Retreat #1

Today was my first retreat day that I have been able to do as part of my clergy training.  The instructions we are given are pretty vague.  The only thing I knew I had to do was morning devotionals, prayer at each meal, and a full druidic right.  There is nothing about how long a “day” is, or what to do when we are not doing any of the above.  As I was thinking about what I would do, it occurred to me that in a lot of ways every day for me right now is a retreat day.  I am on summer vacation and I am not currently working.  So I stay at home, do some chores each day and do work for my Clergy training.  I do morning devotionals each day, and often say prayer over meals (though not as consistently as I should).  I don’t do a full druidic rite each day however.  In the end I decided that I would cut myself off from all electronics for the day.  No phone and no computer.  I also decided I would keep myself to the room where we have our alters and which also functions as a guest room. 

                I started the day off with morning devotionals and meditation.  I got very deep and had a nice Spirit walk but nothing of great import was passed on to me.  It was more like a spiritual recharging and resting.  After that it was breakfast and prayers to the ancestors, offering a bit of the breakfast to them. I used the prayer suggested to us, but I didn’t really care for the way it was written.  I then set to organizing the alter room.  It was beginning to be used for storage which really it shouldn’t be.  I got rid of a lot of junk and made it much more comfortable.  I then set to reading and writing.  I rewrote the prayer to the ancestors to say over meals to be more to my liking.  I also wrote an invocation to Airmed for the upcoming summer solstice ritual.  I didn’t get one done for Miach just yet.  Not sure how to go about that considering in the tale he’s killed.  Well we offer and invoke our dead relatives, why not a god? 

                I did a lot of reading in Serith’s book “a book of pagan prayers”.  This helped me to write the invocation.  I also spent some time just doing some plain old thinking.  I started to get anxious as the day wore on however and found it difficult to sit.  At around 4 I did my full ritual of blessing.  During the divination phase I asked these questions; is the offering accepted, what is the nature of the blessing, and what do I need to be aware of?  To the first question I received Duir, to the second I received Emancholl, and the third I received Or.  My interpretation is that the offerings were accepted, that I will be challenged with an illness in some way, and that I need to be more aware of my money.  Not really what I was hoping for, as I was already challenged with illness this winter, and not looking forward to doing that again, then again, it could be an illness of someone else such as a friend or child.  Time will tell. 

Snow White and the Huntsman through pagan eyes (warning spoilers)

             Last night, I and many members of the local pagan community got together to go to the release of “Snow white and the huntsman”.  Over all the consensus of was that the movie was so-so.  I am not here today to talk about the acting or the dialog.  No I am here to point out how incredibly pagan this move is.   Some of these elements are really obvious and only the most uninformed would miss the connection.  Other elements are more difficult to pick out if someone isn’t intimately familiar with the lore.  Let me start with the ecological changes.  The ancient Celts had the idea that when a man became King he was to be married to the sovereignty goddess of the local area.  The details of the ritual was likely different from tribe to tribe.  If the king’s rule was just and he was a “good” king then there was peace and prosperity for all.  The crops grew, natural disaster and famine stayed away.  Enemies would be defeated and life was good for all.  However, if the king was not an honorable man, if he broke his word and dishonored himself and his tribe, the goddess of the land to which he was married would desert him.  Famine and drought would come.  Enemies would come and the king’s forces would be defeated.  The goddess would betray the king and in the end he would be killed and a new king would take his place.  This concept is played out in the movie with slight variations, but the pattern is the same.  The movie starts with the king and queen and their daughter “Snow white” (who also comes by her name in a very pagan way, but I’ll address that later) and all is well in the land.  There is peace, the land is fertile and the people happy and healthy.  Then the queen grows ill one winter and dies.  The king is “inconsolable” and we begin to see the land fade a bit.  Still there is the hope and youth of Snow white and this helps to keep things going.  Much later the king takes a beautiful and mysterious woman as his bride, marrying her only twenty four hours after meeting her.  This new queen kills the king and sucks away his life on their wedding night, lets her army in the gates and takes over, locking Snow White in the north tower.  Her rule is so harsh that all the life of the land retreats and “nature turns upon itself”.  Thus our analogy is complete.

                Oh but we are just beginning to see the pagan roots of this movie.  This new “evil” queen and the permanent winter her rule bring ties us to yet another pagan myth, this one from Celtic Scotland.  The main conflict of this movie is the queen who is very old and stays young and beautiful by sucking the youth out of young woman, wants Snow white’s heart, for the queen is told that if she eats the heart she will stay young forever as Snow white is the embodiment of youth and purity, which is easily associated with spring and growing things.  Compare this with the tale from Scotland where the spirit of winter, a hag, called the Cialleach.  She brings winter, and she rules over the winter months.  She captures the young goddess Bridget and imprisons her, because Bridgit will take over and rule during spring and summer.  The Cilleach wants to rule all year, forever.  Yet a young god from the ever green isle (Ireland) comes and rescues Bridget and together they make their escape on Imbolc and the Cialeach sends the last storms of the season to try to recapture her.  In the end she fails and the Cialeach is turned to a standing stone until the next Samhain.  One can thus see the very obvious pagan heritage this story carries. 

