Travel journal five: Gorse, Heather, Alder, Vine

September 14th

The days are stringing together like a tapestry I didn't know the soul could weave.

The fourteenth?  Where...that was the day with the alignements and the deer and the heather, the day I lost the camera? No, that was a different--that is the same.

All is always now, except not, because the sun sets and I get sleepy, and the sun rises and I awaken, and between those moments is every color in which life is painted, every note in which life is sung, every word in which the world breathes intself into our souls.

What happened? The 14th...that was samedi...yes, the deer.

I awoke, the dream of the giant sorting through my thoughts, my desire, his voice deep, his voice quaking, like an old lover I'd forgotten I had, who returned to ask who it was had visited my heart since he last went hunting.  He held a fragment of cloth, a fragment of thought and asked, "whose was this?"  And I had to answer that I hadn't met him yet, but intend to, and I awoke.

Breakfast is always a baguette, except that it was a baguette and eggs and tea and coffee and framboise-jam.  I had awakened into ombre, shadow, feeling--was this the day of light? Of the fire?  I think so.

I sent off a letter (is it for this he was asking?) and went for a walk.  There are abbeys, but not ancient.  They are massive, dominating in their walled cloistered prayers, but they are only as old as Seattle, so they held less interest than other places.  I like all ages of lovers, but not in architecture.  They must be old enough to have great-grandfathered my great-grandmother for me to consider them worthy of my affection.

Still.  I had a walking stick, finally.  Pine, until later, when it became Alder.  There is a pine grove across from the entrance to the Abbey of St. Michel.  This does not surprise me, nor did the oak grove across from the alignments of Menec, but I'm not there yet.

A back path, a faded chemin. Heather in my pocket, because it was beautiful and I knew I would need to give it as a gift. When given the choice between stealing across private property and cutting through gorse, take the choice I didn't take. Gorse is friendly in that "hey I'm a little too drunk for this" sort of way. Gorse reminds me of the only time I was in San Francisco, at a bar with my then-lover whose finger was in a rather intimate place until I realised both of his hands were otherwise occupied.  That stranger's finger? That's Gorse. And it's beautiful, but overly friendly.

The chemins end, or continue onto roads before weaving back out of the interruption of modern transit.  Walking on a paved part of a chemin is like walking through mud, yet less earthy, and louder.  And there, at the side of the modern, I saw the corpse of a newly-dead fawn, its eyes open to the sky, unmourned perhaps.  I found the use of the heather and bid it safe passage.

The Alignments:  look.  I can't tell you about them.  I can't show them to you because of the camera.  All I can say--they are old not in that ancient way but in that chthonic way, older than primeval, radiating an intensity that isn't for us any longer, or not yet, not until we've learned the intensity that is for us.  But you should see them anyway, and stand in the oak grove across from them and be very, very quiet.

I watched a wedding begin at the chapel of St. Corentin.  I felt I needed to.  I did.

And then another long walk home, to dinner, to stars, and to a nearby...rave.  I slept through it.  It was for the wedding guests.  A bunch of them were crying afterwards. Raves, I guess, could do this.

September 15th.

Another day of rest.  Little to say until evening, when I walked one last time to the chapel of St. Barbe.  I don't know why it draws me more than the others...perhaps because she's the only saint who hasn't taken something from me, yet.  Long story.

I had a dream months ago.  I was in a house, and I was leaving, and I tried to go up a path (a chemin, it would turn out), and two men blocked me.  The first was in shadow, the second in light, but "his a face still forming" (t.s. eliot), and they would not let me leave.  The one in shadow smiled, like he was waiting for me, and the one in light said, only, "did you forget your recorder? You should not forget your recorder."

I brought my recorder to the chapel just before sunset and played.  At first I was alone, and then later others entered, sitting, listening.  I stopped at some point, afraid I was disturbing the silence, until a man with a young daughter said, "C'est mieux avec la musique," and so I continued.

The song I played was not one I'd heard before.  I don't feel like I made it up, more that it seemed an old song still echoing off the stones, one that I picked up.  It's hard to explain, but certain notes sounded better within those old walls, and certain progressions of these notes were better than others, and next thing you know you have a song, and it seems best described as the song of that place.  And as she was leaving, an old woman bowed her thanks to me.

And then a final visit to wells, and a farewell to the place.  I tied a bit of blue scarf to two elder trees growing in the water of a fountain, joining them together, and their combined branches made a gate that I looked through and found to be the same place I'd sat a few nights ago, the crossroads, three chemins meeting.

September 16th.

I left in the morning. My Alder staff in hand, rucksack on my back, treading one last time down the alleys and streets to the place where a bus would take me to a train to Quimper.  

Someone stopped.  She smiled, waved, and gave me a thumbs-up.

A little while later, a car honked, and both of the passengers waved and said, "merci."

Were they thanking me for visiting? For playing in the chapel? There were so many people in there that one or two of them could have been those people.  They all looked familiar.  They can't have seen all the trash I picked up around the standing stones (look, kids--if you're gonna fuck in the telluric springs, fucking bring your condom wrappers with you on the way out, yeah?).  

Or maybe they do this to everyone.  Still, it felt--warm.  Happy.  Right.

The train to Quimper did not take long.  I was starting to feel a bit feverish, and it's likely that I've gotten a bit ill.  Laying on the ground all the time, often when it's raining, is probably not incredibly good for the constitution in the short term. Long term? Probably fucking fantastic.  

