In the previous post, I outlined a model of prestige and stigma which predicts whether a language or religion will grow or wither in a society. Now let’s take the prestige/stigma model and look at Neopaganism today. By these measures, Neopaganism is in trouble.

Stigmatized Neopaganism

Imagine trying to revive the Latin language. Imagine speaking it at home, teaching it to your children, seeking out Latin translations of modern works, and using it instead of English whenever you could. What would your friends and neighbors think? Do you think lots of people would jump on the bandwagon with you? Do you think that the revived Latin movement — “Neolatinism” — would have much of a future in your society? There are no celebrities speaking Latin on TV. There are no government officials speaking Latin in press conferences. Latin is stigmatized as a dead language with no future; why would anyone want to learn it?

If the analogy between religion and language holds, Neopaganism is in exactly the same situation as Neolatinism would be. (more…)

Modern religions that are derived from or inspired by the indigenous polytheistic traditions of Europe (I’ll call them Neopagan) have experienced a great resurgence in the last couple of hundred years, and especially in the last fifty or so. This is surprising, because prior to that, everyone pretty much thought they were gone for good. (more…)

If you’ve been reading here a good long while, you remember my review of The Mist Filled Path, a book by Frank MacEowen that struck my life with great force a year and a half ago. Frank’s message came to me at just the right time, and I found that it resolved a lot of issues with the direction of my spiritual path, as well as laying down rich soil for growth. Perhaps the most profound gift the book gave me was a deepening of my sense of comfort and rightness in the label ‘druid’, which I had adopted as my own just a few months before, and the path circumscribed by that term.

But people are not labels, as Frank makes very clear by his own example. His path has wound among Zen Buddhism, shamanic studies, Celtic spirituality, and Jungian psychology, with a dash of poetry thrown in. He has undergone the ’shaman sickness’, participated in the Lakota Sun Dance, and slept alone in burial mounds in Scotland, listening to the song of the world.

Frank’s latest book, The Celtic Way of Seeing: Meditations on the Irish Spirit Wheel, is vastly different from The Mist Filled Path. The latter is a journeyman’s chronicle, a spiritual travelogue; but The Celtic Way of Seeing is a great map of the soul. Frank looks at the ancient divisions of Ireland, and the connections between that sacred physical space and the sacred spiritual space within us. It’s a book that packs a lot of punch, especially for those of us inclined to think in terms of maps and landscapes. I’ll be writing a full review soon.

In the meantime, I’m absolutely ecstatic to present this interview with Frank, in which he very graciously opens himself up with characteristic insight and honesty on all kinds of topics. I asked Frank five questions, and I’m going to present four of them here; the fifth I’ll save for the review of The Celtic Way of Seeing, since it will make more sense in that context. And now I’m going to scurry out of the way and let you jump right into the interview! (more…)

The New Year is coming! Here in Massachusetts we’re in the midst of our first major snowstorm, and while it’s too cold for the big white fluffy flakes, the fall of the tiny ice crystals is like the tinkling of fairy bells. The acres of grass surrounding our new home (in Avallonia, on the east side of the Connecticut River!) have transformed into a field of swirled cream, and the apple tree standing guard alone in their midst seems to be laughing as it lifts its branches up to the sky and catches the snowflakes. (The tree has been much more communicative and friendly since we gave offerings to it at Samhain…)

So it’s my very great pleasure to offer to you the 2008 Almanac and Planner of Nature and the Ancient World, put together by my wife and myself over the last few months when we probably should have been unpacking or something. This has been a labor of love for us — for me, because there is a “Word of the Week”, landscapes, and quotes from the Druid Journal for every week — plus it was tremendous fun putting in the holidays, because I got to learn about so many celebrations from all over the world (did you know that Dec. 3 is International Basque Language Day??) — and for my friend Esmerelda, because she got to indulge her new love of weather wiccecraeft: she contributed a long essay about the theory and practice of weather control, and added tips for helping to alleviate global warming throughout.

