Pagan Interviews: Erynn Rowan Laurie

Pagan Interviews: Erynn Rowan Laurie September 14, 2015

Erynn Rowan Laurie is a pagan scholar, poet, author, and one of the guiding lights of the Celtic Reconstructionist movement. After many years spent living in America’s Pacific Northwest she recently moved to Italy. She writes and teaches on many aspects of Celtic Paganism, Druidism and Filidecht. Visit her online at The Preserving Shrine.

Painting of Ossian by François Gérard .  From WikiMedia.
Painting of Ossian by François Gérard . From WikiMedia.

Erynn Rowan Laurie
Erynn Rowan Laurie
Sean Harbaugh: Hi Erynn, thanks for taking time to be interviewed. Let’s start out with talking about your new book The Well of Five Streams. This book appears to put your experiences over the past two decades in one book. Tell us about how this came to fruition? How did it feel bringing all of this material into one spot?

Erynn Rowan Laurie: Sean, and thank you for your kind invitation.

Well of Five Streams is really a compilation of articles, essays, interviews, and other short pieces that I’ve written in the last couple of decades. Some of them have always been easily accessible while other pieces have appeared in publications that have been hard to find, or limited in circulation. I know there are a lot of people who don’t have access to some of the more obscure stuff, and many of my friends over the years have asked if I would ever considering making these works more easily available.

I’m a big fan of printed media, as opposed to electronic everything, even though I have often had a large online presence over the years. I like the way that books feel in my hands, and I find that I relate to books better than to a screen; I know there are others who also feel that way. I like the idea of having things available in this format, that doesn’t require batteries or electricity to access.

Mostly I’m pleased that my readers who have wanted this material all in one place can finally have that. I never really imagined my writing would get this far.

Tell us about yourself.

It’s always hard to know what people want to hear about, with an open-ended request like this. I’m a middle-aged genderqueer person in a female body. I’m a fan of science fiction and fantasy. I love music in almost any form. I enjoy camping when I can, though my body doesn’t always approve of things like long hikes or sleeping on the ground. I’m a disabled Navy veteran, and not at all a supporter of the military. I love people but am very introverted and need a lot of time by myself.

You spent many years living in the Pacific Northwest. How much of a culture shock was it moving to Italy?

It has been both easier and more difficult than I imagined. I’m kind of an obsessive researcher, so I read a lot before I came to Italy, and my brother has been living here most of his life, so I’ve had his support in adjusting to a new country and a new culture. I think I’m always a little afraid I’m going to say or do something stupid and offensive, and learning a new language is hard when one tends toward introversion and has a difficult time speaking with strangers in one’s own language, much less one that is only partly understood.

I like the people I’ve met here, and am very much enjoying my life in Italy. Of course, it’s easier to enjoy life when you have enough money that you don’t have to worry about food and shelter, and I’ve had times like that in the US, where only the kindness of friends or strangers has kept me from sleeping under a bridge. Living in Italy I’m conscious, for the first time in my life, of feeling wealthy. It’s really a very strange feeling.

Being able to travel or to get to things in town easily without having to own a car is wonderful, and was the initial reason I wanted to try moving here at all. Being unable to drive in the US makes things extremely difficult in most places. While Italians certainly do love their cars, they also love getting out for a walk to the bar or the gelateria, or just going out for the sake of being out in the piazza. I’m continually delighted by how much of Italian life takes place outdoors.

Fireflies-at-Absolute-Zero-199x300Reconstructionist Paganism is a fast growing segment in the Neopagan community. Being a Celtic Reconstructionist, please describe what this path means to you and what led you on it. Do you actually feel reconstructionist paganism as a part of the Neopagan community or something separate?

I started in Paganism, as many people do, with an eclectic version of Wicca, more a generic Neopaganism. It was what I could find, and there were at least some books available, even if finding people was hard at the time. Some years later, an Irish goddess came to me, and it was a while before I was able to learn who she was, but that was where my initial contact with Irish and other Celtic mythologies occurred.

My path to reconstructionist religion was longer, and started with the ogam alphabet. I read the few popularly available books at the time, including Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, but the linguistic mess that was Liz and Colin Murray’s Celtic Tree Oracle was the impetus for me to actually research things and try to learn what was really going on. The more I read, the more I realized that the books I had been reading were inaccurate, and I wanted to get at something closer to the truth. I found that history, law, archaeology, and anthropology were more informative about the things I wanted than any of the popular Pagan or occult books.

At the time, it was very difficult to find people who shared my interests, and when I got online I finally started finding others with the same inclination, but there was no forum where we could discuss our own interests without distractions. In forming a couple of communities where that was more possible, we created an incubatory alembic that allowed space for a nascent movement to form.

