Druidry | Contemplative Inquiry

My inquiry moves slowly. But it doesn’t stand still. So from time to time I update the ABOUT section of my blog. Sometimes I discuss my changes in a post. Occasionally it seems as if the blog has its own life and writes itself through me. I’m not sure that I would claim the word Awen here, but I can end up surprised at what appears.

This time there seems to be a settling, an emphasis on continuity. I recommit to a contemplative inquiry, grounded in modern Druidry and with the inquiry process itself as my core practice. I am now assuming that this will be lifelong. In the past I have tended to believe that the inquiry would eventually lead to a conclusion of some kind, or become redundant for other reasons. Another project would then emerge – or maybe I would retire from projects and put my feet up. That belief has gone, for my inquiry is no longer a ‘project’.

As I was writing this morning, I became conscious of the change. ‘My inquiry’, I wrote ‘has shifted from a focused experiential investigation into a more relaxed, at times meandering process that brings illumination, healing and peace’. I have always had, in the back of my mind, prestigious models of both academic and spiritual inquiry that do not encourage relaxed meandering. In the academic models, results like ‘illumination, healing and peace’ are beside the point. In the spiritual ones, they are mostly reckoned to be very hard-won. But there it is. I am moving into a life-lived-as-inquiry space by softening and reframing my idea of inquiry. I seek support and nourishment rather than new and different ‘results’. Looking at these words now, they seem obvious, not even new – but I’ve only just caught up. It does seem, experientially, as if the blog has become the voice (spirit?) of the inquiry and intervened to educate me. It’s an odd feeling.

Here is the new ABOUT text:

“I am James Nichol and I live in the city of Gloucester, England. My contemplative inquiry began in 2012. It is grounded in modern Druidry, though I have drawn on the enduring wisdom of many times and places. I am also influenced by the current turn towards an eco-spirituality that meets our own historical moment. The inquiry itself is my core practice. I see it as a lifelong journey. In my blog I include personal sharing, discursive writing, photographs, poetry, and book reviews.

“Over the years, my inquiry has shifted from a focused experiential investigation into a more relaxed, at times meandering process that nonetheless brings illumination, healing and peace. In the contemplative moment, I am living presence in a field of living presence, at home in a living world. This is not dependent on belief or circumstance, but on the recognition of what is given, in joy and sorrow alike. I find that this simple recognition encourages a spirit of openness, the acceptance that nothing stays the same, an ethic of interdependence and a life of abundant simplicity.

“My book, Contemplative Druidry: People, Practice and Potential, was published in 2014. It includes a foreword, Deep Peace of the Quiet Earth, by Philip Carr-Gomm. There are major contributions in the main text from 14 other Druids offering diverse perspectives on the topic: https://www.amazon.co.uk/contemplative-druidry-people-practice-potential/dp/1500807206/“

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April 3, 2023

APRIL AND ‘DRUID MINDFULNESS’

Where I live, April 2023 brings qualities and freshness and new growth. My heart meets the moment as I walk in the bracing breeze. Sunny and overcast periods succeed each other. Moving through this enlivening space, I naturally welcome the energy of change it embodies.

But it’s not quite that simple. There’s an underlying turbulence too, which can easily challenge my balance. Slogans like ‘I am the sky. Everything else is weather’ aren’t enough. I, as natural man, have to ground and embody them. They have be be aligned with my felt sense.

I wasn’t sure how to talk about this when I discovered that someone else had done it for me. Philip Carr-Gomm, who until recently led OBOD (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids), offers a regular podcast: Tea with a Druid. No 249 is about ‘finding calm in chaos’. It is up on YouTube as: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew4pD3OJen8

Philip suggests that the best way to deal with chaos, turbulence, or the everyday stress of modern life, is to turn to the stillness inside. Then it becomes possible to stay in the moment whilst expecting nothing. It takes work to get there – to identify ways of finding stability and calm even when all around is unstable and unpredictable.

Philip understands modern Druidry as a tradition of ‘mindfulness in natural settings’, whether real or visualised. The stillness found in those settings isn’t a dead stillness but a living one – leaves rustle, waves crash. The refreshment is somewhat different from that of a more abstract meditation where we sit with thoughts and feelings, finding the space beyond. In the podcast, Philip takes us through a meditation of the kind he describes. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone, whether or not involved in Druidry.

Returning to my recent walk, and the record of it, I see branches, buds and sky. I remember the movement in the sky, and a slight quivering of the wood. Records have their limitations. The stillness wasn’t one of complete stasis, as it may appear below. My current response is complicated by the human gift of memory, which is not the original experience. I am also absorbing someone else’s input. I am in a completely different here and now. But I am held within an enlivened tranquility, not at all that of the ‘tranquiliser’, and this is certainly a wonderful resource. Gratitude to the culture that has enabled it.

