Ngetal: the wound-charm

Wounded we come into the world
And wounded we leave it.
The light’s white glare. The forceps.
The mother’s sweat. The screaming.

Wounded we lurch to gawky height
and learn our numbers, our words
and our ways. Wounded we love
and wounded, receive love.

And wounded our Mother, the ground
of mountains eroding, swept by
the white caps, fed by the torrent
that tears from the heavy gray sky.

Wounded the hand that grasps the nettle
and wounded the nettle torn
from the dirt, the flap of skin
held together by thorns.

Wounded we love, and wounded
receive love. Wounded, we heal
others, ourselves, with the nettle
that stings and yet nourishes.

They heal, those wounds, into patterns
and maps, scars rising mountains
and charting the seas, the currents,
the stars, a choreography

etched on the face, on skin, parchment –
a book of wounds, of healing,
of failures, renewals. Wounded
we give forth, and wounded receive.

Vision: at the table

the woman next to me
at the vast table turns.

Young, robed in blue of night
and her hair: corkscrewed night

Her eyes: hour before dawn.
Hooked nose, smile bent upwards.

And then: a ringing slap
a hand darting from a sleeve

to leave a red imprint
on the cheek of my dream.

A laugh, warm as starfall
a kiss to my red cheek.

“Wisdom comes with a slap
and a kiss,” she whispers.

And then I find my feet
back in the dusky sand

coarse grains wearing my soles
pale foam crashing, darkness

The different flavors of meditation

When I signed up for Yoga Journal's 21-Day Yoga Challenge, I joked with my husband about how long it would take me to end up in traction — or, as a friend calls it, "assisted yoga."

I've been doing yoga — a personalized hybrid of Sivananda and vinyasa — on and off since graduate school, when I took a weekend class at the local YMCA with my mom. Through the years, I've taken sporadic classes in Svaroopa and Vinyasa Flow, among others. Some years I've done more than others. I've been doing it more consistently since 2007, a year after my thoracic outlet problems started; giving up yoga for nearly a year worsened the condition rather than made it better. (I wasn't formally diagnosed until a few years later.)

So these days, I do a long practice — long meaning anywhere from 75 to 83 minutes, these days mostly in the latter range, and that's asana  alone — twice a week. Since the Yoga Challenge began, I've done some long practices, but mostly added a half-hour of asana (postural practice) daily to my gym workouts. It's been a learning experience: working with my body rather than forcing it. But that's not the part of the challenge I want to ramble about. This is a Druid blog, after all.

The other important YC component: meditate 15 minutes a day. 

What is meditation? It comes from a Latin root meaning "thinking over" and often refers to a practice of contemplation and reflection, especially of a religious nature.

The definition reminds me of what John Michael Greer terms "discursive meditation" in The Art and Practice of Geomancy Traditional Western meditation involves not the banishing of thought, but focusing thought like a laser on a particular concept: in Greer, the geomantic figures, although you can do the same with any symbol system or a name or aspect of a god. This was the form of meditation used in the Christian world, although it's largely fallen out of favor.

The type most commonly used is Eastern meditation, which involves withdrawal from both the senses and thought, achieving a greater oneness through the absence of objects. This is the type you commonly see in yoga, in which people focus on their breath, a mantra or a candle-flame; the focus provides a retreat from thought. In this way, I find yoga asana itself a meditation; I count my breath throughout the practice to know how long to hold a pose, which leaves little room for thinking. (Thoughts do try to squeeze in there anyway.) Weirdly enough, I find counting to calm the mind — one to ten, over and over and over.

Overall, meditation is a shift in thought process from the secular to the sacred — the "set apart." It's the setting apart that makes something sacred, according to definition; there are no distractions, no other obligations in that moment, no multitasking, no ruminating.

