by Caitlín Matthews

Talk given at OBOD 50th Anniversary – 7th June 2014

You would think that 50 years were long enough and yet, we still hear, ‘By what authority do you call yourself a Druid? Or ‘You’re not a real Druid! You’re just a neo Druid!’

In the face of a society that dismisses spirituality to this degree, it is hard not to harbour a sense of fraudulence. Is my Druidic avocation founded upon anything? Is mine an authentic path and so do I act with authority? A sense of fraudulence is something that many seekers are subliminally aware of when they approach a tradition that has had no living elders for centuries.  By what right are we here? Where are the druids of yesteryear?

When When a tradition loses its living practitioners, it doesn’t mean that the tradition dies. Like water that goes deep underground, it will find another place to come up. This has been my experience since I was 12. The mixture of land, ancestry and the inspiration that connects us to spiritual sources weaves its own golden thread which we follow as best we may. If we follow faithfully, it leads us onwards and we find the tradition to which we have already been connected without knowing. People seek druid initiation in different ways.

Some folks try for complete authenticity by druidic re-enactment, learning a Celtic language, dressing the part, living in the Iron Age. But, as Bob Truscott points out in the recent issues of Touchstone, these people still bring their own mindset with them.  It is not by copying the past that we continue the druidic tradition, although the past can inspire us.  Some join a druid order and commit its literature to memory: but druidry doesn’t lie in what is written.  Some folk perform rituals that mark initiations: but it isn’t in the ritual that initiation lies. Some seek a line of transmission: those who have been druids before, but  druidic authority doesn’t lie in having an ‘apostolic tradition.’

When we want to properly orient ourselves, we study the cardinal directions, north, south, east, west, and map our course from the clues that they give us.  Each of the directions feels different; each speaks about, teaches different things. When we stand in the place of our true abiding, we can be aware of the powers of the cardinal directions that are unseen but also just as real.  In a similar way, Druidic initiation involves us finding the internal compass points of druidry.

The 10th century Middle Irish Saltair na Rann or Psalter of Verses advizes that there are five things a wise person should know: ‘the day of the solar month, the age of the moon, the tides of the sea, the day of the week, the calendar of holy days.’  Although this was written down in the Christian era but we still catch the druidic necessity to understand time and our surroundings.

In the not so ancient days of my youth, analogue televisions came with what used to be called the horizontal and vertical hold  – buttons that controlled how the picture was delivered to our tiny screens. Loss of horizontal synchronization usually resulted in an unwatchable picture; loss of vertical synchronization would produce an image rolling up or down the screen.  We are living in times when a similar problem is afflicting people too: a lack of primary coordinates is making life unbearable, disabling understanding and connection.  Wherever we live in the world, in whatever circumstances, we can still find our horizontal and vertical hold.  They are essential for druids.

Our ‘horizontal hold’ is what makes us a native of the place where we live, regardless of whether we were born there or not; it entails knowing the orientation of the celestial bodies – the sun, moon, stars and planets – over that place, in every season; knowing the plants, rocks, animals and trees in our region; being aware of the spirits of that place, the unseen and manifest life both in, and out of time, in that location.

Our ‘vertical hold’ transects time and place, for it is made up of the ancestral and inspirational rivers that flow into our being.  The ancestral tributaries are those of blood, of genetic and epigenetic tendency that inform and shape the life of our bodies. Ancestors of blood and spirit become aware of us. The inspirational tributaries carry the influences that inform and shape our souls.

With our internal compass of the unseen and manifest directions, and with a well practised horizontal and vertical hold in place, we become established and seen, both in our communities, where we can be of service, as well as to the unseen witnesses who observe and support us – the spirits and ancestors who are part of a living spiritual continuum.