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March 29, 2023

GREENING

Lately I have been seeing more catkins and leaves amongst the elegant branches of their trees. A vivid green is present on the ground. As yet the changes are tentative. But they hold the promise of new life and growth. There’s a freshness here, enhanced by strong breeze. I notice and feel energised, walking down the path.

The changes have not gone very far, but the trend is now clear. For me, it shows up well against a blue sky. In this changeable season, I see possibilities for my own life, now that I am settled and in good health. These too are in their early stages, showing signs of promise more than accomplishment. My inner wisdom warns me not to move past ‘promise’ into ‘accomplishment’ too speedily or strivingly. Promise has its own season.

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March 25, 2023

EMERSON: ‘IMMORTAL BEAUTY’

“Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

“Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, – no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes), which nature cannot repair.

“Standing on the bare ground, – my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am a part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, – master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of an uncontained and immortal beauty.” (1)

In the first paragraph above, I hear my own experience, described in a mid 19th century American voice. I share the sense that the exhilaration comes partly from the land, woods and sky themselves and partly from the continuing life of the child within us.

In the second paragraph, I feel at home with with the overall sentiment, whilst having to work a little with Emerson’s terminology. At the beginning I am not sure what he means by ‘God’. I do understand that ‘plantations of God’ restores innocence, as well as wildness, to the term ‘plantation’. (Emerson was a notable abolitionist.) I also note that the woods are a domain where reason and faith are brought together, in a time and culture where they seemed to be in conflict. Nature isn’t just a word for material reality. Nature is a source of protection and healing that goes beyond the mundane.

The third paragraph makes Emerson’s transcendentalism clear, and with it the true power of contemplation. ‘Standing on the bare ground … uplifted into infinite space – all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing: I see all”. God and Nature become Universal Being, from which ‘I’ am not separate. To be simply present in this space, with no agenda and nothing in mind, is to be “the lover … of an uncontained and immortal beauty”. The nature of our experience is a living nature we perceive, are part of, and relate to – not a reified externality. An open, enlivened receptivity to this reality can allow a deeper awareness (for Emerson, that of the Divine in us) to declare its presence.

(1) Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature Boston, Mass: Thurston, Torry and Company, 1849

NOTE: According to Wikipedia, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82) “was an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century” who gradually moved away from the religious and social beliefs of his contemporaries, formulating and expressing the philosophy of transcendentalism in his 1836 essay Nature”. He wrote most of his important essays as lectures first and then revised them for print. “Emerson’s ‘nature’ was more philosophical than naturalistic. … Emerson is one of several figures who took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting the view of God as separate from the world”.

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March 16, 2023

MARCH 2023: WINTER PUSHES BACK

Where I live, March has so far been a contest between the coming of spring and a winter that won’t let go. The city of Gloucester has been relatively insulated, but we have still had sub zero nights and low day time temperatures. There has been snow that didn’t settle, cold hard rain and occasional high winds. There have also been frequent periods of sunshine – still cold, still rainy, yet a joy to be out in. Underneath this changeability, the period of daylight grows longer.

A canal side walk shows a more subdued world than last year, and a sense of latency, as though life is waiting to see what will happen next. The wheel of the year turns as ever. What to expect on the ground has become less certain. The climate crisis is visibly in process, with the consequence of vast changes in the arctic now making themselves felt here. We could say that the Cailleach is angry and mobilising. But what this means for our day-to-day weather isn’t always clear.

As I experience these shifts (not so dramatic in themselves in the here and now) I can’t help thinking about culture as well as nature. Climate has moved down the formal political agenda – again. Outright denialism and repression of information about relevant topics still aren’t over. Sir David Attenborough, who has been making nature programmes since the beginning of broadcast TV, will not be having his most recent one (6th and last of a new series) shown live by the BBC. It will be available only on iPlayer.

Supported by groups like WWF (World Wildlife Federation) and RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), this programme highlights the destruction of nature in Britain and looks at rewilding as part of the solution. There are allegations that the restricted availability of this content stems from a fear of offending Conservative politicians and the right wing press. The BBC has issued denials but I have not seen any other plausible reason put forward. Yet this is about conservation: in older meanings of ‘conservative’, the protection of nature and the exploration of rewilding could readily have become a conservative cause. They have been, in the past – think about Theodore Roosevelt and the National Parks movement in the USA.