Asana, running, weight-lifting, ecstatic dancing, washing dishes: all these can be meditation, if done in the right spirit. Trance-journeying, contemplating a prayer or concept, counting your breath. Religious rituals and prayers. If you're setting that time apart, using it for something other than distraction, ruminating or mechanical action, then it's meditation.

So, if chanting "om" doesn't do it for you, don't give up on meditation as a concept. I'd heartily recommend "Meditation: The Complete Guide" from Patricia Monaghan and Eleanor G. Diereck, which introduces the reader to a wide range of meditative practices from multiple traditions. Check it out.

Yoga, Wicca and the myth of origins

Every week — at least several times and often 80 minutes at a stretch — I make shapes in the basement. At least, that’s how the amused basement cat, Schnoogie, must view my yoga practice, an intensive hybrid of Sivananda and Vinyasa styles honed to my own particular needs. Schnoogie enjoys our yoga time, in which I spontaneously turn myself into the perfect cat jungle gym.

What annoys me about yoga: the competitive aspect of many classes, which is why I do my best practices by myself — listening to my own body, although I have taken classes in the past. The second: the whole notion of yoga as “ancient wisdom” that’s “5,000 years old.” To which I say: Put down the almond milk carob latte and listen up.

The problem, in my view, is a conflation of terms and concepts. Folks who say yoga has millennium-old roots tend to conflate it with the practice of Hinduism. Indeed, classical yoga — whose root means “to yoke,” similar to the meaning of the Latin “religio” — is quite old: it’s seated meditation. The precepts of meditation are included in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra and even the Upanishads. But even those texts don’t bring us to 3000 B.C.E.

Those who make the millennial claims conflate yoga with the Vedas, without truly knowing what the Vedas are. Yes, they are the oldest texts in Hinduism, memorized by every Brahmin. But they aren’t meditation instructions: they are hymns to the Gods, many of which are no longer worshiped in modern Hinduism, having evolved through the press of time. Other texts are ritual instructions and invocations to be recited by particular kinds of priests, not by the layman or even the mystic, so to speak. Religion was different back then, including practices such as animal sacrifice that would be abhorrent to Hindus today but which were standard in the ancient world — even among the ancient Israelites.

In other words, it was in no way recognizable as “yoga,” at least how that practice is viewed and defined today. In fact, even in modern history, “yogis” were regarded as charlatans and miracle-workers of ill repute, using manipulation to twist bystanders out of their well-earned ruppees.

There is ancient art from the Indus valley civilization that shows a god or man sitting in what appears to be a “meditation posture,” but that’s about it for postural yoga in ancient times. The Gundestrop Cauldron depicts a horned God sitting cross-legged; does that mean the Druids practiced yoga, or an equivalent? Or is it only that sitting cross-legged is the easiest way to situate yourself on the ground sans chairs?

Mark Singleton has written a truly excellent book, Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, that details the actual origin of what we consider the heart of yoga. In short, asanas come from body-building practices and the harmonial gymnastics traditions of the 1930s, which were embraced by Indians as well as Europeans. The meditation practices were older — they were around in the 1800s — but completely severed from postural practice, which was considered disreputable at the time. The first modern yogis included body-builders, not mystics; it was a strictly physical practice that only became married to meditation later on.

It’s not as fun as claiming yoga as ancient wisdom, true. But accepting it as a relatively modern practice also allows you to think critically about it, and not take it as immutable. This is important because any physical practice — or mental one, for that matter — can harm you if done without listening to your body and spirit. By accepting something as “ancient truth,” you give up the agency to adapt the practice. Adapting is important, too. For example, while some gurus claim headstand is good for all ills, I’ve stopped doing it because it aggravates my thoracic outlet syndrome. Headstand is probably great for a lot of people; heck, even elderly yogis do it. It’s just not suitable for my particular body formation.