I probably can’t do better than to quote from the introduction:

In this volume I have tried to bring together the most useful and interesting information – weather, astrological influences, holidays, passages to invite thought and spiritual reflection, and landscape art inspired by nature and the ancient world — in a simple format that allows you to plan and weave your life according to the rhythms of the earth and sky.

Each week you’ll find expected temperatures and rainfall, moon phases, important astrological events, and holidays from a multitude of traditions. You’ll also find an inspirational quotation – usually, but not always, from my site, the Druid Journal – and a “Word of the Week”, an in-depth exploration of a single word’s history and spiritual energy. Finally, the week is capped off with artwork created by myself in the style of my web site.

On top of all this, the quarter and cross-quarter holidays of modern paganism, which mark the grand turnings of the ancient year, are given special note, with history, etymology, and notes on climate. And last – but certainly not least! – Esmerelda, a local witch, has kindly provided an in-depth essay on weather magic, with particular attention to global warming – and what you can do about it! (more…)

A few weeks ago, I posted the text and instructions for a meditation designed to find purpose and direction through cultivating loving kindness, in the grandest old Buddhist tradition. In my experience, the meditation is a great way to quiet the needy voice of the ego so that Spirit can speak, restoring the connection to your highest goals. I also noted that I’d recorded a guided version of the meditation, useful if you’d rather not memorize the whole thing ahead of time, downloadable here.

But an Attentive Reader, Claire from Ireland, pointed out that there was a huge contradiction between the text of the meditation and an earlier post of mine on the proper phrasing of affirmations. In that post, I wrote about negation, vagueness, and other kinds of language that ought to be avoided when stating your intentions for Spirit. If evidence from phonosemantics is to be believed, negation (like “no”, “not”) and vagueness (”all”, “some”), and time dependencies (”will”) are completely ignored by Spirit, so that an affirmation like “I will not gain weight” changes into “I gain weight”. But Claire noticed that the text of the meditation is full of negatives, right from the very beginning:

May I be free from anger.
May I be free from sadness.
May I be free from pain.
May I be free from all suffering.

Confusing the issue further: Claire had downloaded the meditation and listened to it, and noticed that in the recording, almost all of these negative statements were replaced with positives:

May I be full of love.
May I be full of joy.
May I be full of good will.
May I be free from all suffering.

As Claire says:

In the recorded meditation … you only use one negative: May I (or they) be free from all suffering. There, the rest of the list is phrased positively. In the article, they’re about equally balanced between positive and negative. I have occasionally used a version like the one from your post since I was a teenager (i.e. on and off for over ten years), and I know from my own experience that if I’m very down and hating myself then it’s much more likely I’ll get stuck on the negative words and resonate with anger, pain and suffering than that I’ll be able to conjure a positive feeling to counter them. I haven’t used this meditation for a few years, which is why I downloaded your guide. I definitely hadn’t heard of intention-manifestation back when I was using it, so I wouldn’t have been paying any attention to how the affirmations were phrased. Today, having encountered the two different versions one after the other, and with the memory of your recent post (which really resonated with me) fresh in my mind, the difference was striking.

I totally goofed on this one!!

When I started recording the meditation, I noticed that the text I’d prepared was quite negative; I could feel the negative energy as I was speaking, sure enough! So I quickly tried to fix it. That’s what I recorded. Then later, when I was writing the article, I totally forgot about that, and just used my original text. Whoops!!

