Sticking a label on it

For the last couple of years my path has gradually been changing. A lot of what I do in my personal practice is the same but there are newer elements. It all started when Loki came into my life. I now honour an increasing number of Heathen deities along with those from Celtic lands I have honoured for years.

Most Druids and Heathens honour ancestors and spirits of the land in some way. And in both communities if you ask a question you will get a multitude of answers – although Heathens will more often refer you to various written sources such as the Eddas and Sagas.

At the same time as these changes have been happening with my spiritual life I’ve also gradually become more confident about referring to myself as autistic in spite of being told that I didn’t fully meet “diagnostic criteria”. Yes, it still annoys me. Fortunately those that know me best, including my kids, as well as an assortment of adult autistic friends have recognised that I am autistic. I refer to it as being peer recognised.

I am still me. I am still Pauline, daughter of Siusaidh. I am also Potia Nighean a’Chailliche (the second part of that name I took in October 2019 as part of my promises to the Ancient One). I’m still a Hearth Druid and I’m proudly autistic. But now I’m adding a new label to my collection, I’ve fully accepted that I’m also Heathen.

Practicalities of a home retreat

I was asked elsewhere if I could write a bit more about the practicalities of doing a home retreat following on from my last post.  The simple answer is yes, the more complicated one is I can tell you what I did and what I learnt from it but this was something planned solely for me so various aspects may not transfer well to others.

The first thing I did after making the decision to have a home based retreat was to plan out what I could do and when. My first initial thoughts had been to just do a day but I felt this wouldn’t really give me enough time to really benefit from the whole process. I think I was right in that.  I decided to do a three day retreat. I felt that would be enough time to feel the benefit but not so much I would start having difficulties in focus while at home.  I didn’t get that quite right but life has ways of throwing up things you don’t anticipate.

Here is the plan I developed:

Aim: To reset mind, emotion and spirit in a busy world

Minimal technology use – no facebook or email checking. Meals to be eaten, and chores to be done, more mindfully. Reading to be spiritually focussed.

Planned daily routine

1. Morning devotional mediation before breakfast honouring Brigantia
2. Breakfast
3. Morning prayer and chanting in honour of Maponnos
4. Mindful chores
5. Devotions to and communing with the Herd Mothers
6. Lunch
7. Devotions to and communing with the water beings
8. Afternoon exercise – walking or yoga type stretching
9. Reading or devotional craft work
10. Mid afternoon devotions to and communing with Gofannon
11. Reflection time – may include journaling or blogging
12. Devotions to and communing with Loki
13. Dinner
14. Evening activities – could include reading, crafting or divination
15. Late evening devotions to and communing with An Cailleach
16. Bed

As you can see the routine above includes several periods of prayer/communing with different beings. These are the beings I have regular devotional practices with at the current time.

So that was the plan. It didn’t work out quite like that in practice although it wasn’t far off it. I learnt I made a pretty big mistake putting exercise in the early afternoon. It was too soon after lunch and I had to tweak that so I did some reading or craft work after my post lunch devotions in order to let my lunch digest a bit more before doing exercise.  I also usually ended up sitting down and doing a bit of reading after my chores and before doing my pre lunch devotions to the Herd Mothers partially to relax a bit physically after the chores and partially because I had more time available than I anticipated.

In addition to the devotions of the retreat routine I also felt I needed to incorporate my usual daily devotions which include a libation to the being/s I focus on that day.  The retreat devotions did not include libations or other physical offerings. As my retreat took place on a Tuesday to Thursday that meant the first day there was an evening devotional to Brigantia, the second day I honoured my ancestors and the third day I did my evening devotions to Gofannon.

I was pretty good at restricting my online time but I did have the odd quick look at facebook or emails if I was looking for something in particular, for example on Thursday, where I usually join a zoom singing session with Sing aLoud.

Thursday, the last day of the retreat was a more difficult day to keep the retreat focus going. There were a couple of unanticipated interruptions. One was a brief visit from my kids who were staying the week with their dad. Lovely to see them but unexpected and it knocked me off the routine a bit. The other was news from my husband family down south that his mum had taken a turn for the worse and she wanted to him to visit. We had known she wasn’t well but this sounded much worse. Fortunately travel restrictions in Scotland were just lifting and we decided to travel down that weekend to see her. If the travel restrictions hadn’t lifted I think we would have still gone anyway under the circumstances but we didn’t have to make that call. I still completed the retreat but as you can imagine my mind was much less focussed after that news. It did seem apt that I needed to work harder on a day where my daily devotions were honouring Gofannon who UPG tells me appreciates hard work and perseverance.