All of this, however, reminds me of Wicca and its myth of origins. Thankfully, we’re largely past the point where people are claiming that it’s an unbroken spiritual tradition dating from the Neolithic. While it may be inspired by ancient Pagan cultures as well as Renaissance magic, modern Wicca — with its duotheistic structure and ceremonial circle — has its origins in the 1930s with Gerald Gardner. It has since evolved into many different traditions, much as yoga has evolved since the 1960s. Obviously, Wicca is more than just Gardner; the Romantics and feminist movement have influenced its various strains, for example.

Witchcraft before Wicca is a different entity, often Christian in its imagery and focused on charms, spells and other ways to achieve desired results. In other words, it was magic and not religion. I’ve always thought that the marriage between magic and religion tilted toward the former even in modern Wicca, but then again, I’m a pesky religious Druid.

My recommendation: any time a tradition claims to be ancient, disregard the claim. Few things are truly millennia-old. Age doesn’t necessarily equate with value, either. Modern Wicca is a vibrant religion, just as modern yoga is a vibrant form of exercise, regardless of ancient “pedigree.” The ancients weren’t necessarily wiser, healthier or more spiritual than we are today; they were simply people – human beings with human bodies, needs and desires. For that matter, teachers and tradition-leaders aren’t necessarily wiser, healthier or more spiritual, although they can be (and if they’re not, claim to be even more so). Don’t give up your right to question and, if need be, adapt for your own truths, realities and physical necessities.

On secular new year

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
– Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The secular new year comes in a rush of wind and sleet, rattling branches and fat flakes amid the gray light. I partake of my rather small annual ritual: updating my calendar with Brighid’s vigils, solstices and equinoxes, the four great holidays and the phases of the moon.

I don’t celebrate the secular new year. We go to bed our usual time, with our usual weekend revelry. I don’t foretell the future, although I may divine the answers to mundane, immediate queries, such as what I need to do to overcome my running injuries. We clean the house, visit relatives, do laundry.

Secular time means little to me, other than a need to change my calendar and update it with the missing annual events. Our secular calendar and its just-past-midwinter new year comes by way of Julius Caesar, a political invention to tie an empire together. The new year comes with no natural analog: not the falling into darkness that is Samhain, the Celtic new year; not the start of spring that is the new year in other parts of the world. No hero was born on this day and the solstice has passed us, the day already lengthening.

It is a calendar for political realities,  new year to bind us across traditions. But like most of our civic holidays, it feels arbitrary, disconnected from the natural round. And so I let it go.

I follow the Celtic sacred calendar, which means my year begins as the leaves fall and the frost comes, and my day begins as the sun sets. Get the worst over with, perhaps! Where do you find it meaningful to mark the start of sacred time?

Meán Geimhridh, the hearth

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.
– Christina Rossetti

The snow still coats the garden and the leaves on the house's north side as an ice-bright sun gazes down.

Meán Geimhridh: the heart of winter. Of the eight holidays on the great wheel, it has long been my least favorite, too evocative of the forced merriment endemic to the season. The Christmas Monster, clad in wrapping paper, credit cards and Advent candles, ordering everyone to be happy or else.

Traditionally, Meán Geimhridh is a time for me to put on a Druidic rite and either a.) fumigate the house with smoke or set it on fire, or b.) set myself on fire. The Gods laugh at me during midwinter, probably because I take everything too damn seriously. 

This time, I took a different path. I joined a women's hearth group set to put on the local Pagan community's Yule celebration. The focus was on the skills of our female ancestors — growing and preparing food, and the like — with the intentions of sharing the Hearth Goddesses' and ancestors' blessings and skills for the winter solstice.

And so. The year didn't turn out as expected. The wettest year on record prevented many of us from achieving good harvests. Life — including devastating flooding and its aftermath — prevented us from diving whole-hog into food preservation and the like. The ritual itself shifted and changed.

But it went well. It was probably the best Meán Geimhridh I've been to in a long time: simply a party, in which we made holiday decorations, chatted and feasted, and toasted the Gods and ancestors. We boasted, too, sharing our blessings, even those who struggled to find the year's blessings. I tended Brighid's altar throughout, a sacred duty I was glad to perform, and showed off my prize squash.

