The Dog Who Wears A Crown

Our relationship with dogs is sacred. They are the wolves that came to our fires, and taught us where to find food, in hopes that we would care for them, and be their pack leaders, strong and protective. They bowed to us, and held up the crown, and placed it upon our heads.

When a person harms any animal needlessly it is a tragedy and an affront to the Mother and to nature, and when they harm a dog especially, they are breaking a sacred trust, an oath given by our ancestors to be wise leaders, just and fair, and worthy, and compassionate.

You see, the dogs see themselves in us, and see us in themselves. To them, we are the same, and they are us and so, if we harm them, we harm ourselves. The soul we share is wounded, and frightened, and confused.

But we still have this crown they gave us. They placed our feet upon the Stone, and they heard the Stone cry out, and so they still honor that pledge.

Never forget, that we are the dogs who wear the crown, and that crown was given in love.

Be worthy of it.

The Purpose of Myth

Myths are truth spoken of by allegory, metaphor, and symbolism. Myths are illustrations of spiritual principles. They are not the principles themselves. They were created by those who had an insight to demonstrate those principles which such people already had some understanding of, not to become dogma themselves. 

I prefer to take the tack that what is, is. I enjoy reading the myths and folklore, but if they do not sync with my actual spiritual experiences well then, I am going to take my own personal experiences over anything else, because the sun is right there and it's the sun, and the ground is right here beneath my feet and it is what is.

I think the Gaelic and Brythonic myths of my ancestors as we have them are valuable, but I would never trust them enough to believe that they are automatically more correct than my own personal experiences, especially considering that they were still written down by Christian monks, and although the Bible is at least 1700 years old, I think it is pretty much wrong on most things of consequence to me, so appeals to written authority don't really hold as much weight with me.

I would rather study the myths of my ancestors, but translate into modern English words every thing or being my experience by using modern English to create epithets, etc. If I feel that my experience of a being coincides with the mythological descriptions of particular deities, etc. then great.

I think if more people would actually translate the names of the gods as much as possible into modern English so that we can really understand what the epithet meant, and use that modern English phrase instead of the deity's "name", then we might come to a better understanding of what our ancestors thought about them, because they were not for the most part using foreign language to describe their deities. They were using the everyday language that they intimately understood and were raised with. I certainly agree with the value of studying Celtic languages, I study Finnish, Norwegian, Old Norse, Old English, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic myself and have even studied at Sabhal Mor Ostaig, but we should never forget that it was our ancestors' actual experience with their own present that we are reading about. As a language teacher I can tell you it certainly can get in the way, especially a foreign and romanticized one.

Some may wonder what happens when one's personal experience is at great odds with a detail of the myths, and I suppose the answer would be complex and would depend on the specific discrepancy and it's degree, whether or not the discrepancy were covered by another related people to show a possible other interpretation that existed but didn't get attested, whether we know enough about that topic that there is absolutely no debate at all among scholars of the subject for there to be a "correct" interpretation or answer, etc.  I think though, that the fact that learned scholars can't agree on some things means in and of itself that no one view can be authoritative regarding those topics, and in a way would make every belief a kind of personally favored myth-inspired UPG. 

The Celtic and Germanic tribes are but two groups of many tribes descended from whom scholars typically name the Indo-Europeans and that their language, which all European languages but four descend from, is called by them Proto-Indo-European, and that many deity names are co-arisen from common PIE root names. I fully agree that different peoples came to understand the gods in their own unique ways, but no matter how long the centuries and the miles and the language slang innovations that turned into dialects and then separate languages, the sun each generation looked upon was the same, and they only ever taught their children a combination of what their parents taught them coupled with their own experience.

I also try to think about the individual and small community life experiences back then. I don't think most people's considerations of the gods extended beyond their experienced world.

If they had a concept of a deity that was everywhere and represented a certain set of powers, experiences, or what-have-you's, and they moved to a new area already populated, did that god come with them? Are they more intuitive than the indigenous population to detect a deity that was already there that the indigenous inhabitants didn't notice? Would they have said "oh, you call her that? Well, we call him this"? 

