by Bobcat
I’ve just got out of the bath. It’s a wonder in itself, my bath: a deep water pool for which I give thanks to the gods and my ancestors, a haven that allows me an hour of utter darkness, submerged in warm water, its surfaces softened by a profusion of cushions. In the silence of my home, in this dark enfolding warmth, with the wizardry of technology I pour nourishment into my inner landscape, my iPod filling my soul with the music I adore.
For the last hour, after a rich blend of Justin Sullivan (Navigating by the Stars), Bowie (Outside) and Nick Cave (No More Shall We Part), I turned off the little silver box and sunk deeper into the water, calling to the goddess with whom I find the most ecstatic connection.
Her shimmering darkness hummed as my ability to perceive her extended, my soul releasing its cohesion to increase my receptivity, as I opened out like a raindrop hitting stone, aching to experience the power of her in the water, in my breath, in every cell of my body. And in that space, upon her seething currents, as ever, I absorbed strength, strength to find the clarity, laughter and generosity needed for another day. In that space I felt the current of my ancestors moving through my own blood, waking the stories in my bones, not rising into consciousness as words or song but as the seething power of connection: the stream of continuity. And in that space I was guided to remember my intention to focus on the G8 talks happening in Gleneagles, Scotland. Within the darkness I crafted the power of awen-blessed potential and blew it into the threads that connect us all, human soul to human soul. And when my craft was done, slowly I became aware of the water as it sang to me and I opened my eyes, feeling its holding presence, drawing me back to the world of breath.
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Ritual I have defined as the act of taking a break from the busy highways of our lives, pausing in order to reflect and locate ourselves in time and space, remembering that all life is sacred, that all nature is divine. Ritual can provide the opportunity where, claiming sufficient stillness to perceive, we are able to (re)connect or to deepen our relationships within our environment, whatever our theology of deity and spirit. Ritual can guide us out of complacency, apathy and blinkered complicity, into a wakeful state of honourable living once more. But how often does it?
My bath was an ordinary bath. Crafted into a sacred moment, for me it was a familiar ritual. Ensured of no distraction, held by my intention, I honoured the gods of water, I honoured my ancestors and all who had enabled and provided me with this haven that, seamlessly, became a sanctified temple. And honouring those who inspired me, I had slipped into its darkness, honouring my goddess of the breathless, bottomless cauldron of existence. Such was my ritual: the common practice of a priest and devotee of nature within our tradition, taking a moment to connect.
Yet it is also common for me to receive letters from people seeking integrity and deep or transformational experience within Druid ritual, who are finding nothing close. Disheartened, they are ready to give up on Druidry all together, shrugging dismissively, declaring it a tradition of superficial theatricals or dull formality. Though what they crave is deep connection, these seekers are heading to public ritual and gorseddau. They are meeting grove leaders/facilitators and, finding congenial and open priests, attending seasonal or lunar rites. But they are coming away having received at best a glimmer of what they are needing. I sigh as I reach for words with which I can reply, knowing that for myself most shared Druid ritual doesn’t come close to the experience of my ordinary bath.
So where do we find ecstatic and powerful ritual? It is what a good many crave, and that craving is often what brings people into the tradition.
In my experience, for the most part, such deep ritual is only found in solitude. As a feline human for whom solitude is a pleasure in itself, this is not as hard as for the human folk who are by nature gregarious, or who are still wanting the affirmation of others to give the confidence that allows progress.
But if deep ritual is most often found in ritual made alone, how can we learn how to do it? We may define Druidry as a natural spirituality, an indigenous human religion, but most folk need guidance, and few have teachers who are willing or able to impart what is required. After all, ecstasy is a profoundly personal experience. It is about intimacy of connection and to a point where many find their lives shaking with transformation as notions of reality start breaking apart.
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According to the teachings of the tradition given to me, deep ritual is possible when we are able to share a current of energy.
But with whom? Needless to say, it is not only rude but ineffective to sidle up to anyone and assume they would wish to spend time in your company. There needs to be established at least a sure sense of acceptance or consent, or our quest will be more about battling friction and resistance.