Things I missed from a home retreat included simply being somewhere else which can help in distancing yourself from your usual routines and interactions with other people. I’m lucky in having a pagan and Druid husband as talking bout some of the things I was reading or thinking about was helpful.  If I did this again I think I’d try and set up a zoom/skype session or two with others I could talk to and reflect on some of my retreat experiences with so probably fellow druid types.

Overall the home retreat did help me with a spiritual reset and I came out of it feeling more strongly connected with the beings I honour. I also came out of it with a desire to re-kindle the druid aspects of my path and signed up for the British Druid Order (BDO) distance bardic course.  I’m also trying to be a bit more active in the Scottish Druids Facebook Group I set up and admin.

Hopefully if you are considering doing some form of home retreat this will give you some ideas to consider in your own planning.

Thoughts on a retreat at home

Today is the second day of an attempt at a home based retreat.  There are good aspects and not so good aspects about trying to do a retreat at home. You can set your own structure with a home based retreat. In the current circumstances of Covid-19 you don’t have to worry about social distancing while travelling or staying somewhere else if you do something on your own and at home. But it is much harder to leave the mundane aspects of your life behind when you stay at home and unless your family joins you in retreat activities you don’t have others to talk to during times of reflection. You also don’t have anyone else keeping you on track for activities.

I developed my own retreat structure which is a mix of devotional time, contemplation, mindful chores and exercise with time each day for reflection too. On the whole it’s working pretty well although there are aspects that I am finding need a bit of tweaking – I definitely wasn’t thinking clearly in putting exercise after lunch for example even with a light lunch. I have also greatly reduced my time on email and Facebook during this retreat and any reading I am doing is focussed around spiritual or religions matters.

I picked this week to try this as my kids are staying with their dad for a week which means my days are not punctuated with their day to day needs. Not that either of them are particularly needy during school holiday periods but there are some care requirements in an autistic family. Technically it’s only one at school now but the lad did try college this year and is now looking at modern apprenticeships. Anyway, I digress, suffice it to say it’s easier to immerse myself in spiritual matters without them here.

Luckily my other half, Neil, is also a druid as many readers will already know so although he hasn’t joined me in this retreat I have been able to talk to him about some aspects.  We had an interesting conversation yesterday while walking round our local park.  In it the idea of Druidry as an entity came up.  This immediately brought to mind a passage I had read earlier that day in the book “Contemplative Druidry” by James Nichol in which Penny Billinton speaks briefly about the concept of egregores although Neil had come to the idea of druidry as an entity in a different way.  I have been musing on the idea ever since.

Druidry as a being,
An egregore.
A child growing
Changing into…

Would Druid then become both the name of someone in a form of relationship, consciously or unconsciously, with “Druidry” and the name of the relationship itself? This could also help explain why it is so difficult to define “Druidry” as it is partially formed by those that have relationships to it. This also changes how I feel about being druid as it becomes my relationship, my connection to the entity “Druidry” and like any of my relationships that will always be unique because it is partly shaped by me, a unique being.

It’s been an interesting experimental home retreat so far and I have one more day to complete my intended aim of a three day home retreat.

 

Musing about my druid path

My journey with druidry began in 1997 at a Pagan Federation conference in London.  At that conference Philip Shallcrass and Emma Restall-Orr, then co-leaders of the British Druid Order (BDO) were giving a talk. I’ve never forgotten it. It was entitled Druidry, druidry, whose got the druidry?” and in that talk Emma and Philip gave an overview of the different types of druids you can find from experiential ones to academic focussed ones and everything in between.  Much of what they mentioned then is as valid today as it was then. I brought a copy of their Druid Directory, copies of the Druid’s Voice magazines and signed up to the BDO journal “Tooth and Claw”.  I loved what I read and heard of the BDO but at that time they didn’t have any distance teaching materials and I was in Glasgow (as I still am). It wasn’t feasible for me to attend face to face events with the BDO so I looked at other druid orders for something closer or distance learning courses.  I ended up with the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD) as many others have also done.

