January seems to not only be our time of resolutions, affirmations, and attempts to improve diet, and loose some weight. I feel and discover January is the time many people explore ‘divination’ as a means for setting priorities of what we would like, and what we would like to be and feel through the months ahead.
During future Sunday writings, this month, I will explore ‘divination’ and ask for your thoughts on that too.
For this Sunday, I’m going to be writing to you on a ‘soap box’, so I hope you are not offended, but will discuss points.
Myself? I have been thinking a lot of where to take ‘Nature Folklore’ and it’s sideline activity, ‘Holy Wells Revival’ that gets me out of the house.
One of the delights already this year is discovering this Substack platform, thanks to recommendations by writer friends who love this platform, and I will introduce you to these lovely people over the coming weeks.
Substack here is enabling me to flow with a question I repeat to myself, “What is the ‘Nature Folklore’ content, and the followers of this content, becoming?”
I frequently see other people present similar things to what I share but some give themselves ‘titles’ to get some recognition, have earned a catalogue of registered ‘qualifications’, are authors of quite a library of books they have written, and run courses that I often feel are quite demanding financially.
Two thoughts cross my mind. One is that I feel these people handling similar subjects to me must be very busy studying to earn their extra registered qualifications, plus writing and editing their books … so how do they find the time to actually practice what they are studying, talking and writing about?
My other thought is that if these practitioners are charging quite high fees for access to their content, workshops, and sharing what they know, who are they trying to attract?
Are they trying to attract just people with money, and exclude the rest of us? Or lure people to pay them lots of money while their clients/students have to cut out food, risk their rent payment, bank loans payments, and similar, so they are able to learn from the educating host?
There was an article I read a couple of weeks ago that I feel brilliantly sums up what I often try to say about those two questions I constantly carry.
I picked up this article on Facebook from a Ragna Cloontabonnive, and when I wrote to him he replied that he could not find the writing source. One of the comments, after this was posted, suggested the writer to be Daniel Burns-McKernan, who has a very entertaining profile on Facebook. I think he lives in New York and his business is professional sword fighting and teaching people how to use antique, historical swords, or replicas of them. Despite that Daniel comes over as a pacifist.
Anyway, this is what Daniel wrote, and I trust you will be able to relate to much of this yourself? …
Our pagan ancestors were not seers, magicians, witches, or other mystical types. They were farmers, bakers, hunters, builders, and common people living their lives. The average person did not maintain an altar, or cast stones... as they were too busy maintaining gardens and casting seeds.
They didn't search their dreams for divine meanings, they napped at the height of the day and dreamt of cold beer and crusty bread and days when the work was finished.
Magic is not something to be controlled, it is something lived alongside. You can ask favours of it, and it will expect favours in return, but it is no more supernatural than rain... it is just a part of the world. Our ancestors planned for it, adjusted to it, and went along with it all during their lives.
Holidays were not for esoteric rituals for the common people. They were for taking a break from working the fields, to spend time drinking, eating, singing songs, and telling stories with our community. Rituals are there just to provide a simple framework for community building.
Do not let "Celtic Priestesses", "Shamans", or modern "Druids" tell you that magic and ritual are the ways to be pagan and only they can teach you.
They are just people desperate for power and filled with a need to feel special and get attention. They simply switch snake oil for essential oil and prey on our Judeo-Christian cultural predisposition to establish their own hierarchy.
They also award themselves with meaningless titles. So I suggest, avoid and mistrust anyone who claims to know the will of the gods and goddesses. You will usually find their claims coincide with their own self importance desires.
Instead, look to your elders and people living lives you admire. Bake bread with old women and split firewood with old men, and they'll teach you the world. They will do it for free, do it with a smile, and they'll never put on a crown and ask you to call them by a title that sustains their false privilege.
Avoid people who think they alone hold the keys to knowledge and wisdom, and announce they keep it all hidden away from people they don't consider as being "worthy", as they are not ‘on a high vibration’ level, or similar.
A handy motto is that ‘learning is an act of devotion, teaching is an act of worship’.
Ways to apply that could be, commune with the earth by nurturing a garden and growing your food. By doing so you will understand the seasons and the ways land changes, much better than you ever will through spells or meditation.
Raise animals, breed them, care for them, kill them, and eat them... and you will understand life, love, and death in greater nuance than any prophetic vision can convey.
Walk through woods, fields, farms, and markets so you can watch the trees, the sky, the crops, and the people that you live around. This will let you feel the changes of time and tell you more about the past and the future of the world around us … much more accurately than through any divination stones and twigs.
Build a home, a greenhouse, a barn, a fence, a wall... and you will find an appreciation for structure far greater than through any cosmology composed and written.
Love the people you live with and work with. Share meals and stories with them, and this will keep you more in touch with your ancestors than through offerings, prayers, and stones.
So that is the thoughts and views of Daniel Burns-McKernan, that I also feel very close too.
… but having quoted all that ???
I still enjoy a bit of ceremony and play-acting, such as with the winter ‘dark to light’ expressions and interpretations through folk dramas, such as quite modern day Mummers.
It is through ‘folk drama’ that I actually entered into this ‘Nature Folklore’, as I call it. But I did not enter into folk drama until I had heard some stories from farmers and working people. It was the play-drama that helped me towards understanding a bit more about what these ‘grown-ups’ had told me. After all, I was a wee child playing games at the time. The drama was also an excuse for me to show off a bit too, and I still hang on to that advantage :-).
More important to me than the fun of the folk drama, though, is the source of those folklore stories of the water, trees, land, and our toils upon it. This source holds no human language.
So I trust that what I share with you of what I call ‘Nature Folklore’ here on Substack, is the combination of the fun, drama and poetry of folklore, coupled with practical useful applications of the folklore during each annual cycle of seasons.
Though the article quoted here does not seem to support ‘divinations’ my upcoming writings will look at divinations, distinguishing it from ‘fortune telling’, and also aiding a more intimate relationship with our water, trees, and wildlife.
Please feel free to comment and discuss what I have written here as some of you probably love dressing up and attending ceremonies and rituals around altars, around fires, beside water, and within woodland groves?
And yes, I do ask for donations and money contributions for some things to cover my costs of subscriptions and sometimes equipment breakdowns and replacement.
I look forward to sharing more with you over the coming weeks, starting with divination next week.
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Yes! I've always thought Irish music reminded me of Greek music. I didn't know about Kurdistan/Ireland connection but am not surprised. Another connection - I remember hearing from older relatives about the neraides up in the village (something like water sprites) were so active that everyone was afraid to collect crayfish except my grandma. (She later became an herbalist and midwife.) It is said that even horses refused to cross and had to be dragged across this stream. In Greece, rather than reading tea leaves, it's more common to read coffee grounds.
Just jumping in to your substack after a bit of technology block. This article was a wonderful read, and I couldn't agree more. I'm here visiting older relatives in Greece. The knowledge and wisdom they share comes from the heart, and I regret missing the skills I could have learned in my youth,from their parents, aunts, and uncles. There are many kinds of folk wisdom for those who have ears to hear...