                The more obvious pagan portions of the story is the time the heroes spend in an enchanted forest full of fairy and friendly animals, the secret last bastion of green and growing things.  This too harkens back to many an pagan story where the hero is taken to a magical otherworld.  What I found really astounding is the directory/storywriters inclusion of a magnificent with antlers seemingly made of birch saplings.  This white stag was only referred to as “him”.  It was plainly obvious to every pagan in the theater that this was the representative of Cernunnos.  The stag bends his head to Snow white giving her his “blessing” and thus making her the embodiment of a sovereignty goddess. I also feel I must point out how similar this stag was to a scene in the Gibli animated movie Mononoke.  

                There were many uses of magic through the movie and plenty of aspects that smack of the shamanic journey and working with nature spirits, not to mention the magic mirror.  This movie was so amazingly pagan to its core that the one very Christian head nod, the reciting of the lord’s prayer by Snow White while she is a captive, is jarring and completely out of place.  There is no other reference to Christianity in the film, not even at the end when Snow white is being coroneted by a priest!  I can’t help but think that the inclusion of the Lord’s Prayer was in fact added in by another party, perhaps the actress herself.

                Lastly I want to point out another reason why I feel this film has a strong pro-pagan message.  The road to success for our character was obviously helped by the Fey and dwarfs, and of course that magnificent white stag.  Never were our characters aided by angels, or the Christian God, or Jesus, nor were they opposed by devils or demons.    All in all as a pagan I really enjoyed the film and was pleasantly surprised at how pagan it was. 

                

Woah! what a trip its been!

It has been long since I have had the time to really sit down and write a post for this blog. I have so much to share and I’ll do my best to tell the stories that relate to my spiritual practice…what a trip it’s been.

 I have worked half this hard in school and gotten straight A’s, but now I am in Nursing school, the rules have changed and the gloves have come off. I have sacrificed my social life, my family time, my position as president of the local pagan meetup, and Cottonwood protogrove is limping along at best. All this and I am excited to have gotten solid B’s in all my classes and passed on to the next semester. In this processes my ego has taken some blows, but nothing has brought me to tears like some of my classmates. I have seen a lot of hardworking, intelligent people drop or fail the program. During these trials I have often invoked the help of my ancestors, land spirits, and the gods. I find that most often I am calling on my ancestors to help me through. I think this is for several reasons. First it is the ancestor fetish that I created as my last major magical working. Through this I am able to contact them directly. As of yet I have not done the work to gain the aid of any other Nature Spirits other then my totem the stag. I also call on my ancestors to help me with nursing school because many of them were nurses. Others were pharmacists and physicians. They really understand what I am going through. My work with them has ranged from simple prayers and offerings, to direct communications. My idea of direct communion happens when I open the gates, give my offerings and place my hand on the fetish. I call to my ancestors and ask questions. Sometimes I get a simple feeling in the hand in arm, other times I hear words or phrases in the back o f my mind, or images or just a knowing of something. One example was that I got a knowing of specifically at topics were going to be asked and what I needed to study. A couple times I was “told” to relax, that I had done the work and would do well on the test. Never was I given the answers to the questions…despite my asking. I did not give offerings or communicate with the ancestors on every test or quiz. What I noticed over these past two semesters is that on the tests where I sought out the help of the ancestors beforehand there was consistently a 6% increase in my test score over the days I did not seek their aid.

 The Protogrove got off to a really good start, but then we recently lost two of our four members (counting myself) at the same time for different reasons. The timing was also very bad as I was closing in on the end of the semester. I ended up doing the public spring equinox ritual solo, and Beltaine did not happen. However I was able to do a really good talk about dealing with grief and loss from a pagan perspective. Also before the loss of membership the grove gave a good talk on Indo-European Cosmology and why we set it up in ADF as we do.