Banishing Negativity

Claire went on to muse with a great deal of insight about the best way to fix the text:

I can’t think of how to re-phrase some of the affirmations in a positive manner. What is the opposite of anger, for example? Somehow ‘peace’ feels different to me, broader somehow, than simply ‘not angry’. Similarly, one does not have to feel joy to not feel sadness — peace could cover that as well, or simply emptiness, or… Perhaps it’s necessary to identify the negatives in order to reject them? I was thinking of immediately countering each one, perhaps like this:

I love myself.
May I be free from anger.
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be free from sadness.
May I be happy.
May I be free from pain.
May my body be healthy and strong.
May I be free from all suffering.
May I be at peace.
but that feels all wrong, somehow. The four positives at the end build up a powerful feeling for me which this order doesn’t deliver. Any suggestions? I really liked the positive build-up in your recorded version, but maybe it’s good to remember what you’re trying to get rid of? It kind of corresponds to the release of fear…maybe it’s good to acknowledge that you have these negative feelings, then consciously replace them with positives? Perhaps run through the list at the start of the meditation, then focus on the positive? Maybe something like:

Anger vanishes.
Sadness vanishes.
Pain vanishes.
All suffering vanishes.

I like in particular the way Claire ties our emotional states into the communication we’re trying to make with Spirit. I think she’s right to focus on how the words make us feel — it’s much more important than their literal meaning. But I also agree that it’s important to evoke somehow the feelings you’re trying to banish, to acknowledge them and replace them. I’d argue, though, that you can do that without actually naming the emotions involved. The key is in understanding how opposites work.

The Opposite of Anger is…

Most people would say that the opposite of something — say, “X” — is “not X”, but that isn’t the case at all. The opposite of happy isn’t not-happy, it’s sad; and the distinction here is crucial. Not-happy includes all kinds of emotional states — melancholy, depressed, or angry, grumpy — or any other negative emotion. It also includes apathy, or the lack of any emotion; and it includes logic, and green, and anything else that’s not an emotion at all. But the opposite of happy isn’t any of that; it’s sad. Why? Because happy is a very simple, generic positive emotion, and its opposite needs to be a very simple, generic negative emotion. In other words, sad is just like happy except for one crucial difference.

Take another example: what’s the opposite of black? White, of course! Not any other color or shade, not music or logic or bananas or anything like that. Black is the absence of all kinds of light, and its opposite needs to be the presence of all kinds of light (ideally, all colors of light together in equal proportion). In other words, white is just like black, except for one crucial difference.

So this is how opposites work in human language. Amazing how linguistics can come in so handy in totally unexpected places!

So what is the opposite of anger? It really depends on what you think anger is. The American Heritage, my favorite dictionary, says it’s “a strong feeling of displeasure or hostility”; so we want something that means “a strong feeling of pleasure or non-hostility“. Joy is a pretty good candidate, but I don’t think it carries the idea of non-hostility far enough: anger is such a targeted emotion, we really need something that means “welcoming” or “taking delight in something”. The best word I know of is love.

The same exercise needs to be carried out with the other words in the meditation. I didn’t do this much analysis when I did my quick rewrite for the recording, so the phrasing could undoubtedly be improved by going through it more carefully.

Notice that doing this addresses the issue of acknowledging and banishing the bad emotion at the same time. Because you’re taking “anger” and finding out what it’s made of, and identifying an emotion that is its real opposite, you’re really targeting every part of anger and replacing it with its opposite. Contained in the word love is all the information you need to identify anger and dispell it.

Positive Loving Kindness

So below is the text of the meditation as it appears in the recording. There are still a few negative statements in it, but for the most part everything has been converted to positives. See if you can feel the difference, too.

I love myself.
May I be full of love.
May I be full of joy.
May I be full of good will.
May I be free from all suffering.
May my body be healthy and strong.
May I be filled with loving kindness.
May I be happy.
May I be at peace.

I spread this loving kindness out.

I send love to those who are dear to me.
May their difficulties fall away.
May they be full of love and strength.
May they feel only joy and good will. May they be healthy and happy.
May they be at peace.

I send loving kindness to my friends and associates.
May they be full of love, peace, and joy.
May they feel compassion and goodwill. May they be healthy and happy.
May they be at peace.

