Paganism | Contemplative Inquiry

September 12, 2016

DRUID CONTEMPLATIVE DAYS

On 1 October Elaine Knight and I will be holding our tenth Druid contemplative retreat day since we began in July 2012. Over the years we have also offered shorter sessions and a weekend retreat (in April 2015). Yet by and large we find that day retreats are the best format for our offer to the community.

Shorter monthly sessions work fine for our local ongoing group, in a context of experience and continuity. But when new people are coming in and meeting each other, we want the spaciousness of a day. A day is enough to build the kind of experience we are aiming at. We are not offering complex teaching that needs extended time to unfold, and we don’t need the dynamics of residential community for our focused and limited purpose.

It looks as though we will have 10-12 people on 1 October and we have reached the point at which we know the day will pay for itself. This is within the ideal range for our kind of day – two or three more or less is also fine. Elaine and I will be co-facilitating this event with Nimue and Tom Brown.

I look back and see ‘contemplative Druidry’ as a project. Retrospectively, I find project a better word than ‘inquiry’, though an inquiry element has been present. I began the project by testing the word ‘contemplative’ itself. Was it going to be resonant or even meaningful in Druidry? I wrote articles in the OBOD membership publication Touchstone asking for people to contact me with their views and, subsequently, describing our early ventures. I created the Contemplative Druidry Facebook Group in August 2012. This is still going strong with nearly 1700 members (as at 12 September 2016), though I have not been involved in moderating it for over three years. Over time it became clear that the term does mean something. Although it caused some confusion and questioning at first, it has been taken up. As we developed our practical work, it became easier to explain and discuss.

With the help of a considerable number of other people I was able to publish the book Contemplative Druidry in October 2014. It is still selling and still witnesses the life experience of real people exploring Druidry (frequently among other traditions) and explaining why a contemplative thread matters to them. As time has gone on one of the outstanding questions has been whether there is a particular group of people who can be marked out as ‘contemplative Druids’. I think at this distance the answer is a qualified ‘no’, qualified, because some are clearly contemplative in emphasis. But Druidry is such an extensive field, or interlocking set of fields, that only a few people cover everything. In the end I decided for myself that ‘Contemplative Druid’, as a description of particular people, was a splitting and otherising kind of term (potentially in both directions) and so best avoided. This is why we now talk of ‘Druid contemplative days’ rather than ‘Contemplative Druid days’.

My sense of project is coming to an end. My personal contemplative inquiry, which has always had a degree of separation from the project, is continuing with a different emphasis. But we have a group, and we have the days. Our capacity to provide days is proportionate to the demand for them: no problem there. So I expect this work to continue. For me, it will be my one active role in Druidry. It doesn’t contradict anything else I am doing or likely to be doing. So I look forward to this day, and the continuing life of the group.

Further information on the days can be found at http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com/

James Nichol (2014) Contemplative Druidry people, practice and potential Amazon/Kindle (Foreword by Philip Carr-Gomm

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Contemplative-Druidry-People-Practice-Potential-ebook/dp/B00OBJAOES/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

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June 28, 2016

METHODS IN CONTEMPLATIVE INQUIRY: PART 2

In my last post I talked about the ritual patterning of my morning practice and, in my understanding, the Sophian values it enacts. Here I discuss what happens in the main body of the practice. This begins with a set of physical and breath related exercises, which I originally learned in a Tantric setting. They draw on a kundalini yoga tradition (1) and to an extent on Chinese energy arts. I call them ‘rejuvenation exercises’ and I do them because I like them and find them beneficial.

I do not have a strong view of subtle energy or deep experience of energetic healing. But I do feel charged by this work and I go on to a contemplative engagement with the chakra system. This system is now widely use and has been described as “part of a common, New Age esotericism in the West, entering from pan-Hindu use of the six or seven chakras in Yoga to indicate centres of power within the body and specifically arranged along the central axis of the trunk. Within Indian medicine this central axis became identified with the spinal column, and there are … fusions of Western anatomy with Indian esoteric anatomy (2)”. Druids and Pagans use this system too, and are therefore to my mind a sub-set of the ‘New Age’ in this regard. For me, the main value of this work is that it offers a for of practice that is both contemplative and embodied.