However, though I use the word ‘anyone’, I do so as an animist. For it is not only other human beings with which we can share this deep connection. Indeed, for the vast majority of us, to find sufficient trust to share energy in intimacy with another human being is very hard. In the first flood of passionate love, we may lay our soul bare, the seratonin rush allowing our world to become exquisitely small and simple, our vision of reality filled with the deliciously overwhelming sensation of deep connection. For many, though, that love-rush doesn’t last long, and may happen with just a handful of people in a lifetime. On the whole, we keep each other at sufficient distance to protect the intimate space in which we dwell naked and vulnerable in our truth.
So it is that when we reach to make deep and powerfully sacred connection, many choose to do so with elements of the non-human world. After all, although a confidence that our presence is accepted is essential, understanding is not: we don’t need to share a stream of consciousness or intention. The key is the willingness to merge with another current of energy, to let go into its stream, even if only momentarily. It isn’t easy. If it were, as a species we’d be off our heads on natural ecstasy too often to be functional.
Slowly, we learn, finding the edges of our own soul or consciousness, the quality of our own energy in flow, with sensitivity perceiving that of another, and through the power of our intention we move closer. When enough courage is rising within us, we touch, soul to soul, conscious of the subtlest edges of our being, our intention opening our mind to the exquisite sensuality, until we are ready to open our soul, our edges dissolving as we slip into that current of energy, of life, of existence.
We are not negating ourselves, sublimating to the power of another, for in the instant that we touch, the current is shared. We may not understand, but we experience union with another’s life force, and in that flood of connection there is ecstasy. We drink deeply from the cup of awen. Indeed, at times that cup’s contents are simply hurled in our faces, kicking us into breathless wakeful wonder.
Of course, when we share with another human being, in love, the balance of power can be hard to raft, currents shifting in differing directions. Yet the similarity of energy and intention is relatively easy compared with other forces of nature. Though the words are dependent upon our theology, the experience of opening to deity is even more intense. Releasing our soul into the divine currents that scream through the landscape and over the seas, letting go into the wind or the rain, into the suffocating power of water, the seething omniscience of darkness, or the dance of fire, can blow our minds. The ecstasy of sharing for a while the current that is the pulse of growth, of chaos or thunder, of utter emptiness, or the soul-web that holds the fundamental patterns of life, changes our vision of reality.
We can open to a god or goddess whose currents we find in the myths of our ancestors, woven into the mud and blood of our heritage and humanity. Letting go into the drums of our ancestors’ feet and hearts, the stories of our people surge through us, in the cries of love and hunger, of glory and desolation. Indeed, we can seek the awen of connection within any part of human and non-human nature. Where we find a current, we learn how to surrender into its flow, in trust, in faith, willing to die.
The depth of that connection is limited only by the strength of our own identity and fear.
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Yet must we do it alone?
Though it is not as common nor as easily found as gentle public ritual, it is wholly possible to experience these ecstatic moments in the company of others. The forces of human nature – love, anger, indignity, grief, sexuality, curiosity, hunger and so on – allow us the potential empathy that can draw us together.
Within the mutually supportive environment of a Grove or other ritual group or gathering, where there is sufficient honour and care, we can build the necessary trust and faith to break down barriers of defence, pride and fear. Particularly where there is a shared vision and reverence for a particular divine force or deity, we can find a coherent and cohering focus. We need not understand the many layers of intention in those with whom we share the ritual, but still we can let go into the experience.
Hand in hand, or simply acknowledging the others’ company in the temple space, together we can slip, surrendering, dissolving into the currents of energy. And at times, not only do we share the moments of ecstatic connection with the divine, but our energy merges with each others’, bloodlines touching and flowing into the rushing streams of the Grove, the tribe, of ancestry, of humanity.
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Music is one of the most powerful tools that facilitates the process, and one that must have been used for hundreds of thousands of years, with drums and voice, with the movement of our bodies in dance. It is an ideal way of drawing a gathering into a common focus, through which each individual can choose to slip into ecstatic communion.