Quimper is...fucking dark.  Alder everywhere, and beautiful people, and a sense of lust and madness and poverty.  I want to live here.  Dominated by the Cathedral of St. Corentin (him again...), founding mythically by King Gradlon after the sinking of the city of Ys (long story, and I hope to tell it better someday soon), the confluence of three rivers, hills dividing the city, flanking the valleys in which people live.  

Yet again, I tore away from my camp site just after setting up the tent and walked, walked...

I gotta stop doing this.  I ended up on one of the hills, which is where I was headed, because I didn't want to go to the Cathedral of Corentin yet.  And I'm on this massive hill which is hard to reach and fenced off, and there's a woman, drest well, behind a fence in a mental-hospital.  The hill is covered by psychiatric and other specialty hospitals.  

She said, "bon nuit," and I didn't answer, and not because I didn't understand.

Travel Journal, 4

September 11th

I have almost no time at the moment, but I wanted to update you folks.

I left Rennes and got to Plouharnel/Carnac a few hours later and pretty much lost myself immediately.  I almost didn't wait to set up my tent--I practically found myself running out onto the chemins, visiting as many holy sites as I could in a very short time before the sun set.  I almost missed the closing of the only grocery store in Plouharnel on account of this fanaticism. 

It's really damn hard to explain how insane this place is.

I arrived near 4pm, set up my tent, bavarded a bit with the the owners of the camping site (who haven't changed much since I saw them 9 years ago, though they've got two young children now).  On my way to the site I got a bit lost, on account of getting off at the wrong stop, and ran into a group of old breton women who preceded to flirt with me uncomfortably.  One asked if I'd hitchhiked, and when I told her no but mentioned I'd considered it, she answered "someone as nice and attractive as you? People will stop."

As I said, after setting up the tent, I went for a long walk, visiting the chapel of Ste. Barbe (one of the oldest here) and several fountains which I'd remembered before.  Walked until it was dark, headed back, made dinner and passed out to strange, scattered dreams.

September 12th

I woke awfully early, took a shower, made breakfast (coffee, gallettes, jam) and decided to go for a short walk. 

If, by short, one means 12 hours and 18 or so miles.  The path I chose was a series of linked chemins which go along the bay towards Carnac in the south.  It meanders through gorse, heather, blackberries, and wind-contorted pines and firs, past and through old villages, oyster farms, fountains, lavoirs (baths, though they're a bit mucky and I have not used them) and insanely breath-taking views of the sea.

When I started out, the bay was near dry, gulls and herons feasting off of the crustaceons exposed to the air.  There were huge piles of shells here and there, where the birds gathered their spoils and then left their refuse.

I forgot to bring food, or hadn't cared to, so I ate as many blackberries and unripe blueberries as I could handle--this is a lot, you should know, and my hands were stained purple by the time I reached Carnac-ville.

What can I say about this walk?  I would show you things, photos, but--fuck.

I lost my camera.

When I arrived in Carnac, I headed first to the chapel of St. Cornaille (I think that's his name), one of the 6 founding saints of Bretagne (that is, on of the 6 christian founders).  I need to maybe stop going to greet saints, for as I fumbled for my camera which I'd been using extensively during the walk, I found it gone.

This was utterly frustrating.  After walking around a bit, buying a pain-au-chocolat (of course) and a baguette, I started the walk home, retracing my steps to find where I must have lost the camera.

Thing is, it was getting quite dark.  I could already feel the day fading, and I had not brought my flashlight.  But I found myself obsessing over this camera and where I could possibly have lost it.  I needed it, you see.

Well, sort of.  This made me think about several things (walking for miles is great for thinking), including why I'd been taking so many photos in the first place.  It was, mostly, for you, dear reader, dear friends.  I don't resonate heavily with photos myself, unless they are extremely good, but I thought for certain this would be the best way to explain to you how fucking beautiful this place is, how strange and wondrous it is to come out from a copse of pine or oak to a small medieval village and then see the sea. 

I walked extra, retracing my steps several times in order to find where I'd lost the fucking thing.  It was getting quite close to sunset, I knew this was a lost hope, but I took another detour to check one last time. 

Nope.

I wonder, though.  Did some higher part of myself leave it on the rocks on purpose?  Or did I leave it at the chapel?  It's loss has actually been a very good thing for me.  Here's why:  I'd see something profound, beautiful, breathtaking, Otherworldly, and immediately fumble for my camera, snap a couple of photos, check to see if I'd caught the image right, and then put it away and walk on. 

That is, I stopped seeing things, except to see them for others.  I realised this just as the sun was setting, just as I knew I had no hope of getting back before dark.  I sat on a rock, frustrated, tired (my feet are mangled, by the way), and found myself seeing something unimaginable in its beauty.

The sun set over the bay, brilliant and dark hues of purples, violets, blues mixing with crimson reflecting off the water of the bay (the tide had come in fully now).  Greens of seaweed floated like islands upon the water, and silver danced in the waves where the last whites of the sun hit.  The stones of the shore are black, but also dun, as was the sand though giving off a yellow-gold that seemed like trapped sunlight from the warm day.

I cried, but not from sadness.

September 13th.

Nothing happened today. 

This is not true, of course. But most of it was in my head. I wrote a letter, I read Tarot and Ogham and a book (a fucking great one, by the way, called The Art of Pilgrimage).  And I ate. 