Historically, “the Tantric body is encoded in tradition-specific and text-specific ways. The practitioner inscribes the body through ritual and forms of interiority or asceticism, and so writes the tradition onto the body. Such transformative practices are intended to create the body as divine. This inscribing of the body is also a reading of text and tradition … Any distinctions between knowing and acting, mind and body, are disrupted by the Tantric body in the sense that what might be called imagination becomes a kind of action in tantric ritual and the forms that the body takes in ritual are a kind of knowing”. The description describes an Indian spiritual culture, transgressive in certain respects, but quite typical of medieval (and to a degree modern) cultures in creating practices where first person, subjective experience is moulded by reference to authoritative texts. Tantric teachers took care to write their works in Sanskrit, no longer spoken but still the holy language of their cultural zone.

I’m aware of being from a different culture in both time and place. For me the chakra rainbow works because it creates the body as more fully human, rather than ‘divine’. For this very reason it suits me better, I now find, than the Kabbalistic middle pillar system which I have sometimes used as an alternative. I begin this section of my morning practice by raising my arms and holding them up with the palms of my hands pressed together just above the crown of my head. Then I move down the chakra positions, using gesture, sound, and colour to inscribe and energize them:

At crown level, palms in prayer position, syllable nngg as in sing, colour violet-flecked white.

At 3^rd eye level, index fingers touching brow, syllable mmm as at end of Om, colour indigo.

At throat level, hand cupped below my throat, syllable eee, colour bright blue.

At heart centre level, hands crossed over my heart centre, syllable ayy as in play, colour green.

A little above my navel, hands clasped together, syllable ahh as in father, colour yellow.

At the pelvic level, hands in a diamond mudra, syllable oooo as in rule, colour orange

Bent down, each hand on a foot, syllable ohh as in road, colour red.

From here, I turn my attention around and move slowly up again, elaborating meanings, and noticing my responses – sensations, feelings, thoughts. The following is an example of how I can work in a session, here using affirmations. I check out my congruence in using the chosen words: how fully do I stand behind them? Do I experience any promptings to change them? I also check out the ‘demons’ present at each level and ways in they test the affirmations.

Feet: earth/body/senses: ‘I am a child of the Earth. I am welcome here.’ [Demon: Fear]

Sexual/Sacral: water/desire/sexuality/feelings: ‘I embrace sensory pleasure’ [Demon: Guilt]

Belly: fire/will/power/self-sense: ‘I celebrate my personal power’ [Demon: Shame]

Heart: air/thinking/social sense: ‘I love and am available for love’ [Demon: Grief]

Throat: sound/resonance/creativity/expression: ‘I speak my truth’ [Demon: Lies]

Brow: light/imagination/vision: ‘I am guided by the Light of Sophia’ [Demon: Illusion]

Crown: awareness/capacity: ‘Empty awareness, holding the world’ [Demon: Attachment]

I have to say that there is indeed a text behind this practice, and a tradition. The text is Eastern Body: Western Mind by Anodea Judith, and I picked it up and worked with it easily because I already shared certain cultural features – some background in ‘New Age’ Tantra, more extensive background in humanistic/transpersonal and in particular Jungian psychology and therapeutics, and a knowledge of developmental psychology. This presentation of the chakras draws attention to the human life course. The upward hierarchy is aligned to the developmental tasks of different age groups – root, pre-birth to one year; sexual/sacral six months to two years; belly two to four years; heart four to seven years; throat, seven to twelve years; brow, adolescence; crown, adult. The practice is made powerful by the reality that ideal development is not normal, and most of us live with some level of wounding at more than one developmental stage. Our younger selves, and their needs, continue to live within us.

Contemplative chakra work reinforces my commitment to the human side of human spirituality. The stresses and distresses of the human body/mind are part of contemplative work in my view and this work is a direct challenge to ‘bypassing’ – the flight into love and light as a means of escape from aspects of life experienced as negative or distasteful. I don’t treat Judith’s work as gospel and I have customised her framework in important respects. But in what I hope is an authentic and creative way, I freely acknowledge being text and tradition based in my use of chakras, happily using conventional frameworks and understandings to the extent that I find them useful.

In my next post I will discuss the forms I meditation I currently use and why I have chosen them for this stage of my inquiry.

(1) Swami Satyananda Saraswati Kundalini Tantra Munger, Bihar, India: Yoga Publications Trust, 1984

(2) Gavin Flood The Tantric body: the secret tradition of Hindu religion London & New York: I.B. Taurus, 2006

(3) Anodea Judith Eastern body: Western mind: psychology and the chakra system a a path to the self Berkeley, CA, 2004 (rev. ed.)