I sent for their first gwersi and I carried out the initial Bardic initiation which is at the start of the courses for the Spring Equinox in 1998. In the next few years I progressed through the OBOD courses and my mundane life changed too. I started an OBOD seed group in February 1999 with another OBOD member I had met through a local pub moot.  In August 1999 I got married for the first time.  My son was born on 30 August 2001 and that year I was progressing through the Ovate grade materials.  In early 2004 I completed the OBOD Druid grade materials and started exploring further while continuing to co-facilitate what was now our local grove. I also worked with the members of that grove to run an annual conference in Glasgow called DruidCon for a few years. That gave me the opportunity to meet and listen to a number of different Druids.

In 2007 we ran the last of the DruidCon series of conferences. Our grove was fading into the mists and I was pregnant with my daughter who was born in October 2007.  Family needs were increasing and I had less time or energy for moots or conferences.

In the years between completing the OBOD druid grade and now I looked at a range of other druid orders. I learnt things from Celtic Reconstructionist practitioners, joined the Druid Network and found myself at Caer Feddwyd and then into Dun Brython. I learnt a lot with Dun Brython and through that group met the man who became my second husband following my divorce from my first husband.

Along the way I have gone through at least two different phases of questioning whether I I was a druid. My path now dies not look anything like it did in those earlier years.  My practices are regular and devotional. I am a polytheist. The more common style of ritual in a cast circle calling to the four quarters of earth, water, air and fire is not one I really feel comfortable with anymore. When I do use a formal circle (which is rarely if left to my own devices) I call to earth, sea and sky not as separate realms but as the land beneath me, the waters around and through this land and the sky above me. Until recently I had barely used the Druid’s prayer for years or the Druid’s Vow. But somewhere in my heart, somehow I still described myself as druid, hearth druid as my path was focussed around my home and family.

In recent weeks I have found myself returning to my roots and remembering that it all began with the British Druid Order.  That Order too like OBOD has grown and changed over the years but it still has the same heart feel to it. The BDO still feels like home to me even though I have never been able to attend any BDO events. More recently they too have developed distance learning courses. I’ve looked at the bardic sample, read the course descriptions and looked at the costs and I’m thinking…

Perhaps it’s time to return to the beginning and take a different route though the forest of Druidry.

 

Grant, O Spirits, thy protection…

This is the first line of one version of the Druid or Gorsedd Prayer originally published by Iolo Morganwg in his work Barddas in the late 1800’s.  He gives multiple versions but this is a variant on the one adopted for use in the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD)

The full prayer in the version I used to use is as follows:

Grant, O Spirits, thy protection
and in protection, strength
and in strength, understanding
and in understanding, knowledge
and in knowledge, the knowledge of justice
and in the knowledge of justice, the love of it
and in the love of it, the love of all existences
and in the love of all existences the love of Spirit and all Goodness.

For various reasons which I won’t go into here I stopped using this prayer on a regular basis years ago but recently the words have been simmering in the background of my mind.  I think this was partially triggered by a recent blog post by Philip Carr-Gomm on The Call for Justice: In the USA and Everywhere

I have been reminded of a story of Iolo Morganwg hosting a series of early gorseddau (basically a series of Druid meetings for those not familiar with the term gorseddau) in 1797. His first that year was at midsummer, the next three months later, presumably at the autumn equinox. During that one due to his known political leanings the meeting was observed by twelve local justices accompanied by a troop of mounted and armed vigilantes. This is referred to in Professor Ronald Hutton’s books “Blood and Mistletoe” and “The Druids”.  P169 in “Blood and Mistletoe” (published 2009) and p161 in “The Druids” (published 2007). Around the time the books were due out I heard a talk by Prof. Hutton in which he brought that story to life in a way that the best storytellers can. I can’t remember his words but he said that a version the Gorsedd prayer would probably have been said at that meeting.  Prof. Hutton brought to life the idea of being at a gathering on a hillside with hostile armed men observing while reciting one of the original Welsh versions of that prayer.  I find it a powerful story.

Would I have the courage to stand reciting that prayer with hostile observers around me? I don’t know. I would first have to overcome my social anxiety to be at any size gathering and that in itself is not an easy thing now.

I am, however, finding the words of that prayer more relevant now than ever before and intend to start using it more often once more.  Where once I used the words Spirit and Spirits I think I will now use Gods so I am addressing the many deities I honour.

