawl, but less than they used to,” answers the carter.

The warrior continues:“Tell them at home: When the faith is so weak, that no one walks up to the three peaks, then I will arise and come with my black army.”

“Who are you, then?” asks the farmer, taken aback.

“ I am King Mathias! Step nearer and come with me into the hut, so that you may see with your own eyes the truth of what I am telling you.”

The carter steps in, and King Mathias says: Stand behind me and look over my right shoulder through this window!”

The farmer obeys and sees a great plain, wide and long. Across the plain are standing armed soldiers with their horses, one next to the other. Everything is quiet and silent, no one moves, as though horses and people were sleeping.

“See, that is the black army,” says King Mathias to the amazed farmer.“Look again through the window!”

The Carynthian looks, the king takes the sabre lightly by the handle and draws it a little way from the sheath. At this moment the whole army stirs to life. The soldiers raise their heads, the horses begin to nod and snort and stamp.

“You see,” adds King Mathias,” it won’t be long, and I will rise and draw the sabre from its sheath. A warm wind will be blowing, and breathe into people the one single thought. Then my soldiers will spring onto the horses, and the black army will move to defend the old holy faith. Then all who have a man’s head will grasp their arms. Old, young, all will rush to war, to defend old beliefs. There will be such urgency, that no one will have time to change clothes, and they will all go to war in the clothes they are wearing. So many people of faith will gather that the battle will take less than the time it takes to eat three loaves of bread; and if the third loaf falls from his hand, his neighbour will tell him: leave it, brother, let it lie there, after the battle there will be plenty for all. So swiftly they shall overcome the enemy of the old holy faith!”

I tend to tune out when the conversation turns to the relationship between quantum physics and magic. Mostly because the people doing the talking aren't usually physicists (if they were, I'd be more likely to listen) and so I have no reason to think that their grasp of the subject has any more depth than mine. I get bored not because either subject is uninteresting, but because the way the relationship is argued is usually trite and boils down to something like "Science has now discovered that magic works!" This, for me, is in the same territory as arguments like "The Eleusinian mysteries were based on hallucinogens!" or "Manna from heaven was really fungus!" in that it completely misses the point of magic and myth. It reminds me of Palaephatus, arguing that Callisto was actually eaten by a bear, because after all, it's stupid to think that anyone could transform into a bear. The argument tries to save the myth from being unbelievable and kills it stone dead in the process. As my Palaephatus example shows, there's nothing new about this process, though Palaephatus is funnier than most modern examples.

I do not believe, a la The Secret or What the Bleep, that we create our own reality. It in fact seems glaringly untrue to me. It's not enough to think nice happy thought - plenty of people have thought nice happy thoughts and still had horrible things happen to them. Plenty of others have been dreadful and cruel and still prospered. We are brought up in this culture to think that Being Good leads to Getting Stuff - Santa Claus is one of our principle myths of childhood, and there are plenty of Christians who firmly believe that if only they are good enough in this life, wonderful things await beyond the grave. The flip side of this, of course, is that behaving badly leads to deprivation and suffering. And that in turn is easily turned around to: those that have good lives deserve them, and those that suffer have brought it upon themselves by being bad.

This can be a very comforting worldview, both for those that have and those that don't. Suffering is easier to bear if you can convince yourself that you had it coming, and being prosperous while those around you lack can be much more comfortable if you believe that your prosperity is your reward for Doing it Right. It's a very useful myth for a capitalist society, and it's no surprise to see it so ingrained even in modern theories of magic.

There's a softer version which is the Pollyanna theory, that if you greet everything with a positive attitude and sunny smile, no matter how it works out, at least you'll feel better about it and see the bright side of whatever it is. I have an easier time with this than with the Santa Clause theory, because it often works. Focusing on the good is a useful skill that has helped me through some difficult times. Still, when confronted with pain or loss, it's not always helpful. Focusing on the positive side of having to eat beans and rice for a week because you're too poor for anything else is useful and helpful; focusing on the positive side of the death of a loved one is psychotic. You can't make that reality go away no matter how much you might believe that you created it. And if you did believe that you created it, how awful is that! I have never been more tempted towards violence than when someone has said to me, after a great loss: "What lesson do you think you were meant to learn from this?"

I have been studying magic as part of my AODA studies. I thought this would be simple enough. I've been doing magic all my life, after all, and consider myself to be very familiar with the basic concepts. I've studied it both from an academic and a practical perspective. It's one of the things I would describe as a defining part of my identity. It's something that has been with me consistently all my life. Yet, I've never spent much time on the nature of magic. I don't have a personal theory of how it works, at least not until very recently. I understand the why, and the when, and the how-to-do-it. I can describe different theories of magic. I know about ceremonial magick-with-a-k, I know about folk magic, I know about anthropological theories of magic, I know about witchcraft both ancient and modern, I read the PGM from cover to cover - you hand me a book on magic, I'll either have already read it or will immediately sit down and read it. I don't mean to be boastful in saying all this, though I suppose it might sound that way; it's just one of the things I do. I'm for magic the way some people are for sports statistics. I had already read all of the books that are "recommended reading" in the AODA Magic Spiral. All but one - RJ Stewart's Underworld Initiation. I'm reading that now.

I'm stuck on page 59. I started reading this book two weeks ago and I can't get past the bottom of page 59. Here's the paragraph that stopped me in my tracks: "Humankind stands as a mediator between the Source of the Archetypes and the substance of the Land or Planet. This substance is said, in turn, to be composed of elements compounded from numerous other worlds. The Innerworlds are not truly within the imagination, although that is our first entrance to them; they are within the fabric of the physical planet, and therefore within the human organism which partakes of the substance of that fabric."