The question of whether I see reconstructionist polytheisms as a part of the Neopagan community is a complicated one at the moment. I have for most of my life seen myself as Pagan in the sense that I worship and work with deities outside a monotheistic framework, but definitions are shifting and the same difficulties that we had in creating a space for ourselves to talk about our interests twenty years ago continues today. Wicca and other similar paths continue to dominate the discourse in most places, without realizing they are doing so and, often, going so far as denying that they are doing so.

Five years ago, I would have said yes, reconstructionists are a part of the Neopagan community. Now, I’m not so sure. It isn’t just ritual structures that are at issue, but central theological viewpoints, and assumptions about community and purpose. At the moment, I’m definitely leaning toward reconstructionists as separate from Neopaganism, but I think all of us have to define our own paths and whether we feel we fit under some definition of Neopagan. I’m not going to ostracize someone who defines as Neopagan, or Pagan, but also as a reconstructionist. I don’t think I should be the final arbiter of anyone else’s spiritual purity, whether I agree with them or not. The only person whose spirituality I feel genuinely entitled to define is my own, and the only thing I can really say about someone else is whether or not I think they are doing the same thing I am, regardless of the words used to define it. That much, at least, I think I’m competent to judge.

How do you see the recon communities growing and evolving? Will they always be a niche, or do you see a continuing growth?

I don’t think we are ever going to be a majority religion anywhere. I think it’s possible for a religious community to grow and evolve and prosper and still be “a niche” without that being a negative thing. We don’t have to be a majority to have influence, or a powerful voice in advocating for ourselves, and for others. If our focus is on the deities, our ancestors, and the spirits of the land, I think we are doing well.

That said, I would love to see larger communities of reconstructionist polytheists, to expand our world and extend our reach. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with organizing, or with having infrastructure and larger communities. I think we really have to stop eating ourselves alive if we are going to have such things, though. We have to stop allowing other people to define us, and the boundaries of our communities. It’s imperative that we focus on our own communities and our own issues, without being isolationists. We are a part of a larger, interconnected world, and we have to survive in that world while at the same time tending to the nurturing of our own corner of it.

book_circle_of_stonesThe Morrigan seems to be making her presence felt the past few years, and there have been many recent books published on her. Why do you think she is making her presence felt now in such a big way? What books and authors do you recommend?

If I had to hazard a guess, I think it’s at least in part because our civilization is collapsing around us, and her lessons are necessary ones in times of chaos and destruction.

I can’t honestly say that I’ve kept up with new material coming out in the last couple of years, but I am familiar with Morgan Daimler’s work, and I think she’s doing some fantastic stuff. Just on general principle, I would recommend anything she’s doing.

You mentioned earlier that you were in the military, and you have discussed this in panel discussions about outreach to soldiers returning from combat arenas. I know it’s a big topic for you but important. Can you elaborate on the rituals you do for soldiers who leave for and return from combat?

It isn’t just combat, it’s the military in general. All of it, whether you end up shooting at anyone or not, is miserably destructive to the human soul. The military makes a concerted effort to remove your humanity and any capacity for independent judgment, in favor of following orders, and when it returns you to the civilian world there is very little transitional assistance.

The rituals the group in Seattle did on sending someone out, and welcoming them upon their return, were vigils overnight, designed to offer specific questions that contextualize what is happening and the person’s internal state, and to try to help overcome some of the dehumanization. The rituals were based on material from the Ulster cycle of Cú Chullain tales, and some of the material around Fionn mac Cumhaill and Suibhne Geilt, particularly in recognizing the separation between the state of the person in service and the civilian world.

Given that the military takes eight weeks to indoctrinate a person into its worldview and no time at all to reverse that indoctrination upon a person’s return to civilian life, it’s important to work toward restoring something of the person who existed before that change.

What can we do to as a community to welcome these warriors back and aid them in their transition back to society?

I wish we weren’t sending people out at all. I think the romanticization of the warrior and of war needs to end, because what we are asking of people is horrendous. In the military, violence is always the answer. I think it is destroying us as a civilization. I think this applies as much to the Neopagan and reconstructionist Pagan communities as it does to the overculture.

But given that we are doing it, that we are sending people out and expecting them to commit atrocities in our name, we need to take responsibility for the damage that happens to military personnel. We need to make sure there is medical and psychological care for people when they return. We need to find ways to offer a reasonable transition back into civilian life that include things like ritual, counseling, and support while they find work and re-learn how to exist outside the circumscribed life of the military.