Mostly, I hobbled.  I rather messed up my feet with that walk.  They're better today, and I'm in the middle of another 10 mile walk. 

Oh.  One thing happened, I guess.  After dark, I went for a walk and sat at a crossroads for several hours (probably 3 or 4, I'm guessing).  I suggest it.  I'll have more to say on this later. 

And I woke the next morning (but I'm not talking about this yet) to a dream of a giant sorting through my head. 

Travel Journal, Three

September 9th

I had what should have been a bad day, except, well, no. 

I wandered around the grande ville again for several hours and found myself getting oddly lost, like I was walking in a labyrinth.  Mostly, I'd been trying to find that pool again, with the severed head.  I wanted to think and read tarot and journal at it, because it felt oddly sacred...but no.  No luck. 

I walked for HOURS, getting progressively more lost, finding myself each time turning back upon the same alleys.  But here's an interesting thing about labyrinths: they are mazes on the outside which walk you through similar, strange twists internally.  Anyone who's walked a labyrinth as part of a ritual understands this, I imagine. 

Where my mind was going, I'm not quite sure.  I was everywhere and nowhere, stumbling repeatedly upon the same cathedrals, the same chapels. 

Later, I went to ameliorate what was the most pressing problem of mine: lack of cooking fuel.  The campsite shop (every municipal one has this) had none, and I'd heard of a strange shopping center, about a mile and a half away from the campground, that would sell it. 

From the center of the city I took a bus, listening to the conversations around me while still turning within my head.  And I arrived, and oh gods....

Malls in the US terrify me.  I've been to one in the space of maybe 6 years because of this, and that was with a fellow druid, and we were only there to get a sandwich.  But I was now in another, except in France, and oh--

Culture shock comes for me when I go shopping for groceries.  Upon return from europe each time, I break down when I enter an american grocerystore.  And at some point it happens in Europe, too, surrounded by configurations which make NO sense. 

Still, found what I thought I was looking for, left, and cut across some back alleys and a Chemin (trail in French, in Bretagne the word usually refers to the Old Tracks).  There, I gorged on elderberries and blackberries and strolled with less care than before back to the campground.

But--oi.  Gas canisters used to be standardized in Europe.  The same one from the same company fit in everything they made, but it seems, unfortunately, they've caught on to the ridiculous absurd shit America does, where you ALWAYS IMPROVE and therefore ALWAYS MAKE OLDER STUFF OBSOLETE. 

I had to go back to the mall, this time to get a different cooking stove (the new and improved one which fits the three canisters I'd bought). Normally such a journey to undo something that didn't go correctly the first time really pisses me off, but at least I got to walk by more berries. I picked up a bottle of Breton cidre while I was at it, gathered more berries and flowers, and returned to my site, finally getting to make myself tea, and then dinner, and then a mulled cidre with the berries I'd gathered. 

I'm not fully certain what happened next, and some of it is not for this conversation, but I found myself out in the woods, not exactly drunk but most definitely intoxicated by something intensely different from what I normally experience.

September 10th.

There was a transit strike, so I spent most of the day at my tent, reading, thinking, and organizing.  Also, drinking more tea than one really ought (it'd been DAYS, you know). 

Most of the day I was in my head, dreaming, attempting to make sense of the world around me.  No--this isn't quite true.  Actually, I've been attempting to make sense of the world I left behind, now that there's a continent and an ocean between myself and it. 

Returned to the city, bought my train tickets for the next leg.  In about an hour I leave for Carnac/Plouharnel, where I've been before.  This is the place I've dreamt the most about, and the dream which compelled me to return to Bretagne took place there.  It's littered with standing stones and wells and old tracks and chapels, and though I'll be there a few more days than I was here, I'm not sure it's going to be enough time. 

I finally found that fountain with the severed head again.  I'd circled it repeatedly the day before.  This doesn't surprise me.

I may not be able to update for a few days, as the closest internet will be a 45 minute walk away, and I've much to do there. 

Many of you are in my thoughts, by the way.  I miss knowing there are people close by to talk to who know me. I've little time to reply individually to emails, but I've been reading 'em all.

Travel Journal, Two

September 7

I arrived in Paris around 1pm, groggy.  Since customs had been done in Iceland, arriving in Charles de Gaul was not difficult, except for the 50 pound bag on my back.

The rucksack I have is rather great, actually.  It's heavy by itself, and incredibly heavy with everything I've got packed into it, but once you wear it, it's nearly weightless.  That is, of course, until you're on a bus which suddenly stops and you find you've got much more mass than you remember.


From Paris, I took a train to Rennes.  The train station is within part of the terminal (something which cannot happen in the united states, as everyone wants to blow us up and trains are socialist, right?).  Not difficult to reach, not difficult to negotiate, but all liquids for sale cost roughly 3 american dollars.  A pain au chocalat is still the correct price, as France has a long history of bread riots, so price gougers know better.

Arrived in Rennes around 6pm.  The first thing which hit me was the air.  I cannot describe it, nor could I possibly take a photo of it, but I can maybe tell you how it made me feel:
Alive.
Like I'd breathed it before, in some other world for years, decades, perhaps an entire lifetime.

The campground I'm staying in is quite good.  It's nothing like an american camping ground--France has public, city-run campgrounds in almost every decent-sized city, and they're both plain and perfectly useful.  This one happens to be in a wooded park, near several ponds...one could almost spend one's entire time within the park and the campground and feel one has fully vacationed, except, of course, for there being a city nearby.