I send love and kindness to all the people of the world, known and unknown, everywhere on earth.
May all on this planet be free from suffering.
May they be full of joy, goodwill, and hope.
May they be happy and at peace.

May all beings in the universe be free from suffering.
May all beings in all universes, everywhere, be free from suffering.
May they be well, and happy, and at peace.

May all beings of all kinds, in all directions, be happy and at peace.
Above and below, near and far, high and low.
All types of beings.
Humans and non-humans. Seen and unseen. May they be happy; may they be at peace.

I open my heart and receive loving kindness of all beings in return.
I let that love into my heart.

May all be well and happy.
May there be peace.

A couple of days ago I read one of those books that reaches deep into your heart and wrenches you. I was in my daughter’s brand-new first grade classroom, and the first big meeting between the class parents and the teacher was over, and people were milling around and talking and getting to know each other. In Waldorf education, a single teacher stays with a class without interruption from the first grade through the eighth grade, so at this meeting everyone knew that they were laying the groundwork for relationships that had to stand the test of time. Of course, many of us parents knew each other already from last year’s Kindergarten, and most of us knew our class teacher from earlier work she’d done with the school, and the informal parties and gatherings we’d had over the summer — but still…

I found myself over by the bookshelf. I wondered what books my daughter’s teacher had picked out to get started with — no doubt books with beautiful pictures and simple words for early readers… Here was a magnificent ancient edition of the Billy Goats Gruff, with a neat pop-up mechanism that allowed the reader to see the troll encountering each of the goats one at a time. The biggest billy goat Gruff looked so terrifying that I felt absolutely sorry for the troll.

My eye was drawn to a small paper book called Komo the Shepherd Boy, by Martha Hackman (Green Tiger Press, 1982). The illustrations were stunning — bright watercolors in a sort of “Yellow Submarine” late-60’s style, by Aura Cesari. I thumbed through the pages, and saw that there was quite a bit of text. Obviously, our teacher intended this to be a book that she would read aloud to the class. I was surprised, because in our experience Waldorf teachers tell stories completely from memory, for a number of reasons — perhaps most importantly to allow the children to form their own pictures in their heads, uninfluenced by pictures in a book, and to allow themselves to fully engage the children as they’re speaking…

My eye was caught by a few key phrases. I immediately read the whole thing in two minutes. (more…)

Whether you call it the Law of Attraction, Intention Manifestation, Calling Upon the Gods or just plain Magick, the advice is the same:

• Don’t use negatives. Phrase your intentions positively for the best results. Don’t say “I don’t want to be alone”, say “I am with Bob”; don’t say “I don’t want to live in the ghetto”, say “I am living in a comfortable home.”
• Be specific. Avoid generalizations like “I want everyone to have what they want”; it’s much more effective to list out the individuals and their particular desires.
• Don’t live in the past, don’t live in the future. Phrase your intentions as if they were already taking place now.

You can see all these laid out along with a bunch of other great tips, in this article. I can attest that my personal manifestations work better when I follow these guidelines.

But… Why? (more…)

This Lughnasadh has been a quiet one for our family, but one with some very interesting revelations for me personally.

Our Family’s Lughnasadh

Our usual mentor, Ellen Hopman, was away in Tennessee leading a large gathering, so the six of us tramped into the woods to do our own little thing. It turns out that back behind the farm where we get our summer vegetables is a stand of woods with a network of crisscrossing paths, and a lovely little brook with bridges scattered here and there along it. It was amazing to us what a sense of peace and reverence permeated these quiet woods, even though they are almost completely surrounded by developments now. At one of these bridges we sang “We are Children of the Earth” and silvered the water; then we went to the top of a hill and gave our offerings to the trees and to fire. I read a selection from the life of Lugh — the part where he’s taken from his home on earth and raised up to be a man by the King of the Sea, and how he decides to return to Ireland and free it from the yoke of the Fomorian invaders. Then we did a brief divination using Druid Animal Oracle cards, asking for guidance in our search for a home closer to the land. The general indication was that the search will take considerable cleverness and a strong warrior spirit, but that we will have help.

