With a Whirr of Wings

With a whirr of wings
Small creatures dart
From plum tree to climbing rose.

With darting glances
They pause to watch
Then swiftly to the feeder.

Tiny pecks at seeds
And fatballs rich
To fuel their gentle dances.

With a whirr of wings
Small creatures dart
Inspiring words within me.

The 1st Mycellium Grove of the Honourable Order of Mushrooms

Bursting forth in the dark heart of the Yew on 22 April 2023 the first fruiting took place. As Spore Mistress I now bring into the light the 1st Mycellium Grove of the Honourable Order of Mushrooms. Our Motto is:

 “From Shit We Grow.”

 We thrive in darkness. We reach out unseen to connect, to nurture and support, and to laugh. And from time to time we burst forth in bodies of weird and wonderful shapes and colours to send out our spores.

There are a few people I am hoping to infect with our spores and bring into this first Mycellium Grove. 

Join us! Let the wonder spread!

Thinking about colonisation

I am a member of a group called Heathen Women United and this year we have begun a year long project that links with the Year of Aun. Each month we are presenting a theme connected to a figure from history or the sagas and linked in some way to a being. We began this project in February with the figure of Uun the Deep Minded , Unnr one of the nine daughters of the oean deities Rán and Aegir and the themes of community and frith-weaving. In March we focussed on Þorbjörg lítilvölva (“Thorbjörg little-völva“), the deity Jörð (whose name literally means earth or land) and connections to the land.

This month our figure is Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, sometimes referred to as Gudrid the Far Traveller with themes of migration, colonisation and the Goddess Freya who according to the myths was part of a hostage exchange to end the Vanir-Aesir war and also travelled the world seeking her husband. While each of these figures are interesting in their own rights for various reasons, the theme of colonisation is what has triggered this post.

Colonisation is a complex subject and an often emotive one. It’s also something that very few, if any, countries in this world have not been touched by in some way or another through history. There have been many occasions in history when a nation first became powerful and then sought to expand into other countries, sometimes neighbouring ones, sometimes more distant ones. Frequently that expansion became hostile at some point with indigenous communities pushed out of their homes and abused. Native languages and cultural practices were often forbidden, sometimes for many generations leading to long term losses and sometimes the extinction of a culture and language. The traumas of these events often result in unseen and sometimes unrecognised multi generational wounds.

I live in Scotland. A nation that has had people forcibly removed from the land in some areas during the highland clearances. A land where the native languages of Gaelic and Scots were forbidden in schools and the numbers of native speakers of both has suffered immensely because of this. Similar events have taken place in other part of the United Kingdom. And yet Scotland is also still part of the United Kingdom, once known as the centre of the British Empire. Sons and daughters of Scotland, and the rest of the United Kingdom, were part of colonisation efforts in many other countries doing to others what had also been done to them and worse. Trauma begetting trauma and for many that trauma is still ongoing. A cycle that is known of in other areas of human interactions. I may not have been personally involved in the wounds of colonisation but there is a strong likelihood that at least some of my ancestors were.

As an individual where does my responsibility lie within these tangled threads? What lessons can I learn from history? Are there generational traumas connected to colonisation in my ancestry that could do with healing and if so how do I heal them? Or are have they already healed to some extent leaving old scars that should be acknowledged but not broken open again? I don’t think there are any easy answers.

And what of those whose colonisation traumas are still very much ongoing? At the very least I can to listen to their experiences so I can help my children learn. Maybe together all our children will learn the way to heal each other of these painful wounds.

I am now…

I am the listener in the darkness.
I am comfort in times of stress.
I am a shoulder to cry upon and a voice to laugh with.

I am a song of grief and pain.
I am the scream of anger and loss.
I am the silence when words can not be found.

I am safety from your fears.
I am the seed of trust reborn.
I am the love of soul’s sibling and heart’s friend.

I have become what I am now.

Shit makes good fertilizer!

If you take nothing else from this piece please remember that shit makes good fertilizer.

I’ve said that a few times to different people and in different situations recently and each time it seem to have been words that those listening needed to hear. Life is never easy but the past few years seem to have brought blow after blow to many of us. There are days when it feel like you are struggling uphill through thick sucking mud, other days where it feels something in the universe has dumped a big pile of shit on you. For some it may feel like they are having to carry increasingly heavy loads that they don’t feel they can let go of for all sorts of reasons. Grief, pain, anger and fear buffet us like the winds of an unceasing storm. And it’s exhausting!

And so I remind myself again and again that shit makes good fertilizer. I’ve stuggled in the past, feeling I had to hold my pain and fear in, that I couldn’t let my anger out or express my grief. I was wrong.

I discovered that if I didn’t learn to drop the steaming pile of shit, or at least some of it, I would break down and for a while be buried so deep I didn’t know which way was up. I learnt to cry out my fear, to scream my grief out into the winds. I learnt that if I sever the chains that bound me to my heavy load of anger it would fall and shatter apart like a brittle rock and let out the tears of pain bound within. And I learnt that in release I began to wash away the shit clinging to me with my tears. I didn’t get rid of the shit completely but I was able to dump it on the emotional and spiritual equivalent of a compost heap.

Over time huge piles of shit break down and in doing so it becomes fertilizer that helps new things grow.