And the city's quite excellent.  After setting up my tent, I all but ran back to it (jet-lag is for losers), except on a bus.  There's a bus directly from the campground to the centre-ville, and it takes about 20 minutes or so to get there.

I wandered for a few hours, purposefully without a map, turning corners into sudden explosions of ancient architecture (though most of what's here is no older than the 1600's) and streets thronged with people.

I got some street food (I'm sort of embarassed by its name, but it was good), took it to a square where punks were playing with their dogs and fashionably drest students were playing a Breton version of horse-shoes and ate, suddenly aware of something I hadn't quite experienced in a long time:

Relief.

I was here, in a place which has called (back) to me for years, and had nothing to do but live.

When I returned to the campground, I hung out with an Irish couple who drank me a bit too much and regaled me with stories of their homeland (New Grange--I must go)m their occasional ice-cream shop (guinness ice-cream, it seems), their hopes to move to France.  Maybe the most absurdly hospitable people I've met in quite some time, I had a significant time attempting to persuade them that I really didn't need to smoke all of their cigarettes and drink all of their wine.  Also, I couldn't find camping fuel the first night, and the next day was a sunday, so they let me borrow their cooking stove to make tea in the morning.

September 8

I slept maybe the first very deep, very restful slumber in months.  Woke cold, the stars still out, rabbits everywhere. Felt damn good.

I saw Ian and Emily off (the aforementioned irish folk) with some tea that I'd brought with me from Seattle, as the french tend towards weak tea.  Even as I write this, a day later, I've still got Ian's irish accent in my head, a funny thing to have remain but also quite welcome.

Spent maybe four hours in Rennes after this, exploring more, eating more pain au chocolat (this will be a recurring theme), and sitting in random places with fountains and well of strange and wondrous design.  This one's my favorite so far:

I'm actually quite proud I got the reflection of the face, as I'm not generally a very good photographer.  And I've got all sorts of other photos already, but only a few will have to suffice for now, as the computers in this internet cafe are hit or miss (some shut down immediately when i plug in a camera, some work perfectly well) and I'm currently on one towards the side of "miss."  I like not having constant access to a computer.  I like that I don't see many smartphones around here.  I like that people are talking to each other--everywhere.

I dislike that I have to travel to another country to see this again.

No bitterness, though.  Seattle's rather far away at the moment.  I did a quick check on Facebook and confirmed that, yes, everyone is still posting pictures of what they had for dinner and yes, complaining about waiting a couple of minutes for a bus and yes, narrating their lives through tiny witticisms that sometimes land utterly flat.

I've been thinking about this a lot, particularly.  Narrating one's life is quite crucial and I think probably universal.  However, I've noticed there's plenty of times that I experience something and immediately wonder how to describe it to someone else.  This--this is probably not good.  Not everything is meaningful, not everything can be re-inscribed into the world of others (who really cares what you had for dinner?) or should be thus re-inscribed.

But obviously, some things can be and should be.  Why tell story in the first place?  Why write any of this at all, or read what others say?

Maybe we've gotten lazy, or maybe more desperate for material.  Maybe going to France was a very, very good idea for me.

Nah.  It was fucking brilliant.

As far as druid stuff goes, there's been plenty already.  I found myself collecting crystalline cedar resin and had a woman stop and ask me, fascinated, what I was doing. Had my necklace shatter dramatically in front of a statue of a saint in a church (still not sure what that was about), and, last night, saw a toad hopping across my path and said hello to him.  Not sure if it's quite common for toads to stop when you greet them instead of fleeing, or if it's quite common for them to let you pick them up after this.  At the very least, he seemed a very, very nice toad.


More in a few days.  There's a transit strike tomorrow, which may affect my plans to go to Carnac, but may not.

Travel Journal (one)

3 September, midday:

My higher-mind functions are a bit off currently.  I've been thinking about this as it relates to the binary thinking of sane/mad, spiritual/mundane. The last couple of days at work I wrote extensively in my spare moments, which were few as there were people screaming (always people screaming) and it was my last continuous access to both a computer and a printer.

The essay I was trying to write was regarding Madness and Belief.  If I ever finish it, I'll post it.  Suffice for now to say that I've been working on a conceptual framework and a theory as to why there was such an initial resistance within my mind when I started encountering the Other.

This statement isn't completely true--the resistance was more social than mental: that is, I more needed to check with others (constantly) that what I was seeing, sensing, hearing, dreaming and feeling did not qualify as madness, regardless of how otherwise quite well-trained I am in recognising the signs of mental imbalance in others.

Last night was my final shift as a low-level, underpaid social worker for a homelessness agency.  Not altogether bad, I guess, though I'm utterly relieved to be free of it.  One of the clients dressed in drag and prophesied for me (a strange experience in itself, which goes back to my attempts to find the precise line between the insane and the spiritually-aware): I am to have sex on the steps of a cathedral, and if I do not wish to take a plane, the woman who comes down from the stars will take me up, he said.  Another particularly mad client told me that, instead of going to France, I should go to Florida.

Speaking of Florida (strange woman), I have an extensive contingency plan in case I find myself not staying in Europe.  This involves hitting much of the east coast and then crashing with my sister in south florida for awhile until--well, I can barely plan a week ahead, so such a question is useless to ask.

The possibility of staying has come up a few times in other's readings of my situation, though my own divinations make it rather clear I'm to return for some reason.  I've been joking it will be with an army.