Initiation means simply ‘to go into it.’ Our druidic initiation is about going into and becoming part of that living continuum. Recognition by the spirits and by the community, who are the joint witnesses, has a very pragmatic manifestation. It is an unfortunate fact that those who didn’t go into that continuum yet, often set themselves up as druidic practitioners, but it is only those who’ve been initiated into the living continuum who are asked by their community to be of service, because people can tell when we have not.  It is only by becoming part of that living continuum that we have initiation: when we enter into it, then we have the authenticity that we seek.

Each contemplation of a living tradition of wisdom has its own light which is reflected through and beyond time. The light that was shed in ancient time is thrown from its place of concealment to become the visible means by which we walk our road.  It reveals to us the task that calls us home, which is the living druidry.  The stillness and attention that we give to druidry causes its interior light to shine into our perception: our own witnessing of the druid light causes it to be reflected and amplified. When we do that,  we too are witnessed as druidic successors.

Making a place at our hearths and community gatherings for our ancestors is the first step in continuing the traditions and wisdom with which every land is endowed. When this happens, when we honour ancestors and their wisdom at a national level and things will change for the wellbeing of All That Is and for our children’s children.  When we have done this, then we have authority indeed.

A tradition that gives life has no need to reinvent itself: it has a continuity of its own. We are part of that continuity.

When we acknowledge and live the internal compass points of our tradition by our authentic connection with ancestral wisdom and true service to our community, then we stand in the light of our forebears, becoming in our turn, ancestors of blood and spirit.

So when someone says, ‘So you call yourself a druid,’ you can, with authority, look them in the eye and say, ‘I don’t call myself a druid, I AM a druid.’

http://www.druidry.org/library/modern-druidry/authenticity-and-authority-druidry

I had someone ask why we were ‘breaking’ the sacred circle boundary so often during our Samhuinn ritual on Saturday. My response.

Thanks for the note (name with held). Remember that any circle you may perform magickally is a construct to keep your mind focused. It is not required to do any healing work, or workings in general.. That being said: When we do public ritual with moving parts and invocations, we move ritual participants in and out of the circle. In this specific case, we invoked Cailleach – which was an exterior entry to the circle and ritually brought forward for the purpose of the Rite. The interesting thing is that it was one of the participants that transformed to that energy. No new energy added or removed from the ritual circle. So in a poetic way, we drew the Cailleach from the energy in each of us… If you reference some modern thought on magick circles and magick in general, you’ll see advice not to get too hung up on constructs cause you’re just weakening your own magick capabilities by relying on them. Kerr Cuhulain in his book ‘Full Contact Magick’ is a great reference guide for more contemporary quantum thought on Magick and less 18th century ‘mechanicalism’. He is a Wiccan practitioner and his book is great for any pagan tradition to draw from. It is very much in line with the OBOD traditional thoughts on the subject (druid and ovate grade) and expands a bit on areas of Magick that aren’t heavily outlined by the order. I have a few hard rules I use for our public rituals. This is to keep them grounded well and understood by a wide range of participants that may or may not be druids:

• Don’t let people leave or join a circle where deep work is taking place (judgement call of the ritual leader). The energy being added or taken away is far more disruptive than crossing some imaginary boundary, though they are related loosely to understand who has ‘joined’ or ‘left’ the circle, or merely watching. You have to be strong practitioner to do public ritual because you are limited in your control of geography.
• I ensure that we always do a standard opening and closing based on OBOD tradition. This creates sacred space (less about boundary) and more of a sacred place within each participant.
• Certain level of uniformity in dress and ritual tools for the main directions and principals of the ritual. This shows unity and balance of the circle – also is a powerful effect on the dignity of the Rite itself.

John Beckett also wrote on the subject. You can check out his blog article at the link below. “The circle is also an organic arrangement for gathering. It gives everyone unblocked heat from a common fire. It allows everyone to see everyone and facilitates conversation. Like King Arthur’s Round Table, it promotes egalitarianism. The idea of gathering in circles is a very old, very natural, very pagan idea. While we can only guess at the purposes behind such ancient monuments as Stonehenge and Avebury, it is no surprise they are circular.” http://www.patheos.com/blogs/johnbeckett/2012/10/circles.html

Starting on the Druid path as a Bard years ago, I was faced with the reality that I may be better enriched should I keep, at least, a journal of my travels through the forest journey. After all, it is suggested in the gwerse itself. I did begin to write, though it was a rather anemic recording of my journey. Nevertheless it sufficed to remind me what I had experienced and helped to organize my thoughts and work. The truth is – writing is hard work, and even more daunting is writing of your own personal experience.