June 10, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: SPINNING IN PLACE

4163oG+V32L._AC_US160_ Highly recommended: Spinning in Place is a clear and thought-provoking guide to the festival year from the perspective of a humanist/naturalist Pagan. Bart Everson describes it as not so much a ‘how to’ as a ‘why bother’ book, for “no-one can dictate what the festivals mean or how to observe them”.

What he offers is a narrative of how he works the widely adopted eight festival cycle in New Orleans, and “idiosyncratic encouragement” to “spin your own wheel”. The reader he imagines is “an atheist, or perhaps a pantheist or an agnostic”, someone “without a strong belief in gods or supernatural powers”. Yet, within this philosophical naturalism, he imagines also an interest in religion and spirituality – perhaps in the form of “being surprised by a sudden awakening” and entering upon “a quest for something more”. For me, it also has a value to anyone with an interest in the Wheel of the Year.

Everson makes two important points about the festivals in general. One is the sense of a holiday as more than a vacation – more than time off for relaxation and recreation, important though these are. A true holiday enshrines values, “reminding us again and again of certain existential truths”. Modern ‘Western’ style societies tend to be “mobile, rootless, divorced from the specific realities of a particular place … it’s my thought that if we spin in one spot for a while, dervish-like, perhaps we’ll corkscrew right down into the Earth and regain our sense of location.”

The second point to remember is that “seasonal variation happens according to its own schedule and not according to any calendar devised by humans.” When festivals become entrenched, “conventions have a tendency to become concretized in our minds, as if they were the primary reality rather than a convenient symbolic expression”. Everson invites an open and fresh approach to ritual celebration. This will of course include the repetition of loved and familiar patterns, but not imprisonment within them.

The book gives a chapter to each season, opening with December: Solstice Connections where the solstice is seen not as a Solar event (nothing happens to the sun) but an Earth-Solar event. Everson’s ritual year is about Earth and its cycles, celebrating an Earth spirituality. January/February: Searching the Depths remind us that there is no Nordic winter in New Orleans, and a Carnival season starting at Twelfth Night, with Mardi Gras any time from 3 February – 9 March. For Everson, it is the time for Candlemas and Brighid crosses. March: Spring in the Subtropics, Spring in the Self – and oak pollen on the porch a sure sign of the equinox. A theme of balance rather than excess: purification understood as “feeling good, staying strong, promoting vitality, improving focus, and nurturing inspiration”. April/May: May Day x2 The Worker’s holiday matters as much as Beltane to Everson: celebration of revolutionary political desire, the notion of power to the imagination, the spiritual dimension of politics – “the sense of connection to Earth and humanity fuels outrage at manifest injustices”.

To begin the second half of the year we have June: Flowers to Flame, a time of sunshine and superabundance – yet at the same time, acknowledging limits set by nature. Flowers coming to full form, and flowers given over to the bonfire’s flames. Then comes July/August: How Lammas Changed my Life The warmth of the year has continued to increase. Everson remembers his first link to a local Pagan group, a Paganism for kids event to which he took his daughter. Making corn dollies. Still making them, and baking bread together. September: The Other Equinox is elusive as a season, though it is getting darker and it is the time of Lycoris radiata – naked ladies, red magic lilies, hurricane lilies locally. The hurricane season peaks on 10 September and goes on to 1 November. Themes of loss and darkness, yet also gratitude (rather than fear or denial). Making ‘gratitude garlands’, since gratitude is always for something and to someone. Finally, we have October/November: Dead Time where All Saints, All Souls and Dia de los Muertos are all celebrated locally. Everson talks both of celebrating ancestors’ night and what he calls “surfing the new spooky” – “there is something delectable about the spooky, something desirable, something necessary”.

Spinning in Place shows how to create a wheel of the year which honours tradition, place and personal history. This approach allows fluidity and responsiveness to environment, community and culture both past and present. It clearly works for Bart Everson. Spinning in Place does not offer an off the peg set of rituals. Rather, it asks readers to wonder what we might do, in our place, using our histories and our forms of expression. That’s what makes it inspiring.