If they moved to an area where there used to be a people who worshipped a certain deity, but those people were long gone without a trace, would that deity cease to exist because the new people worshipped their version or whatever instead? Would they intuit that god there as different even though each culture considered their own deity present everywhere they were and used different names?

I'm one who believes there are many gods, but only so many, not a soft polytheist who believes that all gods are one god, and not a hard polytheist who believes that every mention of every single god name*has* to represent a completely separate being. You might say that I am an "al dente" polytheist, just soft enough, just hard enough, for my taste anyway. I think all things have their individual spirit, but that the gods are omnipresent in all things in the way that they are, that there is no part of anything that is not "of the gods".

I'm not 100% pure hard polytheist because then I'd have internal conflict trying to decide if Odin only created the first Germanic people while Zeus and Prometheus made the first Greeks. That's why I say that my experience weighs just as heavily for me as the myths, because for me the gods are so much more vast than any people in any time could have defined completely. The All Father is the All Father, not the Some Father.

If the creation myths can be assumed to be metaphorical without specifically telling us so, then how is it so easy to say that all people aren't talking about the same great powers as manifested through their own story telling and understanding?  Why would we feel free to take the myths as definitively saying that all the father gods of all the pantheons are different beings, but then be wary of taking the rest too literally?  In my opinion, it is simply better to take it all as metaphor, speaking a truth symbolically, rather than literally.

I am the same person, acting always from my same core, and yet my wife and my mother know me differently by the very nature of my interaction with them and their perception of my actions. If they didn't know each other, and described me to each other in the checkout line, would they possibly think they were talking about different people who happened to have *some* commonalities?

Myths are the lived experiences of a spiritual reality, not an objective observation of a spiritually lifeless universe. 

Myths may be the bricks and tiles comprising the walls and roof, the shape of which define a way or culture, but the principles that inform those myths are the same ground and foundation for everyone, and from which everything is born equally. 

Where Have All The Pagans Gone?

Where have all the actual pagans gone? Not the universalists. Not the its-all-the-same-mountain-ists, but the Actual Pagans™?

Where are the dirt worshipping heathens?
Who lights the bonfires anymore? 

Who beats the drum by moonlight? 

Who spills ale or mead or wine for the ancestors and the spirits of the trees? 

Who really crosses the hedge, not just claims it for ego and praise? 

Who slips inside the world through the roots deep underground? 

Who whistles up the wind anymore? 

Who rides the brooms and pitchforks among the clouds and the stars to the Meadow? 

Who takes up the runes, roaring?

Who dances the ring-dances and guises the People of Fur and Feather? 

Where are the shapeshifters? 

Who still has a fire in their head? 

Anyone? Anyone???

Weather Work

I live on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It is a great place to live, for the most part. An hour from New Orleans, a little more than that to Mobile. There is a quaint charm to my small town, and the French colonial culture still lingers, lending a rich history. The weather is pretty darn great, too. We have long summers to enjoy our beaches, ample rainfall without usually getting drowned out, and mild short winters. There are no blizzards. There are no mudslides. There are no earthquakes, volcanoes or tsunamis. Tornados typically do not form here in the 3 mile wide strip of land south of Interstate 10. But we do have hurricanes.

Back in 2005, we had the mother of all hurricanes come through. Katrina. That name will forever haunt an entire generation of coastians. You see, New Orleans may have gotten the coverage because their levies broke an hour after the storm had passed, but they were 40 miles from the eye of the storm, on its weaker west side, while my town was 20 miles from the eye on the stronger east side of the storm. So I know a thing or two about what weather is capable of doing.

One aspect of any "magical" path that is mentioned often is the ability to influence the weather. From the witches of Europe, to the shamans of Siberia and the medicine men of Native America, the ability to influence the weather for good or ill has been a common feature of sorcerers, magicians and shamans the world over.

