Riding the River; My Journey into Paganism

 My journey into Paganism is something I've talked about before, but I don't think I've ever written explicitly about it here. Since there's a blog theme going around taking on that idea I thought it might be interesting to look at it here.

Many people when you ask them 'How did you end up pagan?' have a straightforward answer - they found a book or they met a particular person. My own story is a bit more complicated, although it does eventually involve both a book and a person, both of which I owe a great debt and neither of which continued with me on my path.

Unlike most of my peers I wasn't raised Christian. I tend to say I was raised a secular agnostic because that sums it up fairly well. We celebrated all the main American holidays but without any religious overtones - Christmas was when Santa came in his reindeer pulled sleigh to magically bring us presents and Easter was when a bunny brought us baskets of candy. I include the agnostic part because there was no firm disbelief, but neither was their any clear structure within any particular faith. We grew up hearing stories about our families history and culture, Cherokee, Irish-American, and New England with all the folklore and belief that came with that. I spent a lot of time out doors in nature, connecting to the wild world. I also had the added personal quirk of seeing spirits, something that (luckily for me) my family humored for the most part. I built little houses for the fairies and left them notes on my windowsill for as long as I could remember. But actual formal religion, there wasn't any.

I was also always a spiritual seeker, maybe because I saw things other people didn't. At various points I was curious about different religions, attending church services with my friends, reading about Judaism, I even read up on Mennonites and the Amish. Nothing ever quite fit though. And then when I was in middle school (the early 1990's) one of my best friends introduced me to a book by Scott Cunningham called 'Wicca: a Guide for the Solitary Practitioner'. For the first time I was reading about a religion - witchcraft and paganism - that made perfect sense to me. Gods and Goddesses, spirits, magic, these all resonated with me and fit into the world, spirits inclusive, that I already knew existed. I was mad for Irish culture at that point so it wasn't much effort to add in Irish mythology to to everything else and begin reading about the Irish Gods. I think I was about 11 years old.

I went to the library and found a few other books, and used my babysitting money to buy a couple more and I read what I could get my hands on at the time: Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, Sybil Leek's Diary of a Witch, Laurie Cabot's Power of the Witch. At the advanced age of 12 I decided to preform a self dedication ritual, out in the cold on Imbolc. Because at 12 I was certain that this was the most amazing religion ever.

Of course within a few years, by the mid 90's, I'd started to focus more on what I'd later learn was called Celtic Reconstructionism and by 1997 I'd joined a CR Druid group called the Order of the White Oak. In 2001 I joined another Druid group, Ar nDraoicht Fein, and in 2006 I joined Our Troth after I began studying Heathenry/Asatru. I had long since stopped considering myself Wiccan but I never stopped practicing witchcraft and throughout it all the Good People - by any name - where the bedrock of my belief system and practice.

I remained a dual-trad person, both a reconstructionist Irish polytheist and a Heathen but I also began to see that over the years I had developed my own type of witchcraft, my own flavor if you will. So in 2013 I wrote a book 'Pagan Portals Fairy Witchcraft' which would be published the following year that described my witchcraft and my belief system, formed from a lifetime of experience and woven from the Fairy Faith and a reconstructionist approach to working with the Other Crowd. That of course led to another book, Fairycraft, and another (coming out later this year) Fairies. And there's another one in the works that will be out in the next year or so as well. I feel like Themselves have something to say.

Last year, as those of you who read my blog already know, was a transitional one for me. I went to Ireland a polytheist dedicated to several Gods. I came back belonging to the Daoine Maithe. Looking back on my journey to paganism and its evolution over the years I suppose it was a predictable evolution, but I honestly never saw it coming. I had always thought of my path as a tree, growing up from roots into spreading branches but always one thing always the same even as it grew. I suppose in a way that's true, but recently I've realized that my path is far more like a river - the water is always the water but the river expands and contracts, reshapes itself, slows or speeds up as it travels. It changes as it needs to change. My path has always been about the Good People even before I realized I was on a path, and I have walked it my whole life even when I wasn't aware it was there. It has changed and reshaped itself radically along the way, and that's alright. I've learned a lot.

And where I am now is not the end either.

Witchcraft of The Devouring Swamp

My friend at Via Hedera wrote a great post about her green witchcraft in the context of her river and its spirits called "Green River Witchcraft". You should definitely give it a read. It has me thinking about the way that where we live, the environment we live in, shapes how we relate to spirits and perhaps our witchcraft or wider spirituality. For my friend at Via Hedera that means green, growing, knitting community together. It also reminds me of this Puscifer song:

All of this got me thinking about my own environment, my own animism and my own witchcraft.

Animism is and always has been a core concept of my beliefs, back for as far as I can remember believing things. The idea that there are spirits - souls - in objects, in places, in everything has always just been a given for me. Of course the river has a spirit. Of course the road has one too. People can split hairs about the details of animism, what it is and how its defined, but ultimately I think any view of animism hinges on that core idea of an ensouled world.

Building on that, for me, is the idea that the physical anchor for that spirit shapes and influences the spirit to some degree. Just as our experience in our body effect how we interact with the world, it has been my experience to a large degree that other spirits are effected by the state of their physical anchor, when they have one. A river that is free-running and clear is a happy river; one that is clogged and polluted is not. A happy river, often will have a happy spirit while an unhappy river will have an unhappy spirit, to give a simple view of it. Rivers shaped by waterfalls and wild rapids have more wild and fierce spirits. Rivers that are calm and slow moving have more languid spirits. I am speaking of generalities of course, trying to get a larger point across.