Bart Everson Spinning in place: a secular humanist embraces the wheel of the year New Orleans, LA: Frowning Cat Books, 2016 (E-book available on Amazon Kindle)

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June 3, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: RAGNAROK

The book is A. S. Byatt’s Ragnarok: the end of the gods (1) and I highly recommend it. A labour of love, this piece is part review, part celebration, and part reflection.

Ragnarok is sparely and powerfully written. Above all, it shows a people held in the trance of their own dominant myth. Prediction is predestination. What must be, must be.

“This, they thought, was how it would be when the Fimbulwinter came. The fat sun was dull red, sullen, like embers. She gave little light, and what there was was ruddy or bloody. They longed in their bones and their brains for clear light, for a warm wind, for buds, for green leaves. The winter stretched into another year, and another. The seas froze: icebergs clashed by the coasts, and floated into the bays. This was, they began to understand, not a likeness of the Fimbulwinter, but the thing itself. Wind time, Wolf time, before the world breaks up.”

For the gods, it is a little different. They are better situated, and have some apparent agency. Odin can gather information and consider options. But Asgard is weakening; the health of the world tree is compromised; there is paralysis and decay.

“In Asgard the sheen on the gold was dulled, but the magic boar could still be eaten at night and reborn for the next feast. Yggdrasil was shaking all over, leaves were falling, branches were wilting, but the tree still stood. Odin went down to the well at its roots and spoke to Mimir’s head under the black ruffled water. No one ever knew what he learned, but he came back set and cold. They waited. They did not act, they did not think, perhaps could not think. Idun lay, curled in her wolfskin. The apples of youth were withered and puckered.”

In the end, all they can do is to continue what they have been doing all along, which is to follow the course that confirms their fate, in the guise of an attempt to resist it. They ride out for their last battle, already compromised and doomed.

“The gods went over the bridge, Bifröst, the rainbow bridge that linked Asgard and Midgard. They were damaged already, when they set out. Tyr had lost his arm to the wolf, Odin his eye to Mimir, Freyer had given away his magic sword, Thor’s wife, Sif, had seen all her magical hair fall away from her bald head. Thor himself, according to some poets, had lost the hammer he had thrown after the Midgard-serpent. Baldur had lost his life. There are two ways, in stories, of winning battles – to be supremely strong, or to be a gallant forlorn hope. The Ases were neither. They were brave and tarnished. Yggdrasil drooped. Its leaves hung and flapped. Its roots were shrinking. … Black birds spun away from the branches into a red sky.” The outcome is the expected one, as everyone had known it would be.

Myths are different from fairy tales, and both are different from stories about real people or ‘imaginary real people’, according to the author. “The thin child, reading and re-reading the tales, neither loved nor hated the people in them – they were not ‘characters’ into whose doings she could insert her imagination. As a reader, she was a solemn, occasionally troubled, occasionally gleeful onlooker. But she almost made an exception of Loki. Alone among all these beings he had humour and wit. His changeable shapes were attractive. His cleverness had charm. He made her uneasy, but she had feelings about him, whereas the others, Odin, Thor, Baldur the beautiful were as they were, their shapes set. Wise, strong, lovely.”

In Byatt’s rendition, there are no new heaven and earth to follow the destruction. This is because she first encountered the story in a version that dropped this as a late Christian interpolation, imposing redemption where it did not belong. Yet it was her childhood favourite, and Byatt brings her childhood self into the book as “the thin child”. It is war time, in Yorkshire. She knows that the story is a Viking one, and that Yorkshire was once a Viking place. So, “these are her stories”. Her book is a translation from a German one, so it talks about the old Germanic world with its secrets and wonders. She asks herself, “who were these old Germans, as opposed to the ones overhead, now dealing death out of the night sky?” She thinks of the latter as Odin’s wild riders. She lives in fear that her own father, another flier, will never come home. Indeed, she is certain of it – though he does eventually, “his red-gold hair shining, gold wings on his tunic, his arms out to hold her as she leaped at him”. The old Ragnarok story, perhaps because of its pessimism, has helped her through World War II.

Ragnarok: the end of the gods was published in 2011, when the historical context had changed again. Byatt’s adult fascination with Loki is if anything greater than before. She says:

“There are no altars to Loki, no standing stones, he had no cult. In myths he was a third of the trio Odin, Hodur, Loki. In myths, the most important comes first of three. But in fairy tales and folklore, where these gods also play their parts, the rule of three is different; the important player is the third, the youngest son, Loki.”