From a Druid and Earth spirituality perspective, the desacralisation of nature, and the emergence of a wasteland culture, lie at the heart of this problem. This is not new. It has being going on for a long time, for many reasons – religious, economic and political – driven by people with widely different projects and motivations. I know that there is much creative work going on to develop better understandings and positive projects. But it still saddens me that the balance of power and resources, especially in a renewed time of wars and the threat of wars, remains so troubling.

In my personal life I am happy and optimistic. I can feel sad about what is going on around me without being defined or disabled by my grief. Moments of fear and sparks of anger, too. They need not be driven away. They too have an honoured place at the table. They are part of the larger whole, and, lived with emotional intelligence, a way of bearing witness and a spur to action in the world.

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March 13, 2023

A NEW DEPARTURE

Elaine and I are settled in our new home, after a long and at times hard journey. A year ago I was struggling to breathe. Now I can celebrate my breathing. Elaine can celebrate her increased mobility. We have become free to look around.

As a result, we have joined a new community choir based in the revamped Gloucester Folk Museum, which has space for classes like this. After three sessions I feel more commitment than I expected, since I have had no involvement in choirs since my voice broke over sixty years ago. I discern no real continuity. It has been wisely said that the past is another country: they do things differently there. There is a prospect of actual public performance before very long. Voluntary, but I think I am up for it.

Given my Bardic education in Druidry, I see this venture as a playful aspect of my spiritual inquiry, refreshingly different from the contemplative aspect. Part singing and harmonisation demand sensitivity and cooperation, each iteration bringing something new into the world. My two YouTube clips are versions of songs we are learning.

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February 16, 2023

AFTER SUNSET

The light is draining from the sky with its subtle reds and greys. The hills, not quite reduced to silhouette, watch over the town. The houses and urban trees seem darker and my eye is drawn to an arch of artificial light. I continue to enjoy the spacious outlook from my new home. But I’m also in an odd liminal mood, with a pervasive sense of unknowing.

I drew a (Druidcraft) tarot card for the first time in a month. This was a single card, to illustrate something about myself within this space. I was given the Hanged Man.

The Hanged Man is bound and upside down – helpless and vulnerable. He does not appear to be suffering, but serenely awaiting a consequential event – a death, a birth, perhaps both. In the Druidcraft Tarot he is the initiate, suspended on the world tree, surrendered to the rhythms of life. The Tree unites the three worlds and. now one with the Tree, the Hanged Man has the capacity to travel freely between them. His seed has become the mistletoe that will be cut with the golden sickle “to symbolise the entry of the Divine Life into the world” (1).

When I draw the card my responses are less mythologised. I am settling in a new home, a place that I want to be in, with a partner I want to be with. It’s a story of renewal. It’s also a time when physic energy is being withdrawn from preoccupation with the project of moving. This energy is available for other dimensions of experience. Perhaps the ‘after sunset’ dimension is one of them. But what, specifically, is emerging I cannot yet sense, or intuit, or divine. All I can do is watch and wait, sensitive to experience, and my responses to experience, as they arise.

It seems that my task in this extended moment is to remain awake, engaged, passive and vulnerable at the same time. This is my lesson, at this time, from the card.

(1) Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm The DruidCraft Tarot: Use the Magic of Wicca and Druidry to Guide Your Life London: Connections, 2004 (Illustrated by Will Worthington)

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February 9, 2023

ALERT REST IN THE LIGHT OF EARLY SPRING

Crocuses are appearing, harbingers of spring. In the middle of the day, I feel the power of the sun. In my own life, I am getting used to a smaller and lighter living space. The work of moving is almost done. I shed calculation and care, making room for curiosity and glee.

Some of this is visual. I track changes in daylight from misty early morning to strong sunlight and vivid blue sky at noon. Subtle shifts moment to moment lead to big changes over the hours.

A personal mood of renewal fits the change of season, now that we are clearly in a rising year. The difference is that I am allowing myself to experience a tiredness that I had not fully acknowledged when our moving process was at its height. I am also aware that there are still things to be done. I am not fully in a get-up-and-go frame of being. What I need most, right now, is an alert kind of rest.

I have a sense of coming to a place, and settling, and embracing the experience I am offered here. I’ve been working to refine my personal understanding of Eckhart Tolle’s use of ‘Presence’. For me, it seems to combine an immersion in the flow of experience and a communion with it. Not only bare awareness but also relationship. Being alive in a living cosmos. Opening up to gratitude and love.

This is a key aspect of my contemplative inquiry within the modern Druid tradition, though the experience pointed to is universal. Uncovering what is hidden in plain sight by polishing the lenses of perception. An alert kind of rest.