--
Washing my tent.  I went to a Radical Faerie gathering in Beltaine, and because I was perhaps the only fag who went for the pagan part of the pagan-sex aspect of the gathering, the forest gave me an STD anyway: poison oak.  I don't think I've mentioned this to many, but I think I laid a towel down on a patch of it and then dried my entire body after an open shower in a field.  My entire body.

The doctor, otherwise professional, could not stop cringing and laughing sympathetically when he saw how incredibly large certain areas had become.

So, on the off-chance some of the oil from the plant remains in the tent, I washed it.  Simultaneously sorting through the stuff I intend to take.  I am stubbornly leering at my journals, willing them to become a bit lighter, as I refuse to not take every one of them.

4 September

I packed my bag and everything fits.  I can say with almost complete confidence that I'm not forgetting anything, that everything I need will be inside that bag.  If all goes well, it might even make it to Europe with me.

I've been really into the idea of story for most of the last decade, but it's taken on a new meaning and power for me since beginning druidry.  The first grade, the Bardic grade, focuses much on learning the uses of story, the hidden meanings woven into certain sacred myths, and the stories that can be told about the mundane which infuse the world with the existence of the Other.

And the last couple of weeks have seemed much about completing stories, ending them, or at least closing circles of the worlds contained within that story so that it's unwoven threads do not snag or fray.  Particularly as I am leaving this city and have no intentions of returning, these stories, which are also the stuff of my dreams, the material of my meaning, have each paraded themselves before me as if to say, "write my ending."

The psychological way of putting this is "getting closure."  I dislike the sterility of the term, but it's another useful way of understanding what I mean.

I've had two deep, profound loves while in Seattle.  I've had many loves, each of them beautiful and meaningful, but the ones where you decide to write your story with another, when two people decide not just to love and fuck and care for each other but to co-create their worlds--that is what I mean by deep, profound love, and of these I have two.

The most recent one ended last winter, and it's been a little difficult to narrate that story into completion and, more so, narrate that story into my life now without letting the sadness of its ending stain its threads.  Also, funny thing about me that I've recently recognised--the ideas of love lasting forever and the notion of a lover being "enough" for one (that is, monogamy) have always held intense sway over my heart, simultaneous to me being quite the prophet of open-relationships and knowing that all things must end for them to have ever begun.

A lover isn't just a partner or a friend, he's a fucking world, a dream incarnate, a canvas upon which you paint your desires, a spring from which you draw your inspiration, a wind which carries upon it hope.  The unraveling of that kind of love is always difficult, and it's even harder to write the ending of those stories than any other.

The most recent lover and I met for a final time last night and made dinner together like we used to, ending it with hot cocoa (an old roommate sagely saw this as code for "you've just had sex, huh?", just as the cooking of a specific meal heralded that we were having a "spend-the-night-friend," though this hot cocoa was merely what it was).  It was an old pattern, soaked in meaning, but fraught with nothing except kind recollection.  And we both told each other I think what was most necessary to hear--we shall remember the other always in love, with no hurt or sorrow or "what if," just in love.

The previous lover, a wild, dream-filled 9 year affair, reminded me in an email yesterday that I will be leaving for France very close to the time when he and I returned from France roughly 9 years ago.  He's right, and this is another way in which stories exist--those that have ended sometimes have sequels.  It's a principle of magic that certain things have correspondences in other things, that certain patterns from the past affect the patterns of the future, that certain events in the future redeem certain events in the past. 


And so it is, then. Some stories end, some stories wait to be finished, some stories wait merely for more chapters.  I'm going to several places that I've been before, places where a certain sense began to speak to me deeply.  Many of my dreams have returned to this place, and sometimes I wonder if I haven't been spending most of the last decade attempting to understand what the hell that strange beckoning meant, why everything felt so odd yet so familiar, why I remember specific places there more vividly then I can remember what I had for dinner the night before. 

You Are (Most Likely) Not Crazy

I got more "hits" on my most recent post regarding the gods within a day than I have of anything else I've written over weeks.  This is cool, but I realize I've got a rather profound responsibility here, if I'm going to go off prattling about what I've learned.  I've begun to learn a little more even since I wrote that post, and have had multiple synchronous things cascade upon me in the space of just a couple of hours, so there's gonna be plenty more to tell.  Before I tell you about this, though, I need to tell you...

About Divine Trauma

Here's how it happened for me:

I started having dreams last year around specific events and at strange, profound times.  I'd wake from them shaking, write them down and then, a little while later, forget about them.  Sometimes when I'd close my eyes I'd see them again, mostly when I didn't want them or didn't expect them, but for the most part I could ignore them and they interrupted nothing.

But they increased, and I began to feel a strange tension in my life between what I was dreaming and beginning to suspect of the world and what my actual life looked like.  A relationship had already begun to wind down, a job had become increasingly untenable (low-level social work for violent alcoholics...most people don't last a year, by that time I'd been there for 3), and a very long living situation which held joy only inasmuch as I shoved enjoyment down it's throat.  All of these things, though, were not only tolerable but also completely sufficient until I started confronting some of the dreams.

Right before it all came utterly crashing down, I'd written a long entry in my journal regarding a strange, looming sense which ended, "...something is coming. That beckoning call, I..." and then nothing.

Two months later after what I've liked to call The Long Winter, I found myself muttering a prayer to a goddess I'd seen in one of my dreams.  It was Imbolc, it turns out, and that goddess was Brighid.  Neither of these meant much to me at the time, and then suddenly meant everything once I got a profound answer.