We don't live in a vacuum. Everything we do, everything, has consequences, both good and bad, and this applies to our physical actions (and inactions) just as much as our "magical" ones. Our responsibility when working with the weather comes foremost in trying our best to determine what effect we will have on not only our community but also adjacent communities and indeed, the entire world.

With this in mind, one must think long and hard about performing weather work, and only doing so in situations of true need. But the responsibility does not end there.

While it should go without saying that to push a storm away from you and yours is unethical because it will mean pushing it towards others, I'd like to tell you about another unethical practice. I remember many years ago, when another hurricane threatened our shores, that one group of practitioners, and I don't remember if they were wiccans or druids or what they called themselves, decided for all the community that they felt *we* could handle the storm better than the Florida community to which the storm was apparently headed, so what did they do? They performed a rite to draw the storm to us! Thankfully, most practitioners were working to weaken the storm, so when it did arrive on our beaches it was not so strong.

Hurricanes are needed. They provide a release for the energies building up in the world's oceans. Without this release, things could get much worse. Hurricanes also bring much needed rain to land and they also help to cool the blistering summer in many places. These things are needed.

We should not try to avert weather conditions, in my opinion, unless lives are at stake, and I don't just mean human lives. We might save a human, and in the process kill thousands of marine and land plants and animals. If you think that won't create a debt for you, my personal belief is that you are sorely mistaken.

This past weekend we had another small storm come through, tropical storm Karen. I saw the usual rhyming spell passed around asking for the storm to be weakened, but I have recently been working more animistically on purpose, so I thought I'd take another approach.

The fox is an amazing animal, and it has much to teach one who would be open to receive its wisdom. Even studying the physical habits of animals will yield much wisdom that can be applied to one's daily life, as well as to one's spiritual practice. One thing the fox is known for is creating caches of food to save for later. Their stomachs are not very large compared to the rest of their body, so they kill or scavenge food and hide it, to return to it later when they have less luck.

I decided to utilize this to my advantage and at the same time, try to weaken the storm. After speaking to the spirit of the storm and asking to have some of its energy, I asked fox to nip away bits of the storm's energy and save it for later, to cache the bits away safely so that we could have use of them later. After the storm I did a divination to see how many caches of power she had acquired, and how powerful they were, and I am very pleased with the results.

You will never hear me being so pompous as to say that I am the reason the storm weakened before it came ashore, but I do feel that I contributed in some small part to make it safer for everyone, while also allowing the storm to take its course and expend its energy, while not taking too much.

The Truth of The Deathless and the Sacrifice of Life to Life

Life is a web, forever weaving and dynamic, not a mountain with a peak. Consciousness is a sphere, with all points equidistant to the center, not allotted more to some and less to others like some cosmic pyramid scheme. All things are alive, because all things are conscious. All things are conscious because consciousness pervades all things, and does so equally. All things are beings.

In all of Nature, life is taken to preserve life, all life is sacred, and all life is equal. All life is equally precious. All. From the largest of animals, to every person, down to every blade of grass and pebble and grain of sand, all life yearns to live. So should we all conceive of it. Such should be our perception as well.

This speaks to a great responsibility placed upon what we choose to birth into existence. Does that idea benefit life, or does it encourage needless death or suffering? Does that organization promote the good for all of life, not just for some individuals? Does that piece of plastic really need to be created?

When you can feel the loss, and the awe of the sacred immensity resounding in the depths of your soul, at the death of the tiniest green growing thing as much as you feel it for a human life or that of an animal, and when you can feel the certainty of the debt to life thus created, then you will only have begun to perceive the truth of the oneness of things, and the sacred equality of which I speak.

Understood this way, every moment becomes a sacred moment, with no escape into the "ordinary" to be possible, no escape to the belief that this-and-such a moment is profane and only that-and-such a moment is sacred, and every death becomes a sacred sacrifice and a promise to return a gift fully given. What will that sacrifice call forth for you?

Do the implications of this make you uncomfortable? Does your discomfort make it less true, just to make you feel better?