In this excerpt from Arnold Bennett’s book from 1918 ‘Self and Self-management: Essays about Existing’, I found words that helped me assimilate my feelings on the chore of writing my journeys. My only regret is that I didn’t find this passage years ago when I first started the Order. Perhaps my first exercise would have been first to write how I felt about keeping a journal!

May you find this a treasure in your crane bag.

Ken Webster, Druid – Awen’s Light Grove and Three Rivers Grove – Alban Eiler 2013

I

Let us consider, first, a strange quality of the written word.

The spoken word is bad enough. Such things as misfortunes, blunders, sins, and apprehensions become more serious when they have been described even in conversation. A woman who secretly fears cancer will fear it much more once she has mentioned her fear to another person. The spoken word has somehow given reality to her fear. But the written word is far more formidable than the spoken word. It is said that the ignorant and the uncultured have a superstitious dread of writing. The dread is not superstitious; it is based on a mysterious and intimidating phenomenon which nearly anybody can test for himself. The fact is that almost all people are afraid of writing — I mean true, honest writing. Vast numbers of people hate and loathe it, as though it were a high explosive that might suddenly go off and blow them to pieces. (That is one reason why realistic novels never have a very large sale.) But the difference between one man’s dread of writing and another man’s dread of writing is merely a difference of degree, not of kind. And if any among you asserts that he has no fear of the written word, merely because it is written, let him try the following experiment.

Take—O exceptional individual!—take some concealed and blameworthy action or series of thoughts of your own. I do not mean necessarily murder or embezzlement; not everybody has committed murder or embezzlement, or even desires to do so; I mean some matter—any matter—of which you are so ashamed, or about which you are so nervous, that you have never mentioned it to a soul. All of us—even you—have such matters hidden beneath waistcoat or corsage. Write down that matter; put it in black and white. The chances are that you won’t; the chances are that you will find some excuse for not writing it down.

You may say:

“Ah! But suppose some one happened to see it!”

To which I would reply:

“Write it and lock it up in your safe.”

To which you may rejoin:

“Ah! But I might lose the key of the safe and some one might find it and open the safe. Also I might die suddenly.”

To which I would retort:

“If you are dead you needn’t mind discovery.”

To which you might respond:

“How do you know that if I was dead I needn’t mind discovery?”

Well, I will yield you that point, and still prove to you that your objection to the written word does not spring from the fear of giving yourself away. The experiment shall be performed under strict conditions.

Empty your house of all its inhabitants save yourself. Lock the front-door and the backdoor. Go upstairs to your own room. Lock the door of your own room. Pile furniture before the door, so that you cannot possibly be surprised. Light a fire. Place the writing-table near the fire. Arrange it so that at the slightest alarm of discovery you can with a single movement thrust your writing into the fire. Then begin to write down that of which you are ashamed. You are absolutely safe. Nevertheless you will hesitate to write. And you will not have got very far in your narration before you find yourself writing down something that is not quite so unpleasant as the truth, or before you find yourself omitting some detail which ought not to be omitted. You will have great difficulty in forcing yourself to be utterly frank on paper. You may fail in being utterly frank; you probably will so fail; most people do. When you have finished and hold the document in your hand, you will start guiltily if the newly moved furniture creaks in front of the door. You will read through the document with discomfort and constraint. And you will stick it in the fire and watch it burn with a very clear feeling of relief.

