July | 2023 | Contemplative Inquiry

This post looks at Animism as the guiding principal of my Druidry. The term itself comes from nineteenth century anthropology, and is somewhat problematic. Scholars from European and North American backgrounds , formed by a mix of Christian and secular ideas, were studying, and labelling, the traditional practices of other people. The people themselves were mostly in the process of becoming colonial subjects and living in cultures under stress. So ‘Animism’ started out as a top-down classification, which gave Animists a lowly position in the hierarchy of cultural and spiritual life. A stigma persists to this day.

Despite this dubious history, the word ‘Animism’ is now being turned around by people from the global north itself, spiritually hungry in our now palpably faltering 21st century world. Some years ago, research by Graham Harvey distinguished two positive uses of the term Animism among modern western Pagans. “Some Pagans identified Animism as a part of their religious practice or experience which involved encounters with tree-spirits, river-spirits or ancestor-spirits. This Animism was metaphysical. … Other Pagans seemed to use ‘Animism’ as a short-hand reference to their efforts to re-imagine and re-direct human participation in the larger-than-human, multi-species community. This Animism was relational, embodied, eco-activist and often ‘naturalist’ rather than metaphysical” (1).

My Animism draws primarily on the second of the two accounts above. But it is deepened by a Buddhist influence, especially that of the Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh: “There is no absolute dividing line between living matter and inert matter. If we took the so-called inanimate elements out of you and me, we would not be able to live. We are made of non-human elements. This is what is taught in the Diamond Sutra, an ancient Buddhist text that could be considered the world’s first treatise on deep ecology. We cannot draw a hard distinction between human beings and other living beings, or between living beings and inert matter. There is vitality in everything. The entire cosmos is radiant with vitality. If we see the Earth as a block of matter lying outside of us, then we have not yet truly seen the Earth. The Earth is also alive” (2).

Thich Nhat Hanh follows an old tradition. In thirteenth century Japan, Zen Master Eihei Dogen had taught that enlightenment is just ‘intimacy with all things’. Elsewhere in his own text, Thich Nhat Hanh says: “Just as a wave doesn’t need to go looking for water, we don’t need to go looking for the ultimate. The wave is the water. You already are what you want to become. You are made of the sun, moon and stars. You have everything inside you”. Thich Nhat Hanh explains that a flower is made only of non-flower elements. We can say that the flower is empty of separate self-existence. But that doesn’t mean that the flower is not there. “When you perceive reality in this way, you will not discriminate against the garbage in favour of the rose” (2).

This Buddhist wisdom doesn’t seem to me to come directly out of the four noble truths or eightfold path. The Buddhists of south-east and east Asia were at ease with the traditional Animism of their cultures, and the views expressed above appear to me to be at least partly a cultural gift from the Animists. Japan, for example, was intensely influenced by Buddhism without any thought of displacing Shinto, and the traditions readily interwove.

It was otherwise in the west. Already, In the first century CE, the Roman philosopher Plutarch wrote of the death of Great Pan, after the time of Jesus but before the rise of Christianity. James Hillman comments: “With Pan dead, so was Echo; we could no longer capture consciousness through reflecting within our instincts. … The person of Pan the mediator, like an ether who invisibly enveloped all natural beings with personal meaning, with brightness, had vanished. Stones became only stones – trees, trees; things, places, animals no longer this god or that, but became ‘symbols’, or were said to ‘belong’ to one god or another. When Pan is alive, then nature is too – the owl’s hoot is Athena and the mollusc on the shore is Aphrodite … Whatever was eaten, smelled, walked upon or watched, all were sensuous presences of archetypal significance”.” (3).

James Hillman, after service as Director of Studies as the Jung Institute in Zurich, went on to develop his own form of archetypal psychology. He was a strong proponent of Panpsychism, a world view very similar to forms of Animism being articulated today. Panpsychism literally means the ensoulment of everything (from the Greek), though the sound ‘Pan’ also associates us with the god. At the same time this view broadly fits with the understanding of Zen Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, described above.

‘Animism’ is for me a word, not a thing, or a another religious banner to raise. It points to a wide range of experiences, understandings, and articulations. Pinned down to a single, dictionary definition, it would lose its power and energy. Yet Animism has become the word that best describes my way of being a modern Druid, both as view and as practice. I find it grounding and regenerative to have decisively adopted this word.