It’s also important to address the needs of the servicemember’s family, because spouses, children, and other relatives and significant others are affected by military service. Domestic violence is rampant in military families. Rape and sexual assault are endemic in military bases. So much of this is rooted in the dehumanization of the servicemember by the military. A lot of it is hidden due to how often military families are moved, and how many of them live on military bases, in military housing, separate from any other community. It is a spiritual and a social tragedy, and keeping our eyes open to the signs of these things can help toward intervention and possibly to prevention.

I honestly don’t think anything short of a complete transformation of American society is going to help in a systemic sense. The best we can do right now is stage ritual intervention with individuals when they go out and when they return, reminding people of their humanity and the humanity of those they have been told to destroy, to try to avoid the worst problems, and work to change the system as a whole.

book_wellof5streams_smallYou and I share a common relationship with the Irish/Gaelic god Manannàn mac Lir. You reference him in the title of The Well of Five Streams. Talk about your relationship with him and what he means to your overall path.

I experience him as a gatekeeper of sorts, who offers access to otherworlds through the mists and beyond the ninth wave. Given that I do a fair bit of dreamwork and otherworld work, he’s important in opening those doors for me, and acting as a guide of sorts. As a deity connected with the well of wisdom, I also see him as important for my poetic and other creative work, and for my writing. He and Brigid are central figures for me when it comes to that devotional practice.
Manannàn is very much associated with the ocean, and I’ve always felt a strong link with the sea. I never feel quite right living far from the water. There’s just something about the way the sea resonates, the scent of the air, the sound of waves. I feel his presence intensely in those places where sea and shore meet, and the smell of salt water is a visceral comfort to me.

In Manx mythology, he is a protector, though one who acts more with tricks and deception than with attacks. His sword is called “the answerer” and he responds to acts of violence rather than opening with aggression, which I think is an important thing to understand. His shapeshifting is another thing that has immense importance to me; it teaches flexibility and suiting one’s response to the situation. I think there is wisdom to be had in inhabiting and deeply understanding other forms, other cultures, other lives, other languages, in both a metaphorical and a physical sense. His liminality is important for people who inhabit spaces outside of the binaries that our culture constantly attempts to impose upon us.

Ogam: Weaving Word Wisdom is considered one of the more important books on the subject matter of ogam divination. ADF uses it as a resource for our study program. How long did the research take for this and what surprises came out of it?

I spent about eighteen years on research and writing – and rewriting – the book. I started my studies of the ogam where so many others do in the Pagan movement, and discovered along the way that pretty much everything I was being told was wrong in one way or another. My study of the ogam taught me a lot about research and being able to set aside preconceived notions, and about having to surrender my expectations when I go to the sources. I’ve found it a very far-ranging system, and one that deeply informs my poetry, my spiritual work, my journeying and dreams, and my approach to my daily life. I’m unsurprised that the medieval Irish poets treated it as such a central thing in their training, as evidenced by the various ogam tracts in the Book of Ballymote.

OWWWWhat projects do you have on the horizon?

I’m going to be in Salt Lake City, Utah later this month, speaking on a panel about reconstructionist Polytheist religions at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, so that is taking up a lot of my headspace at the moment.

In terms of writing, I still want to write a second book about ogam and magic, but I am also doing research and outlining toward a book on Brigid and flamekeeping. One of my essays in Well of Five Streams addresses some important aspects of that work. I also have a lot of material toward books on filidecht, and on the role of the geilt and “sacred madness.” These are also big topics in Well of Five Streams. In the interstices, I’m trying to do a little traveling, and a little composition of poetry, as well as learning Italian. I feel like my life is very full right now, and very blessed.

Erynn, thank you so much for taking time to answer these questions. Do you have anything else you’d like to add?

I’m looking forward to seeing some of my friends at the Parliament, and really wish I could come to some of the festivals I’ve attended in the past in the US, but getting over the ocean and across the continent is a large and expensive proposition.

I’m pleased to see so many developments in the Polytheist communities these past couple of years, and have some hope that we can support and define our own communities rather than allow people from outside of them to drive our discourse.

Sean Harbaugh is a druid with Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship (ADF). He was ordained an ADF priest in 2007 and is currently serving on the ADF Mother Grove. He also serves the Pacific Northwest as ADF’s NW Regional Druid. Sean is also a member of several other druid organizations including the RDNA (Reformed Druids of North America) and the MOCC (Missionary Order of the Celtic Cross). Sean is also a Celtic Reconstructionist and a polytheist. Rev. Sean Harbaugh can be reached at seanthedruid@gmail.com


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