“When I came to write this tale I realised that Loki was interested in Chaos – his stories contain flames and waterfalls, the formless things inside which chaos theorists perceive order inside disorder. He is interested in the order in destruction and the destruction in order. If I were writing an allegory he would be the detached scientific intelligence which could either save the earth or contribute to its rapid disintegration.”

In a section of Thoughts on myths at the end of her book, Byatt says: “If you write a version of Ragnarok in the 21^st century, it is haunted by the imagining of a different end of things. We are a species of animal which is bringing about the end of the world we were born into. Not out of evil or malice, or not mainly, but because of a lopsided mixture of extraordinary cleverness, extraordinary greed, extraordinary proliferation of our own kind, and a biologically built-in short-sightedness.” She muses about the humanness of the Norse gods. “They know Ragnarok is coming but are incapable of imagining any way to fend it off, or change the story. They know how to die gallantly but not how to make a better world … Loki is the only one who is clever and Loki is wayward and irresponsible and mocking.”

The great Norse myth offers no salvation, and nor does A.S. Byatt. She ends with the sentence: “As it is the world ends because neither the all too human gods, with their armies and quarrels, nor the fiery thinker know how to save it.” And yet … she does show how we can see beyond our myths. The imagination is bigger than any of them. It is creative and flexible. It is subtle, shifting, multi-perspectival and articulate. For me, an unstated hope lies in the work itself.

(1) Byatt, A. S. Ragnarok: the end of the gods Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2011

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May 28, 2016

NATURALLY INQUIRING

Recently I reviewed Godless Pagans: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans (1) which I enjoyed very much. There’s a growing community of Pagans clearly identified as ‘humanistic’ and/or ‘naturalistic’ – see https://humanisticpaganism.com – and I am wondering about how I sit with this approach.

I am dedicated to contemplative inquiry. I see it as naturalistic. But I am also aware of the way in which terms like ‘empiricism’, ‘science’ and even ‘humanism’ can be mobilized for a certain type of fighting talk. This says that valid knowledge can be based only on third-person, objectifying inquiry conducted on a hypothesis-experiment-results model. I am engaged in a first person inquiry, which also extends to community and culture, as in my Contemplative Druidry book (2), so for me this is a potential problem.

In response I pick up a book off my shelves, and dust it off. The title says Qualitative Research in Counselling and Therapy (3). A half-remembered store of magic words is laid out before me in the accessible form of chapter headings: qualitative inquiry, hermeneutics, phenomenology, ethnographic approaches, grounded theory, conversation, narrative and discourse analysis, bricolage. I used to work in the field of public health and health research, with sexual health, mental health and ageing as my main focus at different times: all areas where lived experience and issues of culture, meaning and value are of great importance. So I’ve long had a concern with an extended epistemology, which takes these areas into account.

There have been many attempts to bring different pathways to knowledge together and identify what the togetherness might look like. One of the most recent is Ken Wilber’s Quadrants model (4), which sits as the Q in a larger system called AQAL. The quadrants look like this:

INTERIOR/INDIVIDUAL: ‘I SPACE’

The subjective life world – thoughts, feelings, meanings, meditative states

Explored in the domains of literature, arts, therapy and spirituality

An exemplary text would be: In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust

EXTERIOR/INDIVIDUAL: ‘IT SPACE’

Atoms, brains, bodies, behaviours, organism

Explored in natural science, scientific medicine, philosophy of science

An exemplary text would be: Consciousness Explained, Daniel C. Dennett

INTERIOR/COLLECTIVE; ‘WE SPACE’

Shared meanings, relationships, mutual understanding, the influence of culture, media, community

Explored in the domains of literature, arts, therapy and spirituality; also philosophy and ‘qualitative’ social science

An exemplary text would be: The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault

EXTERIOR/COLLECTIVE; ‘ITS’ SPACE

Systems, environments, technology, cosmology

Explored in the domains of natural science, philosophy of science and ‘quantitative’ social science

An exemplary text would be: A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence M. Krauss

The basic outline above is Wilber’s. I have added the bits that suggest subject domains and key texts which I know well enough to put in the boxes – in both of the multi-volume works on the left, the first volume makes to point on its own. I value all the quadrants, whilst having a clear bias towards the left hand. My contemplative inquiry is in the upper left quadrant, though my beliefs in no separate self and interdependence push me out, especially towards the lower left hand but to an extent over to the right as well. In this perilous Anthropocene era, how could they not?