As our culture has found more freedom to express the instinctive, over the past forty or fifty years trancing to music has become a fundamental part of life once more, particularly for the younger generations; in Paganism and Druidry, where convention’s rules are less readily followed, people continue to dance regardless of their age, as indeed they do in the majority of human societies. In common with so much of natural and deep Druidry, all we are doing is finding a consciousness of – and thus a way of understanding, utilizing and intensifying – what are natural spiritual cravings within humanity.
Music is a crucial part of my life. When it is loud enough to erase perception of any other vibration, closing my eyes, my soul loosens, losing the tight restrictions of its cohesion, of its individual identity, allowing me to be utterly held by the current of its rhythm, from there slipping into the flow the ritual’s intent, effortlessly finding unhindered connection – whether that be with the earth, with a lover, or the current of my ancestry, the flood of a deity.
Sex, fuelled by the intense passion of love or lust, carrying us upon the rhythms of its own dance, of our blood and breath, can be another way to make profound shared connection, either with each other or with another current. Exhaustion, pain, hunger, or indeed almost anything that shakes the soul, offers an opportunity that can be taken alone or in company. For in that shaking of the soul, our capacity to complicate life breaks down. And here is the point: on the rush of physical or emotional energy, we perceive the world through a childlike simplicity, the level at which we are experiencing sensation increasing, flooding us with exquisite and intense wonder.
Some may smile and shrug, murmuring that various drugs (currently legal and illegal) do the same job very well. In fact, some may question the need to learn how to do it without drugs; if the drugs do the job for us, why spend years learning natural ecstasy? Yet, putting to one side any issues of physical health or legality, while most drugs do restrict our perception, intensifying sensation, the chemicals create an inflexible tide; they kick in, keep us down, then take time to wear off. As a result, they restrict or severely cripple our ability to extend our minds during the process, integrating, moment by moment, and so weaving the intense experience with a lucid clarity and broad vision. Indeed, after a while, many drugs damage our ability to extend our minds at all.
Without that integration, the fundamental value of the experience is lost, at least from a spiritual perspective. The experience becomes an escape from the complex world by providing moments of overwhelming and – with drugs – usually fully passive relationship: the infant at the mother’s breast. This is not the power of ecstatic ritual. What the Druid seeks is the transformational power that comes from fully conscious and active connection with forces of nature. Awake to learn, quest the awen: divine inspiration. In other words, we seek to blow our minds on the comprehension and realization of nature’s patterns, that will guide us to live within a deeper experience of love, harmony, beauty and peace.
With respect: if those four words seem to you to be superficial fluff, you have not understood me … or not yet experienced the power of nature.
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Ecstatic ritual: I couldn’t live without it. Occasionally the question arises, as we ponder the history of our people and the state of the world, whether or not we would be willing to die for our religion. Without constraints of pedantry or any sense of my own vision of deity or truth being universally valid, I know that I would die without this fundamental part of my religious practice, simply because without such deep connection my soul quickly withers.
Yet most of Druidry in terms of the broader community is not dependent or expressing ecstatic ritual. Though my words here enthuse about the importance and power of such ritual, I don’t dismiss other forms of rituals. Let me explain why.
When a newcomer approaches me, I suggest they see if they can attend a public rite, find a local Grove, or come to Druid Camp where a great variety of beliefs and practices are expounded. I may suggest some reading matter, and I am likely to encourage them to explore the natural environment of their home landscape, human and non-human, the plants, trees, clouds, waterways, and so on. Some folk take these guiding suggestions as first steps, and slowly from there they make their journey to a place where they have a sense of what Druidry means for them. That journey may take them into the realms of deep Druidry and ecstatic ritual. It may not.
For ritual, in whatever form it has, still about taking a break from the flurries and floods of modern busy living, pausing to find the stillness which allows us again to perceive and breathe in the sanctity of nature. When we are thirsty, we don’t always need to drink perfect cool water drawn from the darkness of a spring deep in the earth. Sometimes it is fine to have a glass poured from the tap in our kitchen; sometimes to do so is more appropriate all round. There is profound spiritual value in the shared rituals of our community that are not drawing their awen from the most ancient wells and hurling it across our souls in the cutting passion of ecstasy.
