Another beginning

I confess: I really don’t know how to explain this pattern of mine.

It’s been two years now since my last words here. It’s not that I’ve been gone from the path, but more that my heart has been in hibernation.

The truth is, I don’t know what causes my drawing away. I know that – in some respect – this is depression. I’ve suffered from depression for many years, and sometimes it’s just harder than others. It doesn’t help that I’m in a country where mental health resources are hard to find, and harder for a foreigner to access than even a native.

But some of it is…I don’t know. Something else.

I continue to think about the gods, about my path. I continue to read and to study. I look at the stars. I touch the earth and rejoice. I give thanks to spirits of place when they aid me. I tell stories to my children.

But then the cycle turns again and it seems as though I just wake.

Like there are other things my spirit needs to be doing, and deep down I know the gods will understand.

And then things happen. I meet some new people. I stumble on things. I have a dream.

And then suddenly I need to come back. I need to return to the path and take a few more steps along it.

And somehow, it always seems to come around now: in the fall, in the days before the equinox.

In the days that lead to Calan Gaeaf.

Is it that the gods want me back? Is it that I want them.

Is it both?

I don’t really know, but after so many years away from my precious soil I’m grateful for one thing:

A place where I can go home.

But what of the stars?

Courtesy of NASA - a photo of Jupiter taken by
New Horizons

Like many of us who follow the pagan path, the sky is very important to me.

My first clear memory of awareness of the sky is from when I was five years old.  Our family had moved to the far north of Canada – literally in the tundra – and it was winter.  My father knew the science teacher at the local high school, and had been invited to join a star-viewing party during which some pretty amazing aurorae were expected.  There were several impressive telescopes, the sky was as clear as crystal, the aurorae were as amazing as advertised, and I was hooked.

Dancing with the gods

Barajima Hachiman o-mikoshi with offerings
(photo taken at the invitation of the Kannushi)

I love summer here.

The heat and humidity I could do without, but I can’t help but love summer – because summer is the season of gods.

There are festivals all year round of course, and some of the most important are in the depths of winter, but in July and August every year is a concentration of Shinto religious celebrations like nothing else.

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. 

Hard or Soft is not the question

This recent article on Patheos regarding hard vs soft polytheism made me stop and think about my own practice.

 

Years ago, when I had my first revelations, I started out very much a “hard” polytheist.  I had personal experiences, after all – it wasn’t philosophical, it was visceral, and it seemed obvious that gods existed.

 

Then I transitioned into a much, much softer phase.  After the initial excitement, I started to really delve into not only the history and mythology of what I was coming to believe, but also the philosophy.  I was coming at this from an academic perspective and some part of me was desperate to make it “rational” – the result was that I started to rationalize my experiences as psychological.  Oh, it was still religion, and it was still true in important ways, but looking back I put an amazing amount of effort into turning my personal experiences into something universal.

 

Lay the Spring Hearth

Since I stepped back onto my path again so many months ago now, things have not gone in such a straight line. I suppose that, all told, I should have expected a kind of spiral dance – but I confess I didn’t expect the barriers that have sprung up before me.

These are social and personal irritations, but the fact of the matter is that they have interfered with my ability to move in the direction I had hoped – a sign, perhaps, that the direction I had in mind is not the right one.  As we approach what I have called Gŵyl Braid y Canhwyllau (Brigid’s Feast of Candles), suddenly the way appears to be opening for a new beginning.

 But of course, I should have expected this for more than one reason.

Beginning the Path - Part 3 - The Door

Part 1
Part 2

Realising that I needed other guides was a big step forward –

A door had opened.

But the problem was that I had little idea where to turn: The local pagan community had given me support, but as anyone with this experience knows there is only so far others can lead you. The library had already given up all it could offer in this area.

I had struggled and read and asked all the rational questions that were possible, and now it seemed as though I had come to the end of the road.  For weeks I wrestled with the problem, tied up in my need to find signs, a map, a guide – something to tell me where to step next, how to lead myself out of the maze.  I spent the summer plagued by insomnia as I lay awake thinking.  Most nights, I eventually gave up trying to sleep and walked for hours, alone in the early hours of the morning – bathed in moonlight and soaking up the silence of the sleeping city streets. My summer job suffered, my friends thought I was cracking up, and maybe they were almost right.

The Dancer

While I struggle to put into words my experience of discovering the door to my gods in the third and final post on that narrative (recognising of course that it was really just a first step onto the path) I thought I'd comment on something I saw today that strikes quite close to home - an article on why cities are so much hotter than the countryside.

Where I live, what I do, it's sometimes difficult to really get away from the heat of summer.

Thankfully, I live outside Tokyo and commute daily - this gives me a bit of respite each and every day, and of course on weekends.  Tokyo has tried very hard to undo the damage of the 70s and 80s though, and the city has not only retained many of the little parks and shrines that dwell here, but has deliberately built up a few green zones and some buildings even have green spaces on the roofs. 

I'm desperate for more of course, but the little islands of green help a little.

Beginning the Path - Part 2 - Mazed

Part 1

My new path was confusing.

The Elders were good to me. They could tell that something different had happened to me than to any of he other visitors, and while the young First Nation participants went to join a discussion circle and the visitors went to join a seminar, I ended up sitting at a desk in the back office of the community center, shuddering like a new-born colt as I stared into a cup of black coffee.

The kind Elder who had tended me in the last moments of my journey had gone, but in her place was a younger man who lived in the city. We talked about my experience, explored it as best we could, but he had no context to work with and I was completely unprepared for the strike of lightning. When he was sure I wasn't just having a trip and was safe to go home he let me go. He gave me his number and offered to talk again, but I could tell he wasn't sure what he thought he'd be able to do for me. I did call a few times, but he was right. 

I needed other guides.

Beginning the Path - Part 1 - The Path

It was 1989, and I was a student.

I was confirmed Anglican, enrolled in the Anglican college at Uni, but I had long been curious about the old gods.

At that point it had mainly been a matter of reading – Wales has its fair share of myths and storied locales, and I’d inherited a deep interest in such things from my grandfather.  I’d read kids versions of the Mabinogi, I’d gone to see stone circles and wells and valleys with reputations.

But it was all academic, you know?

Then we moved away, emigrating to Canada, and I found myself stuck far from home in the prairies.  Interest didn’t wane, exactly, but it was a harder thing to follow.  And anyway there was church, which I went to mainly for the politics of it, and the locals were sometimes terrifyingly evangelical so it didn’t do to say too much about such things.

When I went to Uni, and everything changed.