Contemplative inquiry in the narrower sense is about consciousness and conscious being. Here I follow James Hillman in suggesting “suggesting a poetic basis of mind and a psychology that starts neither in the physiology of the brain, the structure of language, the organization of society, nor the analysis of behaviour, but in the processes of imagination” (5). Hillman places himself in a western lineage going back from Jung, “through Freud, Dilthey, Coleridge, Schelling, Vico, Ficino, Plotinus and Plato to Heraclitus”. All I can say is that from a subjective lifeworld perspective this makes complete sense to me, though in my reading I’d emphasize the term ‘starts from’ – the third person perspective also matters and all the other factors mentioned clearly have their role.

In taking this stand I have recently gained comfort from an unexpected source, the neuroscientist and consciousness researcher Sam Harris. A friend and associate of the philosopher Daniel Dennett, Harris is not persuaded that Dennett’s Consciousness Explained (6) albeit a brilliant and fascinating book, has fully lived up to its title, or could be expected to. Harris says (7):

“We know of course that human minds are the product of human brains. There is simply no question that your ability to decode and understand this sentence depends on neurophysiological events taking place inside your head at this moment. But most of this mental work occurs entirely in the dark, and it is a mystery why part of this process should be attended by consciousness. Nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a locus of experience. Were we not already brimming with consciousness ourselves, we would find no evidence for it in the universe – nor would we have any notion of the many physical states it gives rise to. The only proof that it is like something to be you at this moment is the fact (obvious only to you) that it is like something to be you.”

Harris is well versed in both contemplative practice and scientific investigation, and so is at ease both with the exterior and interior approaches to consciousness. He has experience of the self-less state and is also clear about describing selflessness as “not a ‘deep’ feature of consciousness, but right on the surface. And yet people can meditate for years without recognizing it”: no need to invoke divinity-as-subject or traditionally mystical views of ‘enlightenment’ as heroic attainment. I for my part experience Headlessness, very available in the Douglas Harding method -see website at headless.org – as perfectly containing the poetry of mind. It’s ‘only’ natural. How miraculous nature is!

(1) Halstead, J. (ed.) (2016) Godless Paganism: voices of non-theistic Pagans com (Foreword by Mark Green)

(2) Nichol, J. (2014) Contemplative Druidry: people, practice and potential Amazon/KDP (Foreword by Philip Carr-Gomm)

(3) McLeod, J. (2001) Qualitative research in counselling and psychotherapy London: Sage

(4) Wilber, K. (et al) (2008) Integral Life Practice: a 21^st century blueprint for physical health, emotional balance, mental clarity, and spiritual awakening Boston & London: Integral Books

(5) Hillman, J. (1990) The essential James Hillman: A blue fire London: Routledge. (Introduced and edited by Thomas Moore)

(6) Dennett, D. (1990) Consciousness explained London: Penguin

(7) Harris, S. (2014) Waking up: searching for spirituality without religion London: Transworld Publishers

2 Comments

May 17, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: GODLESS PAGANISM

Highly recommended. Godless Paganism: voices of Non-Theistic Pagans is the fruit of a substantial pioneering project. The book has 75 chapters, with only a small number of contributors writing more than one. The chapters are arranged in 10 themed sections, with a substantial introduction that surveys the territory as a whole. I think that anyone with an interest in modern Paganism could gain something from this book.

The book exists thanks to the efforts of John Halstead and colleagues at HumanisticPaganism.com. (I notice that, in the text, ‘Naturalistic Paganism’ seems to be the more favoured term). Money was raised by supporters and the book is published by Lulu.com.

Godless Paganism is fresh and alive, and introduces many voices – the voices people who are moving and changing, engaged in experiential exploration, open to new ways of sense-making. Culturally, it has as U.S. centre of gravity, though contributors from other parts of the world are included.

Some contributors report being challenged by fundamentalist Pagans over their right to call themselves Pagan, and this is presented as a problem emerging in the 21^st. century rather than an inheritance from the 20^th. This may help to explain why Godless Paganism has, for me, a remarkably deity-focused feel. Brendan Myers writes a chapter called The worship of the Gods in not what matters but the book has no overall sense of saying, ‘let’s base our spirituality on a different focus – our response to nature, perhaps, or to suffering’. Approaches like this are represented in the book, but it is more usual for contributors either to present reframed understandings of ‘deity’ and ‘belief’, or to celebrate the play of deity yoga without belief. All fine by me – yet this does suggest a concern with responding to perceived fundamentalist challenges rather than an actual departure from theistic language and theistic frames of reference.