Most open rituals are designed to be accessible by the broadest section of those participating. They are often fundamentally simple and safe, offering insights and affirmations that guide those attending to remember, through and through, not just the sanctity and value of nature (human and non-human) but also the point at which they are gathering in the cycles of the seasons, the sun, the moon, their lives. They help us self-locate, in time and space, aware of the journey that has brought us to this moment, finding a broad vision and an acceptance of the present, and opening our creativity consciously into the future. In some ways they are simply about being fully here and now.
Many such rites will have flows of magical intention running underneath, flows that nourish and fuel, such as old prayers, the priests’ personal relationship with the spirits of the place, the gods and the ancestors, or the power of a place. When a rite seems flat, it is often because this undercurrent is not present.
Yet the notion of ‘priest’ in Druidry is nowadays rather complicated. My own religious practice is most poignantly inspired by many preRoman and even pre-agricultural energies: the power of true vision being crucial, the Druid or priest is the individual whose life path has taken him (or her) through sufficient trauma or natural sensitivities to provide that necessary vision. Amongst our ancestors, and within communities still using such shaman, it isn’t that this priest claims authority over the people because of his vision, but simply that few argue with him: he sees what others can’t.
In modern Druidry, however, there are now many who work within the priesthood who don’t have that shamanic vision. When someone with vision waking stands in a circle where the ritual is led by one who has not, frustration can arise. Yet the priest without vision offers something profoundly different, and still of considerable importance to the community. For he walks not on a path separated from the people, but entirely as one of them, facing the same difficulties and complications that are a part of humanity, the same struggle to understand the mysterious and intangible forces of nature, the same need to find honourable interaction with spirits of the dead and of the land. As such, this priest walks the same path, guiding those who seek direction and care from one whom they can relate to.
Ritual without the ecstatic connection is a part of the everyday life of the Druid. I wake in the morning and acknowledge the moment’s pattern crafted by the positions of earth, sun and moon; running water to wash my face, I honour the sources and journeys of that water and the elements that have created it; when I eat, I stop to remember all whose stories still shimmer within the food, sun, rain and soil, tree and plant, the energies of the people involved in producing and transporting the produce; as I move through my day, I reach out to the spirits that hum in the valley of my home, to those of the forest, the meadows, to the community and its ancestors, acknowledging their presence and the patterns of our interaction. This is a simple bow of recognition, not a request for communion, yet each prayer is a moment out of the rush of life, a pause within which I remember the sanctity of life.
Communally, this acknowledgement and thanksgiving is inherently about celebration, and this is what a great many open and public rituals are: an opportunity for people to gather in order to find their ‘here and now’, to remember what that means, to acknowledge all who are involved, and to celebrate it. That’s all. Yet what an extraordinarily important act that is.
When such rites work best, it is because every step is clearly accessible, and the ritual’s purpose is sufficiently comprehensible, so the current of intention is easy for everyone to ride. With each person engaged in the ritual, each person invests energy into it, and naturally there is a shared humanity that provides a channel through which everyone can experience a connection with nature, with spirit or deity. That connection may not be ecstatic communion, but it is significant enough for people to feel certainty in the relationship, a certainty that reminds them to live with honour, with consideration, respect, responsibility and care.
Once again, music, drums, the theatre of ritual drama, the poetry of prayers and song, all facilitate this shared focus and the crafting of that certainty.
In rites open to those who are there for no more than the sense that they belong to a group to which they relate, a tribe that has integrity, this is the most important result. A pause is shared, nature is celebrated, and upon a current we find ourselves a part of the beauty of human community in its ancient and honourable (tenable) bond with the land. Such a poignant aim must be accepted too by those who are studying the mysteries of deep Druidry.
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Some of us may crave ritual that breaks our minds open and tears the world apart, giving us that kick of metaphysical lightning we call awen. But the power of ritual can not be measured by those standards. Although such rites are, for many, an integral part of personal Druidic practice, the gentle rituals of our faith community are as crucially important. Their power can be measured by the ease that is evident amongst those who have shared that space, and how their walk their lives as a result.