kindred

Do Not Speak, and You Will Be Heard

April 5, 2012 By Teo Bishop 16 Comments

Today I approached my altar in silence. Speaking the words out loud, my standard approach to a daily ritual, felt unnecessary. In my mind, in my heart, the words rang out with perfect clarity, and I trusted that whomever needed to hear them would.

The effort I put into my daily practice waxes and wanes, and it is influenced a great deal by my emotional state. Some days I don’t feel I have it in me to make offerings of gratitude and thanks to the Kindred. There are financial concerns, piles of paperwork on the desk, and sticky-notes of errands that have been neglected. When I wake up with a busy brain I have a very difficult time making space for piety.

But today in my ritual, rather than using my voice to will the space into stillness, I went inward. I turned my gaze into the depths and found that there was already plenty of space for reverence. Caverns of it, really. And the stillness came.

To my delight, I found that the richness of my meditative, magickal work increased in this state of silent dialogue. My small candle flame transformed into the great, Sacred Fire with a force that it hadn’t before. The chalice became the Well, and reached deep into the center of the earth, effortlessly. In between the two stood the Great Tree, broad and majestic, and full of life.

All of this happened in a silent room, and it was only possible – I think – because I’ve been faithful to my daily practice to the point where the words I speak out loud could finally be internalized. The Kindred listen in ways that are beyond my imagination. The spirits of the land and of our ancestors are sentient, I believe, but I’m not sure how. I think that I was persistent in speaking out loud because I thought there was a connection between the sound of my voice and their ability to hear. This may have even been a lesson I was taught.

But I don’t believe it’s true. I don’t believe we need to approach the Kindred — the Gods of our heart — with the idea that their limitations are easily conceivable. They may not, as many Pagans have presumed, be omni-anything, but the exact shape of their being remains a mystery.

Sometimes I think the Pagan Humanists have it right in their approach to their practice. They see the Gods as archetypes, but they also see the archetypes as our entry into deeper engagement with the greatness, the expansiveness, the mystery of the Gods. In a way, I’d rather suspend my need to affirm some definite conception of the Gods if it allowed me to approach Them with greater reverence and wonder.

Does that make sense?

Before today, I spoke out loud in my room because I thought I needed to do so in order to be heard, in order for my ritual to be successful. But I’ve discovered that I can have the experience of being heard without speaking at all. It feels like there are greater ramifications to this discovery that I can’t yet see.

Does this inspire something in you?

Filed Under: Paganism, Practice Tagged With: Ancestors, Archetypes, Daily Ritual, Gods, Humanistic Paganism, kindred, Magick, Meditation, Practice, Silence, Spirits of the Land 16 Comments

On Meditation and Devotion: Weeks 7, 8, and 9

March 3, 2011 By Teo Bishop Leave a Comment

Week 7

On the night after I wrote my last Meditation and Devotion post I became very sick. I’d just written how my daily practice had become a central part of my life, and then I was bedridden for days; unable to maintain my normal routine.

I lost about 3 days of meditation and devotion, and when I returned on February 12th, still a bit stoned from Nyquil, I felt completely shaken and unable to focus. I described it like this in my journal:

“…it felt as though there was a kind of hood over my inner eye. I felt like my inner vision was blocked off along the edges.”

The low energy and sinus pain continued on the following day, and things began to clear up on February 14th. That was also the day that I noticed that, as I put it,

“The trance-like intensity of my daily devotions and meditations has waned. Given, I am no longer in the thick of an intense creative process – or, at least, not the same creative process – but it is strange to me the way this is starting to feel ‘ordinary’.”

I was forced, due to the illness, to cancel a very important event in my life; what felt like, at the time, the culmination of much of the creative work I’ve done so far this year. On that day, February 16th, I was wrecked. I rushed through making offerings, drew cards but couldn’t see any meaning in them, and then closed the Hallows without offering thanks to Brighid and the Kindred. I was so upset that the illness had disrupted my life as it had.

Week 8

What brought me back into a pattern of meditation and devotion was the tarot. I put my focus on the spreads I’d lay after making my offerings, and those spreads began to show more sign that they were coming from the Kindred; they offered new insight, creating greater context for why I’d become ill and what I had to learn from the experience.

All of my entries during this week are heavy on the tarot interpretation. I focussed little on stillness in meditation, and went through the ritual of making offerings with a slight mechanical nature. The cards were my main focus, and they were what brought me back into an awareness of the mystery of this daily work.

