Balor and The Very Hot Solstice of 2017

I love the Irish myth of Lugh’s slingshot victory over Balor of the Evil Eye, at the (second) battle of the gods at Moytura. I once told their story with home-made puppets as part of an OBOD grove ceremony. It was as solemn and mythically accurate an occasion as you can imagine from the picture below.

This myth is, of course, more properly associated with Lúnasa, the August festival – but this year I’m claiming its relevance for this summer solstice (which has no myths associated with it, as it wasn’t celebrated by the Irish within folk memory).

Characters, left to right: Ethniu, imprisoned in a tower (interpretation apparently taken a bit from Rapunzel); Cian; Balor of the Evil Eye (interpretive influence obvious); Lugh Lámfada.

There are many theories about who Balor in the Irish myths might have represented*. One is that he was the blazing summer sun that destroyed the crops, who needed to be slain, perhaps with a sacrifice, so that the harvest could happen. This year, that mythic concept resonates rather well with me — and probably with a lot of the people in Britain, suffering a run of hot weather of the kind that we are never prepared for. (We live in houses designed to hold the heat, most of which were built in the Little Ice Age, and we have no air conditioning.)

And, looking at it less literally, that Eye of Evil that threatens our land could stand for a lot of things, in UK society, in this post-Brexit post-election summer of chaos…! But then, in my theology, Chaos is the pool that feeds the Xartus, the tree of Justice and the pattern of the universe.

Here’s to you, Lugh Samildánach, victor over the blazing Eye that threatens our land.  May chaos never destroy the order of the universe. May the order of society never become so hard and unyielding that chaos cannot rebuild it.

You can read Lugh’s story here.

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*As usual, I am more focused on mythic truth than ‘historical accuracy’ of myths (given that even the concepts of ‘historical’ and ‘accuracy’ are really socially constructed and unstable things). AKA, take my UPG at your own risk! (Especially when it comes to the Xartus, which is based on one person’s interpretation of one speculative idea and is almost pure mythic truth and UPG.) I haven’t had a chance to find sources for this interpretation of the myth of Balor this year – I’m so busy with my PhD that I hardly have time to blog at all at the moment – but I’ll edit with references when I get a chance. In the meantime, it’s still the interpretation that Wikipedia references. I’m told that this interpretation is quite dated. But again – mythic truth! :)

Happy Samhain. Happy ‘Year of Less’.

The sun’s down – so blessed Oíche Shamhna to you. :)

This afternoon, rushing home (with a bag full of apples) in a tightly-timed attempt to ensure I was indoors before dark, I started pondering how I’ve developed this strange mix of Samhain customs over the past six or seven years. In my attempt at developing my own style of Gaelic polytheism, little things start to resonate, inspired by community or folklore (or other places entirely). They become part of the mix. Things like not setting foot outside the bounds of my land from sundown to sun-up on Samhain Eve; burning a candle in the window all night; replacing my Brighid’s cross with a rowan cross for protection through the winter; a sacred fire…

This is a time of the ancestors, but it’s also a time of many other things. The final harvest is brought in; the Good Folk are abroad; Cailleach Bhearra is reborn from stone onto sand; the Nightmare Queen stands with one foot on land and one in water, waiting for the Good God.

Around these central mythic moments turn my Samhain/Lá Samhna customs.

Hag Stone, Beara Peninsula, Ireland – associated with Cailleach Bhearra

Now comes November.
my birth time, and white ribs of tide
uproot the silence of the bay.

Today I break from stone onto sand,
motherless, my mother a stone
bedding the earth and dreaming my image.

– ‘Birth’, Leanne O’Sullivan

She is reborn. Everything changes.

October is about cleansing, changing, reforming, making ready for Oíche Shamhna (Samhain Eve). Spaces: altars have been redesigned and redecorated. Spirit: Work has been done on lots of things, mostly to do with casting off the old and getting ready to let in the new. Self: I’ve been doing a lot of work to sort out a myriad of health problems this month, have managed to get pretty deep into my thesis draft, and feel like I’m at least plodding on through the swamp, even if it’s all rather a struggle still.

Oiche Shamhna ritual setup. Will attempt to keep a candle burning all night. It is at least *near* a window!

The Samhain wreath on my door is synthetic – and beautiful, and made by someone else. (I support local and small-scale artists wherever possible.) I’d love it if I had the time (and fine motor control) to make my own. But my hands don’t work well, and I’m spending pretty much every minute I’m awake drafting my PhD (100,000 words due by February). So, purely symbolic it has to be. #MyDisabledPolytheism

I managed to completely fail to collect any rowan today, too, rushed as I was doing other prep. That can be tomorrow, I reckon.