The next day I decide I'm gonna study to be a druid, and 7 months later I'm writing this right before I go try to find out what some of these dreams mean (oh...don't think for a second they've stopped).

That winter was the beginning of what I've been calling Divine Trauma; that is, strange events full of brilliant meaning which utterly shake up your life, yet, when resolved carefully, suddenly leave you better off than before the trauma began.  It is in this way that Divine Trauma is utterly different from normal trauma and worlds away from mental-illness (more on this later)--both of these leave you worse off, seeking healing or sanity, and your ability to live in society go down.  The schizophrenic finds themselves soon isolated from others because of their voices, the sufferer of PTSD cannot reconcile the trauma with its later echoes; Divine Trauma leaves you more at peace, more perceptive, more skilled, and more self aware.

But it also fucking sucks, at least while it's happening.  

In some of the monotheistic religions, a mystic or a devotee with visions may enter a cloister or a monastery where they can study and experience their insights away from the chaos and difficulties of daily life and be surrounded by others experiencing something similar  We've mostly abolished both the monasteries and the concept of their function in our modern and advanced society with the exception, maybe, of the university.  So when someone has shamanic or deific visions, sees their ancestors or faeries or land-spirits, they still have to find a way to pay their rent, hold down their job, take care of their children, and have pretty much only the internet, psychic phone-lines, or mental-health professionals to turn to.

The last will medicate or hospitalise you, penultimate will drain your money, and the internet?  It's utterly hit or miss.  Try doing a web search such as "Does Apollo exist?" and you get mostly moon-landing conspiracy sites.  Then again, similarly, do a search regarding the existence of "true love" or "art" and you'll get no better.

The lack of available human community for most people, the anti-authoritarian nature of most of "paganism" (we don't like priests anymore than altar boys do, it would seem), and the apparently complete discontinuity between the older worship of the gods and the current iterations of pagan worship can leave one completely bereft and thinking you're going mad.

Guess what? You most likely are not crazy.

I can't fully vouch for you, though.  I hope you've got some rather good friends (if you're not, make some...quickly) who will listen to you patiently and not judge.  I hope you already experienced some sort of life-altering transformation because you've probably already picked up some of the skills you need (if you're gay, trans, or otherwise a freak you're gonna have an easier time--if you're a suburban housewife who likes to watch television, you have my sincere apologies).  And seriously, if the voices tell you to hurt yourself or others, or if the car talks back when you yell at? Go see someone, and quick.

I don't want to make this all sound really scary.  It isn't.  Actually, experiencing the gods and magic is absolutely the BEST FUCKING THING EVER.  But it's really, really not easy.  You're gonna lose sleep.  You're gonna start noticing stuff around you that you learned to stop noticing when you were a kid, and it's gonna be distracting.  Your dreams might get really vivid and maybe sometimes your vision, or you'll start to get senses from things that you didn't know.  And you're probably gonna start setting money aside for stuff like candles and incense and wine, and maybe grow a garden so you've got easier access to something a goddess tells you she would like, and gardens take work.

Some advice

 I'm just some punk wanna-be poet who raised himself and made a decent life for himself before all of this started happening, and now I'm still a punk wanna-be poet who thinks it'd be a nice idea if most other people don't have to freak the fuck out when gods start appearing.  If this helps someone, awesome, and if not--whatever.  I like writing.

1. Be really, really nice to yourself.  Just like in a break-up, or after a death, or during anything else traumatic, being hard on yourself is really easy to do and also maybe the worst possible thing to do.  After I used my first "revealed" sigil, I made myself a cup of hot cocoa, and then another, and then maybe got drunk and passed out because the whole thing was crazy.  You maybe don't need to get drunk, I donno.

2.  Be open to new and timely friendships.  I started calling the dating site I'd occasionally troll OKDruid, because within an hour of deciding to do this druid thing I met an adorable furry punk druid in another state and we wrote each other reams of emails.  And then when he didn't have time to talk, I met another one, and then I met another and another until I was pretty certain there were no straight or ugly druids in the world (there have been no druid orgies, I must sadly admit).  Maybe I could have done this all without them, but no, fuck that.  I couldn't.

3.  Consider some sort of guided study.  Seriously.  I'm relentlessly glad I joined OBOD, primarily because the pace of the lessons is up to you, but they are lessons, and they are written out.  There are other groups like this, too, and though I can't vouch for them, others can and will.  You may really like some of the wildly independent, build-your-own tradition orders, but maybe consider doing this later? If you're new to this stuff, it's nice to have someone guiding you, especially if they admit up front that you can take what you want and leave the rest. (And as a warning--avoid creepy cults).

4.  Don't be an ass.  You're probably wrong.  So am I.  I'm wrong all the time, and mostly I've only started to be right on the "maybe I'm wrong" thing.  Also, avoid people who are asses.  If you're wrong and they are right, they'll have a pretty good sense of how to guide you out of being wrong.  Wise elders are never asses, I've noticed.

5.  Ask.  There are some wicked nice people who are not asses at all, or at least not when you ask them for help.  A lot of them have websites and write about this stuff all the time, and maybe they've met the same god or goddess or spirit or what have you already and can give you advice on what worked for them.  Some of them maybe won't email you back, so email someone else.  Some of 'em are linked on this blog, and--know what? Go ahead and ask me. I probably have no clue, but maybe I know someone else who might.

