The Final Initiation

(Image : “Druid Review”, final exam, SG, 2009)

A year or so after receiving the lovely scroll that marks the end of my formal training as a Druid at OBOD (actually you may find out that it never ends!), the final Initiation.

…I was in the kitchen, talking with Mika and Adam (the other two parts of the Earth Sanctuary Project´s coregroup) over coffee one morning, about how hard it is sometimes to maintain this land, and how sometimes we would love to travel or go someplace different, smaller, easier, – and how we couldn´t ever go back to living in a town flat, when a sudden realisation hit my brain.

I, who thought I couldn´t ever live in a town again, had the sudden vision that all the trees of the world were now rooted in my heart, and the mountains, and the rocks, and the little river, and all the animals, deer, fox, squirrels and eagles, and that I could, without batting an eye, pack my suitcase and go…anywhere!

Tears just welled up in my eyes.

All the forests of the world are now rooted in my green heart.

I have become the Grove.

The ranting grandmother

(Image : Last Ray of Hope, collage on cardboard, SG 08)

…The image that people have of Druids is usually of white-bearded old men, doddering through the forest, with laurel in their long hair and a golden sickle to gather mistletoe or, more likely, to open the heart of a beautiful and willing virgin (I mean, litterally). Ridiculous. Truly, it´s time to do away with the cobwebs!

When I say that I am a Druid, I get this weird look, and then the question… Aaaah…Do you…err…cut mistletoe with a golden sickle, at midnight on full moons? *discreet chuckle,chukle* …Well, I can´t really see you doing that! Although …with you, one never knows…*more cackle*

Well, no. I don´t waltz through the trees in a white robe on dark nights, with wolves howling at my heels. Though…mmm…I like the image.

 You might see my involvement with Druidry as an ecopsychological stance. In my opinion it is urgent that we try to get to understand – to “grok” – the planet that we infest, lol. To understand, we have to observe. To observe we have to dedicate time and energy. To dedicate time and energy, we have to set priorities. And yes, for me, being with Nature, understanding Nature, including and first of all my very own inner one, wholeheartedly, is a priority.

What prompted my rant today? I just read an article saying that if we go on with our habits of consumption we will need another planet by 2030. That´s in 22 years. My grand´son will not even be 25, and the planet will be in such a disastrous state that we will probably have gone back to the caves(if we get to 2030, that is). Not a very nice perspective, to say the least.

 I am a woman, I am a grand´mother, and I am a Druid. I will speak for the trees (and for my unborn grandchildren, unto the seventh generation…). And no, I will not put on white robes – I will just be myself, jeans, a sweatshirt and my good old walking shoes. Have you hugged a tree, lately?

Damn it, is everyone sleeping???

PS.- Yeah, I have looked up the word consumption, and it means exactly what I want to say : the act of consuming, as by use, decay, or destruction, Pathology : progressive wasting of the body.

Yeah, yeah.

Double

Cernunnos

(Image : Cernunnos, collage on paper, SG, ‘o5)

…Being one of those crazy post-menopausal Wild Women “who run with wolves”, my favourite god is quite naturally Cernunnos, in his various aspects, Herne the Hunter, the Green Man, the Lord of the Beasts. As a woman I feel extremely comfortable with these energies, which is a paradox. More than a paradox, I see it as a (hard-won!) synthesis of male and female in me. I am him. Maybe my love for him is the only way I will ever get closer to the other gender.  Sometimes I perceive him as the daimon in me, something that completes me as a person, as a woman. And I perceive him as a wonderful bridge (in my mind) over the chasm that has been artificially created between the genders, through the systematic and intentionally distorted (my interpretation) application of social stereotypes to all children, male and female. A sorry situation, as I have discovered in my own life, as a mother and as a woman.