On Oíche Shamhna itself, the most consistent thing I do is putting a candle in the window, to signal to the dead that they may come in and rest. My religious path is offerings-focused, so offerings to the gods, the spirits, the ancestors and the Good Folk are important. So is having a fire, if I can, but I can’t always. (I can try this year.) Everything else will probably be suggested by those whose time of year it is – Morrigan, Dagda, Beara – or it won’t. It can be a good night for divination for the coming year, or sometimes that works better at Midwinter. (I’d love to hear what other Gaelic polytheists do on the night itself, if any are reading…)

I always have a serious time of chaos around this time of year – She is about to be reborn, and so things fall apart before they can come back together in new, more coherent, better ways. Earthquake and fire and blood, before the new landscape emerges. Then, between Oíche Shamhna and Midwinter, things tend to get pleasantly quiet. This year I’m looking forward to that. My poor little mind has been broken for a few months now (hence my absence from online discussion, which is probably going to continue). It wants a rest. (I just got a new medication for anxiety that I’m somewhat hopeful about. I’m asking some relevant saints of health for help with that. We shall see.)

And Happy New Year to those who celebrate Samhain as such. I do, but sort of by accident – since it coincides with the beginning of a new academic year. This is going to be my Year of Less. A year to nurture my barely-flickering little Dark Flame. This is the year where I say No a lot more. This is the year when I say No to being being involved with things where I’m marginalised, or able-splained at constantly, or which cause me anxiety… say No to trying to be something I’m not (yes, I can do this polytheism/Paganism thing entirely my own way)… say Yes to speaking only my truth… and say Yes to creating only things that are honourable and beautiful. I want more time for things I want to do: go to gigs, and take my scooter around the wilder, weirder parts of London, and maybe see people I want to see (but let myself be alone as much as I want to be, without judging my little anti-social self too much). I want to read tarot and Ogham, and play a bit. I want to have my fifth or six attempt at learning Hebrew (you can’t give up till you’re at, like, 20 failures – that is Official). Most of all, I want to write my thesis, and I want to tell people that, No, I don’t have to do things they want me to do that will give me less time for that thesis…

At least, that’s the plan. :P

Oíche Shamhna Shona Daoibh. Blessings of Samhain to you and yours. Blessings on your ancestors. Blessings on your year to come.

Celebrating My Disabled Pagan Life: Photoblog

Every time a Pagan or polytheist tries to tell others that they should only take natural remedies or dictates what health should look like, I get twitchy.

I’m currently deep into drafting my thesis about disability and a particular religion (which will eventually be 100,000 words long, so it’s keeping me fairly busy). I’m exploring big themes. And the more I read and write about certain religions (you know, the ones that Pagans are often so quick to judge), the more nervous I get about how Pagans can be very similar in our attitudes towards bodies and minds. We, too, dismiss disabled and chronically ill people for being different. We may do it much more subtly. But we do it.

For example, I’m looking in my research at how some religious and spiritual communities keep out people who are different, telling them they just need to pray more and have more faith, and then they’ll get better. That has varying effects on people, usually negative ones. For Pagans, the equivalent could be: you just need to take more natural, herbal remedies and ‘think positive’ and you’ll be all better soon, and then you can come and join us. Or it could be: sickness is full of miasma and bad energy, and you need to be cleansed before you can be a member of our group/do magic/be good enough.

Well, bollocks to all that.

I want to allow my body to be me. It’s different, and it’s beautiful. We are all different. This is not a bad thing.

See how beautiful! This is how great I am looking after nine hours working on my thesis. I think the threadbare second-hand hoodie is particularly glamorous. And the birds-nest hair.

[Image: Me in chair. With slightly worrying grin.]

I celebrate my reliance on ‘big pharma’. It has allowed me to do a PhD in which I am blessed to be allowed to share the stories of disempowered people. How does it do that? By providing me with medication that treats my appalling levels of pain. Without medication, I’d be unable to move from bed most of the time. It also treats my heart problems and blood vessel issues, extreme fatigue, anxiety that stops me from having the life I want, my three separate sleep disorders, and a few other things. And what a blessing to live in a country with a National Health Service that offers me all that medication at a price that I can afford (and that’s even giving me free acupuncture at the moment). Blessings of Brighid on the doctors and nurses and physios and pain clinicians and sleep technicians that are a part of my daily life (yes, I do mean daily – I have medical appointments most days at the moment).

Just three of the many gifts that great human minds learning from the wisdom of nature have given to me. I will have to take these meds for the rest of my life – and I will have a rest of my life. How cool is that?

[Image: packets of pills.]

I celebrate my reliance on modern medical technology. It means I don’t have to risk dying in my sleep. That’s a very real risk that people with sleep apnoea live with. Mine is comparatively mild (although I still stop breathing 50+ times an hour in deep sleep), so the risk of that is low, but it exists. More likely, though, is that my ten years of untreated sleep apnoea has led to degenerations in my brain. That may be the root cause of why I’m so anxious, forgetful and brain-foggy. Herbs won’t help that (not least because I’m allergic to most of the ones that traditionally help with sleep). Right now I am struggling very hard to get to used to this dread machine. (I, ahem, may have screamed at it and then thrown it out of my bedroom door at 2am one night earlier this week.) But I persist. It’s been four difficult months trialling it. And I am still deeply, profoundly grateful for this stupid fucking machine with its enormous sleep mask that means I wake up uncomfortably every half hour. Slowly, crawling along month by month, I’m getting used to it enough that it’s actually having the chance of treating my daily and long-term effects of this. (Sleep apnoea, by the way, is a common side effect of my genetic condition. I don’t have enough collagen in my connective tissue, so everything is very very floppy. So my airway collapses a lot. Fascinating, huh? I love the amazing diversity of the human body.)