6.  Consider starting from how other people do it first.  If you're american and anti-authoritarian and all that, it's kind of your nature to try to build a religion or practice from scratch.  Sure. You could do that, but this is a little related to #4, because you may find yourself getting so isolated from other people, being so sure that you're right, that you start getting into insane arguments with people on the internet which is probably your only access to people who understand.  You can totally find your own gods later if you need/want to.  This isn't monotheism, where rejecting one god means you've rejected the whole thing.

7.  Learn Tarot, or runes, or some other divination method.  This has all kinds of benefits, particularly in that most of them will tell you more about yourself at the beginning than they will about the divine, and this is a very good thing.  See #8.

8.  Learn about yourself.  Every religious tradition I've seen which leads to some sort of peace for the adherent starts with the same precept: you cannot hear the divine if you don't know what your own voice(s) sound like.  The schizophrenic makes the mistake of believing every uncomfortable voice to be outside themselves.  The "mundane" makes the mistake of believing that every thought is their own. Neither are correct, and the only way to tell the difference is by learning to follow that twisted, contorted, complicated wanderings of your own beautiful self.  Do you know why you get angry at certain times, or feel lonely at others, or feel afraid of certain things? If not, how will you be able to tell what that strange voice meant when it told you to light candles in a certain order, or to add damiana to the wine you were offering, or don't evoke certain powers before chanting a certain prayer?

A final thing about Divine Trauma.  I think it's probably brutally necessary.  When stuff gets wicked difficult to understand, when you suddenly find yourself about to enter another walking myth or learn the name of a deity whom you've felt watching you from the shadows, something seems to break inside of you.  Thing is, what's breaking isn't you, it's what's been keeping you from entering into communication with these vast outer and inner worlds that most people get by without ever bothering to experience.  If all you care about is money and television or MMORPG's, you can get by without ever even noticing, and live a perfectly happy life.

But if you've gotten this far, you've probably either already heard that same beckoning call I did, or are about to.  And if it hasn't gotten fucking crazy, it's probably about to.

Congratulations, and, oh dear--good luck.

What I've learned of the gods.

I haven't tried to write anything of this whole druid thing out in plain language yet, as, really, not much of it is given to plain language.  Really, how do you begin to put dreams into the concrete?  And why put anything into the concrete? Concrete is gross.

There's a reason most mystical truth is hidden in poetry, and why most poets are out of their minds.  Emily Dickenson hinted at this in one of my more favorite poems (and speaking of being mad, she was a shut-in):

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,
Success in circuit lies,
Too bright for our infirm delight
The truth's superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased
With explanation kind,
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind. 

Part of the problem, I think, is how words just don't quite do.  There's a reason words are not our only form of communication; beyond pictorial representations of ourselves and the world (and a great photographer is not quite the one who shows the subject as it is; rather, we are shown how the photographer saw it), beyond the indescribable of music (ever try to detail to someone else what a song "means" to you? Try it again and you'll see the problem), beyond the strange evocations of scent (I cannot smell nicotiana flowers wafting into my house in a cooling evening without losing myself in intoxication), there's all the configurations of touch and movement.  

On that matter, I learned something recently, and I learned it both from one of my gods and a man who for all I can tell was a devout priest of him, certainly without knowing.  I watched him (the man, not the god, but I'm not sure I could tell the difference--this is a matter for poetry, not for prose) dance upon a stage and cried, learning for the first time why words cannot suffice to capture something that can only be told in movement.  And, of course, there's also all the touch, all the hugging and hitting, all the kissing and fucking and punching we do to communicate with another when nothing else will do.  We tell angry boys to use their words, but there's a wisdom they understand that we forget--words are for the ears, not the body.  

Ah, words.  What did Eliot say?
 
Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

They don't do enough, they don't work sometimes.  And I sometimes forget, because I am all words, that I am not just words.

Still, I'm trying to tell you what I've learned, and I keep retreating to poetry.  Bad habit, like smoking, like getting grumpy and shutting someone out when they seem to reject you because your body is not attractive as your face or somesuch.

This is what I've learned so far: that when people say that the gods are just stories, I should agree and, smiling, add, "and so are we."

Some people think the gods are fictions, or figments.  There are those who say they're mere archetypes springing forth from human consciousness, or great teaching tools, or an endless resource of psychological self-improvement.  There are those who believe in one God and think the other ones are demons.  And, more complicated, there's one emanation of divinitiy of which the gods are mere interfaces, mere masks for a unitary One. 

I believe something a little less complicated.  They're real, and they do stuff, and sometimes go by different names to different people.  They show up in my dreams and sometimes not in my dreams, somewhere between actual sight and imagination, usually in the middle of ritual but sometimes not (and in those cases, rather surprising).  I've had a god show up on the face of another person, and that was...weird.  I'm glad he did, though. 

(It occurs to me that a few people probably think I'm not sane.  It's true.  I've never once claimed otherwise.  Poetry demands nothing less). 

If you're still reading, I'll tell you about them.  If you're concerned about my mental health, I'll show you how to write an "involuntary treatment" detention declaration...I just wrote one for a client the other day.  She hadn't showered in months and babbled about how the bearded men finger her with knives and left trails of strange liquid everywhere. Madness is relative.