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January 23, 2023

BRIGID AT IMBOLC

“Every day and every night

That I say the genealogy of Bride,

I shall not be killed, I shall not be harried,

I shall not be put in a cell, I shall not be wounded …

No fire, no sun, no moon shall burn me,

No lake, no water, no sea shall drown me.” (1)

Brigid has a long history, stretching back in Gaelic traditions to at least the pagan Celtic iron age. The words above come from the Western Highlands of Scotland, in this form probably dating to the traumatising early modern period. Caitlin Matthews suggests that, even though the the words are addressed to ‘St. Bride’ rather than the Goddess of poets, they still have the talismanic power to preserve life.

More recently, Brigid has been successfully revived as a Pagan Goddess, where, according to an affirming Imbolc self-dedication story by Morgan Daimler (2) she has lost none of her capacity to protect her devotees.

“When I decided that it was essential for me a self-dedication to the pagan path, just like all my books talked about, I chose Imbolc to do it on. At that point the holiday to me was on the 2nd, the same day as America celebrated Groundhog Day, and was about cleansing and blessing of the self, so it seemed ideal for a self-dedication. I got everything together and when the night of the ritual arrived I was excited to take such a life changing step. At 13, coming from a non-religious background, doing something like this was momentous and I felt like I was ready to commit myself to the spirituality I had been studying.

“I went out alone into the bitter cold, without a winter coat on, and tried to do the ritual the way I had learned how to, but it was hard to focus. February in Connecticut is frigid and the darkness on that particular night was total, without any moon to light my way. It was Brigid’s holiday, so I automatically started calling on her, asking for her help, for the strength to do what I planned to do. At the same time it was almost a reflex to call on a Goddess I associated with warmth a light under those circumstances. It was important to me to make a declaration of my religious path, the books I’d read at that point had emphasized the need to be outdoors, and I was too stubborn to let the cold weather stop me. So I prayed to Brigid.

“It’s funny the way, as children, we simply take experiences in our stride, without considering them at all out of the ordinary. I don’t remember ever feeling Brigid’s presence or having a sense of the numinous, but I prayed and then I was warm. The cold simply ceased to be something I noticed, as if everything around me had become an indoor room temperature. I took the usual half hour or so kneeling on the cold ground to do my ritual, dedicating myself to the Irish Gods and to pagan spirituality. And then I got up, collected my supplies and went back inside, feeling euphoric.

“At the time it never even registered that what I did was dangerous or that I was risking frostbite and hypothermia. And I never stopped and thought that it should seem at all remarkable to pray to Brigid for warmth and then be warm. It all seemed entirely natural and normal.

“We speak, and the Gods really do listen. Sometimes they even answer.” (2)

(1) Alexander Carmichael Carmina Gadelica Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972 (Cited in Caitlin Matthews The Element of the Celtic Tradition Shaftesbury: Element Books, 1989)

(2) Morgan Daimler Pagan Portals – Brigid: Meeting the Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Forge, and Healing Well Winchester UK & Washington USA: Moon Books, 2016. Daimler identifies as a reconstructionist polytheist pagan working in the Irish tradition.

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January 20, 2023

THE VIEW FROM HOME

This, now, is our view from home. It helped to sell a compact apartment to us. It is a place of light and sunshine for much of the time, and allows us to see beyond the perimeters of our small historic city. Looking out, I see an expanse of energised space, providing room for the fecundity of nature. A wonderful gift for an old Druid.

Tilting my gaze a little downwards, I have more sense of our neighbourhood and the inevitable presence of cars. There was once an elegant square here, now somewhat sacrificed for a modest amount of parking space. But I do like the sense of an outlook on everyday life. I don’t want to be cut off from it. I’m glad that it’s there.

Elaine and I have not fully moved in as yet. This is a transitional moment. There’s still much work to be done. But there seems to be a shift in gravity now, and the promise of a benign base. As I se it, human flourishing enables the spiritual path too. It supports our capacity to be present in and to the web of life. At times in the journey, deprivation may need to be faced. But it is not a virtue, and in this moment I am glad of a space where the heart can easily open. Feeling gratitude, I wonder how this adventure will unfold.

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Contemplative Inquiry

Tag: Druidry

April 5, 2023

ME AND MY INQUIRY

April 3, 2023

APRIL AND ‘DRUID MINDFULNESS’

March 29, 2023

GREENING

March 25, 2023

EMERSON: ‘IMMORTAL BEAUTY’

March 16, 2023

MARCH 2023: WINTER PUSHES BACK

March 13, 2023

A NEW DEPARTURE

February 16, 2023

AFTER SUNSET

February 9, 2023

ALERT REST IN THE LIGHT OF EARLY SPRING

January 23, 2023

BRIGID AT IMBOLC

January 20, 2023

THE VIEW FROM HOME