Grant, O Gods, thy protection
and in protection, strength
and in strength, understanding
and in understanding, knowledge
and in knowledge, the knowledge of justice
and in the knowledge of justice, the love of it
and in the love of it, the love of all existences
and in the love of all existences the love of Gods and all goodness.

Initiations and rites of passage

When you talk about initiation in Pagan circles it is often understood to be a ceremony that takes place within a particular path and changes your status within that path in some way. Initiation can also be about beginnings and some initiations are not formal or even planned but situations or events that change you. I have experienced both types of initiation.

Initiation:
“1. formal admission or acceptance into an organization or club, adult status in one’s community or society, etc.
2. the ceremonies or rites of admission. Compare rite of passage.
3. the act of initiating.
4. the fact of being initiated.”
(from http://www.dictionary.com)

 

Initiate:
“1. to begin, set going, or originate: to initiate major social reforms.
2. to introduce into the knowledge of some art or subject.
3. to admit or accept with formal rites into an organization or group, secret knowledge, adult society, etc.
4. to propose (a measure) by initiative procedure:
to initiate a constitutional amendment.”
(from http://www.dictionary.com)

In March 1997, after hovering on the edges of Paganism for about seven years, I took the decision to dedicate myself to a Pagan path. In many ways that decision was my first initiation as it is a decision that changed my life. Inspired by a particular book and also using some materials I found online I wrote a solitary ritual for the Spring Equinox that year that included my self dedication. A year later, having joined the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids (OBOD), I carried out my first initiation rite as a Bard with OBOD. The initiation rites provided by OBOD allow for solitary initiation although those within active groves or able to attend OBOD events may well choose to have their initiations with others of the Order. That initiation too was one that changed my life because it was the start of my ongoing journey within the forest of Druidry but I didn’t feel any dramatic changes at the time. These two events and choices I made in later years have linked the Spring Equinox with initiations in my heart and mind even though I have also had initiations at other times of the year since then.

I continued to walk those first few years of my Pagan life with the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and although I work in different ways now I will always hold a special place in my heart for OBOD. The structure of the materials I used in those years provided me with a good grounding in which to grow and change.

In November 2000 I became pregnant with my first child. My pregnancy went pretty well and in due course I had life’s initiation into parenthood. I still feel that no matter how much you think you are prepared for the changes your first child will bring you are wrong. It is an initiation of a very different type and comes with its own ordeals and rites of passage. Nothing can truly prepare you for the changes having a child brings. The change is not as dramatic the second time around but there is still a rite of passage involved for parents. We celebrate the birth of a child, we give gifts for the child, hold naming days but I don’t think we acknowledge the effect on the parents very well.

Rite of Passage:
“1. Anthropology. a ceremony performed to facilitate or mark a person’s change of status upon any of several highly important occasions, as at the onset of puberty or upon entry into marriage or into a clan.
2. any important act or event that serves to mark a passage from one stage of life to another.”
(from http://www.dictionary.com)

During my first pregnancy I had another form of initiation. By that time I had been a joint facilitator of a local Druid group and had been writing and facilitating group rituals for that group for about a year. Two members of that group died during the period of my pregnancy. Both had Pagan funerals and one of those, Insa’s, was my first experience of acting as celebrant for a rite of passage.

Being a celebrant for a rite of passage is an honour and a privilege. It’s also incredibly hard work and emotionally exhausting even for the lighter rites of passage like namings and weddings or handfastings. The hardest rites for me, and many others, are the funerals. Holding space for people to remember and grieve for a loved one requires walking along the knife edge between compassion and distance. You have to somehow maintain enough distance to allow you to lead that all important last service for the departed while also helping those grieving to feel the connection to the person they knew. If you didn’t know that person yourself then you have to draw a sense of them out from the stories you are told by family and close friends. If you did know them you have to put your relationship to one side to allow the person that others knew to come though. I still don’t know whether I find it harder to prepare a rite of passing for someone I knew or someone I didn’t know. I have done both more than once and the service for Insa was the first.

For a few years I carried out a range of Celebrant work including legal Pagan weddings and handfastings here in Scotland. I no longer hold the registration to do legal Pagan weddings as I chose to mostly give up my role as a Celebrant. I gave the work up because it requires a level of commitment and energy that owing to family needs I found increasingly difficult to maintain. I have been involved in a baby naming and carried out at least one funeral since I gave that work up but these are rare events now although as my children grow older maybe I will choose to return to this work.

