Monthly Archives: March 2017

The Last Wolf of Albion

I have to admit to feeling a little nervous about attending a Camp in Cumbria before March had even waved us goodbye. Reports of snow on higher ground by friends the previous week hadn’t helped that feeling. I may be a southerner by birth but my paternal family are all northerners and I’ll have lived under northern skies for fifteen years this September. I am a northerner at heart, and we are made of sterner stuff. So as Saturday dawned cool and clear I donned a thermal vest under my T-shirt and fleece and headed towards Grange-Over-Sands and the Humphrey Head Centre where The Druid Network were hosting a “Leap into Spring” event.

I love the Lakes with a deep abiding passion, many of my childhood holidays involved fishing at Arnside, woodland rambles near Kendal, minnow trapping at the Troutbeck, scrambling around at the feet of Shap. To name just a few activities. And it was during these holidays that my love of folklore and myth probably first took seed. Both my father and grandfather were excellent story tellers, and the raucous songs and tales they made up for my delight are memories that make me smile even on the greyest day. So it was great news to me that the location of my weekend adventures was purported to be the site where the last wolf was hunted down and killed and that a great story accompanied it. A story that has been brought to my attention, for no apparent reason a number of times over the last few months. So obviously it has some as yet unknown lesson to teach me. So as the start of my adventure through the landscape of the last wolf I thought I might share its sad tale.

The Last Wolf

Once upon a time, for after all it’s important for all good stories  to start like that don’t you think? There lived a very powerful family who resided in a beautiful tower near the village of  Allithwaite. In those days the landscape was different to the one we know now. It was a much wilder place. Inhabited by much wilder creatures. Possibly the most fearsome of which was a ferocious wolf. His howls could be heard all across Over-Sands and on moon lit nights the local peasants brought as many of their sheep inside as possible for the Wolf had a voracious appetite.

The beasts indiscriminate hunting went on for many years before the common folk could take no more and pleaded with their lord to help them. To rid them of this menace. Sir Edgar Harrington listened to his serfs and swore to rid them of the predator. He called to all the Lords and Knights across the region asking for aid. If they caught and killed the wolf then half his lands and the hand of his orphan niece Adela would be theirs as reward.

Now Adela was less than happy with this state of affairs, but as an Orphan ward there was little she could do. All she could hope for was that either that the wolf escaped to hunt another day, or that the man to which she would be wed was an honourable and decent man. She knew though that her heart would never belong to any other man than John. The son of Sir Edgar. As children they had played together and as they had grown so had their love. Once he came of age John had asked his father for her hand but had been refused for Sir Edgar saw great alliances that could be made with her marriage. John left in anger to travel to the Holy lands swearing never to return. Leaving a grieving Adela behind.

So as the appointed day arrived nobles across the land assembled. Forming the greatest hunt the land had seen since Arthur had valiantly pursued the elusive White Stag. Adela pleaded with her ward begging to accompany the men so that she may see the triumph of the man to whom she would be wed. Finally he agreed and as her horse was being saddled a mysterious knight arrived to join the hunt. Mounted upon the most magnificent glowing white Arabian stallion the knight refused to dismount or remove his visor whilst the final preparations were made. Instead he silently watched the fair maiden.

The horn sounded and the hunt began. The Wolf a wiley old beast led them a merry dance. The hunt zig zagged across the land, from Coniston to Windermere with many an erstwhile suitor falling by the wayside. Finally the chase led the remaining pack to Humphrey Head with the mysterious knight leading. He cornered the beast and speared him through his heart. Turning to Adela he lifted his visor to reveal to his prize that he was her long lost love. Sir Edgar seeing the truth of the situation summoned a learned Monk from Cartmel Priory who happened to be in the retinue. He instructed the Monk to marry the couple there and then. In front of the holy well that springs even to this day from the foot of the cliffs at Humphrey Head.