Having said that, I strongly welcome Godless Paganism and what it represents. I hope that it strengthens the confidence and community standing of those who identify as ‘naturalistic Pagans’. I salute the people who have made this happen, and I look forward to future collections on this topic.

John Halstead (editor) Godless Paganism: voices of non-theistic Pagans Lulu.com 2016 (Foreword by Mark Green)

16 Comments

April 19, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUID PRACTICE: SIMPLE AND PROFOUND?

People of like intent working together. That was an early principle of our Druid contemplative retreat days, when we started in July 2012. We didn’t have to be like-minded, in the sense of having a common doctrine, or even of entering a common spiritual trance. That’s one reason for choosing plain, open and simple practices.

We have carried on in that spirit ever since, and it means that people who have otherwise diverse practices and views can comfortably share our contemplative space. My sense over the years has been that, essentially, this way of working has a restorative and regenerative role for people who live with the pressures of busy and/or challenging lives. That would include most of us, Druids or not.

Then there is the thought of being ‘simple and profound’. The ‘simple’ is easy to describe. We are very sparse in our use of ritual or mythic narrative. Rather, we enter into more conscious relationship with the space we are in and with each other. We are attentive to where we stand in the wheel of the year, what the actual conditions are like, what we notice around us and the effects on us. On retreat days we make sure of including time outdoors. We spend time side by side in solo meditative silence, turning within. We also spend time in a more outwardly attuned collective silence (Awen space), from within which we may speak or sing out. Sometimes we have specific activities like toning, chanting, meditative exercises, or contemplative drawing.

What about the ‘profound’? In Moon Book’s recently published Pagan Planet (1) I wrote a short piece called Living Presence in a Field of Living Presence: Practicing Contemplative Druidry. For me, being ‘living presence within a field of living presence’, and living this presence more consciously, is the key to any deepening that we may find in our simplicity. It enables both the transformative potential of ‘knowing’ ourselves a little more, and does so within a context of interconnectedness.

I find that when I cut to the chase, and get to this experiential level, I need have no worries about working the Headless Way or how it fits with Druidry. My solo practices and meaning-making have indeed undergone a shift, yet Druid contemplative sessions and retreat days remain a highly appropriate and nourishing vehicle for practice and community.

(1) Nimue Brown (ed.) Pagan Planet: Being, Believing & Belonging in the 21^st. Century Winchester, UK & Washington, USA: Moon Books, 2016

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March 30, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDS UPDATE

2016-01-10 16.50.19 Update on our presence at public events in 2016. These are the Pagan Federation Wessex Conference on 9 April, the Barmoor Druid Weekend 19-21 August, and our own Day Retreat at Stroud on 1 October. Here are the details.

Elaine and I will be on a stall at the Pagan Federation Wessex Annual Conference for the morning and part of the afternoon. The conference is on Saturday 9 April at The Village Hall, Whitminster, Gloucestershire. If you are going you are welcome to have a chat to us in between the talks, pick up a leaflet or buy a book or an original art work. Doors will open at 09:45 with the opening ceremony performed by the PF Wessex Team taking place at 10:15. The talks are scheduled to end at 17:15.

In the evening the doors will open at 19:30. A fully licensed bar will be available and entertainment will be provided by Tinkerscuss and Finnegans Wok Ceilidh Band.
Tickets for the whole event costs £20 for Pagan Federation members and £24 for non-members. You can also purchase tickets for just the day or the evening. Further details here: http://conference.pfwessex.org.uk/

Barmoor Weekend 2016 On their Facebook page Barmoor Druid Weekend the organizers make this invitation: “For all those on a druid/pagan/nature-based spiritual path, please join us for the 4th annual Barmoor Weekend at Hutton-le-Hole, a delightful village in the North Yorkshire Moors National Park near Pickering. The dates are Friday 19 – Sunday 21 August 2016. The main theme this year is divination but there will also be a variety of other workshops”. One of those workshops will be a contemplative session lead by Elaine and me, and thus far scheduled for the Saturday morning.