My APAP machine to treat sleep apneoa. It runs on the will of the evil beast of Electric Power. (It’s alive! It’s alive!) [Image: black machine with clear face-mask sitting on top.]

These negative attitudes I see in Pagans towards medical treatment – they all reflect the insidiousness of ‘normalcy’, which is a way that our culture regulates our bodies. “Be normal,” says our culture. So we try to pretend we are. And that is very, very limiting of us. And it’s bad for us. It stops us from loving our human diversity. It stops us from understanding our complex, remarkable bodies and minds. It teaches us to judge each other. The very fact that I’m writing about this will be frowned upon, and mostly ignored, since these aren’t topics to be discussed in polite company. (Yes, physical conditions are stigmatised in our society too, even though I hear some people with mental health problems claiming otherwise.)

That little display says I got nine and a half hours sleep last night. IT LIES. [Image: Close-up on APAP machine.]

But I, like Whitman, sing myself and celebrate myself. (Please excuse the hubris of comparing myself to great poet.) This is my Druidry. This is my polytheism. This is my daily practice.

The siren song of the normal is seductive. But we know better – we liminal ones who live in the ever-moving spaces between pain and relief, between difference and normalcy, between this world and the Otherworld. And if we force others to look at the shadowy spectre who walks with them daily, that they have forgotten how to see? Then we have done the sacred work of the Lords and Ladies of Life and Death. That sounds a lot more adventurous than doing the normal thing.

Disability does not make me ‘impure’. That’s why the gods don’t mind me giving them an offering from my scooter. Like here, in which I sit on another beast of the Demon Electricity! This one is made of Iron! [Image: Me on my scooter holding a piece of paper and a cup. I was at a Pagan Federation event in which I called on many deities.]

My polytheism/Paganism celebrates my entire human experience. Does yours?

It’s coming to eat me. I don’t know why I appear to be finding this amusing. [Image: Me wearing APAP face mask.]

On Speaking and Not Speaking

Recently I’ve been thinking about what I make public and what I keep private. In the past I’ve scoffed, a bit, at the ‘keep silent’ answer of the Sphinx, that fourth bit of wisdom that Thelemics, Wiccans and others hold dear. I don’t hold with the late modern idea that religion should be kept out of the public sphere. Religion is culture. Religion is life. Many paganisms, and perhaps especially Gaelic polytheism, are woven into every aspect of life, both private and public. Singing prayers as you light fires in the morning; walking the bounds of your land to claim it as your own; Bealtaine fires to cleanse cattle and (today) ourselves.

But there are aspects of some paganisms that it may be better to keep silent about. I refuse to talk about magic, for example, except with people who are close to me (and then I’m careful). And sometimes, saying or doing anything puts you in the path of what the Irish called the Evil Eye – e.g. from people who don’t like it when others gain any kind of attention, and who might do things in response to that.

And then, some things need to be somewhat public. When you pray to St Expedite, it’s important that you share his name and spread his fame. People used to put his name in the paper. I pondered what the modern equivalent of that was, and came up with twitter and blogs – so here’s my acknowledgement of the generosity of St Expeditus (I hear that you never say his name the same way twice). He also likes flowers and pound cake – I had to substitute what we call Madeira Cake, as we don’t have that – but he seemed OK with the exchange. He came through for me. Blessings on you, St Expedite, who gets things done in a hurry.

Image: improvised temporary shrine to St Expeditus, with his picture, flowers and sponge cake.

I’ve been doing some Work that’s definitely for my eyes only, recently. And pondering the paradox of how to write about that in places where it’s helpful to talk about what I’m doing, but where I know it will be seen, probably by those who don’t need to know what I’m doing… See, this is tricky :P I also got into some trouble not too long ago with some people who didn’t have the best of intentions, who (among other things) linked my public, academic profile with my personal, Pagan one. Their intention was to do me harm across all the spheres of my life. I don’t hide who I am – at the moment, it’s not difficult to get from here to my public persona. I’ve had to ponder how to address that. Password protected posts? Writing more in places where posts can be locked to a small audience? Neither of those sits very well with me, given the purposes of this blog.