Then we tramped back to the farm proper and had a feast of whole wheat and oat rolls and salad. We placed a roll at the base of a birch for the local fairies, as well. Afterwards, most of the kids headed for the sandbox, but our 6-year-old second daughter, who I sometimes think has more intuition about people and relationships than the whole rest of the family put together, sought out the farmers, buttered them up properly, and secured a free cantaloupe and other random fruit. We had a lovely time.

Lugh: The Embodiment of Sunfire

I recently did a piece on Lughnasadh, Lunasa, and Lammas for the Druid Journal Word of the Day. Lughnasadh is Old Irish for “Lugh Gathering”, and it was a fire festival celebrated midway between the summer solstice and the fall equinox — a time of gathering together for trade and exchange of goods and ideas. As such, it wasn’t primarily a harvest festival, though according to legend it was established by Lugh, king of the gods, in tribute to his mother Tailtiu, who died readying the fields of Ireland for agriculture.

At the Word of the Day, I go a step beyond the history of a word and look at its spiritual significance based on an analysis of its sounds. Lugh is the primary syllable of Lughnasadh, and it is similar to the name Luke and Latin lux in sound and meaning: a light, volume-filling energy is gathered with speedy, fluid motion into a grounded container — or, put more simply, embodied, flowing light.

It appears that some of my guides arranged matters so that they would be “revealed” at this time of year, when the energy of the sun is made manifest, because they are so closely tied to solar energy. (more…)

Almost everyone is aware by now that honey bees are having a very, very difficult year. Bee colonies are dying all over the United States, imperiling not only the supply of honey, but also crops that depend on the bee for pollination, such as almonds, strawberries, blueberries, apples, watermelons, cranberries, and soybeans. While there are other pollinators out there, the honey bee is the only domesticated pollinator — it is the only pollinator that can be moved from crop to crop as necessary, and the only pollinator that can be depended on to serve crops that are not native to North America. As such it is essential to the large-scale agribusiness of the United States.

The death of a colony is frightful. First, the older adult worker bees begin to disappear, until only the younger ones are left. The workforce grows smaller gradually, becoming too small to care for the bees’ young. The Queen begins appearing outside the hive more frequently than normal. The bees seem reluctant to eat the food provided by the beekeeper.

Within a week or two, all the workers have disappeared entirely. They have gone away, and do not return. There are very few dead bees found near the hive. Food stores are abandoned uneaten. The babies are left growing in their hexagonal chambers, and they quickly die with no adults to feed them.

BUT WHY? (more…)

I’ve found myself profoundly inspired by phonosemantics. In one stroke, it’s opened up a whole new way of looking at language — something I didn’t really think was possible for me after studying linguistics for sixteen years…

It would be like finding out that my wife actually has another job, house, and life that I never knew about. Except I’ve only been married to my wife for nine years. (Yowch! That reminds me: my anniversary is coming up in three days!…)

So I decided that I’d chronicle my exploration of this new side of language, and give you a chance to come along for the ride.

DJ WOD

This is a different kind of Word of the Day.

Most Word-of-the-Day services offer words that most people have never heard of, in order to build vocabulary. Words like moil or redound or inveigle.

Fine words, no doubt, but they don’t live in people’s hearts.

I want to offer words you already know — simple words like god and sun and home. Words that are part of the furniture of your mind, the vocabulary of your subconscious, the words in your heart. You’ll read about where they come from and what they mean, just like in a regular word-of-the-day, but you’ll also read about how their sounds contribute to their meaning in subtle ways (phonosemantics), related words, and their place in the universal subconscious.

I want to offer, not just a word, but a guided tour of a tiny piece of the human experience.

I’ve set up the WOD as a separate blog, so you can subscribe to this Word of the Day service in a feed reader or via email.

Check it out here!