In turn the spirits and physical anchors they have shape us and resonate with us, or not. People are drawn to certain places, certain types of spirits, whether or not they are aware of it. We may say we like to live near specific terrain, or we always have to be around a specific kind of thing; or perhaps we draw those things to us. I have an affinity for things with thorns and now through no effort on my part my yard has been overtaken by things-with-thorns. We are connected to the spirits around us and they in their way are connected to us, and this is especially true for those of us who practice any form of magic or follow a spiritual path that lends itself to these connection.

Water flows through and around the land I live on, shapes it and re-shapes it. I live within 8 miles of the ocean, and a mile from a large river. But my backyard is a freshwater swamp, less than 50 feet from my house. Those spirits are woven into my home and my witchcraft, inevitably, because they are a part of my environment. They are what I am connected to and what I resonate with.

my backyard

 Rivers have a certain nature to them, whether they are big or small, and their spirits tend to reflect this. They flow, the move, they nurture. Swamps are very different in nature. Swamps devour. Swamps consume. Swamps take in. Swamps have their own cycles, their own ecology, their own blessings and dangers. Ground that looks safe often enough proves a sucking void and one misstep in a swamp can be costly. Swamps are where, often, we see the process of decay front and center, even when they are living and thriving. Trees, uprooted, crisscross the water dying and adding themselves back to the mix from which everything else springs. Yet swamps also nurture life in their own way. Trees grow here, finding roots on the dry islands that rise between the water. Birds nest here, frogs breed here, animals  make their homes here. Paths can be found across the danger by treading on the trunks of fallen trees, if one is daring and has good balance.

The spirits of swamps reflect the nature of swamps; they are devouring and merciless, but they can also be nurturing and helpful. They respect people who are bold, and people who know where to tread and where not to step. They are not subtle, except when they are. The green growth of the swamp stands directly on the brown decay in which its rooted, and the spirits of the swamp, more perhaps than other spirits, are mercurial and stand between baneful and blessing in nature. The Otherworldly beings that choose swamps to live in tend more towards darkness than light.

There is powerful magic to be found here, and powerful connections to be made with these spirits. The lessons of the swamp rest in patience, and rhythms, and finding paths where others see only obstacles. Swamp spirits teach you discernment in trust, and that things are rarely as they appear. The witchcraft of these liminal lands, as much water as earth, is something that knows to respect decay while nourishing new beginnings, and knows when to seek a safe path and when to give over to the devouring waters. The spirits here make powerful allies. But let's be honest, the swamp isn't an easy thing to learn and just when you think you understand it you're sure to set your feet wrong and fall into the half-decayed muck. It takes time and effort to learn the rhythms of any swamp, and to speak to its spirits and learn their language.

Just don't follow the lights in the swamp at night and you will be off to a good start.

Cliodhna: Goddess and Fairy Queen

The Following is an Excerpt from my book Pagan Portals Gods and Goddesses of Ireland

Cliodhna -
Cliodhna, also known as Clíona, is considered both one of the Tuatha Dé Danann in older mythology and a Fairy Queen in modern folk lore. Her name may mean ‘the territorial one’, likely reflecting her earlier role as a sovereignty Goddess; her epithet is Ceannfhionn (fair headed or fair haired) and she is sometimes called ‘the shapely one’1. In many stories she is described as
exceptionally beautiful.

Her sister is said to be Aibheall, and her father is Gebann, the Druid of Manannán mac Lir2. There are no references to who her mother might be or to her children among the Gods. Several mortal families trace their descent from her including the McCarthys and O’Keefes and she was well known for taking mortal lovers.

Cliodhna is said to have taken the form of a wren, a bird that may be associated with her, and she is also often associated with the Otherworldly Bean sidhe. By some accounts she herself is considered to be such a spirit, or their queen, although in other folklore she is more generally the queen of the fairies of Munster. She has three magical birds that eat Otherworldly apples and have the power to lull people to sleep by singing and then heal them3.

She is strongly associated with the shore and with waves, and the tide at Glandore in Cork was called the ‘Wave of Cliodhna’4. In several of her stories she is drowned at that same location after leaving the Otherworld either to try to woo Aengus or after running away with a warrior named Ciabhán. She has a reputation in many stories for her passionate nature and love of poets in particular, and in later folklore when she is considered a Fairy Queen she is known to abduct handsome young poets or to appear and try to seduce them. In folklore she has a reputation for seducing and drowning young men5.

Cliodhna is particularly associated with the province of Munster and especially with Cork, where she resides at a place called Carraig Chlíona (Cliodhna’s rock)6. It is likely that she was originally one of the sovereignty Goddesses of Munster and that her survival in folklore to the present period reflects how deeply ingrained she was in local lore.

Modern practitioners may choose to honor Cliodhna for her role as a sovereignty Goddess or as an ancestral deity related to specific families. I might suggest, given her more recent folklore related to the Bean sidhe and her penchant in stories for harming young men and poets, that she should be approached with caution. Offerings to her could include the traditional milk or bread given to the Gods and fairies, as well as poetry, of which she seems fond.

Citations
1. O hOgain, 2006; MacKillop, 1998
2. Smyth, 1988; MacKillop, 1998
3. ibid
4. O hOgain, 2006
5. Smyth, 1988
6. O hOgain, 2006


References
O hOgain, D., (2006) Lore of Ireland
Smyth, D., (1988) Irish Mythology
MacKillop, J., (1998) A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology