Texas Rain

Though the clouds had been hanging overhead all morning, it didn’t start to rain until a low rumble of thunder had sounded like a horn heralding an army. And then the sky unfolded. I sit here listening to it flow, then ebb away again quietly. As time passes, it rushes out more heavily so that the glass of the windows drum like thunder, which I haven’t heard since the first low peal about an hour ago. And then just as swiftly it seems to die again, so that I can hear individual drops falling off the leaves and petals of the bougainvillea outside in the front garden.

I suddenly race outside to drag pillows from the chairs in the front garden. In less than a second I, and the pillows, even though they have only been out for a short time, are soaked through.

This is Texas autumn. When you live in a place where October and November may still mean 100 + degree weather, or stifling humidity from hurricanes and sudden, swift flooding, showers like this one accent the gentle, pleasant weather and seem to say, “See? Texas knows how to take care of its citizens too.” After years of extraordinary drought, rain like this opens the mouth of the earth, and makes it sing.

This year, the latter half of October and November have unbelievably pleasant, gentle, cool and filled with sunshine. Storms, some small and gentle, and some loud and frightening, are bringing the world back into green life after several years’ worth of parched brown summers. In the northeast, autumn is a time of death, decay and oncoming cold. This year’s Texas autumn is a time of abundant green, and blessed relief.

I think when I sat down and began to type, I wanted the rain to inspire me to say something spiritually moving or wise. It hasn’t given me any great insights, except that to listen to it is enough. It is enough that this is where I am right now, listening, sitting, thinking, and letting the rain bring back life to my own parched soul.

 

The Journey of the Monarchs

One of the most wonderful times of year in Texas is October, when the monarch migration is in full swing, and swarms begin floating through the city streets: wandering through traffic, dipping into gardens, gently drifting, replacing clouds in an empty Texas sky over houses and neighborhoods. Every year I’m thrilled by it, and this year is no different.

This afternoon, on a rare, gorgeously perfect day, I stood in my balcony doorway and watched scores of monarch butterflies drift over my house northward. I almost felt like telling them, “You’re going the wrong way!” but I know that it isn’t so. I feebly tried to capture them on my camera, but such is the nature of a terribly slow digital camera-phone and the fleeting, ethereal creatures flying by scores in the sky that I was unable to get more than blurry specks in my pictures.

As they drifted over the roof of my house like a crest of a wave, some fluttered down to my mother’s rosebushes and plants in the backyard garden, and others wandered into the tree in a neighbor’s yard, disappearing so quickly into the landscape of my neighborhood that their presence was lost in a twinkling. Only when they rose up again and showed themselves clearly against a blank sky did they remind the world of their wandering status, their itinerant existence. Only when they had to move on did they distinguish themselves from the natural workings of this small  world. Birds kept flapping around as though irritated, hungry but not hungry enough to forget how poisonous these annual visitors are. My parents’ dogs ignored them, sprawled in the grass and only rousing themselves to bark at passing joggers through the fence or defend the background from squirrel squatters. I’m not sure, but I saw several cars proceeding slowly down the street, so as to watch the procession (or to avoid getting butterfly splatters on their windshield).

As I watched, I could not help thinking of the time when I was living in Philadelphia that a twitterpatted and territorial butterfly kept me company while I intruded on his park bench. He had looked similar to a monarch, but he wasn’t. His presence had also seemed like a sign, or an omen, but I knew it wasn’t. Nonetheless, seeing his wings on the white pages of my book gave me the same shivery, gentle feeling that I get when I pray, or meditate, and feel connected to the inherent divinity of the universe. So now, in the presence of scores of these butterflies, I wondered if I would feel the same shiver down my back, the same deep heartache.

The sunlight glanced off of wings, off of the leaves on the tree, sending confusion through the air as leaves morphed into monarchs, and monarchs faded into leaves. It took about thirty minutes for the entire swarm to move through. A few stragglers floated by later. Some time after that, one or two flew over and then none at all.

 

Language of the Flame

Tonight is my Flamekeeping shift. I’m trying to take this time to be more definite in my beliefs, and laying out a solid plan of practice. As I sit and ponder, I struggle with the all too familiar, growing knowledge that often haunts me as a writer: what I say cannot capture what it is I am feeling or understanding. Sometimes, it is very close. Other times, my words utterly fail in the face of pure perceived experiential knowledge.

The more think about my path, and the more I sit and look inside myself and try to define what it is I believe, the more trouble I have with this inability of language to capture what it is I feel about the world, about myself, and about my place in it. These key ingredients to a coherent set of assumptions about the world–spiritual beliefs–should, if anything should be communicated, if only to myself for greater clarity. The closer I seem to come to something, the stiller I become, waiting for it to manifest as a clear thought that I maybe, maybe will finally be able to capture on paper. The closer, the quieter I become, straining hard to hear it sound through my inner ear.

Still closer, and still elusive.

As I focus on the flame tonight for Brighid, I think of how easy it is to see the hotness of the yellow color, to feel the tiny warmth radiating and the pulsing light gently wash on the immediate surroundings. How easy it is to perceive, and understand, without the medium of words. Even my words here, trying to describe what I see, and what I feel, take far more time to process and only then approximate my experience.

An Seanchas Fior is a path based primarily on the power of words to shape our lives, to form patterns to live with. My path therefore appears to be founded on something weak, insubstantial, and ultimately, inconsequential. Words are a product of our imagination, stories the product of words.