No, I think the answer may be more related to the concept of ‘hiding in plain sight’. Which is again one that some Wiccans love, and that I’ve scoffed at a bit. But when I had important people over to the house recently, and had to look at what I was hiding in plain sight – Brighid’s cross above the door, altars that look like trinkets and pictures, my door sign a clear boundary between my place of Work and the rest of the house, and so on – it occurred to me that this, too, is Gaelic polytheist practice. The ordinary fire blessed in the quiet of dawn. The rowan cross that looks like decoration. The bit of butter left behind the house for the Good Folk. The whispered prayer as you craft an amulet that looks like a piece of thread.

It’s all important – especially for those who live in the liminal places.

Image: door sign – “Away with the fairies”

(Pt 2:) My Polytheism

There’s a beautiful trend happening. People are writing about their polytheisms, people whose polytheistic practices are diverse, varied, multiple, weird, different from what we’re told (recently) that polytheism ‘should’ be. (See Jack’s post here, and Kiya’s post here, and the wonderful My Polytheism blog which is collecting a lot of this writing – and I hear that Jolene Poseidonae wants more people to contribute to it!)

Like a lot of these brilliant writers, I have been really concerned by the gatekeeping and crypto-fascist stuff coming out of those who would paint themselves as ‘leaders’ of polytheism. As though it were a cult and they were the gurus. As though it were a singular religion, with rules that we all share, and which they can write.

For me, part of this mess has been positive. My Lady is pointing me at the roots of modern cultural polytheisms – roots which are mostly nationalistic and fascist, if we are completely honest – and asking me if that’s what I want to be part of, even as it moves beyond that. For that history will always be with it. I’m thinking about that, and it may take some time. These things can be transformed, She says – but is that the Work you want to do?

Because you see, my gods are not particularly bothered how I worship them and what I call myself. And my ancestors definitely aren’t. It’s for you, they whisper, and I, barely hearing them, shake my head like I were brushing off flies, and pour out my offerings on shrines that Irish gods never had, and that they certainly don’t have now. And what paltry offerings they are – whiskey and mead and scraps of food.

And they don’t mind – it’s what I need. And I believe they appreciate those little offerings, paltry as they are. But there’s a sense that, when I’m ready, there are far bigger things waiting for me outside the four walls of the room that houses my shrines to the beings of Light that dwell in the secret places of the land. And far, far bigger things waiting for me beyond the four walls of my current ways of thinking and doing and worshipping.

My gods do not live in any shrine inspired by modern polytheism. No offering of whiskey is enough for them, and no trinkets that remind me of them could ever fill the deep, dark spaces they have made in my heart.

Then what do you want? I ask, perturbed, frustrated.

You, whispers Beara, my dark Lady, whom I had the gall to name myself, whose tales I have twisted as she has led me to, in whom I have found a depth of chaos and justice that no constructs of ‘ancient lore’ can describe. For it can only be found in the places she dwells – in the wind in the trees, at the seashore in a storm, on a wild island, on the mountain. And in the deepest pool of chaos, beneath the Tree.

Anything (and everything) you want, says Dovinia, ancestress-goddess who crosses divides between land and people, and finds me lost, somewhere in the depths between.

The Adventure, winks Manannan mac Lir, who does not care if I put the accents on the right places in his name, for all names and stories could only ever be an echo of the sound of the sea on the rocks in a mighty storm – and a wry, friendly fisherman watching from the shore in a bright yellow hat, so easy to miss in the heavy rain. He offered me a box once and asked if I wanted to open it. I’m not sure I’ve even cracked the lid yet.

They ask me to challenge the deepest parts of myself that do not want to offer hospitality to the stranger (or wants to fetishise them* until my hospitality is far more about me than about them). The parts of me that withdraw into tribal instincts – where what is mine must stay pure and unsullied by others, and what is yours must be mine if I think it is good, and condemned as alien and wrong if I do not. The parts of me that are racist, colonialist, internally and externally disablist, internally and externally homophobic, transphobic, classist, elitist… the list goes on. The parts of me that secretly like that most of my gods are Irish and that I rarely venture out to meet others. That I rarely look beyond my little boxes. That I call myself a thing and ignore how it oppresses others. Because to look at that oppression is difficult, and may involve Work that I’m just too tired to do. (The parts of myself that use ‘I’m too tired’ as an excuse far, far too often.) They call me to challenge all these things in me, for only then can I even begin to challenge them in others.

This is my offering.

They ask me to give all of myself to a cause without end, from the depths of my frustration and pain, in disability campaigning that alienates me from my community – and leaves me deeply hurt, unsure if I should go on with such work that makes people stand against me, vocally, if very boringly. But I will, because order needs chaos, rising up from the dark pool beneath the Tree, or nothing ever changes. And Beara nods, and approves – but only long enough to ask for more.

This is my offering.

And they ask me to do the most simple things, that are the most difficult. Continuing to show up, even in the too-bright, scorching days of a summer ruled by Balor, where my world and my mind feels like it is falling apart. Keeping going, when the doctors are unkind and unhelpful, when the university administration is neglectful to the point of my desperation, when the mountain of work is terrifying to look up at. To keep pulling out that next transcript to analyse, Cuchullain-like (but with no super-strength to help). To accept the many gifts that They give me. To believe my spouse loves me. To keep lighting the candle on the shrine – because that is what I need, and my need is great.