Patience, compassion and empathy can all grow stronger from the shit life throws at you. How to hold safe boundaries for yourself and others; what love and trust look and feel like; these things also grow from times when life kept throwing shit at you.

Let your tears flow and wash the shit off you for a bit even if it’s only a couple of minutes. Do it again and again if you need to, and you will sometimes. And breathe, just keep breathing.

And remember that shit makes good fertilizer.

Doubt and renewal

For months doubt had been creeping into my feelings about Epona and the Herd Mothers. I hadn’t really noticed any of Her subtle touches in my life. I wondered if in taking time to get to know other deities our relationship was fading and I wasn’t sure if that was my fault or just a natural change.

Doubt is so much more common in people of faith than some like to accept. It’s a normal part of your journey to question and evaluate experiences. Sometimes the doubt gets so strong that you feel you have lost something. You begin to wonder if that being that you thought was so important is really there for you. Perhaps you haven’t seen any signs of them recently, not felt their presence. Perhaps you feel you have lost something, done something wrong or just simply been left. In some cases a relationship that was once incredibly important fades and comes to a natural end. Doubt is natural. Questioning your faith is a part of your growth. The beings I honour don’t want blind faith, they want you to actively choose them. However, sometimes they will take a back seat for a reason of their own, fade from your awareness and let the doubts creep in.

For months doubt had been creeping into my feelings about Epona and the Herd Mothers. I hadn’t really noticed any of Her subtle touches in my life. I wondered if in taking time to get to know other deities our relationship was fading and I wasn’t sure if that was my fault or just a natural change. I kept my devotions going even though at times they felt a bit empty. I also planned a trip that would be something of a pilgrimage for me, a trip to see the Uffington White Horse, a place I had been wanting to visit for many years.

In early March, during my weekly devotions for the Herd Mothers, while I was praying and in particular asking for healing support for a friend’s horse, my prayer beads broke.

Image of my original prayer beads

These were my first prayer beads made for me by my mum, restrung once before by her when they had broken through use. But I can’t get mum to restring them this time. I knew at some stage they might break again as I used them so much but for them to break at that moment was a painful shock. That connection to my mum has gone. I have other prayer beads, other sets that she made, other jewellery that she made for me too but these were special.

In that moment I didn’t know if they were broken as a consequence of my doubts or taken as a price for healing support.

I decided to draw three runes and the runes seemed to confirm to me that this was a price and not a kick in the teeth for having doubts. A forth rune fell down from the plate I keep them on to where I had placed the others and this strengthened my interpretation of this being a price. While this still hurts I have now accepted that this was a sacrifice taken in return for Her aid. The beads, none lost in spite of scattering on the floor, are in a bag on my altar waiting for me to know what to do with them now.

A few weeks later finally the time came for our trip down to Uffington. This was a family trip with my eldest choosing to stay at home for a first experience of being home alone while three of us went South. We had chosen Cirencester as our base for this trip which was more than visiting Uffington and it took us about eight hours to get there. We travelled down on Monday 4th April and returned home on Friday 8th April so we had three full days for more local trips.

The first was Uffington on Tuesday. You can’t see the whole figure from close up. Even from the car park area the top of the next disappears of the hill but still when I got to see my first glimpse standing on that landscape my heart swelled with emotion and I had tears in my eyes. I had made it!

We walked across the fields and up towards the horse itself. As we walked I spotted hoofprints on the path and felt the presence of the Herd Mothers in the land. There’s a rope boundary protecting the horse due to increased erosion but you can still get pretty close. We walked to the nearby Dragon Hill to see if the view was any better. It wasn’t but the winds were wild and cleansing. As we walked down Dragon Hill to climb the other side of Whitehorse hill I noticed a fresh twig of blossoming blackthorn on the ground. I’m sure it hadn’t been there when we went up the path to the top of Dragon Hill. It was freshly broken off from the blackthorn it came from and dropped there like a gift. I carried it away with me. And on Whitehorse hill I made an offering to the spirits of that landscape thanking them for the gift.

From there we walked to the structure known as Uffington Castle. It’s a large hill fort probably originally built in the bronze age and inhabited into and throughout the iron age. It’s one of the largest hillforts I’ve experienced so far and a very impressive location. I was pulled towards the centre of the hillfort area and felt the need to sing out wordlessly for a time. I made another offering before leaving.

After that we returned to the car to get our packed lunch before walking to Wayland’s Smithy. Wayland’s Smithy is a restored Neolithic long barrow about a mile and half away from Whitehorse Hill. It’s surrounded by some beautiful beech trees. I found the presence there to be quiet and gently welcoming. And although it had nothing to do with Wayland or was ever a smithy the links have encouraged someone to add a horseshoe to a fallen beech log near the front of the tomb.

Image of horseshoe attached to a fallen log near the front of Wayland’s Smithy long barrow

Needless to say it felt appropriate to make an offering there too and I poured a little wine from my hip flask over the horseshoe.

It was a good day and by the end of it I felt a sense of renewal in my relationship with Epona and the Herd Mothers which has stayed with me. I feel stronger for this period of doubt and renewal and more trusting in my relationship with Epona.

Hail Epona! Hail the Herd Mothers!