Music Ennobles All It Touches
I’ve been thinking lately about studying Druidry in California, a land where it is not indigenous. I’m beginning to think that what I thought of as a predicament might just as well be an advantage. Instead of the marked wells and obvious stone circles of Albion and Ireland, my landscape is covered with markers that … Continue reading I Will Never Be Indigenous
It takes five types of lines to work a square sail. That means that if you understand this basic pattern, you’re well on the way to understanding the rig, and how it works. Sure there are well over a hundred lines on any ship, but there are only three basic repeating patterns–the square sails, the … Continue reading Sailing Into Land, Sky, and Sea
Ballads were the movies, newspapers, and classrooms of their time. Easy to remember and self contained, they could be taken anywhere and brought to life with nothing more than a single voice. They passed from singer to singer, carried on the breath, and some of them have endured to the present time, long after they … Continue reading Tam Lin
Love of Land. Reverence for Water. Respect for Fire. To me, this is the Druidry of California. It shapes my land and my practice. It’s the bucket under my tap as the water warms for a shower. It’s the ashes from the pipe I tap out into my open palm to be *sure* it’s out … Continue reading The Druidry Of Place
Only ruins stand today before our modern eyesGreen the grass within the wallNo more the music in her hallLong ago the warrior’s fallOr does our vision and our vaunted knowledge tell us lies? Where’s the warrior to be found who ran her fabled schoolOnly those with ears to hearWithin her hall the music clearHer … Continue reading Scathach’s Hall
Silliness ahead, Use Only As Directed. No resemblance to most Realities Intended: I have a yearly visit from the Lord of the Dead, the Great God Sam Hain. His first visitation came one year when I was surfing the web on Samhain with some fellow Pagans. Once again, the twisted tale of the Scary (nonexistent) … Continue reading The Great God Sam Hain
It was raining when the ferry reached Stornoway. It’s Scotland, I didn’t expect any different. Grace was swathed in tincloth, I was likewise. I didn’t have a hostel reservation, because I’d planned on going straight to the stones, and then to Tarbert to catch the morning ferry to Uig. I expected the hostel in Tarbert … Continue reading Stones In The Mist
The closer I got to Skye, the more I realized how much I was dreading this part of the trip. Sure, it was a long walk to what would probably turn out to be nothing, but surely a pile of rocks and a rainstorm weren’t that scary. I saw my first hooded crow as I … Continue reading The Shadow of Dun Scaith
A life, or an experience such as the trip I’ve just taken, is woven of many strands. You can’t take a bunch of those strands, spin them all together, and tell all the stories at once, though I feel that that’s pretty much what’s happened to me. No, if you want to be intelligible … Continue reading The Strands of the Tale
Ballads were–and are–more than just entertainment. There’s a lot of cultural information packed in there too, in rhymed, easy to remember stories that told people who they were. Only some of these things apply to us here and now, but in making the distinction for ourselves, we see the shape of our particular culture and … Continue reading A Different Rape Fantasy