This is my offering.

My polytheism is social justice. My polytheism is critical theory. My polytheism is Hannah Arendt and bell hooks and Sara Ahmed and Robert McRuer and Rosemarie Garland-Thompson and Sharon Betcher and Nancy Eiesland. My polytheism is stories – sharing the stories of those who are not heard, because my privilege means my voice is louder, and this is what I can do. My polytheism is research into disability and Christianity, that I have never walked away from in six long years, through circumstances having forced me to attend three universities, all of which have made it very hard to work as a disabled student – because I made a commitment, and because the stories of my participants need to be told. My polytheism is hospitality, keeping my vows, showing up, and really trying hard not to raid the cattle of others.My polytheism is the modern stories that inspire me that I am afraid others will laugh at, and so I relegate my feelings about those to other places, and pretend I am not inspired by Buffy and Angel and X-Men and Night Vale and a reimagined Narnia where a queen calls to me. My polytheism is not even sure it’s all that different from monotheism, some days, when the voice of the One whispers through and in the voices of the Many. My polytheism simply is, a belief in many gods, because many gods made themselves known to me. And oh, how they made themselves known!

My polytheism is nothing like yours. And that’s OK. It’s good. It’s beautiful.

Now please – tell me about yours?

(Don’t worry – part 3, on disability, miasma and polytheism, is still on the way… :) )

Image: ‘Bright Flame’ shrine. Images of Brighid and Our Lady Breaker of Chains, with flowers (from my garden) and candles, plus memorial and inspirational items.

*Currently reading Sara Ahmed on the fetishisation of the stranger. I recommend it.

A Gaelic polytheist reacts to ‘Miasma’ (Pt 1) – The Song of Amergin

This is a poem about the source of my gods’ power – and mine.

I am the wind on the sea.
I am the ocean wave.
I am the sound of the billows.
I am the seven-horned stag.
I am the eagle on the rock.
I am the flash from the sun.
I am the fairest of flowers.
I am the raging boar.
I am the salmon in the pool.
I am the lake on the plain.
I am the word of knowledge.
I am the point of the spear.
I am the god that makes fire in the head.
Who levels the mountain?
Who speaks the age of the moon?
Who has been where the sun sleeps?
Who, if not I?
– Song of Amergin (mythical Irish invocation – taken from several translations)

To my gods, the earth is not foreign, or hostile, or unclean. They were here first. Longer ago than I can imagine, they dwelt in every atom of the earth. They infused it, welcomed it, loved it, with all its dirt and all its mess and all its blood and all its sex and all its death. Long before we started trying to reject our humanity (in the vain hope that that would somehow make us more spiritual), my gods moved deep within the playground of primordial pre-human muck. Dancing in the dirt, living in the trees, shagging under proto-mountains, feeling their way through the darkness, experiencing embodied reality.

Read the Song of Amergin again, if you are willing. Who is ‘I’? I have no idea. I don’t know if Amergin is channelling a particular god here. Yet the Song drips with divine influence. And isn’t that the point? Arriving in Ireland, the human Amergin accesses the same power as the gods. He does that so well that he defeats them. As he describes it, it is the power of the earth that he invokes – deep, dark, messy, mucky, embodied earth. Brought forth from primordial chaos, and one day to return to it.

The Three Realms are connected. Land, Sea and Sky – we belong in all of them, and so do the gods.

My gods dwell in the rivers, the sea, the mountains, and even in the swirling chaos of urban life. To come close to them, I need to come to closer to the earth – not wash the earth off me in some misguided attempt to ‘purify’ myself. My spirituality, like the power of the gods, arises from what is earthy in me. My deep, earthy, spiritual matter. To some polytheists and pagans – and especially, I think, to Gaelic polytheists – the earth is not something that we need to ‘rise above’. Humanity is not something we have to put aside in order to honour the gods.

Miasma?

There has been a conversation, in response to Many Gods West, about ‘miasma’, and about how we all need to use and work with this concept/practice. This is a Greek concept that I do not understand very well in terms of actual practice (because I am not a Hellenic polytheist). It’s to do with purifying yourself. As the concept has been explained to me, it’s about removing from yourself the things that the gods do not like, because they are holy and we are human.

But that’s a concept from an entirely different religion from mine. I think that, in the joy of finding a polytheist community out there, we can sometimes forget that we are not all one community. We are all working from within very different spiritual systems. Gaelic polytheists are not on the same religious/spiritual path as Hellenic polytheists, nor as Heathens, nor as Kemetic polytheists…

And in that forgetting, we forget some of the most important things about honouring our gods. I do not serve ‘all the gods’. I serve my gods – the ones who I believe reached out to me. Not for any reason of socially constructed Romantic concepts of ancestry, or ‘cultural purity’ (*vomit*). I serve those particular gods because (I believe that) I chose them and they chose me. No other gods have called me but they. There is no grand command sent down from on high that I need to honour a Power that I don’t relate to, in a way that I can’t understand. If I wanted to, I could – it would probably involve me going through something akin to a conversion process, since the way (for example) a Hellenic polytheist thinks about their gods is not the way I think about my gods. But I don’t have to.