I consider myself to be a Priest and I still use the term Druid. It is not formal initiations within a Druid Order that leads me to use the word Druid to describe myself and I’ve never had a formal rite of initiation as a Priest. I use these words because of personal experiences with deities and spirits. I am not the sort of Priest and Druid that leads a lot of ritual for others although I do some of that. I am not the sort of Priest and Druid that supports others in times of stress although I do some of that too. I am a Druid and a Priest because I serve my deities. I serve them in bringing up my children to be responsible and caring members of society. I serve them when I kneel in quiet contemplation at my altar. I serve them when I go about my daily life, doing my best to walk my truth. My service is not demanded of me but offered freely and with love. It is in fleeting moments of ecstasy, fear and awe that I have been initiated by the gods themselves into my role as Priest.

This type of initiation is one that is highly personal to each individual. It comes of personal experiences and personal relationships. It isn’t something that can be easily expressed or something that can be given to anyone else in a ritual. You can lead a ritual that can facilitate these types of experiences but you can’t promise them or give them to others yourself. If you have these types of experience you might choose to mark them in a rite of passage of some kind if you have a community you can do that with but you don’t need to do anything other than accept or reject the experience. Even rejection begins a new path.

Many initiations and rites of passage have some form of ordeal experience that takes place before the rite itself.  I challenge anyone who has arranged a wedding to say there aren’t any aspects of preparation that are an ordeal in some way.  Likewise however smoothly a birthing experience goes some aspect of it is almost certain to be an ordeal.  Ordeals before rites of passage or initiations do not have to be formal structured ones. Sometimes life just puts you into situations that are ordeals to get through and when you come out the other side you want to mark it with something.  I am wondering how many of us will want to mark the experience of this COVID-19 lockdown with a rite of passage of some form when we are able to gather with others again.

Family

In  my last post on Yule I spoke about traditions I have with my family during the darkest days of winter. Family is a central part of my life. Family has always been fairly important to me but becoming a parent changed that from a fairly important aspect to a central one. My journey as a mother began just a couple of years after my journey as a Pagan began. From the earliest days of my first pregnancy there has been a spiritual aspect to being a mother from marking stages of my pregnancies with ritual to sharing my path with my children.  I have not brought them up to be Pagan but with the knowledge of various pagan paths as well as other religions so that they may choose their own paths but I am very open about my beliefs and practices.

A few years ago I coined the phrase “Hearth Druid” as a light hearted but fairly accurate description of my path. As I am also a polytheist, if I want to be more descriptive I will say I am a polytheist hearth druid. Druidry is the path I began with when I first explored Paganism and I later developed into a polytheist Druid. For many there is an aspect of service within the Druid path. That service can take many forms and in my case a key part is service to the future by doing the best I can to raise my children to be caring and responsible humans.

Any parent who says raising children is easy is likely to be stretching the truth to breaking point. Parenthood is wonderful and terrifying. It brings some of the most intense joys, some of the deepest fears and the greatest amounts of stress to your life. I am blessed with two children six years apart in age, one son and one daughter. My son is a young man now and I am immensely proud of him. I am incredibly proud of my daughter too who is growing into a young woman. Both of my children have additional challenges to deal with in this modern world of ours because both are autistic. I am not diagnosed as autistic but I still believe that I probably am. I am certainly among the more neurodivergent section of the population.

I am lucky in that both my children are very healthy. They are intelligent, loving and wonderful young people. The additional challenges they have, that I have, are because our society tries to treat us all as if we are the same. We are told again and again that we must meet set targets and milestones in set periods of time and yet very few of us will meet any of these things in the same periods of time or in the same way. Our modern society does not yet value diversity as well as it should whether that be physical diversity, neurodiversity or many of the other aspects of diversity that exist within our human species. In my opinion we are only just beginning to truly appreciate the importance of diversity in nature generally.

Learning more about diversity in various ways, learning to appreciate diversity, is part of the reason I am the polytheist that I am today. I have grown into polytheism and I believe it fits wonderfully with a viewpoint that treasures diversity.