And this is really what the season is about, whether you call it Meán Geimhridh, Winter Solstice, Yule, Christmas or Saturnalia: the sharing of laughter, food and company. If we were forced into primitive self-reliance — on what we would have produced during this bleak, rainy year — we would have starved and sickened. The Hearth Mother warms us on the darkest night, lighting our way not because of our solitary piety, but the animal warmth that marks us — all of us, no matter how reluctant — as social animals. We congregate near food, warmth and company, as creatures turn their faces to the sun.

Have a blessed Meán Geimhridh, all.

Druids and canon

There is an ongoing discussion in the Henge of Keltria concerning whether Druids have a canon, or sacred texts. Some of my thoughts, culled from my response to the list and fleshed out:

I think, back in the wilds of history, Druids once did have a canon, covering liturgy and ritual at the least, if not theology, etc. As a point of comparison, consider another class of religious persons: the brahmins of classical India. Like the original brahmins — before someone took an inkwell and parchments and started recording the Vedas — knowledge would have been passed down orally from one generation to the next. I’ve seen theories that many Indo-European cultures in antiquity had taboos against writing down sacred lore. Interestingly, modern brahmins still memorize their sacred knowledge and recite from memory during ritual.

As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, recently went to a Hindu temple-blessing rite, an hours-long ceremony involving multiple offerings. The pandit chanted and performed the offerings in the right order throughout — strictly from memory and without missing a beat. It was amazing to watch. That is the tradition Druidry most likely had, and lost once the Romans and then the Christians intervened.

In short: There’s a reason that it took twenty years to train a Druid; there was a lot to remember!

Time-travel to today. Our Northern neighbors in the modern Pagan world, the Asatruar, at least have the Eddas to draw from; although Snorri Sturleson was a Christian, he kept a good deal of Christian philosophy out of it (albeit not all, I’m told; the concept of the end-of-days may have been Christian in origin). What modern Druids, at least those following an Irish/Scottish path, have are the myths and sagas — the Tain, Midhir and Edain, etc. — written down by Christian monks. The other elements we have left to us include folk tradition from out-of-the-way places, such as the Hebrides.

There’s the ogham, too, but there’s no indication that this was extensively used during Pagan times. Heck, there’s Biblical interpretations of ogham as well; it’s not just a tree alphabet. But yes, if you like, throw that into the concept of “canon.” Throw in the various Celtic languages and the concepts contained within its words; throw in the poems and other literature stemming from ancient times, even if Christian.

However, there’s a caveat; much of this isn’t some sort of sacred compendium, but shreds of lore mixed with a whole lot of Christianization, which needs to be winnowed out. I use comparative Indo-European mythology for that purpose.

As Keltrians, I’d suggest our canon is actually the ritual process and its order. In my personal rites, I often do it from memory alone.

Ultimately, though, the concept of canon may have a limited usefulness. It derives from the “Peoples of the Book,” the Abrahamic traditions and their texts. Pagan traditions can have sacred texts, true, but rarely a single one. Think of the sacred literature of the Hindus: mythological epics such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the hymns of the Puranas, the philosophical explorations of the Upanishads, the ritual instructions and hymns of the Vedas. There are many sacred texts and they’re being written all the time.

“Canon” implies that there is a single revelation of truth: the teachings of Christ, or Mohammed, or Moses, with everything thereafter following a set pattern. The universe is created, once and for all; the truth is revealed, once and for all. However, I don’t believe polytheism necessarily supports this view. Creation and destruction are ongoing, dancing back at forth, a spiral that may emulate but not repeat the infinite past as it swirls into the infinite future. There are many Gods, spirits, truths — many worlds and ways of being.