Week 9

I reached a point where I was beginning to feel like my practice was solely a tarot practice, and not an extension of worship. I wrote on February 25th:

I’m having a difficult time starting this entry. I have a 3 card spread before me, and this is beginning to feel like a Tarot Journal rather than a journal to document my spiritual growth. Every day I perform my devotional ritual, and every day I sit down to draw cards. I ask the Kindred to guide my hands and send a message, and yet as I sit here now, staring at the cards, reading their interpretations in the DruidCraft book, I feel alone, and very much in my head. The rest of the experience feels spiritual, but trying to make sense of the cards launches me into a mental tailspin.

What is this time designed to do?

What had given me an entry way back into this daily time – the tarot – was now pulling me out of the moment.

I notice as I look back on the rest of the Week 9 entries that I’ve created a pattern of documenting my daily time. Each entry starts with 1 or 2 paragraphs of reflection. Then, usually somewhat abruptly, I write about the card reading. The rest of the entry is about the cards, and I don’t seem to spend much time contextualizing them or connecting them back to my initial reflection.

I tried that this morning, and I noticed that my mind went to a million different places. I think it is time for me to return to the DP material and search out techniques to control my mind. It’s time to bring more mental discipline into my practice.

Filed Under: Meditation, Practice Tagged With: ADF, Dedicant Path, Illness, kindred, morning devotional, omen, Practice, tarot Leave a Comment

A Response to “Omens and Tarot”

February 28, 2011 By Teo Bishop 5 Comments

This post is a response to the blog post “Omens and Tarot“, posted yesterday on Grey Wren’s Flight. I encourage you to read the full post for context, and I’ve provided a brief excerpt below which summarizes what she wrote.

“I’ve been incorporating omens into my devotionals lately, partly because I’ve been wanting to take my spiritual work to the next level, and partly because I have so many beautiful tarot decks that need love. (I’m such a little kid, wanting to play with my toys.)

The short version of this post: how do you take omens during a ritual?

What’s the best way to take omens? It must vary from person to person, but how does one find a method and feel confident that it’s working? Any thoughts?”

I’m delighted to read the you’re incorporating the tarot into your daily work, especially if you already have a relationship with the cards. I also use (as one of 2 or 3 regular decks) the DruidCraft Tarot, and I know exactly the image you’re speaking of.

For me, I’ve chosen to use the cards in a slightly different way. After making my offerings, I ask of the Kindred something like:

“If my offerings are acceptable to you, please provide me a point of focus, a message of guidance, an Omen.”

Then, I work with the cards. I may lay out a single card, or a three card spread. I have an Ogham deck, and I may choose to use that over the more visual, narrative cards. I allow the spread to be guided by my intuition.

I also may change my request of the Kindred to suit my needs at that moment. Today, my request was that they provide me insight into the story, song and poem that I’m preparing for the Bardic Chair competition at Wellspring. When I sat down at my tarot table, I chose to pull one card from 3 different decks – the DruidCraft, the Llewellyn Tarot and the Ogham Deck (something I’d never done before). The message that came forth was amazing!

This may not be strict ADF or PIE orthopraxy, but to me it feels right. I don’t just want to know if my offerings were accepted or acceptable, because I don’t think that all the Kindred want from me are some oats and a bit of oil. This is a relationship, and the offerings, in large part, are symbolic of something much deeper. I make these offerings so that I might initiate contact with forces that are greater and more powerful than myself. The objects I use are – I think – mostly arbitrary. It is the sincerity with which I share these object – these symbols – and the focus and intent with which I hold them up in worship that matters most.

I believe we should make offerings that feel right to us, and make requests of the Kindred as our needs and desires dictate. If, by Their wisdom, they do not see fit to provide us with exactly what we are asking, it seems to me that we need not take that as an immediate sign that our offerings weren’t “good enough”. It could be that our requests were simply not coming from the place of true need or right desire (if I might risk sounding moralistic by using that phrase).

So, use the tarot as feels best to you. Or, seek out their Omen in the clouds…or in the pattern of your coffee grounds! Or, perhaps best of all, still your soul and listen for the sound of their voices in the sanctuary of your heart.

Filed Under: Omens, Talking the Walk Tagged With: ADF, Druidism, Druidry, grey wrens flight, kindred, Offerings, Omens, Pagan, Ritual, tarot, Tarot Spreads 5 Comments

Do Not Speak, and You Will Be Heard