Some polytheists are able to put their devotions to their deities at the centre of their life. Some have incredibly close relationships with a small number of deities, relationships where they are asked to serve their gods in very direct and often life altering ways. I am not one of those polytheists, at the centre of my life are my children. My children don’t need me quite as much as they used to when they were younger but my daughter in particular still needs a lot of support.  I still have deep relationships with my deities but they do not ask me to choose between my love for them and my love for my children. Those I am sworn to understand that I what service I can give them, as with everything in my life, is balanced against family needs.

Other members of my family are also very important to me. I am lucky enough to have a very close relationship with my parents. I had a particularly close relation ship with my mum and I miss being able to phone her up for a chat.  I miss her hugs most.  I had more of a friendship than the usual sort of mother/daughter relationship many people seem to have. Neither of my parents were Pagan when I was growing up, they came to it later in life when I was in my late teens and although I was aware of that change it wasn’t something that led me to become Pagan myself. Our paths differ but we still share seasonal rituals as part of the same local group which used to be driven forward more by my mum with my dad and I in support and my dad now carries on with me in support.

And then there is my husband. Both of us have been married previously and both of us have learnt things from those previous relationships. I now understand so much more about myself, my probably autistic self, than I knew in my first marriage and that learning has been incredibly valuable in my relationship with my husband now. He is my love and my support. He is also a Druid and that gives us another bond. We call him a Land Druid because his Druidry is so closely tied to his relationship with the Land, walking it, taking landscape photographs and being out there.

My relationships with other members of my wider family are also very important to me. I chose my current home for example because I wanted to be physically closer to my brother, his wife and their children. That in turn has allowed me to develop much better relationships with all of them.

For some, family can also become something incredibly painful. While that is not my experience I know that for some the last thing they want is to be close to some or perhaps all of what would usually be called their family. Family is not just about those you are connected to by blood, upbringing or marital status though. Family means different things to different people and for many a spiritual family can be as important or more so than their blood family. In some cases those you think of as family widen out in different directions. A best friend may be closer than a sibling, members of a grove may become like a second family or members of an online community may develop a sense of family brought together by shared interests or commonalities in situation. Families are another area of diversity in life that can be overlooked but what is a family but whom you love the most and who love you in return?

I am very open with my family about my beliefs, they all know I am polytheist. Some members of my wider family are happy to chat about faith matters, others are not so keen. In my wider family there are several Christians and yes, there has been the odd misunderstanding over the years but we have been able to move past such things. When I was a child and for most of my growing years the only faith really spoken about in the family was Christianity. That has changed. When we do talk about religion we don’t just talk about our own faiths, we also talk about other faiths in the world.

In my own home I openly practice my faith, there is nothing hidden and my children are free to join in when they want to or not as the case may be. I have taught them that if someone is at prayer unless it is an emergency you wait respectfully until they are finished before you start talking to them. I have an altar in my dining room, pagan books on bookshelves, robes and cloaks hanging in my wardrobe. Nothing hidden. If anyone in my family is curious about my own path or other aspects of Paganism they know they can ask me. They also know there’s a chance I’ll start getting very enthusiastic and start telling them about all sorts of related information. A question about a Norse deity may lead to a discussion on Norse myths, then myths of other cultures, the place of story in our world in feeding our imaginations, in allowing us to move beyond our own limitations and widen our perspectives. Or it might lead along other paths entirely. I get very enthusiastic and my mind jumps about leaping from trail to trail. My family know this about me and know that if they start asking questions an hour could easily pass as we discuss things. Fortunately they are also quite adept in letting me know when they’ve had enough if I don’t spot the signs myself.

My family, like my faith, is intimately woven into the strands of my life. The tapestry of who I am would not be as colourful or as complex without either of these parts of my life.

A death, a rebirth, a claiming

A Death

Recently I chose to support a particular kickstarter project for “Tales of Hopeless, Maine” and I chose a level of support that included as a reward a Hopeless, Maine obituary by author Nimue Brown. When I first chose this I did so because I thought it would be unusual and fun (which it is) but not long before mine was written Nimue asked me what name I wanted to die under.  That’s not a question I expected and it got me thinking about my various names. My birth name is Pauline and many people use that name for me including my husband. My parents call me Polly, my brother sometimes calls me Pic (short for pickle), my children usually call me mum. And among many Pagans, particularly Druids, I have been known as Potia. I have also had several surnames in my life, Pitchford is my fifth. So I had a lot of options to choose from for my “death”. After some thought I felt that it was time “Potia” died.  Potia was a name I took up towards the beginning of my journey into druidry. I have changed a lot since then.  It’s also a name linked to Epona via a particular inscription. My love for Epona hasn’t changed but I am not dedicated to Her alone.