But suddenly a last thought shimmers through my head as I prepare to extinguish the flame, and go to bed. What if, my thought whispers, what if it is the other way around?

What if words are a product of stories? This seems logical. After all, our experiences of life came first, and our words came second to try to share them. Thus, my world, based upon words, is actually based upon stories, not words; on events, not things.

What if, that tiny thought says, what if that path, and everything my world stands upon, is a flame–an event based upon the interaction of other things, which are themselves, a result of the interaction of other things. What if words are in fact far more powerful than we often consider them to be: what they fail to capture may not be a thing at all, but an event–insubstantial, but not inconsequential. Their power, or lack thereof, hints at the truth: that what they fail to capture cannot be captured at all.

I am a flame, ready to ignite, ready to be blown out. I am a word on the breath, ready to exhale, ready to fade.

 

Nature and Filidecht

Over on The Cauldron, a popular pagan messageboard and a frequent haunt of mine, there is an interesting discussion going on called Nature and Pagan Religions. All of the questions, concerns, and howls of rage brought up by this topic are important to discuss and certainly worth thinking about, particularly as every time someone tries to talk about it, people get caught up in “this religion IS, and this religion ISN’T” in terms of whether it is “nature-based” (a problematic term in and of itself) and nothing happens except hurt feelings and a lot of anger.

What do I mean by nature-based? It’s problematic because no one seems to quite agree on just what it means. I mean, for many folks (myself included) think of the word “nature-based” as though you would think of the word “carbon-based” or “water-based”. We ourselves are carbon-based, with lots of other things added to it. Carbon is not the end all, be all of our being. Is this how religions that are nature-based work as well–nature is the foundation, but has lots of other things added to it?

Folks consider Wicca to be “nature-based”, and use that as a measuring stick by which to determine if other religions are “nature-based”. This is problematic mostly because Wicca has very little to do with many pagan religions, and nobody likes being measured by a stick that has no commonality to the religion.

Here is an answer, a definition of “nature-based” I like:

“For myself, I think that “nature-based” is best understood as when the idea of nature (however “nature” is conceptualized) is understood as a central organizing principle of the religion — to the point that if you chopped out all references to nature, you could not practice the religion in a recognizable way. That’s it. No commentary on specific forms of worship, or how one conceptualizes the gods, or whatever — there’s tons of different possibilities. And moreover, I think it’s more of a continuum than an absolute category.”

–Catja on TC

I’m going to try and work out from this kind of definition rather than any other because to be honest, it’s the only one I’ve ever been able to try and fit my head around. By this definition, Wicca is still a nature-based religion; without the context of the Wheel of the Year (based on agricultural cycles) Wicca would not be recognizable nor practical.

So, how “nature-based” is Filidecht?

 

Water

They say that all life came out of the ocean; all life still needs water. Water is that which lies inside us, which makes up our deep being, and we need it to sustain ourselves. Water is ever-shifting; at one moment, still and deep, another shallow and fast. In yet another form, Water appears icy sharp, and in another, delicate and fragile, but glittering. Rain from the sky is what supports the eco-systems on earth, and all rivers, streams, tides, glaciers erode away the very earth. Water moves in us, as emotions, as physical processes, as thoughts and words.

Water, in classical antiquity, is often associated with the emotions and the deep source of inspiration that comes not from the gods, like Fire, but from within. Like Fire, Water is also to our essential spiritual being, because Water is that wisdom and life that resides within us and supports us. It mothers us, while Fire moves us. Water is another important element of ritual, cosmology and symbolism in Filidecht, and, along with Fire, is at the center of much of Celtic mythology.

 

Fire

In classical antiquity, the world was thought to be made up of four principle elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. This mindset lasted for much longer than you might think in science, and in religion, it has been transformed into a magical system. In ceremonial magic, such as that utilized by practitioners of Wicca, these four elements are called upon or invoked to construct and consecrate a sacred space as forces of nature, connected and manifested in both nature and in our psychology, and often are used with other magical energies in spellwork.These four elements have many symbols and correspondences attached to them in the occult world, and as such are powerful tools for creating spells, rituals and personal meditations.

The Celts did not view the world as being constructed of these same “elements”, and in modern practice, those in a traditional Celtic mindset do not see the need for invoking these elements to create a sacred space, as sacred space already exists all around them. The Three Realms, already discussed in this essay, are acknowledged, but not as “elements”, in the sense of the classical principles or forces. Which isn’t to say that forces or energies have no place in magical workings or ritual. In fact, Celtic tradition has a strong background and evidence for several of these forces, and I have utilized forces of my own discovery that I feel is true to the Celtic mindset, if completely UPG.

However, two of these “elements” do have a place, cosmically, in the Celtic worldview, and in a worldview of story. They are Fire, and Water, the mysteries of which are potent energies and forces in their own right, and to be respected as such.

 

Quotes on the Cosmos from St. Colum Cille

Now that we are firmly established in the realms of the Poet, let’s take a quick break and look at St. Colum Cille, one of the pre-eminent saints of Ireland, and some quotes about the world as story. Colum Cille, a poet himself, judges that the poets should remain in Ireland:

“If poet’s verses be but stories,
So be food and garments stories;
So is all the world a story;
So is man of dust a story.”

“And for this case it were right for thee to buy the poems of the poets and to keep the poets in Erin. And since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring.”

–Betha Colum Cille