Oh, I said. Oh. Then I closed the book and thought about that, and then said Oh again, opened the book, and tried to read on, but couldn't. I just read that line over again. So I put the book back down, went into the backyard, sat down, and meditated on it for a while, and then when I came back from the outer reaches of the cosmos said, Oh, again. Eventually I will get on to the rest of the book, but I have to work through that paragraph first. I think

Wednesday, as I was walking home from work, a sudden downpour made me duck into the Penn bookstore to let it pass. The Penn bookstore is basically a two-story Barnes and Noble that also has Penn materials, as well as a Starbucks where you can grab a book and read and have a cup of coffee. I went to the science section, looking for something for the non-math person on the fabric of the physical planet. and saw a book called "The Fabric of the Cosmos" that seemed just what I was looking for. It's by Brian Greene, who you may have seen looking all cute and nonthreatening on PBS, explaining complicated concepts in simple terms. I thought I would look through it and if it seemed like the thing, to find it at the library (I am too poor to buy every book I want to read. Hooray for the public library.) I read the introduction and drank a decaf mocha while the rain passed. I read, "Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent. By deepening our understanding of the true nature of physical reality, we profoundly reconfigure our sense of ourselves and our experience of the universe." I bought the book.

I like reading popularized science books. I make no claim to any background in science or math, but I am an enthusiastic amateur. It's been a few years since I've read anything like this - more than a few years, actually (I think the last one I read was something by Hawking, or Kip Thorne.) I've always seen it as separate from my interest in magic, though - as I said, I'm nothing but annoyed by New Age attempts to equate quantum effects with New Thought-style magic. I didn't even like "The Tao of Physics."

Yet, now I have to read a 500-page book on spacetime before I can get past page 59 of a 300-page book on magic.

Too bad for the gardeners, but how lovely really. Deer are among the most beautiful of all creatures and the entire week's tone was set by them this week. On Monday last, I visited another state part by the Mississippi River with my friends Nigel and Caryl. There, we were met by a young hind on the driveway into the park. She stood, watching us carefully, but with little fear. If disease took us all one day and left the land to them, the deer would populate it nicely. Of course, the wolves and coyotes would come again to fill in the give and take of predator and prey. But while we humans last, the deer teaches us grace, caution, and to walk gently upon the earth. Caryl said that we must take the lesson of the deer and go gently this week.

At the gorsedd of druids by the banks of the Mississippi, I tried once again to act the leader for a camp while spending my nights at a nearby hotel where I could plug in my VPAP breathing machine and, I hoped, get a reasonable sleep with the help of drugs of various prescription kinds. It seemed that the currents of life had other plans. Somehow my digestive malady was triggered. It is becoming increasingly hard to figure out the culprit, but the usual, predictable course began by Saturday morning. I had slept but not very soundly and when I arrived at camp late in the morning everyone was up and breakfasted and off on a hike (despite the fact they had all been up much later than I had). There was no bacon left and no one seemed to care that I was famished. My father would have said, "Stop feeling sorry for yourself." Dad had learned young that a man must grow a hard shell over his soft insides, like a turtle.

But I was being taken by a gut reaction, which in my case, does not mean a "hunch." My gut reaction are overwhelming and when they come they sweep away all of the reasoning mind, all ability to stay calm, to use coping strategies, to "manage" anger. The anger wells up for no reason at all except as a biochemical energetic reaction of a gut that has been enraged and rendered terrified by the introduction of some food that other humans would digest quite happily. It may be a molecule of milk protein, a particle of gluten, or it may be something else entirely. According to my naturopathic doctor, my body recoils at shellfish, peanuts, walnuts, corn, and even chocolate. This gut is like a nervous deer, easily startled, easily rendered full of fear. But the fear is transmuted into the emotion of anger and not wishing to let loose an embarrassing and irrational temper tantrum at my family or friends, my this emotion is transmuted into motion. Fight or flight? I flee.

I flee my own anger, my gut reaction, then my shame at the gut reaction and the anger, my chagrin at being unable to digest the simplest ordinary foods. So, I was "taken." It used to be that people spoke of others being "taken" by the fairies. Then psychologists taught us there were no such things as fairies and we were really just being taken by a fit or taken by some form of mental illness. These are scientific terms for fairies. The identity is apparent to me when these "fits" take me because the irrational state seems sometimes to open up my mind wide to the Otherworld. So it did on the first Day of Saturn this July. The dark father. Saturn was the father of Jupiter in the Roman way of thinking, a dark devouring father. Freud was quite interested in the devouring Mother, but here in the center of Western culture and the European collective unconscious is Saturn, the devouring father, castrated and murdered by his son. An interesting fellow although a monster. One wonders what his point of view might be.

Well, filled with the rage of Saturn and taken by it, I marched off, without sunscreen or insect repellant, hat, water, or even a walking stick. Indeed, in my sandals, not my boots. I walked in a rage, walked in order to walk off the anger. I was hungry and soon grew thirsty too, and was being led on a merry quest, a soul journey that had nothing at all to do with being a "leader" of my grove. The notion of a "leader" in our culture, American culture, if not the whole of the West, is that of being "level-headed," a careful planner, charismatic, self-confident, and reliable. Great leaders inspire their followers, make them feel empowered, and are able to bring into manifest being their grand dreams and visions. They do not, as a rule, have temper tantrums or disappear for five hours into the woods.

I walked down a shady hollow, up a sunny hill at noon, down another long decline into shadow and emerged on a road where I slipped like a thief behind a park building, eluding the notice of the rangers taking a break there. I hid like an outlaw behind an oak while they drove off, then was summoned to pick up a fallen birch branch. There were several branches and their white bark was burned black by fire. Bubbles of sap had boiled out of the tree's flesh and burned into hardened nodules of soot on the bark. I pulled these off like tumors, bursting them in my hand. The bubble burst into black powder.