The weekend is about sharing friendship, sharing our skills, our dreams and spiritual practices. The cost is £45 all-inclusive of vegetarian meals and accommodation. There is a facility to message the organizers on the Facebook page. Hannah Silcock is the primary contact.

On 1 October we are offering a dedicated Contemplative Day Retreat in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in the group room of the former St. Luke’s Medical Centre. led by James Nichol, Elaine Knight, Nimue Brown and Tom Brown. Tom is an addition to the 2015 team and will be offering a session on contemplative drawing. The day will also include contemplative walking outdoors and our ‘Awen space’ practice. Arrive at St. Luke’s Medical Centre from 10 a.m. for 10.30 start, ending at 4.30 pm. £30 full, £15 concessionary. For full details see http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com and for questions and booking write to grovelight@hotmail.co.uk 2016-01-10 16.50.19

March 12, 2016

BOOK REVIEW: BRIGID

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Timely and highly recommended. Brigid: Meeting the Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Forge and Healing Well is shortly due for release in Moon Books’ Pagan Portals series. Author Morgan Daimler describes it as “a resource for seekers of the pagan goddess specifically”, offering “both solid academic material and anecdotes of connecting with Brigid in a format that is accessible and designed to be easy to read”. On my reading, this is an accurate description, and in my estimation Brigid takes its place as a valuable addition to modern pagan literature.

As Daimler points out, the Celtic Goddess Brigid is well known and popular. In the Gaelic-influenced world, she has an alter ego as a powerful Christian saint. Yet what we know, or think we know, is selective and potentially confusing for today’s pagan seeker. “The lore of the Catholic saint is attributed to the pagan Goddess, and some people see shadows of the Goddess in the saint. For many people new to Brigid, or to studying Celtic or Irish mythology, it can be extremely confusing to try to sort out the old beliefs from the modern, to tell the Irish from the Scottish. The end result is that some people who are drawn to honor the Goddess Brigid find themselves lost in a seemingly endless assortment of possibilities”. Yet, in an intentionally short and simple book, Daimler does a great deal to sort out potential points of confusion and help her readers to find their way. She also includes an important chapter on Brigid by Other Names – which include the Brythonic Brigantia, the Gaulish Brigandu and the name Ffraid in Welsh.

Brigid devotes considerable attention to mythology, and to traditional lore and festivals (including a reference to the American groundhog day). But, as a modern Polytheist Pagan, she also has a lot to say about Brigid as she is today, including modern versions of practices like the making of offerings, flame-tending, the creation of altars, divination, meditation and prayer. There is a complete chapter on Prayers, Chants and Charms. Above all, Daimler shares something of her own journey, and the numinous experiences she has had through her Brigid connection from the beginning of adolescence to a present in which she is devising Imbolc rituals with her children. Standing as she does in Irish Reconstructionist Polytheism, she says that “I do not think that the religious framework we use to connect to the Gods matters as much as the effort to honor the old Gods itself. I think that we can all do this respectfully and with an appreciation of history without the need for any particular religion”. Brigid: Meeting the Celtic Goddess of Poetry, Forge and Healing Well amply fulfills its author’s aim of helping its readers to benefit from time spent “getting to know Brigid”.

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January 25, 2016

CONTEMPLATIVE DRUIDRY IN 3 SENTENCES

Elaine and I were recently asked by a non-Druid local group to define contemplative Druidry in 3 sentences. This is what we came up with.

“Contemplative practice in Druidry supports what has been called ‘the Nature mysticism of modern Druidry’. Our understandings of what this means are provisional and inquiring – those of us who follow the Druid way are encouraged to craft our own practices in accordance with our inner guidance, our needs and wishes. Practices in the Stroud-based group include group meditation, personal sharing, outside walking meditation, chanting and contemplative arts.”

This mix of practices also forms the basis of our retreat days for the wider Druid and fellow-travelling community. This year we are running two such days – one in London on Sunday 7 February and the other in Stroud on Saturday 1 October together with Nimue and Tom Brown. See also http://contemplativedruidevents.tumblr.com

We owe the phrase ‘the Nature mysticism of modern Druidry’ to Philip Carr-Gomm, who leads the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), who used it in his foreword to Contemplative Druidry: People Practice and Potential. He also pointed out that the Druid way as a whole is one where we take responsibility for crafting our own practices. We see this a something we need to emphasise, since this approach is still unusual in spiritual movements as a whole.

Tag: Paganism