So, to expound, there is no “canon” in Druidry, in the sense of Ultimate Revealed Truth Without Sequel. The myths, triads, poetry, etc. provides a cultural commons — a place we all share, which helps us define ourselves as, say, Keltrian Druids rather than Hellenic Pagans, Zoroastrians or eclectic Wiccans. But there is no sense that this is the one truth, the only truth, the sole revelation.

One, two, three, four, five…..

My latest book-journey is Gabrielle Roth's "Maps to Ecstasy," which — in its way — goes into the metaphysics of her Five Rhythms trance-dance method. I sporadically do Five Rhythms as a workout; the type of ecstatic dancing I do under its influence is highly energetic, sweaty and interesting. But for Roth, the Five Rhythms — flowing, staccato, chaos, lyrical and stillness — are more than themes for a dance; they are the very stuff of the universe, imprinted in the patterns of our lives in myriad ways.

It is, in short, another way to divide the world by number. Some thoughts on particular numbers:

One is monism, brahma/atman, the universal spirit and total reality, seen and unseen, the undivided.

Two is dualism. It can be the benign dualism of Wicca's God and Goddess, the Yin/Yang, the moon and sun, the male and female. All too often, however, it is hierarchical dualism, which follows a dyad of good/bad, strong/weak, pure/impure, God/Devil. One half is seen as the antithesis of the other, and the goal is dominance. It's a sort of perverted monism, the undivided becoming divided and reflecting the structures of power.

Hierarchical dualism underlies most patterns of oppression. The question, then, is how to get away from it? My answer: we need to build our cultural models and thought patterns on something other than a base-2, either/or model. One is hard to grasp outside of mystical revelation, and often lends itself to the simple conceptual division of two. Two lends itself to abuses, probably due to our primate mind. 

And so. We need complexity.

Three is the number of the Druids: the land, sea and sky; fire, well and tree; the above and below and what joins them. It is the three worlds of the shaman: upper, middle and lower. It is the upright human seeing the world, the three tribes of spirits: Gods, nature spirits, ancestors. It is the triquetra knot, the three legs of the triskelion, the number of Fates, Norns, Graces, Graiai and Furies. It is time: past, present and future. Three mediates.

Four is solid: the base of a house or a pyramid, not likely to topple. It is the four directions, the four winds, the four cities of the Tuatha De Danann and their treasurers, the four elements of the Witch and the ceremonial magician. Four grounds us in space, the land — a map unrolling under our feet. 

Five is the four elements plus the spirit that unites them. It is the star that represents the limbs of the body and the head, the "number of man" in Christian mysticism. It is Roth's five rhythms, the five elements of the Chinese system, the provinces in ancient Ireland — one for each direction and then the center. It provides a center to that map of the land.

Six is a strange number, one that I've never had deep mystical connection with. It's the interlocking triangles of the figure we call the Star of David — upward and downward triangles uniting. A triad of dualities, a duality of triads, the Flower of Aphrodite, sex and sin, the Christian Number of the Beast. When I was a kid, I had an odd fear of sixes and twelves; I considered them unlucky numbers.

Seven is the mystic number, the number of visible planets in the ancient world. The Seven Directions take the map of the world into three dimensions: North, South, East, West, Above, Below and Center. It is the different notes of the diatonic and heptatonic musical scale, the Pleiades, the chakra system, the sacred number in Middle Eastern traditions as three is of the Celts. It contemplates.

Eight is four doubled, and thus an even firmer foundation. It's the map of winds rendered more complete, the medicine wheel, the bagua in Taoism, the solidity of that-which-is.

Nine, in a similar fashion, is the threefold three — the same energy of the triad, but rendered stronger, more complete. It is the Muses, the strongest wave that breaks on the shore, the sisters who rule the Fortunate Isle in Arthurian myth.

And zero: zilch, egg, absence, discovered rather late in the human endeavor. It's nothing, no-thing, nirguna brahman, the supreme reality without form. It's potential: it can be anything, but it isn't yet.

And that's enough driving myself nuts, for this morning anyway.