Following no reason, my hands began to strip the bark and the twigs off a branch, to smooth it, to pull at the rotten places with my fingernails, driven still my gut-anger. Then the oak tree told me to climb the tor, spiraling sunwise. I started to do so, using the rude birch staff to help me keep my footing in my sandals on the rough slope. Around a corner was a limestone shelf with a juniper tree growing on top of it. Have you read the Grimm's Fairy Tale titled "The Juniper Tree"? It is not one that many read today, but it is one I know fairly well. The juniper is a wishing tree, a protective tree, a mother tree. The limestone shelf had a flat base comfortable for sitting and the shelf formed a roof just over my head as I sat as if it had been tailored to me. I noticed too that the birch staff, after I had broken it's branches off was just about my height, and forked at the top, like the Twins, my birth constellation. I sat working that staff with a stone for a rasp like stone age Man might have done. Beneath the hill. I rested, but my hands were restless.

At last, after maybe an hour or maybe a half hour, I resumed my climb and came by stages to the top among the oak trees so familiar to me. Seven ancient oaks in circle surround a grassy clearing. These trees always talk to me. "Talk" is hardly the word. They prophesy, they offer comfort, they recognize me as a spirit, not as the simple life of this existence with its biographical facts and slight accomplishments. But I was still restless and did not stay long. I gazed to the far hills where the oaks have told me repeatedly my Avalon is destined to rise. I left the grove by the usual path but did not want to walk down the road exposed to the harsh sun. My neck and face were burned now, my feet tired, my throat parched. Exercise had quenched hunger, but the anger and the disconnection from ordinary reason was still on me. I took to the deer paths for the shade and knowing that if I could find the right ones they would return me to the shadier trail from which I had originally circled the hill.

But the spirits of the forest had other plans. Every track I followed led me to a new brambly path with thorns to scratch my feet and bare legs (I was in shorts too). My hands were scratched and blackened from the burnt bark of the staff. Now it helped me walk on steep slopes and uneven ground and to part the buckthorn that is taking over the forest everywhere. Great oaks met me – seven sentinels beneath the tor. Brothers to the sisters seven, they said to me. But, restlessly, I searched on, talking now to my guides, realizing that I was being forced to seek them out. One of my guides calls himself Endymion. It is a bit of a joke between us, but that is what I still call him even though he did reveal his true name. He is impatient with me and quick to point out that if my guides do not come to me it is because I do not come to them. Unless I listen, they cannot be heard. My fear, my timidity, my fear of unreason makes me hide from them. Who wants a "leader" who hears voices, who lives many lives, who forever has a foot in the Otherworld and a mind half vanished into a forest? But then it was the guides who told me to take up the job of being a leader in the first place.

In the forest after meeting the oaks, I met a hen turkey and one of her chicks. I startled them and apologized and then thanked them for the blessing of meeting them, although they had both vanished as completely as if they had never been. The lesson the turkey taught was that even seemingly lost in the forest, we are taken to wonderful meetings. I was not afraid, not too concerned. it was only mid-afternoon and I knew I could not be far from a trail one way or another.

In and out of the trees, down deer paths, along rills I went till I needed to rest again and could not determine where I was. Exhausted, the anger at last fading into bemusement, I met a large flat boulder, a stone place to sit in the shade. The trail I sought might have been twenty feet away and I would not have seen it. But every deer trail just let to another. Resting, breathing, feeling the aches and the sunburn and the cuts on my hands and feet, bug bites here and there, I somehow reflected on time. I was wearing my watch and I was amazed to see how much time had passed. What were the others doing back at camp? Had they begun to worry about me? Had they begun to suspect I was lost? Sarah had, after all, witnessed exactly this same phenomenon in Iowa not two months ago when I was taken and just walked off for two hours. Now it had been four. I babbled on about time and how it seems to expand and contract, how it is an illusion, how the stone on which I sat must experience it so much differently. I wanted to know the Elvish way of speaking about life without reference to this false notion that "time" is a "thing." Our language teaches us to think that time "flows." But it is our life and consciousness that flows.

Then Endymion explained to me that what we have come to call "time" is an artificial way of expressing that one's consciousness exists in a particular place. I am here on the stone, then I am somewhere else. I move through space and it is that movement which we imagine to be "time" flowing. We imagine that everyone experiences time the same way because we are taught that it moves with the regularity of a clock. In fact, it is our clocks that have created this idea of time. Outside of clocks and our conditioned minds, there is no such thing as time. There is only consciousness in a certain place and then moving through space – or in the case of a tree or stone, moving very slightly, perhaps imperceptibly to our senses and lives. The spirit of a place, a tree, a stone, is just like us, but it has chose to exist in a certain place under certain conditions of movement or stillness or rootedness. Its very being is joined to the place. This is the same act of choice we take when we choose to exist in a human body. To do so, I confine my self to the space occupied by my body. So, the spirit of the rock choses to occupy the space of the rock's material form. The human form has advantages of being rapidly mobile, but humans have come to grossly over-value this ability. Now we fail to appreciate our ability to be still and slow and to move our consciousness through space more gradually.

Does the word "slow" imply "time?" Of course, it does within our language, but the real issue is how is our consciousness, our attention related to space and place. If we dwell long and hard with attention and intention on a place, then we say we are there a long time. If we devote only fleeting, superficial attention to a place, we say that we are there a short time. But there is no such thing as time. Time is not a "thing." It is a concept we have developed to think in a certain way about our attention, and I am not sure it is the right way to think. At least, it is not the right way for some purposes.
With new understanding from the conversation upon the rock, I held out my wand and asked Endymion to point me the right way. He asked if I truly trusted him. I told him I did, but in my mind I did not believe he was sending me in the right direction. Indeed, as it proved, he was not sending me in the direction I wanted to go. Instead, following his directions, I emerged at the foot of a steep hill. On its top I could see a stand of oaks. Well, if I climbed to the top, as exhausted as I was, I would at least be able to see where I was, above the trees and the seemingly labyrinthine rills. A climb. A tired chuckle. I was right back in the circle of the seven sisters, our oak friends.