It is a truly wonderful tale, full of some very interesting motifs which could be remnants of long lost sovereignty stories. The maiden being married to a mysterious knight who is mounted upon an otherworldly white beast. But what is even more fascinating is that the myth has now become inextricably link to the geology of the land.

Firstly the Holy well which although somewhat sad and neglected still remains to this day. It is mineral rich and tastes a little like Alka Selzer with a slightly silky/slimey texture. And although the water is heavy with salts and minerals it is obviously unpolluted as small freshwater shrimps could be seen swimming in the small pools where the water collected as it trickled down to the marshes just a few meters below.

Secondly is the Haematite which can be gathered in the shingle at the foot of Humphrey Head. This is a black/reddish brown stone which is high in Ferric Oxide. It is sometimes known as Blood stone. A good way to identify the stone is to give it a quick lick and rub it against a rock, if it comes up red then you know you have the right rock. Of course if you have a magnet on your keyring you will also be able to test the stones as even if the Iron content is fairly low you will feel a slight draw to the stones. Might be a bit more sensible than licking them. But hey where is the fun in that! And if you do lick them, you can see how these stones have become linked to the story of the last wolf, their Magickal red stains are the drops of blood shed by the Wolf before he met his final demise on the cliffs above.

 

It is claimed that Haematite is great for protection, grounding and dispelling negativity. And I have used it for that purpose previously but the stones I gathered have now found themselves upon my Brigid altar, after all a Goddess of Smithcraft could definitely use some Iron ore.

It was a truly wonderful day full of myth and magick and a sense of sacred within the landscape. I cannot wait to go back to visit and explore more. Perhaps even discover other legends about the surrounding lands. The Woodspirit camp is being hosted there this year. That sounds like a promising adventure.

 

 

The Blessings of Brigid

For a couple of years now I have been trying to make more of a conscious effort to really connect with the festivals on the wheel of the year. So at the end of January I found myself accepting an invitation to attend an hour’s silent vigil in the woods dedicated to the Goddess Brigid. I’ll be frank, whilst I love dark nights, woodland walks and candle-lit vigils I was rather perplexed as to my subconscious motivations. Brigid is not a deity Ive had a lot of connection with and nor did I really want to. To explain, I think how you interact with deities is a bit like how you interact
with people. There has to be a certain something about the person or nothing will never develop. They will remain just somebody you know in passing, might say “hi” to as you walk past in the street because you recognise them. But you wouldn’t necessarily stop and talk. And to be frank my previous interaction with Brigid had left me pretty much as cold as the Imbolc snow that so often scatters the ground at that time of year. So I think it goes without saying that I was more than a bit shocked when during the vigil a quiet internal voice instructed me to continue to light candles until Equinox.

Publicly Ive been wearing my Druid hat almost as much as I’ve been wearing my Wiccan hat of late so it occurred to me that this sudden tentative spark of connection may be related to that, Brigid is a goddess of poetry and often a patron to Bards. It also occurred to me that it was an aspect of Brigid I was feeling as a soul calling rather than an actual connection. At that early point of connection during the vigil it was close to seven weeks since I had set foot on Anglesey, the longest I have gone in well over 18 months. The author Kristoffer Hughes suggests that the Goddess of the river Braint which bisects the Isle of Anglesey is a localised version of the Goddess Briganti, whom many believe to also be Brigid [1.Hughes, K. The book of Celtic Magic, Llewellyn 2016]. Therefore although admittedly in a reluctant manner I started lighting a candle whenever I sat down in my study and when away, I made an effort, if only for a fleeting moment, to think of Brigid and her sacred flame. After all Imbolc to Equinox was not a long time, right?