Why all these strange sensations? You could not have been caught in the act. Moreover, there was nothing on the paper of which you were not fully aware, and which you had not fully realised. Nobody can write down that which he does not know and realise. Quite possibly the whole matter had been thoroughly familiar to you, a commonplace of your brain, for weeks, months, years. Quite possibly you had recalled every detail of it hundreds of times, and it had never caused you any grave inconvenience. But, instantly it is written down it becomes acutely, intolerably disturbing—so much so that you cannot rest until the written word is destroyed. You are precisely the same man as you were before beginning to write; naught is altered; you have committed no new crime. But you have a new shame. I repeat, why? The only immediate answer is that the honest written word possesses a mysterious and intimidating power. This power has to do with the sense of sight. You see something. You do not see your action or your thoughts as it might be on the cinema screen—happily!—but you do see something in regard to the matter.

II

The above considerations are offered to that enormous class of people, springing up afresh every year, who say to themselves: “I will keep a diary and it shall be absolutely true.” You may keep a diary, but beyond question it will not be absolutely true. You will be lucky, or you must be rather gifted, if it is not studded with untruths. You protest that you have a well-earned reputation for veracity. I would not doubt it. When I say “untruths” I do not mean, for instance, that if the day was beautifully fine you would write in your diary: “A very wet day to-day; went for a walk and got soaked through.” I am convinced that you would be above such lying perversions. But also I am convinced that if a husband and wife, both as veracious and conscientious as yourself, had a quarrel and described the history of the quarrel each in a private diary, the two accounts would by no means coincide, and the whole truth would be in neither of them. Some people start a diary as casually as they start golf, stamps, or a new digestive cure. Whereas to start a diary ought to be a solemn and notable act, done with a due appreciation of the difficulties thereby initiated. The very essence of a diary is truth—a diary of untruth would be pointless—and to attain truth is the hardest thing on earth. To attain partial truth is not a bit easy, and even to avoid falsehood is decidedly a feat.

III

Having discouraged, I now wish to encourage. Many who want to keep diaries and who ought to keep diaries do not, because they are too diffident. They say: “My life is not interesting enough.” I ask: “Interesting to whom? To the world in general or to themselves?” It is necessary only that a life should be interesting to the person who lives that life. It you have a desire to keep a diary, it follows that your existence is interesting to you. Otherwise obviously you would not wish to make a record of it. The greatest diarists did not lead very palpitating lives. Ninety-five percent, of Pepys’s Diary deals with tiny daily happenings of the most banal sort—such happenings as we all go through. If Pepys re-read his entries the day after he wrote them, he must have found them somewhat tedious. Certainly he had not the slightest notion that he was writing one of the great outstanding books of English literature.

But diaries are the opposite of novels, in that time increases instead of decreasing their interest. After a reasonable period every sentence in a diary blossoms into interest, and the diarist simply cannot be dull—any more than a great wit such as Sidney Smith could be unfunny. If Sidney Smith asked Helen to pass him the salt, the entire table roared with laughter because it was inexplicably so funny. If the diarist writes in his diary, “I asked Helen to pass me the salt,” within three years he will find the sentence inexplicably interesting to himself. In thirty years his family will be inexplicably interested to read that on a certain day he asked Helen to pass him the salt. In three hundred years a whole nation will be reading with inexplicable and passionate interest that centuries earlier he asked Helen to pass him the salt, and critics will embroider theories upon both Helen and the salt and will even earn a living by producing new annotated editions of Helen and the salt. And if the diary turns up after three thousand years, the entire world will hum with the inexplicable thrilling fact that he asked Helen to pass him the salt; which fact will be cabled round the globe as a piece of latest news; and immediately afterwards there will be cabled round the globe the views of expert scholars of all nationalities on the problem whether, when he had asked Helen to pass him the salt, Helen did actually pass him the salt, or not. Timid prospective diarists in need of encouragement should keep this great principle in mind.

You will say:

“But what do I care about posterity? I would not keep a diary for the sake of posterity.”