So, Endymion and the forest sprites had led me on a merry round through the forest and back to the very hill I had climbed an hour or more ago (time was completely blurred at this point). The Sun's attention shifted and moved through space. On a far tree was perched either an eagle or a vulture. I could just make it out. I called to it with a poor imitation of an eagle's cry. It shifted and seemed to look around. But all day the vultures had kept their distance, circling high overhead, away, too far to see their faces. This one ignored me and I laughed. "Eagles do not come when you call." Later in the day, or the following day, a young fellow visiting our grove, who is also named James, told me of his experiences with an eagle and a hawk close up and how he called back the eagle using a call that imitates a dying rabbit. Spirals and spirals. A burst of belated fireworks from the 4th of July rocketed over the far hill drawing my attention away from the eagle. When I looked back to the great dying oak on which is had sat it had vanished, as surely as if it had been a spirit.

I decided my need for water was too urgent to go back toward camp at once. The nearest water lay in the opposite direction at the ranger station, and the easiest way down was to descend the steep tussocky hillside on the south. So I descended, for the second time that day, and left the forest. At the ranger station I must have looked a fright. My tee shirt now filthy, my hands blackened, my hair full of leaves – the oak king or the green man? My last animal encounter was at the water tap behind the wood shed where a baby bull snake erupted indignantly from his hole under the well tap. Thinking he had found a cool place to rest, he was suddenly being drowned by this ridiculous druid.

The rest was an assertion of will to walk up the bluff on the road this time and down the well-marked trails back to camp. The result: I was too utterly exhausted to lead the grove in the Solstice ritual. I could not climb that tor again, after having been up and down it twice already. My legs were gone. I tried to rest and eat, but still there was nothing left in me. All my substance had been taken. The anger was gone – though still smoldering a bit. But so also was all my physical strength. Quite apart from walking for five hours, this was the predicable course of my "gut reaction." After the eruption of anger comes complete exhaustion and usually sleep.

So, my discomfort at being the "leader" of the grove, the one to whom everyone turned to direct our feet was addressed when my own feet were led by some other force, and I turned to my herald and pendragon and all the others present and said, you go do the ritual without me. I wanted to know that they could. I never doubted that they could do it without me. But I wanted it to be demonstrated to all of us. It wasn't however, really a plan, or a rational test, or anything of my own devising. The day of Saturn simply fellow out that way.

My need for water. This weighed on my mind the whole time. Water is the element of emotion, of love, of connection to others. My gut-reaction makes me feel alienated, unloved, unconnected, misunderstood. My battle with the emotions, with the Otherworld voices and visions were also watery things. Wellsprings bursting up inside me. My consciousness and attention moving through the magical landscape. Others might see that place as merely a nice bit of nature, some preserve, offering some respite from the city or town. Others might see it scientifically, with the eyes of a naturalist. But I am a naturalist of a different color and there are three places I have seen so far in that park that are clear, active, overwhelming doorways to the Otherworld. I do not offer the statement as a statement of objective fact. Rather, it is a statement of the truth as it is experienced by me. Others feel it in their own way, I believe. Even perhaps the couple who passed me on the trail and did not acknowledge my presence, as if I were invisible. Even perhaps the woman who passed me as we met on the path and who nodded to my "hello" even though she was wearing earphones.

I will continue next time with a note of two other experiences. One happened in the first hour after we arrived at the park and involves a Linden tree. The other happened on Friday night – Freya's night – and involved the place my daughter calls "Spooky Hollow."

The song Obsession from my Herne's Apprentice album has already had a very rich and varied life. I've met a number of Pagan couples who hold that as 'their song', a few people have told me that they've made love with it playing in the background. It's a very sensual, erotic love song, and I am very proud of it. Well, during this home concert another wonderful event took place around Obsession. I was just about to play the song, introducing it, when Paul stopped me. He then got onto his knees and proposed to Sally right there, witnessed by their friends. It was so lovely to have been there. I'm also pleased to report that Sally said "yes", and much hugging and celebration followed. When I played the song it was just for them, on this most special of nights. How wonderfully romantic :)

The picture shows the audience that night. Paul and Sally are second and third from the right. Thanks also to the technical wizardry of Lizzy (second from the left) who managed to set the camera's timer for this great photo. Those who are into photographic 'orbs' will see that event the Spirits were with us that night!

Thank you to Sally, Paul, and everyone else who made me feel so welcome!

"If you like Starwood, you probably won't like what we do here. Four Quarters is for serious pagans."

I don't really know what this was supposed to mean to me, but the message I took away wasn't that the place was for Serious Pagans. It was for Pagans with Giant Sticks up their Asses. While I liked the site, I didn't think of returning because I'd already been told that I wouldn't like the place. I am in fact utterly serious about my religion, and seriousness doesn't put me off. What does put me off in a big way is the witchier-than-thou attitude of way too many pagans that was exemplified in that remark.

However, that was years ago, and I'm not one to hold a grudge. When plans to attend Starwood this year fell through, followed by the falling-through of plans to attend Sirius Rising, we jumped at the invitation from some friends who are 4QF members to attend their 4th of July weekend celebration, Drum and Splash. I love pagan festivals and we haven't been to one in too many years. I was a little apprehensive because of the whole "serious pagans" thing - was everyone going to be all involved in the drum workshops? would the belly dancers pick on me for having too much fun dancing? but I assumed it would be fun no matter what.

Well, it was fun and my apprehensions were completely unfounded. I don't drum, but that was no problem at all as no one cared. I do love to dance, and I got to do plenty of that, and if anyone didn't like it, it was, as I concluded long ago, their problem and not mine. Dancing is fun. I also got to do a huge amount of splashing, which was what really made the whole weekend. They have a magnificent swimming hole. There was also the very simple pleasure of camping on a beautiful piece of land - not only beautiful in and of itself, but a dedicated pagan sanctuary lovingly cared for by a committed group of people. Dedicated, permanent Pagan sacred space is incredibly rare. We're all so accustomed to creating a circle or grove and then taking it down, as a temporary thing. This place is permanent, as evidenced by the stones themselves. The stones are unspeakably magnificent and I felt blessed just to be able to spend a few days near them.