And that means no one gets to impose their way of thinking about the gods onto me.

In fact, I have sacred taboos against honouring entire pantheons of gods. And that, at least in part, is because of what I would have to do to honour them. Things which could violate some of my most sacred virtues and vows – like hospitality, honouring the earth, or my own concepts of justice.

Throwing Off What I Don’t Need

I am already pure enough, just by being part of the earth. I don’t believe I have to cleanse myself of human or earthly things.

But there are things I need to do, if I want to become more fully human.

I need to throw off anything I do not need, anything that does not serve me, or that does not serve the gods. That is how I can move in better harmony with the pathways of the Xartus, the great tree of life. I need to seek justice, not injustice. I need to offer hospitality, probably my highest form of spiritual and community practice, which I fail at all the time, but which I can only hope to get better at.

I also need to do some things that are useful to me, based on my own experience. For me, protection and connection are important. Being around my gods every day, if only briefly, and making offerings to them regularly. Having a hearth shrine where I light a fire (a tiny candle-shaped one in my case!) that is the centre of my home. My Brighid’s cross above the entrance to my home. The ritual of hospitality (there it is again) that I need to try to offer to those who come through my doors. Other rituals that I do as the year turns. The prayers I say daily that build up a connection between me and the Sacred Three. The fires I burn at key times (and sometimes burning certain things, like juniper). And, most important of all, without which none of these things would matter: seeking justice in all things, in all my actions, in all my work, in all my interactions with my community. These are all small things, and probably look very insignificant to a lot of people. But they are important for me, for connection and for protection.

And all of these are about reminding me that I am human, and connected, and embodied. That I am living on and with the earth, and that I only exist as part of my community. They’re not about forgetting my humanity.

If I need to lose anything, I need to lose the things that are un-human about me. My tendency to get really selfish, to forget about hospitality and the importance of community. My ability to get wrapped up in myself and what I need, and ignoring what others need. My ability to ignore what I already know about who needs justice and how I can act more justly, and (worst of all) to pretend I’m a warrior for justice when I can be a terrible coward who avoids the hard work it requires.

There are monsters within me, fomori of the heart. I need to throw off what I don’t need, that keeps me mired in the monstrous, and keeps me from the gods and the community.

But, again. Nothing to do with miasma.

Many Religious Paths

I was having a conversation about why people need gods, with modern druids, recently. Modern druidry is incredibly diverse on the issue of (poly)theism – it’s an orthopraxic religion, not an orthodoxic one – we are druids because of what we do, not because of what we believe. (Which is how I can be both a Gaelic polytheist and a modern druid at the same time. There aren’t conflicting belief systems there.) Someone was talking about not believing in gods, in part because they aren’t keen on the ‘lists of associations with gods’ that you can find on every other cheaply-made witchy website on the internet. (That’s got nothing to do with my gods, I said, though I don’t know if anyone heard…) But I have no need to change their minds about deities. Their spiritual/religious ways are their ways. My ways of relating to the gods are mine.

And you know what’s really nice about modern druidry, with its orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy? No one tried to change my mind, and I didn’t try to change theirs. No one said “Oh but you must think about the gods this way.” And that’s how I know where I want to find my community.

And this was an interaction with someone who is agnostic on the subject of deities. This ‘miasma’ stuff – this is coming from polytheists. People who claim to value the gods – but who know nothing of my gods, and have no right to speak on their behalf. Nor to try to convert me to their way of thinking.

You are the Mountain.
You are the Wilderness.
You are the Wild One.
You were the there when the sea first drew breath
and the land rose up from its depths
and the sky settled on the horizon
You will be here until the land drowns,
Until the sea rises up and swallows her whole,
Until the sky falls and the world burns…

– My own invocation, of Cailleach Bhearra of the Beara peninsula – part of my dedication oath

Stay tuned for a follow-up post to come, about the problems of the concept of ‘miasma’ for people who are disabled, or ill, or stigmatised by society…

 

The behaviour of online Pagans, and why I’m going ‘stealth’ online again

My name has been publicly associated with accusations against someone. If you must read about it, see this post – and most importantly the response below, by Aine, the person being accused. (Trigger warning: the post contains references to abuse, transmisogyny, and disturbing accusations with no forum for addressing them.) The original post contained my real name and links to my professional twitter. (The poster has since replaced these references with my online psuedonym, after I tracked them down and begged.)

For some reason I can’t directly reblog at tumblr the reply that Aine has written – possibly because I’m blocked by the original poster. So I’m posting here instead. In the link above makes she makes clear that she is treating this as libel and dealing with it via her attorney.

I do not know the original poster, nor anything about the situation in the post. I have already been sought out (by other strangers) at my professional twitter to be told I’m ‘enabling abuse’. This linking of me and my real name to a situation I have nothing to do with is really appalling behaviour.

When I talked to the original poster about this, they told me I was causing them stress (??) but that their behaviour was fine. They said they didn’t have to ask before talking about me in a callout post, apparently not when even using my real name and professional twitter link. They took down my real name, but didn’t see anything wrong with initially putting it in. (By the way, they would have had to do quite a bit of online stalking of me to find my professional twitter, if all they initially had was my blog link.)

When I talked to Aine, my friend, about it, her immediate concern was for me.

Of course, that contrast doesn’t prove anything in itself. But I have no interest in discussing the details of this. Tumblr ‘callout culture’ is toxic. There are ways to deal with concerns like this – especially given the seriousness of what’s being accused – and I don’t think posts on tumblr are the way to go in the first instance. They are nearly impossible to refute or address, because they go off being reblogged in all directions, with no way for the accused to have input or respond, except via their own reblogs. I have been nervous of tumblr for a long time, even though I have a (barely-used) account there. The place is rife with accusations that can’t be addressed and other terrible behaviour. It has a culture all its own where people gain status and think they have more power than they actually do. It’s very ‘mean girls’. This is the last straw for me and tumblr – I’m taking my account down, when I get round to it, and I won’t be going there anymore. I’m very glad that Aine is dealing with this through legal channels.

I am not opening comments on this blog post. Aine has asked that people send her their questions about this. (I think this is a very good sign – openness and willingness to address these issues is what I look for in this kind of situation.) Please do as she asks and talk to her rather than me. This never had anything to do with me, and Aine is being very generous in wanting to keep me out of it.

I would like to point anyone reading this to my Hospitality and Zero-Tolerance Policy. If you talk to me here, or talk about me online, I think hospitality should be maintained. It happens to be a key religious value of mine. There are ways to talk about people, and places to talk about them. And there ways not to talk about people, and places not to talk about them.

Related to that, I’m going ‘under the radar’ again. For several years I’ve been ‘out’ in the Pagan/polytheist communities, but I’ve always felt a little bit nervous of what could happen as a result. I think we should be able to be open and ourselves in religious communities, both offline and online. But let’s be clear here: it’s not because of discrimination from the non-Pagan world that I have to go ‘stealth’ online. It’s because of the behaviour of members of the Pagan community. I consider that very telling. Pagans are always talking about how horrible members of other religions are towards them. I’ve never experienced that. I have experienced repeated awful behaviour from Pagans that make me reluctant to admit in public that I am one.

I think that’s a difference worth pondering.

In future please refer to me only as Léithin Cluan in comments in, or references to, this blog. Many thanks.

*EDITED TO ADD*

Well now this is getting ridiculous. Let’s clear up a few of the things I’m now being accused of elsewhere.

Firstly, I have not sent anyone to ask for my name to be taken out of the original post, and I would really rather people didn’t do this. As the poster claims, I did indeed say it was fine for them to keep my username in. It’s the right of the original poster to include it if they want to. The behaviour I found particularly dishonourable was when they included my full name and professional twitter account in the post. Yes, you will see from this post that I used to include my full name here and have now had to rescind that policy – it’s no secret – but it was always as a clarifier to my pseudonym Leithin Cluan, which was always the primary name I used here, and which is the name I use in my modern druid community. I have never linked my professional materials here and I do not know how the original poster found my professional twitter account, not least because I use a slightly different name in my work life. I have now taken down my real name due to the realisation that I cannot trust people in the Pagan community not to do appalling things with my identity. Pseudonyms, though, I can’t do anything about being written about elsewhere. People generally have the right to write about people, as long as no one’s being hurt.

Secondly, if we’re in ‘callout culture’ here, I want to call out anyone who would send people to harass a person (particularly an autistic person) about their support or otherwise of someone who is having unproven allegations aimed at them, and who is currently taking legal action against those accusations. Asking people to seek out a person online and harass them to take any kind of stance on unproven allegations towards friends is neither honourable nor courageous. If you want to engage with me, do so on the basis of honour, especially if you claim to be in shared community with me. I already linked to my zero-tolerance hospitality policy above. I consider that that applies off this blog as well as on it. Of course, I can’t enforce this policy away from this blog – I can’t make people behave honourably towards others. But I will not engage with people who don’t treat me honourably and hospitably.

I will not be persuaded of anything as a result of this appalling, dishonourable shitstorm, and anyone attempting to ‘persuade’ me will be given short shrift. I believe in protecting myself from things that I find oppressive in conjunction with my impairments. I’m not standing for any crap. I’m also contacting tumblr to ask them to remove posts that call for my harassment.

Thanks so much.