 As for other magical workings, the only really noteworthy experiences I have had are when I went to Oregon to help my parents out in when their alcohol addiction got the better of them and my mother ended up falling down drunk and breaking the tip of her acromion and both arms (not sure which bones exactly). Before I left for Oregon I did a full rite blessing. I really felt the blessings of Lugh come over me, and I got the phrase “you are the light bringer”. When I arrived at my childhood home, I went to the river and there I gave offerings and sought welcome from the land spirits. At the end of the short right a salmon jumped and damn near splashed me, this an a deep area of the river where salmon rarely jump as there is no need. While there to add insult to injury my Dad’s beloved black lab and hunting partner died suddenly and unexpectedly. What was more surprising my father, asked me to say prayers over her. I think he asked this because he was and still is, struggling emotionally and spiritually and didn’t have it in him. So I took up my crane bag, went out to the dog, which he had laid in the back of the pickup and I placed a hand on her lifeless shoulder. I spoke my prayer and asked Cernunnos, as the lord of beasts and a chthonic deity to take her and let her join in his wild hunt. It felt very right. I burned offerings for both the dog and Cernunnos. On the day that I had to leave, I went again to the river, as I had every day since coming there, and I asked for a spirit of the land to watch over my father and mother and to help them heal. I left an offering of a semi-precious stone in return for this. I closed the rite and began my walk up the bank and back to the house a caught the glimps of a black shadow in the shape of a man, but with no details. I did not get a sense of maleficence, and so took this to be a sign that a spirit has taken me up on my request. The end result, is simply that my mother is healing well and has stayed away from the alcohol. My father has sunk deeper into his depression and his drinking worsened. I think however this was necessary as all his life he has resisted treatment or the idea that he is an alcoholic. It finally got so bad he could no longer deny it and has gone to a long term treatment facility. I think this time he has gone for himself. As a healer I know that at times things have to get worse, a healing crisis of sorts, before the bodies healing mechanisms really kick in. I pray it’s similar to what my father has had to go through.

 So what have I been up to since school got out? Well not much magically. I am still meditating every day and working on my clergy training. I am doing Ogham castings for free so that I might practice. I am also planning more protogrove meetings trying to get things back on track for that. I’ll be teaching a spell-crafting class on June 16th and also the Protogrove will be hosting a public summer solstice rite on the 16th. I am already looking at options for Lughnasadh. I am going to an ADF druid get together called 8 winds at the end of June and I am really excited about it. I am making plans to do further work from Ian Corrigans summoning book and to find some allies from among the Sidhe. Oh! and I almost forgot one other “working” I did. Once again my ex has decided to try and rob me of my right to claim my daughter as a dependent on my tax return as per our divorce agreement. I gathered all my evidence and sent it in to the IRS and then asked stag to find a fitting spirit to go and help influence things to go my way. Not sure if it made a difference one way or another, but I should be receiving the rest of my tax return next week. Now if I can just prevent this from happening next year…

I am not dead yet! really.

I know it's been an age since I have had/made time to sit down and write on this blog. Nursing school this semester has been a monster to deal with and I just haven't had the time. Summer will be here in just a few weeks however, and readers can once again look forward to regular updates.

I am now a Dedicant

I just recieved the official word last night. I have passed my dedicant's path review and I am now a dedicant! One step down, another to go!

Brushing off the old skills

It's been a while since I have gotten to use my skills as a massage therapist to help those who are in high to mid level amounts of pain. Today I got to do it for three people. Being in nursing school has really taken up an avialable time I might otherwise use to do massage, but today it worked out that I got to help some people out. I had forgotten what a nice feeling it is to see some one get off the massage table and watch the slow smile of relief come to their face as they realize they feel so much better. It's good to be reminded that I am in deed a healer.

I have turned in my Dedicant's pathwork, and the reviewer is going over it, and together we are making corrections and cleaning it up. It's hard to make the time to do it with school and all, but it's important to me. I know it's going to make me a much better writer also.

I have decided that I would like to do some volenteer work this summer for Hospice.

busy bee

School has started again. I have just finished my 3rd week of my 2nd semester of nursing school. It's fast and furious and I spend a lot of time reading, in class, in clinic and just trying to get it all done, thus the silence on my blog. The biggest news of note in regards to my Druidry is that I have completed my Dedicant's path work and submitted it for review. In a few weeks I should see if I pass or if things need more work. In the mean time I am stepping on to the Clergy path and have begun the preliminary work for that. Besides a several basket fulls of short essays this includes a dialy morning prayer, which now comes after my daily morning meditation, a even prayer over the meal, which I haven't succesfully incorperated into my routine yet, and a monthly retreat day. I haven't yet tried a retreat day, but it's just a matter of picking a Saturday and Sunday and making it happen. Easier said then done I supose.

In my inner life, I came to a painful realization last weekend. That being: alcholism is going to kill my parents, and I am powerless to change that. I saw the toll it was taking on thier bodies when I last visited and I see my parents getting old very fast. They have been trying to hold onto recovery since I was a toddler, but never seem to be able to. 36 years or so later and still they can't manage it. It may be thier liver, or a car accident, or some other type of death, but behind it will be the alcohol. It was a realization that made me sad. I am coming to terms with it however.

Also the other day I was taking a test in my Psychnursing class and there was a test question that described a woman who was very much like my ex-wife. I had a huge emotional reaction to it. It was sudden and unexpected. I have never had a test question give me an emotional reaction before. I was flooded with sadness and pitty. It seems there are still some unresolved feelings in regards to the divorce and my ex and what might very possibly be her borderline personality. Not sure when I will have time to explore that. Probably when I make time for my retreat day.