We got there on Wednesday, a little early, and set up camp with our friends, went swimming, wandered around the site to get oriented, did a little New Moon ritual, and went to bed. Thursday morning, we got up wonderfully late, had breakfast (we had our own kitchen in camp, so I can't say anything about the food there because we did all our own cooking), wandered up for the free (!) coffee that is always on offer, roamed around and watched people arrive, hung out with the stones, went swimming, checked out the (mercifully few) vendors, had lunch, went swimming again, and then went back to camp because it was starting to rain. It rained all night Thursday and all day Friday.

I don't mind camping in the rain - it is obviously less fun than camping in sunny weather, but I like the sound of rain on a tent roof, the feel of the woods in the rain - I really mean it when I say that I love and worship Nature, and that includes the rainy days as well as the sunny. It also helps that we have a heroically dry tent. It has never, ever leaked, even under much more intense wet weather than we had. So we stayed comfortable, if damp, and I got some reading done and we still went swimming in the rain. The 4QF drum circle is all sand, and wet sand is really no fun to dance in, so I didn't do a huge amount of anything on Friday except attend Orren Whiddon's excellent talk on peak oil. The subject didn't really fit the theme of the weekend, but it's an important enough topic that it ought to come up anywhere and everywhere an audience can be found for it. Orren presents it very well.

Saturday was sunny again and we spent the day in the water. Orren followed up his peak oil talk with a discussion of communitarian living and the community at 4QF. Those were the only two workshops I attended the whole time. This is normal for me - I go to these things convinced that I want to hear Those who Know speak about things I want to know about, and planning to attend all sorts of workshops and such, and then I spend the whole time being lazy in camp or dancing in the fire circle. I probably need to dance and laze more than I need to hear one more talk about Circle Casting Techniques or whatever, so that's fine. I really thought I would get to some of the dance workshops this time, but nope. There was a beautiful New Moon service that evening that was one of the best large group rituals I have ever attended. I generally think that pagan-style ritual doesn't work well with more than 10-15 people, but it all depends on what the "work" is, I guess, and this one did just fine. It also helped that we did it surrounded by giant standing stones. It would be hard to have it not "work", under those circumstances. After that, there was a procession with a dragon and a fireworks show. The fireworks reminded me of the kind of small-town fireworks I remember from childhood, put on by the fire company. This isn't a bad thing - they were small-ish and some of them were duds, but the community enthusiasm was better than the biggest, most high-tech firework display any big city could offer. Also, the "finale" wasn't just more fireworks, it was poi dancers, and then we all went to the drum circle and did the fire-circle thing.

After Mr. Nettle and I decided it was time for sleep, we stopped off at the swimming hole on the way back to camp to see the stars reflected in the water. Instead, as we came up to the creek, we saw that the fire spinners were all standing in the shallow water doing their thing. We stopped and watched for a while. I was enchanted - the fire reflected in the water, the dancers looking magnificent (fire spinning is sexy, I don't care who's doing it) the stars above, the fireflies in the wood behind them - it was this perfect unexpected moment of magic.

Sunday, we packed up, went swimming again, and drove home. And here I am.

Four Quarters is a beautiful site with comfortable camping facilities - the showers were always hot and the portapotties never got too gross. The people were all uniformly friendly and pleasant. I kind of get the "serious pagan" comment now, because it didn't feel like there were any "newbies" there - everyone had done this kind of thing many times before. It's extremely family-friendly - a little too much so, in my opinion. I don't have anything against kids but I don't think they belong in a fire circle. It's just too... serious for little kids, and it makes me nervous to see six-year-olds dancing around a fire with no parent in sight. I'd rather see a "kid's hour" and then a time when small children are to be kept away from the fire. Maybe the kids are in no danger, but little kid+fire=hyper-vigilant Nettle, and I don't want to be hyper-vigilant at a time when I want to be, you know, a serious pagan.

The night of the concert arrived and Siggy took us to the venue. Cenario is a great little cabaret theatre, and the perfect location for an acoustic performance. When I saw inside I was so pleased, and couldn't wait to see how many people arrived. We have a venue very similar in Brighton called the Komedia. I've seen Show of Hands play there and it has a great atmosphere. The seating is around tables, not the usual rows you find in most music halls. I was due to start playing at 7.45, and with about an hour to go people began to arrive, and by 7.45 when I took the stage the place had reached capacity, which really took me by surprise.

I'm used to having three instruments on stage with me. One guitar in regular tuning, a mandolin, and another guitar in DADGAD tuning. This means I don't have to keep retuning the guitars. I'd only brought one guitar with me (my Taylor), so the two sets had been split into one set of regular tuned songs, and the second set of DADGAD tunes. I'd tried this once before and it hadn't quite worked, but I have a lot more songs now, so I was more confident. I opened with Song of Awen, then went into Pipes of Pan and by the third song I could hear people singing along with me, and that set the scene for the rest of the evening.

I opened the second set with Hills they are Hollow, and ended it with the new live favourite, Wild Mountain Thyme - it's a great song to sing, and everyone knows it. Two lovely encores followed - I'm sure I could have played all night! When I suggested a return concert next year the response was a very positive "Yes!" To be so far away from home, and find people who knew my songs was amazing. What a ride this is!

I still need some time to let it all settle.

I will post again soon

Greetings

Donagh

I think the first time I ever really knew what Druidry was was when I interviewed a lady for my paper's Good Faith page who was preparing to celebrate Imbolc. And I thought it was awesome. Just awesome. She suggested some books to me (including Pagan Paths and Druid Priestess) and I was on my way.

It rang so many bells with me. Who can resist a way of life (let's not call it a religion....) which fosters love of: peace; beauty; justice; story and myth; history and reverence for the ancestors; trees; stones; truth; animals; the body; the sun, moon, stars and sky; each other; and life?