The pictures in this entry are two aspects of Cernunnos that I have felt very intensely, up close and personal, both of them an inner vision, one of them applied to a natural object, the other one a vision in a meditation. I thought I´d share them here, because I feel it is extremely important to balance the part of ourselves that we apparently are not, male or female, inside us. At my age I do not project the Animus  on men anymore, as younger women usually do (when they “fall in love”), and I do not let men project their Anima on me, because I think that this Anima of theirs, this precious archetype of womanhood in a man, is their own treasure, their own inner link with the Great Goddess, to discover and enjoy, rather than project like all adolescents do on “ideal” women (movie stars, fashion models, etc. etc). I must confess that I had a crush on Viggo Mortensen´s Aragorn for a while, perhaps because I felt the energy of Aragorn (in Peter Jackson´s movies) so close to my inner experience of the god Cernunnos.

I feel generally good about men, and if they want to see me as a part of the Goddess, well, they may, because I am. I´m no tantric diva, but I certainly embody a whole bunch of nice womanly qualities…!

(Picture : SG, drawing: La Grotte des Trois Frères)

The Prayer Tree

(Image : Grand´Ma Fig-Tree, picture SG, 2007)

She is a grand´mother fig-tree, who has suffered such a lot from the disrespect of the previous owners. Branches were cut all awry in a silly way, the trunk is blemished and gnarled and twisted and almost hollow and oh so ugly; but she has survived, and is the crowning glory of the entrance of our home in the summer.
A friend with a botanical mind told me last week : “You know, you have to get rid of the ivy, it´s going to strangle the tree. I can do it if you want, I promise I won´t hurt the tree”.
OK. So…to the task! A team got rid of the ivy, and oh miracle, didn´t damage the already damaged trunk (trunks actually, the grandmother is an entire sacred grove all by Herself, lol, with three separate trees emerging from the ground, from the same roots).
It wasn´t spring yet when they did that, and I was struck by the nakedness of the old grand´mother. We hadn´t really seen her, all the ten years that we live here, covered as she was, clothed by the ivy. And though the branches were quite a bit twisted and worn, oh my Goddess, the weirdness of Her all “naked”!…I couldn´t stand it. I think I had a momentary psychological break-down, LOL. Until I went into the process of having a good look at myself. I am a grand´mother too now, though I don´t look the part, it´s a fact. I´m twisted and worn in places too. But when I sat beneath the old Tree, wow, the POWER! … So I sat there, on the wooden bench, and cried my eyes out, goddess, how life has treated us, old chum!…

And then, because I believe in the sacredness of all beings, and in the cycles that bring us to spiritual maturity, I decided to make an altar. In a heart-shaped hollow of the Grandmother I put a little statue of “Birdwoman” that I made a few years back and part of my collection of stone hearts, that my kids started when they were little : they always brought me heart-shaped stones, and let me tell you they found a LOT!… 

Next spring her leaves grew back again, the sun warmed her; she enjoyed the free air, no longer strangled by the ivy.
And we did discover a new function for her : she is going to be our Prayer Tree, our very own symbol of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the great tree that connects together Asgard, Midgard, and the Underworld by its roots and branches, in Norse mythology.
There´s one branch that grows almost horizontal, which is perfect to tie prayer tags on, you know, like the Tibetan people do, with their flags dancing in the wind?
Mika has already cut some tags, and we´re going to ask friends to write a prayer, or a wish, or a poem on each, and tie it there. And the poems will float on the sweet winds, with the chimes of the wind gongs…

And then, I discovered two funny things that the ivy had covered.
Someone – long long ago – gave two strikes of something really sharp, like an ax, to the trunk, and it forms a perfect “X” – the Rune Gebo which, as you may know, is the Rune for “association” .
To top this, growing vertically right out of the branch where we mean to attach the tags, there is a branch that forms a perfect Algiz, the Rune of Protection.PS.- I have always thought that the grand´mother fig-tree looks like an Ent-wife…Have to tell Treebeard that we found one! (And she still gives birth to a whole lot of Entlings!…)