Of course Spring is now most definitely upon us and Equinox is looming fast and I find that the whole catalog of synchronicity which has followed is such that I am now left without a shadow of a doubt that the relationship now has some form of chemistry going on. A spark of interest which wasn’t there before. What that interest is I have no idea, and whether there is a longevity to the interaction is equally mystifying. However, the more I read about her, the more I can see the similarities she shares with the two other Goddesses that have at one point or another shared my life. And there are a couple of aspects which have me positively entranced. For example, How can a fairy Princess, the wife of Angus the Ever young, a Tuatha de Dannan also be patron of smith craft, an occupation which even into history is an Iron rich activity?
I think sometimes, when connections are made you have to go with your gut and follow your nose, and just enjoy the journey, no motivations, no ulterior motive, no “What’s in it for me?”. So I find myself with a small shrine to Brigid on my window, and not unsurprisingly everything I needed for it to feel right was either made available to me or I had in my possession already. Including some beautiful glass crystals that reminded me of the “Guiding Star of Bride”

 “Over her heart gleamed a star like crystal, pure as her thoughts and bright as the joy that Angus brought her.”

And with that I thought I would finish with an enchanting poem I found telling of the search of Angus the Ever young for his Princess.

Angus hath come — the young, the fair,
The blue-eyed god with golden hair,
The God who to the world doth bring
This morn the promise of the spring;
Who moves the bird to song ere yet
He hath awaked the violet,
Or the soft primrose on the steep
While buds are laid in lidded sleep,
And white snows wrap the hills serene,
Ere glows the larch’s vivid green
Through the brown woods bare. All Hail!
Angus, may thy will prevail
He comes, he goes, and far and wide
He searches for the Princess Bride[2. Mackenzie, D.A. Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend, Stokes 1917]

Of Ash, Willow and Ivy

Trees, Ogham, musings
I had planned to start my new year with a study of the Ogham, I have a lovely journal that a friend gave me. Its hand made, quite literally of wood, so it seemed perfect for my needs. There was absolutely nothing stopping me. And yet January rolled past and Imbolc arrived and for reasons that completely escape me, nothing was written in my natty little journal. I couldn’t really put my fingers on why I couldn’t start.

The weeks passed by and I found myself getting increasingly irritated with my non action. Anybody who knows me well knows that whilst I have the propensity to be lazy my default mode of operation is busy, and doing more than most would deem possible. And I had free time because I had also decided that this year would be the year that I learnt how to say “no”. So I was only taking on projects that excited me. It isn’t even like I’m a complete towney who doesn’t know her chickweed from her cleavers, or oak from birch. This should have been easy, flowing, logical even.

The Ogham has been neatly compartmentalised into different aicme (groups), and in more modern times thanks to the ubiquitous Robert Graves they’ve been assigned months. So what could be easier. In January I would study The Rowan, February it would be The Ash, and so on. It was only when I was writing up some practical exercises that meant absolutely nothing to me that it hit me. I was so tied up with the book learning, the ordering, the sequences, that I was completely ignoring the experiential. The single most important thing. Without the experience then we are nothing more than armchair academics, not people fully here in the present, experiencing all that life has to offer. And then I froze, unable to progress.

I know I am not the only person to get this way. We spend our lives regimented, ordered, encouraged to fit into little boxes of explanation and routine. It allows us to make sense of the senseless and derive meaning from the meaningless (but more about that another day). But nature, it’s messy and higgledy piggledy. It happens when it wants, where it wants and pretty much how it wants. Yes there are structures and patterns within it, but it isn’t regimented. Ash Trees burst their buds when the weather has been sufficiently warm enough not because somebody once wrote that they had to sometime around Mid-March. So when we are presented with fuzzy boundaries we stop, try and make the patterns and connections, fit things into little boxes again before we move onwards. So there I was frozen. Then whilst preparing a lesson for a Tarot study group that I run, (which was also failing to fit into designated temporal and physical boxes) I read this lovely quote by the multi-talented Mark Ryan who co-created the original Greenwood Tarot, which has captured the hearts and minds of so many people.

The best advice I ever got about Tarot was: ‘Read the book, meditate with the cards, then put the book away and do your own thing’

I needed to do what I do best, get messy, get dirty, get loud, mix it up and work with what inspired me at the time it inspired me. Be wild, beautiful and unruly. Be that Midday or Midnight, March or May. Forget the tree calender, sure put it in my notes, its an interesting tidbit, forget documenting the trees according to some unfathomable pattern that only the mind of a 20th century genius poet could ever understand. Read the books, meditate on the tree and then put the books away and do my own thing.

