glitterdruid

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:03:33 GMT

Back into livejournal, though slightly red-faced from having been gone so long! The impending summer solstice is a bit of a wake-up call as I realise that I haven't made much progress on the DP since the last major holiday.

Life is about to be turned upside down as I'm moving to Taiwan in a little less than two weeks to begin a teaching job there. The contract is for one year and I expect to renew or work somewhere else in east Asia when it's finished, so I'll be well outside the Indo-European radar, not to mention away from my bookshelves and resources at home. The prospect makes me a little anxious as book learning is one of my primary modes of interaction with the world. At the same time the situation has its advantages: ours is an experiential, not a revealed religion, and I don't want to get caught up in books at the expense of actually going out and feeling the ground beneath my feet. It's easy to do that with all of my bookshelves at my disposal but will be much harder when I'm limited to the book or four that I can take with me.

....which begs the question: which books will those be? Maybe the Mabinogion and another collection of Welsh fairy tales; Bonewits' Real Energy and Greer's The Druidry Handbook.

Rhiannon as Patroness continues to be a joy and an inspiration, though as far as investigating the rest of the Welsh material to construct a hearth culture I've done precious little, partly for lack of time (it's been a hectic month preparing for the move and all) and partly because it's all rather lost in the misty depths of time and seems to require some dedicated digging to retrieve. (Here's where I start to panic about not having all of my books and access to an English university library for the next year or two!) I will do so, but probably not in time for the summer solstice ritual.

And that leads us right back to the question of what to do for summer solstice!

Beltane ritual write-up (or possibly a rite-up?)

Thu, 08 May 2008 01:13:25 GMT

The first ritual that I performed this year was for Beltane. Most of the rituals I had previously performed were centered around Norse deities, but after a long hiatus I decided to do a Celtic focus for this one. It was a solitary rite to honor Boand, Goddess of the River Boyne. As She was responsible for spreading the blessings of the Well of Segais throughout the land I thought She would be an appropriate deity to honor for a fertility-centered holiday like Beltane. The structure of the ritual seemed fine: Brigit as inspiration and Epona as gatekeeper, with offerings to the appropriate spirits in all the right places (and my favorite touch: a long blue ribbon winding through the things on my altar to represent the river – looked really nice against the green cloth). However in spite of being technically correct I don't feel it came off spectacularly well, merely okay. I think it was a combination of factors that dampened my energy levels a little: I had to put it off for almost a week after Beltane, it's been busy and I haven't been practicing meditation these past few days, I'm premenstrual, and I didn't memorize the ritual script like I planned (bad student) and so had to read from the text at key points. Probably would have been better to just wing it! On the plus side, I did feel the gates open quite distinctly – and I have something to build on for next time.

Mon, 05 May 2008 03:34:53 GMT

When I first began ADF-style Paganism and started making offerings, I offered to the deities of the Norse pantheon: Freyja initially, and then to Odinn for a while after that. The search for a patron deity has preoccupied me for about two years now. I tried different rituals and flirted with various pantheons (mostly Norse, but Roman and Greek too) but could never find anyone that felt just right, though I feel I made some friends along the way. A few weeks ago I noticed that the wind seemed to be changing: I made some big plans to move to another country, I've been feeling unusually happy and creative, I'm coming up with more ideas and spending time doing instead of thinking about, and feeling much more balanced generally. Since it felt like something had come undammed inside me, I thought it might be time to approach the Gods again. I was pretty sure it was Freyja, or at least someone Scandinavian. However, multiple divinations by me at home and another reader at the FPG last week turned up consistent negatives. Not Freyja. Not even Norse. Definitely not. It's Rhiannon.

It's hard for me to talk about this because the very concept of a modern American girl falling in love with a very old and shadowy Welsh goddess sounds immensely shallow even to my ears. What can I do? There it is. It can't be helped that Celtic is trendy and Americans have a dreadful track record for making Ireland and Wales the focus of all our pastoral ancestral fantasies. It would have been more convenient for me if the Norse deities had continued to be a guiding force; at least that direction seems more unusual (maybe I'm wrong about that!) and I can pronounce everything properly there.

The outlines of the tale from the Mabinogion can be found on Wiki, or http://www.answers.com/topic/rhiannon?cat=entertainment. It's weird stuff, as Celtic myth usually is (and again, why couldn't it have been like the sagas that I understand well enough?) There's nothing straightforward here, but scholarly consensus (as far as the scholars take us) is that the Rhiannon in the myth is certainly an otherworld figure (white animals are a dead giveaway) and because of the manner in which she chooses whom she will marry (and the etymology of her name) she is almost certainly a Welsh example of the sovereign Goddess of the land. Not exactly a figure strictly of love, sex, or death, she is not the power behind the throne so much as the very power under the throne: without her blessing and consent to uphold the King, he loses his right to rule. She is the land itself and the fertility of the land, and as such is not really 'a goddess of...' so much as 'the Goddess'.

I was frankly disappointed when the reader at FPG came up with a definite yes from Rhiannon. I didn't want a goddess with a (to me) garbled mythos full of names and places that I have no idea how to pronounce, and disturbing stories the meaning of which is not immediately apparent, and may never be. I have no special affinity for horses. I have always enjoyed Celtic imagery but the overall totally alien quality of it (and its unrelenting popularity!) meant that I did not go looking there for inspiration - at least, not until about two weeks ago when I decided to do Celtic for the Beltane ritual. Now the Norse gods are giving me polite but firm farewells and Rhiannon is....to say that she's coming on strong would be a tremendous understatement. I went home from the festival feeling sort of nonplussed and introspective, and like I maybe didn't have the right answer after all but was willing to give it a go. I said some prayers that night and the past 48 hours have been progressively more and more of a trip. Her *name* will not leave my mind; it's a constant litany. The feeling of her is wise, and proud, and compassionate, and immense. The source material is pretty thin on the ground but the utter immanence of her is unmistakable. I don't know why there's this affinity. It's not as if it were Athena and I could go, 'oh, it's 'cause I'm clever likes.' The only (admittedly pretty weak) possibility I can point to is that I do love the land (the actual physical land) of Wales, for whatever reason that I can't quite explain, and have done since I was small. Maybe that's not so weak after all, since it's a land goddess we're talking about (I'm talking about). Possibly it will become clearer later, or possibly it's just a matter of having been at the right place at the right time, whenever and wherever that was.

Maybe now it makes a little more sense - though the point is that it's not actually something that 'makes sense'; it's something that I actually physically *feel* as surely as yarn on needles.

And the tarot reader at FPG - what was her name? Rhiannon.

knitting like a fiend! and happy Beltane to everyone

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:54:12 GMT

My Beltane rite (and of course the essay) are on hold a little while we look after my grandmother and I go to work this weekend, but I'm looking forward to attending a group rite on Friday at the FPG and aim to do my solo ritual on Saturday night. Somebody poke me if I haven't posted about it this weekend - it would be tragic if I procrastinated to the point of not doing it at all!

In other news life has been a creativity bonanza this past week: I learned some knitting basics and am absolutely on fire to learn more and totally convinced that I'll be doing this for the rest of my life (but the question is, am I actually enthusiastic about this?). I discovered Go Make Something last night and am over-the-top excited by their how-to section (matchbox shrines!!) and started coordinating a big Goddess-themed craft swap on another online forum I post to. Normally I don't do much artsy-craftsy stuff at all but I seriously cannot remember the last time I had this much fun! I think I might finally be starting to suss what we mean when we talk about fertility as a virtue.

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:32:27 GMT

So my Beltane ritual is just about finished. This is the first one I've written in a little while (slacker Pagan here) and I've decided to go Irish with this one and see what happens: the main offering is to Boand, Goddess of the River Boyne, and Brigit and Manannan MacLir will be invited as bardic deity and gatekeeper respectively. Do milk and flowers seem like an appropriate offering to Boand?

I was planning it for nighttime on 30th April, but my grandmother is (somewhat unexpectedly) coming to visit for two days and a night then, so it may be wiser to postpone a little bit. I'm not sure how light of a sleeper she is and it's just not the sort of thing I fancy explaining to conservative family members in the middle of the night...

Also this Friday I'm off to Florida Pagan Gathering for the May Day festivities! It's the first big Pagan gathering of its kind that I've been to so I'm quite excited. Sadly we won't be doing the camping thing, but will head off early and try to get in a full day.

Time to tackle the Beltane essay, I think. Does anyone else have trouble catching the distinctive flavor of these High Days? There are so many of them that I think of as being basically 'fertility festivals' - it seems a very fine line between Ostara, Beltane, and Lughnassadh, for example.

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:40:10 GMT

That was better, finally! I got a bit of advice from

verginiamus who recommended meditating while walking, or using some form of repetitive handicraft as a way to still mental chatter. Walking while performing the offering rite would be difficult (though I can meditate while walking without doing a full rite) but I know what my mindset feels like while knitting, and when I found my mind wandering today I imagined knitting. And hey presto, it was easier to be still. I just finished and can still feel the green and silver energies of the Two Powers in me. It was also much easier to concentrate on the visualization during the offering. When I offered peppermint essential oil to the Fire I had an image of my hands full of bright cool green crushed mint leaves, and acknowledged the spirit of the plant in a way I haven't done before, though I frequently use peppermint essential oil. Very happy about this today.

be quiet, brain!

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:38:25 GMT

So I'm about a month into the meditation journal requirement and the road's gotten bumpy. For the past week or so I've had the worst time concentrating - my mind's all over the place and I keep losing track of the Two Powers visualisation entirely. This is the third time I've been doing the Two Powers regularly and I've never had so much trouble before! Just not my week for focus, I guess.

Hopefully it will get better. Anyone else have problems with an utter inability to concentrate?

And on a different topic, something that might be nice for you lucky folks in the UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/spreading-trees-britains-leafiest-regions--and-the-best-woods-to-visit-815327.html

It's finally (sort of) up and running!

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 21:12:44 GMT

How about it, I got the silly handle that I wanted! This is going to be the livejournal that I use to blog my progress with ADF's Dedicant Program and hopefully exchange inspiration with fellow travelers on the DP path. And that's all for now.