I had no idea how I might die on Hopeless, Maine. It’s an unusual place where death is not always certain, where bodies are not always available to be identified and buried. Perhaps I would be stabbed by knitting needles or poisoned via a pot of tea. I never imagined the death I got or the headline: “Potia Pitchford defies explanation“.  To be taken by surf horses was a beautifully significant way for Potia to die, to be taken into the depths by the very image of one of my most loved deities. And yet for my death to be uncertain too. No body to identify or bury, just gone. This death has a strong spiritual significance to me that I didn’t anticipate. It was also published on Friday 13th and Friday is the day I do my weekly devotions to the Herd Mothers, to Epona and Rhiannon.  It was also a full moon and I now do devotions on full and dark moons for beings of ocean, seas and rivers.

A Rebirth

The druid I was, Potia, has changed. What I am now has grown out of the druid that I was. I am a priest, a tender of a shrine, a servant of a group of deities and sworn to two deities in particular. I have written of some of this in a previous post “On being a priest“. I have felt since writing that post that I needed to take on a new name, one that to some extent reflects the changes in my life.  Until this evening what that name would be escaped me. This evening as I sat communing with An Cailleach I received some guidance.  I need to check my understanding and make sure I can write it correctly. I’ve also been led to believe I don’t need to stop using Potia, this new name will be more of a descriptive surname if I understand it correctly.

A Claiming

“You are mine” She said to me this evening. I acknowledge that claim with the understanding that I am also sworn to the Herd Mothers and that any tasks She and They would have of me need to be balanced against the needs of my children.

 

On being a priest

This evening I feel twitchy in a non-physical way.  I feel as if I have forgotten something or I’m supposed to be doing something but I can’t think of anything it could be. This non-physical twitchiness is something that I am starting recognise more easily as promptings from those I serve to do something in particular.  This time I believe this twitchy feeling means that I need to write and, in particular, to write about being a priest.

This isn’t the first time I have written about priesthood but the last time was ten years ago so it’s probably about time I revisited this topic here.

Others have written clearly and in depth on a range of questions around being a priest. Most notably John Beckett has written several posts on priesthood the most recent one being “15 Roles of a Pagan Priest – How Many Is Too Many?“.  Also of fairly recent note is a series of three posts by Morgan Daimler starting with “Priesthood in Service to the Other – Part 1: The wide view“. If you haven’t read these posts I recommend you do so if this is a topic that interests you.

My thoughts on priesthood are coloured to some extent by these authors and to some extent by my own experiences and observations. There are a few public individuals in the UK that I feel embody something of what it is to be a priest. Each of them do this in different ways and some may use other titles.  I’m going to name a few of them and try and give some reasons why I consider them to be priests.

The first is Cat Treadwell and you can find her online at The Catbox.  She is self employed as a Druid and Priest.  Much of her work involves celebrancy but she also runs workshops, presents talks, offers divination readings, writes books and blogs and supports people on a personal basis too. Cat serves her community in many ways and is a public voice for druidry and paganism generally.  She does all this from a place of personal challenges and struggles with depression which she speaks about openly. I have still not met her face to face but hers is a voice that speaks from the darkness.

The next is Nimue Brown who writes at Druid Life. Nimue is also an author of books and blogs and she has also been presenting more talks, I’m not sure of she’s been doing any workshops.  My perspective of Nimue is of a woman with a whimsical sense of humour that has worked to overcome a number of personal challenges to get where she is today. She’s a mother, a folk musician and a keen observer of her local environment.  She is a different sort of Druid to Cat and I’m not even sure that she would claim the title Priest for herself but in my mind she is both Druid and Priest.

What these women have in common is that they are both Druids and both pretty public figures. They also both speak from a place of deep experience with extremely difficult personal challenges.

My next example is Dr Jenny Blain. Jenny is a retired academic and a Heathen.  She is a polytheist and animist with strong ties to her local land spirits or landvættir. It is harder to put into words why I consider her a Priest or in Heathen terms a Gythia. One aspect is her ability to lead ritual, another is her ability to share her knowledge with others both through her books and via more direct teaching but there is more to it than that. She is a Seidr worker, that in itself is not a simple thing to put into words as there are many forms of seidr. A basic and probably incomplete description is that seidr is a method of entering an altered state of consciousness which can be used to work magic or journey for various purposes.