Really sometimes moving forward can be as simple as that. Put the books away, sources are really important, but not to the point that you are frozen in academic analysis.

And of course the minute I let go, the inspiration began to flow. I realised that I’d been working with a number of Ogham woods for a very long time, it didn’t matter that they belonged to different aicme or that they might be studied out of order. And of course the irony the wood I chose as my first study was The Ash just as it’s calendar month came around, but you can rest assured the rest won’t fit into that construct. Continue reading

If the Goddess doesn’t love you

I actually thought I’d written about this before, but a search of the site suggests otherwise. I know Ive joked about it online in recent years and my close friends have heard this story at least once. And the synchroncities keep getting such that for at least 2 years I’ve been meaning to make this blog post.  But something happened tonight that I feel its time to put my thoughts out to a wider audience. A few years ago now I had the pleasure of meeting Marian Greene, the author of A Witch Alone. Being a bolshy and decidedly arrogant young thing I didn’t hesitate to give her the benefit of my opinion regarding the quality of her work. Specifically what I thought of a particular chapter in her book The Path through the Labyrinth. It’s actually an excellent book, but somewhat dated, and is difficult to get hold of which is why I don’t recommend it very often. However, it has some interesting concepts and ideals that would leave some spitting feathers. I know I did.

The biggest gripe I had. In fact the primary reason the book hit the deck and the wall more than a few times related to the following paragraph

The Cup or the Chalice, Goblet or Cauldron should always be a gift of love, received by you unasked. If no one loves you enough to give you some symbolic token which can stand in for your magical cup, then the Goddess won’t love you either!

It took me a long time to get past that statement, how ridiculous and condescending. So much so that until recently the rest of the paragraph was lost in a haze of irritation and frustration. I think I even made several comments both at the time and in the intervening years that if “the gods” demanded such things as a criteria for their love then I neither needed them nor wanted them. How rude and presumptuous. And with those thoughts in my mind I went barrelling through my life. And life is hard and requires a lot of barrelling. It was easy to not worry about the rest of the paragrapgh. To forget it even….except I couldn’t.

To be worthy and respected, loved and wanted is the only way to thread the maze of relationships between the human and magical levels. Love yourself, become worthy of loving, love others honestly and you too will be loved and rewarded.

And why couldn’t i forget it you ask, well this is why I cant.

 


Let’s go through this little tale of joy. So the universe apparently likes to take the mick just a bit. My first chalice came fairly shortly after my first big public rant about how people in the closet would be crushed by such off hand statements about the Goddess’ love. A lovely lady named Jay and I were in the charity shops after doing a few days of intensive elemental and tantric  work, there were two Agate cups the same, she grinned and so did I. It was a bond, and more so she wouldn’t let me pay but gave me one of the pair. A permanent and wonderful memory of our magick.

The second two are gifts from my mother, the first she commissioned when I became HPS of my own Coven and I bemoaned the inadequacy of Chalices in large rituals, so she had made a chalice in English elm that would hold a half bottle of wine and then some. Shortly after was my birthday so she also had a one person sized Chalice made. Then came a gift from my then best friend who wrote one of the most important rituals of my life. Followed swiftly by a birthday gift by my current High Priest and High Priestess. I am sure by now you are all laughing. But none more so than me, because when I was feeling very low today as the result of a few friendship transitions, I got given two stunning Olive wood cups by a wonderful friend.

Apparently the universe likes to remind me, that people do love me, when i hit down on the emotional elevator, somebody is there, when I have a major landmark, then apparently the goddess loves me enough that someone else channels it. And reminds me I am worthy and respected enough that the Goddess gives me cups*

*NB Please don’t ever stop giving me cups, it seems i need them and i certainly want them because if nothing else when i am feeling low i can look at them and remember when the Goddess loved me haha!