The Wheel of the Year, ever turning, ever turning, is a powerful way of thinking about nature, the world and our place within it. Once you know about it and understand it, everything falls into place. From the first shoots at Imbolc to the harvest at Lughnasadh, from the Beltane fires to the dark nights of Samhain, and round and round again every year - it's the circle of life and experience made visible in the world.

[Incidentally, if you are ever in Ireland, you should visit Brigit's Garden, a real highlight of our honeymoon full of symbolism and spirals and things that give me shivers (in a good way!).]

The major problem I had with some forms of Druidry was the worship of deities. It just wasn't for me. I wasn't interested in ritual. In fact, I can point at one book in particular that turned me away - The Modern-day Druidess: A Practical Guide to Nature Spirituality (link). What a title! I was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. But there was too much ritual and not enough nature, and I gave that book away as quickly as I snapped it up so I wouldn't have to have it on my shelves.

Imagine my delight when I came across the Natural Realm cards from the Deo Gloria Trust. Oh yes! As far as I am concerned these are perfect in every way :-) Their whole purpose is to combine modern research, ancient spiritual wisdom and ideas from the Bible. They are fab!

My two favourite cards include two of my favourite elements from nature spirituality - the ideas of thin places - where the division between heaven and earth is thinnest, such as mountain tops or ancient forests - and of walking a labyrinth to reflect our journey through life. I also love the online labyrinths at http://www.rejesus.co.uk/spirituality/labyrinth/ and http://www.lostinwonder.org.uk/ - have a look at them.

Orders like the Ceile De say: "The Living Celtic Spiritual Tradition contains the best of the earlier mystery tradition of Druidism, an intimate, immanent relationship with the Divine and a deep faith in the transformative power of Love, all leading toward Christ-consciousness." Even the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids happily explores the link between Christianity and Druidry.

I feel like I've waffled a bit here without really even addressing the title of this post but hopefully you can see where I'm coming from! As I learn more about Christianity I want to apply my gut understanding of the Wheel of the Year and nature and use it appreciate all the more the wonders of creation.

I'll finish on a wonderful quote from Martin Luther, who I studied at university: "God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees and flowers and clouds and stars". Amen to that.

I'm hoping to be able to post a couple of blogs on my travels. But right now it's early(ish) to bed for a 5am rise to catch the plane...

After the therapy swap, we took a walk around as I wanted to go to this little metaphysical shop that I was aware of, near Albany Road. We went in and it was great, there was a lovely dog there that took a shine to me and followed me around. Needless to say, I crouched down and made a fuss of him. A very gentle spirit, he was very receptive. I bought a few magazines and was quite tempted by some of the lovely ethnic throws there, but I resisted due to my current stretched funds. Then, after a rather nice coffee, my boyfriend picked me up and we spent the evening together. That was good, we had a nice talk and a laugh, and ate together. It was just nice to relax together, I miss him being around and wish I could see him more often. But seeing as we live 23 miles apart, that can be problematic. But we manage, and the time we do have together is usually all the more special because of the distance.

I always seem to blog late in the evening. Maybe that's when my thoughts are clearer, I don't know. Or maybe that's my natural time to reflect. It's also the time when I do most of my OBOD study. That reminds me actually, I seem to have misplaced a book I bought and it's annoying me. I must have a really good rummage and search it out, as I haven't even had chance to read it yet and it's disappeared.

Each of our great rivers has its own unique character and spirit - I live near to the confluence of the Thames and the Kennet - the latter dark, sensual and feminine, the Thames majestic, free-flowing, like a national artery, arching through the glorious landscape. I recall other rivers I have loved - the Ribble, gifted by the Goddess Brigantia; the Ouse, ancient trade route; the Avon, gentler, fecund, picturesque; the Severn, tide racing wild woman of dark mystery. Rivers are the heart and soul of our great cities - founded on their communication routes, acting as protective moats. Shrewsbury, for example, is almost encircled by the Severn, and what would Newcastle be without the Tyne, or Liverpool without the Mersey.

And our rivers bring such life to the land - coursing freely, they irrigate and feed the land, carrying energy to each part of it, blessing with libations. I am put in mind of the lyrics of a favourite band, Dragonsfly, in their song The River, "the river that moves between the mountains, rushes strong and free, giving life to all it leaves in its wake". The song was inspired by "the mountains and the water and beautiful, simple life".

A blessing on the waters. A blessing on the Land.

For those who do not know me at all, I am Druid, or rather, Bard. I am an OBOD member and currently trying to immerse myself in the Bardic study. I seem to be constantly fighting that battle with 'daily routine' and making time for that which is truly important to me. However, through reading the blogs of friends and those who I admire (Damh the Bard and Philip Carr-Gomm for one) then I am finding that the quiet time taken to study and write the blog is good time. I live in the somewhat confusing climate of South Wales, in an area which sometimes does not know whether it is rural or urban. The earth is scarred around me by the aftermath of coal mining, open wounds on the face of the earth slowly healing. I am a child of this place and yet I feel called to other places - areas of this great island which are completely alien and fascinating to me. I have never been happier than when I stand on the shores and cliffs of West Cornwall, breathing the salt spray and feeling the rush of the ocean through my blood.

If anyone out there reads this, please do comment and say hello - I would love to know whether this string of words that I send out actually reaches civilisation.

The Great Spirit speaks through us and to us, and if we are open hearted, and therefore able to listen, guides us and teaches us. So today I have learned this - repeated over and over in lots of different ways, through different people and through the natural world:

The importance of Vision in relation to manifestation is an ongoing theme in this blog. Another theme - dreams don't become real if we just sit around doing nothing - vision also needs execution.

But there is more! We need to be fully present in the world, living in the here and now, and with divine purpose. We cannot live 'provisionally' - we cannot put off being fully ourselves until we have put that last piece in the jigsaw puzzle. There is no 'when I get there' - we are already there - but having a vision too means that we are both being and becoming.