My final example is Lorna Smithers. Lorna is a an author, poet and mystic. She has a deep and personal connection to her patron deity, Gwyn ap Nudd. Her priesthood is one of personal dedication and part of her dedication is a call to communicate some of what she learns and experiences through her writing and talks. She is, in my opinion, a priest due to her very direct service to her patron.

I could go on. I have deliberately chosen to highlight a few female examples of priests here but there are a number of men I also consider to be priests such as Damh the Bard, Adam Sargant, Phillip Shallcrass, Geoff Boswell, Robin Herne, Mike Stygal and Rich Blackett. Most of these are Druid types as this is the community I have been part of the longest. I’m still getting to know individuals within the Heathen community.  The main things they have in common are that I know them either personally face to face or online and I respect their opinions.

All of this serves to give a few examples of the complexity of what it is to be a priest. More recently I have started to think of myself as priest as well as druid.  I am not an author beyond this blog as yet (who knows what they future might hold). Currently I don’t give talks or presentations although I have in the past.  I can write and lead group ritual although I don’t do a great deal of this now. I have acted as a celebrant in the past too. None of these things are why I am using the term priest more lately.  I am a priest because I serve a number of deities and because I am a shrine keeper.

I am sworn firstly to the Herd Mothers and to the Ancient Mother I know as An Cailleach. I feel they are still training me and gradually making me ready for further service.  I also serve within my limited abilities Maponnos, Gofannon, Mannanan, Brigantia, Loki, Ran, Aegir and the daughters of the oceans. Some of these I have served longer than others, some I am still learning about but I honour them and give them offerings. This is why I call myself a Priest and Druid.

 

 

Là na Cailliche

Today, 25th March is known as Là na Cailliche or Cailleach’s day. I haven’t done much in previous years to mark this even though I was first introduced to the Cailleach about twenty years ago. Back then I knew little and it’s taken time for the relationship I now have to develop.

I felt last week that I needed to do something more this year, something special. I thought and decided that a walk in the Campsie hills somewhere was fitting. I see the Campsies each day from my home. I look towards them often and think of the Cailleach. I don’t know of any particular folk lore that links any Cailleach stories with the Campsies but for me She is there. It’s not the only place ties to Her by any means but it is a personal one.

I’m not the fittest person. I also have family commitments that mean I can’t be out all day so I had to plan for somewhere fairly easy to get to and somewhere I could walk and return in good time for kids coming back from school. I chose a walk into the hills above the Campsie falls and if the weather was really bad my back up plan was to do some knitting and  spinning. Luckily for me the weather has been lovely. A bit of a chilly breeze but dry and some sunshine.

I  prepared a packed lunch and a flask of tea, tied a plaited cord belt and prayer beads round my waist both dedicated to the Cailleach, put my staff in the car and headed off. Walking boots and suitable layers of clothing for hill walking too of course and my hubby knew where I was going. Safety as well as spirituality!

It felt good to be up in the hills, it felt right to do something special to mark this day.  I ate my lunch on the hills by a cairn and shared my tea with the Cailleach and the spirits of the land. I sat and gazed out over the land and listened to the skylarks singing. There was a long pause, a silence that felt as if the world around me was waiting for something. I listened. I breathed the air and felt the cold, damp earth beneath me. Sound returned to the land.

As I had walked up I heard a raven call and caught a glimpse of one flying. As I walked down again I heard the raven call twice more and saw it soaring. Three times heard, three times seen. Twice seen and heard at the same time, another time heard but not seen, then seen but not heard.

There’s a low flat stone part way up the hill and it’s clear that several people have taken advantage of its seat like nature for a rest. I did too for a short rest on the way up, a longer rest on the way down. And during that rest on the way down I prayed with my prayer beads. Beads that my mum had made. And the words I said changed.

Earth Her flesh,
Stone Her bones,
Plants Her skin, Her hair,
The waters Her blood,
The air Her breath,
The clouds Her thoughts,
Ravens Her voice,
Eagles Her eyes,
Deer and hares Her ears.

Hail to  you, Mighty Cailleach!