31 Days of Offerings – Day 17-18: Community Redefined

Offerings don’t have to be a solely Pagan affair. We do too much separatism, for people who claim to believe that the world itself is sacred.

Last weekend I was heavily involved in helping to run this conference (see also here, where a group that participated has reviewed it), for which I’ve been on the planning committee most of this year (and I do a lot of their publicity, and was their social media person, and tweeted on the day, and, and…). I’m still recovering! I’ve not really talked about this much in Pagan circles, because, well, Christian.

But I grew up in a Christian context (actually I was about 30 when I left church), and I believe my Wyrd is tied to that community. It is part of my Work. I’m not doing a PhD on Christianity and disability for my health (and definitely not for my wallet). I believe I have a calling, and activism around disability and churches is part of that calling.

Photo: St Martin-in-the-Fields church, London

Other offerings I give to a broad interfaith local community include inter-faith educational work, work with the Druid Network, and various other things that I do with the aim of improving dialogue between religious communities and serving the local community generally.

Ultimately, as well as an offering to the people around me, this is also an ancestor offering. Most of my ancestors were Christians. Social justice and Christianity was important to many of them, I gather from stories told about a few of them.

My exploration of the story of Narnia and its less-acceptable characters is all part of this tangled web of a spiritual-religious journey that never ends. My relationship with a very liminal deity probably is too.

I am a proud non-active Anglican (while also a polytheist and modern druid), living on the edge of the community that is itself living on the edge of the churches: the community of disabled Christians. Religion isn’t always about belief. In fact, in most of the world, it isn’t really. We’ve taken American evangelicalism and tried to apply it to Paganism as well as to every other religion in the world – but religion for most people is about action, much more than belief. Do the stuff. Embody your practice. Be.

Liminality. It’s not just about Otherworlds. ;)

31 Days of Offerings – Days 12-14: Reflections On Daily Religion and Being Too Many Priests

While giving offerings over the past week, I’ve been having more thoughts on the touchstone of daily religion, brief practical offerings, and the giving back of everything I do. A lot of Pagans are trying to live in a mostly-Christianity-inspired devotional world of personal deity relationships and mysticism. But actually, most ancient pagans were nothing like we are, and would have been far more focused on the day-to-day than the mystical.

We are all trying to be priests. Where is the role for faithful laity, and why do we discourage practical, daily religion? And what about the difference between the way we relate to different gods, as well as to the spirits and the ancestors?

Which is not unrelated to the place my thinking went next:

Why is ‘having too many shrines’, and by extension ‘having too many gods’, sometimes a taboo in the Pagan and/or polytheist world?

These are most of my shrines (at the moment):

 

 

 

 

Above – top left: shrine to Cailleach Bhearra and Duibhne – centre: seasonal shrine currently dedicated to Latiaran and the harvest cycle goddess of Munster – top right: hearth shrine including an area for Brigantia – bottom left: three out of four levels of my shrine cabinet, with the hearth shrine at the bottom, the ancestor shrine in the middle, and a shelf for Manannan mac Lir, Macha and the Morrigan above that – bottom right: the shelf above that, dedicated to the avatars of Sophia (who are a mix of gods and spiritual ancestors), including Arianrhod, Jadis, Mary Star of the Sea, and St Catherine. And that’s not including my little corners dedicated to the house spirits and land spirits, or the basic candle and offering bowl in the kitchen…

When I hear people complaining that another Pagan has too many gods, or worse, hear someone saying it disparagingly about themselves, I have to wonder where we get that idea from. It seems to go back to that idea that we all have to be mystics, saints, oracles, prophets and priests – with ALL the gods we engage with.

One goddess, I believe, chose me to go a bit deeper with her. But I have far more simple purposes with every other god I honour – and there are a lot. I honour them to keep their stories alive, as with Latiaran on her tiny shrine with her bee candle. I honour them to keep my home re-enchanted, buzzing with the reality of the Otherworld. I honour them to keep me connected. I honour them because they are there, and they are the gods.

My gods are everywhere — immanent in every tree and hill I pass, in every interaction I have with my fellow human beings, in the tarmac on the roads and the bricks and mortar of my home. So I tell their stories in their many shrines, from the candle on the kitchen windowsill and the little box in corner of the bookshelf, to the ornate table at the entrance to my study.

May my home always be filled with the stories of the Shining Ones.

Preparation for Dedication

30. Any suggestions for others just starting to learn about this deity?

The last question on the 30 Days of Deity Devotion is a tricky one. There is so little written about the Cailleach Bhearra of the Beara Peninsula, specifically. She’s there, in myths and folklore, but you have to look hard. She creeps in, shrouded in disguise, passing for an ordinary old woman. She’s the wife of a druid on an island with a cow. She’s a woman with a lobster in a box. She’s a farmer with a harvest to reap, competing with any man who believes he can reap it faster. She’s an Old One turned to stone by a Christian saint, looking out across the sea and waiting for her husband the sea-god. Waiting for the right time for her reemergence from the land, renewed and young again.