A couple of weeks ago I started a little house concert tour in the South of England (I'm planning to get up to the North in September) and it was great fun. I played the last date last Friday in Southend, Essex. I met some lovely people and was very touched that the hosts were willing to open their homes to me so I could play for them and their friends. I can honestly say I loved every gig, and would definitely do it again. So to everyone at Roz's, Elizebeth's and Jean's and everyone else who sang along, laughed, clapped, and made me feel so welcome, thank you!

The picture was taken at my first home concert at Roz's -  a magical night, great company, wonderful food and hospitality.

Ciò che il vertice Fao "ha dimenticato" di discutere è il cuore del problema della fame nel mondo, che non è solo legato ai costi di produzione e distribuzione dei cibi, ma soprattutto alle abitudini alimentari della popolazione del pianeta. Occorre una rivoluzione nell´alimentazione dei Paesi ricchi per dare il via concretamente e subito ad una soluzione della tragedia dei Paesi poveri, dove si soffre la fame. Noi siamo alle prese con il problema opposto: aumenta l´obesità fra i nostri figli, le nostre adolescenti anoressiche usano il troppo cibo come ricatto e se ne privano fino a lasciarsi morire, la nostra dieta opulenta ci fa ammalare sempre di più. Proprio su questi temi si riuniranno a Venezia a settembre alcuni fra i maggiori esperti per la Quarta Conferenza Mondiale sul Futuro della Scienza: «Food and Water for Life». Io penso che l´ingiustizia alimentare sia una delle peggiori iniquità dei nostri tempi: una questione di civiltà e di cultura, che ci riguarda tutti da vicino. C´è un comportamento individuale responsabile, infatti, che può contribuire a riequilibrare questi due drammatici estremi ed è la riduzione del consumo di carne.

Molti uomini di scienza e pensiero hanno creduto che la scelta vegetariana fosse quella giusta per l´armonia del pianeta. Dal genio rinascimentale di Leonardo da Vinci, che non poteva sopportare che i nostri corpi fossero le tombe degli animali, fino ad Albert Einstein, il più grande scienziato del ´900, che presagiva che nulla darà la possibilità di sopravvivenza sulla Terra, quanto l´evoluzione verso una dieta vegetariana. Anch´io sono convinto che il vegetarianesimo sia inevitabile, per tre motivi. Il primo è di ordine ecologico/sociale. I prodotti agricoli a livello mondiale sarebbero in realtà sufficienti a sfamare i sei miliardi di abitanti, se venissero equamente divisi, e soprattutto se non fossero in gran parte utilizzati per alimentare i tre miliardi di animali da allevamento. Ogni anno 150 milioni di tonnellate di cereali sono destinate a bovini, polli e ovini, con una perdita di oltre l´80% di potenzialità nutritiva; in pratica il 50% dei cereali e il 75% della soia raccolti nel mondo servono a nutrire gli animali d´allevamento. L´America meridionale, per fare posto agli allevamenti, distrugge ogni anno una parte della foresta amazzonica grande come l´Austria. Trentasei dei quaranta Paesi più poveri del mondo esportano cereali negli Stati Uniti, dove il 90% del prodotto importato è utilizzato per nutrire animali destinati al macello. Viviamo in un mondo dove un miliardo di persone non ha accesso all´acqua pulita e per produrre un chilo di carne di manzo occorrono più di trentamila litri di acqua.

Già oggi non riusciamo neppure a contare quante malattie e quante morti potrebbe evitare un minor consumo di carne. Veniamo così indirettamente alla seconda motivazione del vegetarianesimo, che è la tutela della salute. Non ci sono dubbi che un´alimentazione povera di carne e ricca di vegetali sia più adatta a mantenerci in buona forma. Gli alimenti di origine vegetale hanno una funzione protettiva contro l´azione dei radicali liberi, cioè quelle molecole che possono alterare la struttura delle cellule e dei loro geni. Si può quindi pensare che chi segue un´alimentazione ricca di alimenti vegetali è meno a rischio di ammalarsi e possa vivere più a lungo. C´è poi un secondo fattore. Noi siamo circondati da sostanze inquinanti, che possono mettere a rischio la nostra vita. Sono sostanze nocive se le respiriamo, ma lo sono molto di più se le ingeriamo. Consumando carne, ci mettiamo proprio in questa situazione, perché dall´atmosfera queste sostanze ricadono sul terreno, e quindi sull´erba che, mangiata dal bestiame, (o attraverso i mangimi) introduce le sostanze nocive nei suoi depositi adiposi, e infine nel nostro piatto quando mangiamo la carne. L´accumulo di sostanze tossiche ci predispone a molte malattie cosiddette "del benessere" (diabete non insulino-dipendente, aterosclerosi, obesità). Anche il rischio oncologico è legato alla quantità di carne che consumiamo.

Le sostanze tossiche si accumulano più facilmente nel tessuto adiposo, dove rimangono per molto tempo esponendoci più a lungo ai loro effetti tossici. Frutta e verdura sono alimenti poverissimi di grassi e ricchi di fibre: queste, agevolando il transito del cibo ingerito, riducono il tempo di contatto con la parete intestinale degli eventuali agenti cancerogeni presenti negli alimenti. I vegetali poi, oltre a contaminarci molto meno degli altri alimenti, sono scrigni di preziose sostanze come vitamine, antiossidanti e inibitori della cancerogenesi (come i flavonoidi e gli isoflavoni), che consentono di neutralizzare gli agenti cancerogeni, di "diluirne" la formazione e di ridurre la proliferazione delle cellule malate. La terza motivazione, ma non ultima, è di ordine etico-filosofico ed è quella che ha fatto di me un vegetariano convinto da sempre. Io ero un bambino di campagna, amico degli animali e oggi sono un uomo che ha il massimo rispetto per la vita in tutte le sue forme, specie quando questa non può far valere le proprie ragioni. Il cibo è per me una forma di celebrazione della vita, ma non mi piace celebrare la vita negando la vita stessa ad altri esseri.

