Walk your own path

Many pagans yearn for the chance to visit a sacred place that is particularly important to them.  Stonehenge, Newgrange, the White Horse, the Cerne Abbas Giant, Ynys Môn, and dozens of other sites are common pilgrimage dreams for pagans following a British tradition, for example.

There’s nothing wrong with this of course, and these places are sacred for a reason – if nothing else, the simple weight of historical significance is enough to imbue such places with spiritual power to energize an enthusiastic pilgrim.  It’s perfectly natural and appropriate for people to want to visit powerful places they’ve read about for years. Nevertheless, I have heard many people say that they scrimped and saved for a dream trip to visit one or another sacred that had a special place in their heart only to be underwhelmed. 

Part of this is to be expected – after months or even years of anticipation, it would be hard for the real thing to measure up to the dream, particularly when the real thing is wrapped up in the tinsel of a tourist attraction. 

Another part may simply be that despite intellectual interest the expected spiritual resonance simply isn’t there – it’s a sad truth that although we may desperately want to feel a deep and powerful connection with  a place that’s important to us for various reasons it might just not happen.  The gods we follow might not be there, the spirits who inhabit that place may not find us worthy, or interesting, or there may be any of a dozen other ways that we just don’t match.

Finally, these places may have power, may be the dwelling-places of deep spirits indeed, but if we don’t know how best to approach them, how to commune with them, there’s no way the deeper connections we seek can be forged.

Fortunately, these kinds of deep spiritual encounters don’t require pilgrimage to the other side of the world, since powerful spirits dwell in many places, and here I will invoke a Zen aphorism that may not seem to apply at first glance, but will make sense in a moment:

“Words are liars”

In the Japanese Zen tradition, this aphorism is taken as a warning against tying your mind up in knots trying to interpret scripture when you should be experiencing the process of discovering your own enlightenment.  The secret here is that Buddha and the other past masters of whatever Buddhist tradition you might be studying didn’t blaze a trail that you can easily follow along – all they did is point out the destination, and it’s up to you to find the path that works best for you. Maybe it’ll turn out to be the same path, but it might also turn out to be very, very different, and you’d be wasting your time trying to force yourself into a pattern that just doesn’t match.

I think this applies to our hunger for spiritual experience as pagans as well.

Perhaps you’ve read about some powerful sacred site. Perhaps you’ve filled your mind with its history, and read beautiful accounts of ceremonies and experiences that others have had at this site. Perhaps all this moves you and makes you wish desperately to experience the same thing.

I think that’s great.

But I also think that while it’s possible you will have the same quality of experience as others at that famous sacred site, you’re better off searching for a path of your own.  Seek out sites close to home, find paths that will by nature resonate with you because they’re part of your everyday world.

I lived my early life in Wales and Cornwall.  When I was young, I had many opportunities to visit places with deep historical and spiritual significance.  But after moving on to Canada, what was I to do?  Was I supposed to live the rest of my life with only occasional – if ever! – chances to visit these spiritual homes?  And how about after moving even further, finding myself as I do in Japan?

The gods of course move with us, can be called to manifest in many places.  It’s hard for me to do for a variety of reasons (mostly logistics) but I can and have experienced the gods most dear to me even here in Japan.  But those spirits of place, the grand convocations of cobelins and pwca and other minor powers – what of them?

Well, the truth is that such spirits live wherever we might be, and that rather than sitting at home yearning for the chance to touch the altar at some sacred site thousands of kilometers away we should be stepping out into the part of the world we actually live in and experiencing them.

Is there an elder tree in the park down the lane?

Is there a mysterious stone by the river that seems always to be calling?

What of the river itself?

What about the fields, the forests?

 

Take it from someone who had the privilege of walking amid the stones of Stonehenge before they fenced everything off and made it inaccessible – those sorts of experiences are special, and they can be the highlight of someone’s spiritual life.  But so can the deep and abiding relationships we can forge with the spirits who dwell closest to us.

Don’t worry yourself about the celebrities of the spiritual world – if you’re meant to connect with them you will.  Meanwhile, treat your neighbours like celebrities and enjoy what you have.