Poems: The Children’s Hour, Scene with Catbird, Vow of Silence

Some poems from my grad school archives:

The Children's Hour
———————————-
Your mind
is a cartoon
cotton-candy paints
mixed in Tokyo
a million frames
for every motion

oversize rabbits
and talking shoes
you defy
gravity
the laws of technology
and pain

small birds twitter
and circle your headaches
a flying machine
only toddlers would giggle

a safe on my head
you think trapdoors are funny
I fire your animators
and read a good book.

Scene with catbird
———————————-
Toes in the clover
dragonfly armored
with green mirrors
and cross-winged

Heels drum
the chest-dancer
and the lungs' breathy rattle

Slate gray bird
colored a thunderhead
singing in  tongue
not its species

Trees purr back
the bees bristle
a rabbit limps
in the rose bush

Vow of Silence
————————-
You cannot catch the beautiful.
Caterpillar, it wriggles
out
leaving only exoskeleton
and cracked plate glass.

Words net only the ugly
the gnats, the ghosts
the growling angst of a ship
rotting shoreline.

If I caught
a night speckled firefly
on the tip of my tongue
in the hollow of my tooth
would you taste it
would you know
what I meant?

Meandering review of “The Ecstatic Experience”

This morning, I finished Belinda Gore’s “The Ecstatic Experience: Healing Postures for Spirit Journeys.” The premise, drawing on the work of Gore’s mentor, the late Felicitas Goodman, is that assuming particular postures can facilitate the experience of shamanic trance.

Gore uses the term “ecstasy” to denote trance states, but I’m not sure I agree with that. Ecstasy is that which takes you outside yourself, but it needn’t involve journeys to the Otherworld or technicolor visionary experiences. But we’ll lay aside that quibble for now, since there are so many other quibbles I want to get to!

I have long experience with Otherworld journeying, so there’s no argument from me on that basis. My problem is, well, with the nature of the claims — not on the effectiveness of the postures, but on their purpose and derivation. The idea that ancient people must have stood or sat in these postures for trance-journeys is, well, a bit odd and not at all supported in historical record. Body-positions can have a whole host of connotations in art: religious/metaphoric, artistic, even practical in the sense of accommodating the medium (i.e., “I don’t have enough rock to carve a standing woman, but I can do a sitting one — as long as she’s the right shape!”)

I don’t have enough knowledge regarding the Mayan and Olmec cultures Gore focuses on, but I do know about Cernunnos, whose posture is included in the text as facilitating “metamorphosis.” How does she know the “All-Mother Anu” gave birth to him and that “his role was to sing the souls of the dead to the Summerland”? I’m all for unverified personal gnosis, but this was presented as some sort of historical fact. The fact is that the Gundestrop cauldron was likely made in Thrace and that Cernunnos is not mentioned in any Celtic myth. The title — “horned one” — likely referred to a deity with a proper name. (I honor him as Bel/Bile, but that deity is not reflected in myth or literature either; I acknowledge this openly, which isn’t the same as claiming it’s ancient truth or somesuch.)

Frankly, I don’t think these postures were used historically for trance purposes. Cernunnos sits cross-legged — in what yoga calls the “easy pose” — because people sit cross-legged on the ground all the time. His torc and snake are symbolic. If you assume the posture and have a trance experience, more power to you — just don’t claim the ancients did it.

As far as whether they work in shamanic trance…. I have no plans to try. I have my own means for entering trance states, although I’m always eager to learn new practices, whether or not I use them. In my opinion, holding one of these postures for 15 minutes will likely cause great physical pain, which is counterproductive when it comes to trance.And for the record, I’m in very good shape and do yoga quite a bit. In my younger days, I used to do figure modeling and am well-versed in the agony that results from holding virtually any position for even 10 minutes.

It’s interesting, though, particularly when people were recounting their visions in the text. If the method presented here works for you, go for it. I’d love to hear about it.