Possibly not, but some people would. Some people, if they thought their diaries would be read three hundred years hence, or even a hundred years hence, would begin diaries to-morrow and persevere with them to the day of death. Some people of course are peculiar. And I admit that I am of your opinion. The thought of posterity leaves me stone cold.

There is only one valid reason for beginning a diary—namely, that you find pleasure in beginning it; and only one valid reason for continuing a diary—namely, that you find pleasure in continuing it. You may find profit in doing so, but that is not the main point—though it is a point. You will most positively experience pleasure in reading it after a long interval; but that is not the main point either—though it is an important point. A diary should find its sufficient justification in the writing of it. If the act of writing is not its own reward, then let the diary remain for ever unwritten.

IV

But beware of that word “writing.” Just as some persons are nervous when entering a drawing-room (or even a restaurant!), so some persons are nervous when taking up a pen. All persons, as I have tried to show, are nervous about the psychological effects of the written word, but some persons—indeed many—are additionally nervous about the mere business of writing the word. They begin to hanker, with awe, after a mysterious ideal known as “correct style.” They are actually under the delusion that writing is essentially different from talking—a secret trade process!—and they are not aware that he who says or thinks interesting things can write interesting things, and that he who can make himself understood in speech can make himself understood in writing—if he goes the right way to work!

I have known people, especially the young, who could discourse on themselves in the most attractive manner for hours, and yet who simply could not discover in their heads sufficient material for a short letter. They would bemoan: “I can’t think of anything to say.” It was true. And, of course, they could not think of anything to say, the reason being that they were trying to think of something to write, and very wrongly assuming that writing is necessarily different from saying! Writing may be different from saying, but it need not be different, and for the diarist it should not be different. And, above all, it should not be superficially different. The inexperienced, when they use ink, have a pestilent notion that saying has to be translated or transmogrified into writing. They conceive an idea in spoken words, and then they subconsciously or consciously ask themselves: “I should say it like that—but how ought I to write it?” They alter the forms of their sentences. They worry about grammar and phrase-construction and even spelling. As for grammar and spelling, in the greatest age of English literature neither subject was understood, and no writer could be trusted either in spelling or in grammar. To this day very few writers of genius are to be trusted either in spelling or in grammar. As for phrase-construction, the phrase that comes to your tongue is more likely to be well constructed than the phrase which you bring forcibly into being at the point of your pen. If you know enough grammar to talk comprehensively, you know enough to write comprehensibly, and you need not trouble about anything else; in fact, you ought not to do so, and you must not. Formality in a diary is a mistake. Write as you think, as you speak, and it may be given to you to produce literature. But if while you are writing you remember that there is such a thing as literature, you will assuredly never produce literature.

This does not mean that you are entitled to write anyhow, without thought and without effort. Not a bit. Good diaries are not achieved thus. Although you may and should ignore the preoccupations of what I will call, sarcastically, “literary composition,” you must have always before you the ideal of effectively getting your thought on to the paper. You would, sooner or later, say your thought effectively, but in writing it down some travail is needed to imagine what the perhaps unstudied spoken words would be. And also, the memory must be fully and honestly exercised to recall the scene or the incident described. By carelessness you run the risk of “leaving out the interesting part.” By being conscientious you ensure that the maximum of interest is attained.

Lastly, it is necessary to conquer the human objection to hard labour of any sort. It is not a paradox to assert that man often dislikes the work which he likes. For myself, every day anew, I hate to start work. You may end your day with the full knowledge that you have had experiences that day worthy to go into the diary, which experiences remain in your mind obstinately. And yet you hate to open the diary, and even when you have opened it you hate to put your back into the business of writing. You are tempted to write without reflection, without order, and too briefly. To resist the temptation to be slack and casual and second-rate involves constant effort. Diary-keeping should be a pastime, but properly done it is also a task—like many other pastimes. I have kept a diary for over twenty-one years, and I know a little about it. I know more than a little about the remorse —alas, futile!—which follows negligence. In diary-keeping negligence cannot be repaired. That which is gone is gone beyond return.