Dionysus

Speaking of madness, damn.  Except not.  Except yes and no.
You've heard of him, I'm sure.  Toga parties and drunkenness and I recently heard there was some tv show that had one of his "followers" on it, but there were werewolves in jeans I've heard, and this seems a little less what I'm talking about.
Want to know Desire? Ask him, and stock up on lube.  And then, when you're ready to actually learn something, ask him again and try to understand why you've rejected every single lover that wants to change you, even a little bit, since you first talked to him.
There's sex, yeah? And then there's something behind sex, and that's when stuff gets crazy.  I don't mean what we usually think is behind sex (lust and hormones and "connection" and love and all of that).  Maybe, better put, what's in-between sex? Where is that place you go when you orgasm, because you're sure the fuck not here when it happens. And remind yourself that old people who don't have sex have a profound wisdom that us young sluts need to have lots of sex to...avoid.
And then go walk by a christian church and ask why the blood of Christ is wine (or grape juice if it's evangelical).
And then go sit under a pine tree for a very long time and stare at the stars with him and see what he sees.
He likes wine, but you'll have to drink some with him.  Beer works if you really have no other option, but don't be lazy with him, really. Aphrodisiacs mixed in aren't the worst idea.

Arianrhod

She's--what is she? "The Queen of the Witches," she told me in a place between sleeping and waking.  And I saw a blue-silver owl in another such vision, feathers dripping from it like the flames of a phoenix.
Go stare at a pool of water, and look at the reflection of the sky in it.  Now, shift your vision so you're looking at the surface of the water only, and see there's something...else.  Seriously. Go try it. Now.
 And then when you start losing really wonderful meaningful things to you, don't be surprised.  You'll lose everything eventually, so it's good practice.
And besides, everything you've been given isn't yours.  Better to be an orphan and make your own way then to have all you need and never find a path.  She threw a child back to the sea, and took everything away from the other.  Best mother ever, and I mean this.
Also, beware your love.  Did you know you can desire without losing yourself? She and Dionysus may have had "a thing," whatever that means.  What's it mean to you? It probably shouldn't.
She seems to like chamomile, or liked it when I gave it to her, or was gracious enough to pretend she did.

Ceridwen

Stare at the full moon and remember it's completely dark on the other side.
Stare into a cauldron and die and realize it's surprisingly not all that bad.  Kind of lonely until you remember that you're going to decompose and something's going to use your molecules to form itself. 
Hmm.  Still kind of lonely.
Not sure the way around this.  Death is damn lonely.  So is life.  Ever been surrounded by everyone you love and felt alone?  Yup. Just like that.
You die every day, and you need to.  You eat the dead, you breathe their dust.  The crust of the earth, that stuff you walk on? You know, dirt? How much life ended so you could put a seed into it and have a tomato?
Also--this is wisdom, you know.  Meet a beautiful person, fall in love, and tell yourself it will end at some indeterminate point, and tell yourself as it starts. And then throw yourself into it fully, because it's beautiful.
Fool yourself that it's gonna last forever and you'll never see what you've got.
I'm not clear what she likes, except saying hello to her when you see the moon reminds you she's there and you're gonna die and it's a good thing.

Bran

I don't ever really know what to say about him, because he's a little too close.  Like, I know him from somewhere, and I think I can't see him because his reflection is a little too close to mine.
But when you walk in front of a car because you are absent-minded and notice it barreling towards you and hear your own voice say with an odd timbre, "you are not my death," well, ugh.
I watched him stand, towering, on a storm-lit plain with dark hills on the horizon, wearing a fluttering black cloak which flew away into millions of crows or ravens, leaving him only as white bone around which a tower was built.
He gave me a branch of Alder, where the forest met a river.  Alder seems to be everything to me now.  Crows scream at me to pay attention and then I do and they stop screaming.  I don't know what this means, except I've never felt safer.
Corvid feathers.  Go help someone else, too, especially if it involves you taking on some crazy burden that won't break you but would them.

Brighid

I don't have favorites, but, since she was the first, I think she's--awesome.
I've had more dreams of her than of the other gods, each strange and somewhat trying.  She's always laughing at a hearth, and she's laughing because she knows something that I don't.  I'm not sure what this is, and I won't try to tell you.
But fall in love, and she's laughing.  Fall out of love, and she's laughing again, all the while building the fire she tends higher and hotter.  In some places, they "smother" or "smoor" a fire, keeping coals warm overnight so that it can be rebuilt the next morning.  I think this is part of it--the hearth never grows cold, if by hearth one means the warm place inside you from which all creation springs.
I've heard she likes milk, and spring water.  I usually light a small fire in a metal cup with rubbing alcohol, particularly whenever I've fallen in or out of love.  If Ceridwen is death and life, if Arianrhod is loss and gain, Brighid is melting and reforging. 

The Morrighan

I don't feel comfortable talking about her, as we've just met.  A three week courting, it seems, regarding what others are calling "sovereignty."
War is to sovereignty as sex is to desire, faces of something greater, messy attempts to get at the truth. 
I don't really know who she is, except, as a "triple goddess," she seems--well.  I'm tempted to say she's also the other goddesses I worship, or their messenger.  I don't know.  Did I say this yet? I don't know.
Even still, we've met, and she taught me to do something and I trembled in fear at the responsibility of it.


And beyond all of these, there's another one, I think, whom I just saw yesterday lingering outside the circle I cast.  I'll figure this out soon enough.  Younger than the others.  I had this silly idea when I started meeting gods that I'd get a nice manageable number and keep it at that.  That was a silly thing I didn't really mean anyway, I find.