(1) Graham Harvey (ed.) The Handbook of Contemporary Animism London & New York: Routledge, 2014 (First published by Acumen in 2013)

(2) Thich Nhat Hanh The Art of Living London: Rider, 2017 (Rider is part of Penguin Random House)

(3) James Hillman The Essential James Hillman: A Blue fire London: Routledge, 1989 (Introduces and edited by Thomas Moore in collaboration with the author)

See also my recent post at https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2023/07/02/animist-endarkenment which references Emma Restall Orr’s The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature

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July 22, 2023

THE ROOKERY: MAGIC IN A FORMAL GARDEN

Streatham’s Rookery (1) is a formal garden within Streatham Common, one of south London’s many remarkable green spaces. I made a connection with it in 1992 when living close by.

About a year before I discovered OBOD Druidry, I was working with R. J. Stewart’s The Way of Merlin (2). This taught me, first of all, about sacred space. “Sacred space is space enlivened by consciousness. Let us be in no doubt that all space is sacred, all being. Yet if humans dedicate a zone, a location, something remarkable happens within that defined sphere of consciousness and energy. The space talks back”.

I was an urban seeker and used what the city gave me. From an early age I had been fed by imagery of secret and magical gardens. The Rookery, built in the then Spa village of Streatham (1) became my sacred space. Towards its centre, a wishing well testified to the power of healing waters. It was a good place to begin my journey. The space became more alive, and I, included within the gestalt, became more alive with it.

After establishing a sacred space, I was asked to begin a relationship with a spring and a tree. Stewart said: “we need to relate to such locations. This is a physical relationship first and foremost … we are one with the land, and trees, springs and caves are power points that tap into the energies of the land, and then reach into other dimensions altogether”. I found my spring quite easily (above). But there were almost too many trees to choose from, and I recall hesitating about my choice, to the point even of changing trees on my second or third visit. On my recent re-visit – woven into a rare family weekend in London – I found it easy to find the spring again but harder to remember my tree. I settled on the mature birch below, a good choice for a new, Goddess related undertaking (2). But I cannot vouch for it as my choice in 1992.

Sacred space (“the land talks back”), and befriending a spring and a tree: for me, these were the most powerful lessons from R. J. Stewart’s work. They were a helpful preparation for my later Druid training. I was very pleased to revisit this space in July 2023 and share it with family members.

(1) Streatham was in Surrey before becoming part of the County of London in 1889, and then Greater London in 1965. It began as a settlement around the old Roman road (Street Ham) from London to the south coast at Portslade, Brighton, the site a Roman port long lost to erosion. It appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Estreham. The village remained largely unchanged until the 18th century, when its natural springs, known as Streatham Wells, were first celebrated for their health-giving properties. The reputation of the spa, and improved turnpike roads, attracted wealthy city of London merchants to build their country residences in Streatham.

The Rookery began as a large private house with its own landscaped gardens. Much later, when the house and gardens were threatened with disposal and redevelopment, it was bought by public subscription and laid out as a formal open space, first opening to the general public in 1913. The Rookery is now one of the London Borough of Lambeth’s Green Flag Award-winning parks, directly managed by Streatham Common Cooperative (SCCoop), a local community-led enterprise.

(2) R. J. Stewart The Way of Merlin: The Prophet, The Goddess and the Land London: The Aquarian Press, 1991

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July 12, 2023

MUIN: “GATHER IN WHAT IS DEAREST TO YOU.”

Muin (Ogham name for Blackberry) is one of four plants that have a place in both The Green Man Tree Oracle (1) and The Druid Plant Oracle (2). In the latter, from which the illustration is taken, it is called Bramble.

Muin is an important plant ally for me. At times I have identified closely with ‘Mr. Bramble’ (3). He is stubbornly resilient, with deep and extensive underground root systems. Above ground, he can create an almost impenetrable barrier of briars. He digs in. He is a survivor. He tests qualities and intentions. He protects the deep earth and undervalued dimensions of being. Yet he also grows abundant tasty fruit, that can be made into wine or gin.

Where I live, Muin’s time traditionally runs from Lammas/Lugnasadh to Michaelmas/Mabon – essentially the calendar months August and September. This year, as this time approaches, I am thinking of Muin as a teacher. The Green Man Tree Oracle offers words of ‘green man wisdom’ for all its trees. Muin’s words are: “gather in what is dearest to you“. I find “gather in” friendly and relational, very good to hear in a world where ‘harvesting’ is often cold, impersonal and mechanistic. Muin’s more warmly relational note is reinforced by the words “dearest to you”. We are invited to consider “riches of the soul and the things that give us inspiration” as our recommended harvest.