Last year we met an old beekeeper at a wedding. The event was special in that it was a collaborative occasion where lots of guests had contributed something of value to make the whole - a bit like bees really - the champagne, the flowers, the pig for the hog roast, the cheese for the cheese board, the cake, the entertainment - and the mead! The mead was a gift from the bride's father, the old beekeeper. And very delicious it was too.

The beekeeper told us that he learned the craft from another who had also donated his first swarm. When I met up with some Druid friends last week it seems that some of them are learning beecraft the same way. So I will need to commune with the bees on another level to ask for the help we need to get going!

Synchronicity being as it is, its no surprise that my current muse is the Oxford folk band Telling the Bees, who have just released a new album Untie the Wind, which I can't wait to get my hands on after the teasing tastes of unctuousness I have sampled via the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids' podcast. Their new website is sensitive and evocative - a visually beautiful honey-like piece of rustica, and they describe their work as redolent of a 'darkly familiar England of rustic charm and savage beauty'. Tracks like Wood and The Worship of Trees strike such a chord in my beating Pagan heart with lines like 'lately I have succumbed to a old atavistic urge - the worship of trees'.

And 'if you follow the bees and they will bring you the sun' ... come on, bees!

On one fine morning, my daughter went to play around a local maturing fig tree, known by children locally as the 'climbing tree', to find a small bird (a rock bunting) at its roots partially eaten.  She has an affection for the Animal Kingdom, especially for horses and small creatures, who no doubt remind her of herself.

Taking the cue conversations were had concerning the circle of life, and the food chain. We collected the bird wrapped in fig leaves and buried it near a vegetable patch.

During that night another death, this time the oldest member of our family. A great-uncle, a great man.

The morning after, a little after I heard the news, I found a toy frog in my pocket, and then another discarded on the street as I walked along. I played the game of connections,

The frog, dweller of land and water. Herald of Healing and Transformation.

Now, that's not too remarkable for me, since I generally do that anyway. It's more like, I couldn't NOT see fairies, which was far more unusual. They were everywhere, they knew I could see them, and they thought it was just knee-slappingly hilarious. Generally I take visionary experiences completely in stride, because I'm so accustomed to them. So here's my journal entry from the day after that:

"I had a weird thing happen after my meeting with Otter. The next day, I saw fairies EVERYWHERE. I do mean everywhere. They were all over the place, and it continued all day long. I've never had anything like that happen before. Any time I would focus my attention on any particular thing - a lamp post, a doorknob, a car going by, whatever - I would notice an associated fairy. They were even in my office building. The fairy in my cubicle bitched at me for having it be kind of messy, so I cleaned it up and got some filing done.

I wondered if I had slipped a cog or something, spiritually or psychologically, but at no point did it seem like a bad thing nor did it interfere with my regular daily activities. It was more amusing than anything, not frightening at all. I got a little anxious, wondering if I was going insane but wondering if it was going to be a permanent thing. It wasn't - by the next day they were gone, and I couldn't see them even if I tried.

I'm now reminded of why I stopped trying to work with them on this kind of level before - they scared the crap out of me. As soon as they stopped being imaginary or symbolic or mythical or any of those kinds of words we use to hold things at arm's length from reality, they got scary to me and I retreated from that sort of work.

There's something earth-shakingly powerful about this kind of work, and I'm trying to think of words to describe it. For some reason I'm not afraid of it anymore. I'm more grounded than I was back then, I think - more stable, more self-sufficient, more sure of who I am. I think it would be very easy to let Faery experiences become psychologically unhinging, and I think that was what motivated the fear before. I have a lot more confidence in my ability to successfully relate to reality these days. I feel like I've lived in two worlds all my life, but where that used to worry me and make my life feel too complicated, it now just feels like me, and it's OK.

I do all kinds of Otherworld work all the time. I like it. I've gotten pretty good at telling the difference between the levels of the Otherworld - there's a very superficial level where it's basically the work of an overactive imagination, a deeper level where you tap into something real and complex and meaningful but that is still the product of the imagination, still basically self-generated, and then further below that is the real deal, where you can meet the Gods and the guides and such and have really profound experiences.

Then there's Faery. Faery is an otherworld, but it's this world at the same time, and the Fae are of both realms. I found Otter by relating intensely to the patch of ground where I was sitting, and that intensity was strong enough to carry over to the next day and continue to relate to the world in that way without trying.

I wrote this last month [that would be February now] for the SOA Fairie list - it was basically just a stream-of-consciousness response to a prompt.
"Fairies seem like in-between beings to me. Gods and guides and spirits have one sort of existence, outside of the physical world, real but in a completely different way than the material world is real. Humans and plants and animals have another kind of existence, existing fully in the material world. We can interact on the spiritual plane, and sometimes this can seem very physical, but essentially they are not material beings like we are.
Fairies are kind of both and kind of neither. They have a real, physical existence but it's not the same as ours - they kind of have feet in both worlds. Or maybe they are something completely different but can appear to have either kind of reality. They can travel between worlds, but their world, Faerie, is not the same as ours. I hope I'm making sense, this is not easy to express. That's another thing I've noticed about fairies - they hard to pin down, even with words.
They are part of nature. They exist wherever things grow. They like shady groves and mushrooms and still, quiet places. They appreciate gifts and resent any attempts at coercion. They can be wonderful friends, but they have their own ways of behaving, their own ideas of right and wrong and what good manners are, and these aren't always the same as what humans think they are. They get underestimated because they like beauty and sparkles and flowers, and sometimes people think that makes them childlike, but they are actually very old and wise. Sometimes. They never give something for nothing, and you have to watch out for fairy gifts because they always want something in return, so you should know what that is. They can lead the unwary astray. "

I have to amend this because since I wrote it I have seen so many urban fairies who don't care a bit about shady groves or mushrooms or still quiet places. As the land changes and is changed, so they change as well. Some of them like it this way."