There are obvious questions here: what is ‘mine’ to ‘gather in’? what to I choose? what do I let go? But this is not, fundamentally, a questioning and list-making task. It is more about being open to Muin’s magic. This, I believe, is rooted in an unusual combination of qualities: tenacity, challenge, depth, an invitation to pleasure and, indeed, a certain kind of intoxication. Over the coming weeks, I will draw on Muin’s inspiration as I gather this harvest of the soul*.

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The Druid Plant Oracle: Working with the Flora of Druid Tradition London: Connections, 2007 (Illustrated by Will Worthington)

(2) John Matthews & Will Worthington The Green Man Tree Oracle: Ancient Wisdom from the Greenwood London: Connections, 2003

(3) See: https://contemplativeinquiry.blog/2020/08/30/mr-bramble/

I think of soul as a process not an entity, though we don’t have the word ‘souling’.

July 9, 2023

A MOMENT OF GENTLE RAIN

Saturday morning, 8 July. Gloucester, England. I am warm. I am indoors. I am contentedly lethargic. My gaze turns to a balcony door.

I contemplate Elaine’s balcony garden. The flowers are less dramatic than during the solstice period. Their colours are softer. I see more green. I see raindrops on the other side of the door. They are evidence of a gentle rain falling on this tiny garden.

“I am the movement of the breath and stillness in the breath”, I say in my Druid contemplative liturgy. “Living presence in a field of living presence: here, now and home”. This can be true at any time, but some conditions are more helpful than others. Here and now, I become alive to the balcony garden, fully present. Knowing Elaine as creator of this garden extends my sense of connection. A simple nourishing moment.

Hours later, with a flash and a crash, the heavens opened and my world changed, heralding a new kind of experience.

Raindrops on glass,

Flowers in their pots.

Calm before the storm.

July 6, 2023

SABRINA IN GLOUCESTER

Pagan iconography in mainstream life? Sabrina, goddess of the River Severn/Hafren, appeared in King’s Square, Gloucester on Saturday 1 July. She was part of a civic celebration focused on the renovation of the Square. She was very well received. Responses seemed to range from friendly curiosity to enthusiastic delight. I include two photos I took at the time.

Later on, Sabrina processed through the town to the Anglican Cathedral, amidst music and dancing – captured on video by Nicola Haasz, recognised expert and devotee, on her facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/sabrinarivergoddess

In these hard times, it seems that there is a public appetite for solidarity and spectacle. I hope that Sabrina makes many more appearances, in Gloucester and other places in her extensive Severnside domains.

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July 2, 2023

ANIMIST ENDARKENMENT

I have been re-visiting Emma Restall Orr’s ground-breaking work on animism, where she reframes this term for our times and emphasises its value to modern Druids. Much of her book explores the formal philosophy and metaphysics of animism and panpsychism. In this, more lyrical passage, she questions ‘permanent enlightenment’ and advocates freedom from “knowledge-based certainty” and dependency on knowing.

“To the animist, a state of permanent enlightenment is not considered natural. His senses inform him that, firstly, light is sustained by a balance of light and darkness, and, secondly, it is lived for the most part in neither darkness or light, but in varying degrees of twilight and shadow, of half knowing, believing, assuming and concluding.

“The aspiration for fluency and lucidity, another light-derived word, is firmly established in our culture though. Literally and figuratively, in darkness we are denied the safety of certainty. As the dusk comes and the light slips away like an outgoing tide, edges begin to dissolve. In darkness, our senses more easily blur, leaving us potentially deceived. If we are dependent upon knowing, this can leave us confused and fearful. The not-knowing is judged as ignorance; darkness is declared bad, and to be avoided as dangerous. As the deep wellspring of wickedness, any who embrace the darkness must be equally spurned.

“If, however, our aim is not a knowledge-based certainty, what the darkness provides is delicious and necessary release. In the dark, the separation created by edges is no longer relevant to our perception and reality, allowing entirely new parameters of freedom. … We need moments within which we can dissolve all we are and all we know, that we might find the nourishment for new inspiration and realisation”.

(1) Emma Restall Orr The Wakeful World: Animism, Mind and the Self in Nature Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Moon Books, 2012