Lectio Divina and the Summer Solstice

Some inspiration for a contemplative Summer Solstice:

35th Song of the Rig Veda - found on www.vicdicara.wordpress.com

I call upon fire, friendship, waters and the restful night to aid us

I call for aid to the Sun, bringer of life

Revolving through darkness of space, awakening gods and mortals alike

Riding in a golden chariot, looking upon every being

Moving to the northern and southern solstices he journeys

Coming from afar to chase away all distress and sorrow

On a multicoloured chariot decked with pearls and flags

The many rayed Sun sets off powerfully into darkness

White horses draw that golden chariot, bringing its light to everyone 

All beings exist in the lap of the Sun

There are three universes, two belong to the Sun

While the other belongs to death and is the home of warriors

He is the kingpin around all things firmly rest

And revolve

Strong winged, lighting up all regions, causing fear to creatures of darkness

What worlds have the rays of the wise leader illuminated now?

He illuminates the eight points of Earth, the three deserts and seven oceans

The golden eyed Sun appears now to give treasures to those who worship

Golden handed, far seeing, going in his path between Earth and heaven

He drives away sickness, and illuminates what was once dark

Golden handed and king leader, come to us with aid and favour

Drive away creatures of darkness assembling at sunset.

The Sun - from the Carmina Gadelica

Greetings to you, Sun of the season,

And you walking in the high heavens

Your steps strong on the wings of heights

And you adored mother of the stars.

It is you lying down in the harbour of danger

Without bedevilment and without dread

It is you rising up on the peaked wave of peace

Like a young queen in flower.

Alvissmal 15 - 16 - Bellows Translation

Thor Spake:

Answer me, Alvis, thou knoweat all,

Dwarf, of the doom of men:

What call they the sun, that all mean see,

In each and every world?

Alvis spake:

Men call it sun, Gods the orb of the Sun,

Deciever of Dvalin the dwarfs;

The giants the Ever Bright, Elves Fair Wheel,

all-Glowing the sons of the gods.

Radical Amazement - Judy Cannato

Life on Earth is nested in the life of the Sun. Each and every second the Sun surrenders four million tons of energy in the form of light. She is expending all she has, extending all that she is, in order for life to exist. As a result Earth and her inhabitants flourish in her radiance.

  It seems that the giving over of life on behalf of ever-expanding creativity is integral to life itaelf. The massive star that was mother to our Sun met with fiery death, her form completely annihilated by the explosive force of the blast. And yet she exists in each of us,in the cella of our bodies thqt are comoosed of her dust... We are the children for whom she sacrificed all.

The Dead Moon and Aurvandil in Jotunheim

With the Solstice fast approaching I have been giving a lot of thought to the sun, the living Sun. But as I so often do my thoughts soon turned to a quasi-acedmic treasure-hunt.

Simek was of the belief that Sol/Sunna, a reverence for the Sun, was once important to the Norse with that religious significance fading by the time of the recording of the myths. This is of course just a theory, but I accept it on the grounds that the Sun is essential to all life. If Her importance faded then it is high time to revive Her worship. If you are not of an Animistic bent then this sounds a whole lot like ignorant superstition. I make no apologies. I'm neither ignorant nor stupid. I prefer the term 'open-minded' ...

Though Germanic paganism is the meat of my spirituality I find it impossible not to view it within a wider context. Germanic paganism is but a branch of Indo-European paganism, and I look to many traditions to inform my beliefs. So much has been lost that to look at Indo-European mythologyand  culture as a whole is very helpful for me.

So while I was supposed to be considering the living Sun instead I found myself thinking about Proto-Indo-European myth. From studying the divergent traditions that grew from Proto-Indo-European it has been suggested that there was an original myth of the Sun or the Dawn trapped within a rock/cave and freed by a hero - in one myth The Striker.

My mind made a connection that on the face of it makes little sense.

There is a folk tale from the Lincolnshire fens that tells of the radiant moon descending to the fenland where She becomes trapped under a rock by nasty fenland spirits until She is rescued by some heroic but unknown man.

This tale has always tugged at me as particularly pagan. In Germanic myth the moon is male though, not female. Today though I can't help but think this story could almost fit into the Proto-Indo-European myth of the Sun trapped in a rock if the Sun had been replaced with the Moon...

It also occurred to me that I know another tale where The Striker rescues a figure associated with the dawn. We know that Thor rescued Aurvandil while on His way through Jotunheim, though we're not sure what Aurvandill was doing there. It's a tenuous, but the name Auvandil implies a connection to the day and the dawn. In the Old English poem Christi I the cognate form Earendel is used in such a way that it implies a herald of the light, and in both Old English and Norse sources The name is used for the Morning Star. To tie this back into Proto-Indo-European mythology again the Morning Star is linked to the Ashvins, the divine horsemen, who accompany the Dawn Goddess, their sister.

These are my rambling thoughts as we approach the Summer Solstice.

Disempowerment and Connection

You'll read about our disconnection to the natural world all over the place. I don't have to argue the point because most would regard it as a fact.

Yes, it is our current lifestyles that have brought us to this point, but it is something more specific that I have been thinking about of late.

As I walk home from the shops in town I pass a warehouse, not ancient but disused for many years.  Jasmine has over taken the north wall and the southern wall is completely hidden behind a living curtain of ivy. The Butterfly Bush has claimed the grounds of what was once the outside. The walls within are covered in graffiti of various languages, none of it the bright and inspiring kind. The railings outside are bent wide and pallets have been dragged inside to create a nook for the consumption of alcohol. The acoustics of the building however don't lend itself to this activity.

Litter is everywhere. You would think a bin had been upturned.

On the railings outside there is now an unimposing white laminated sheet hanging. The writing small l enough to necessitate you stopping to read it.

It notifies me, member of the public, that planning application has been made for retail and residential properites to be erected on this site. Gone will be the drunks hideout. Gone too he graffiti and the piles of rubbish. All good things.

But gone too will also be the two big ash trees, and this makes me sad. I hope the developers will find a way to leave the ash trees standing, but know that probably this will not even occur to them as important.

And I also know there is nothing I can do. 

Disempowerment.

I read somewhere, some wise person say that we don't care for the land anymore because we no longer live there - we live inside our heads.

Regretfully I cannot remember where this wise insight originated. There is more than a grain of truth there. But I also wonder if part of the problem is that we have no say. How hard it is to love something, somewhere, when you cannot protect it...

Connecting with the Land - Imagery

Getting creative is a well known way to allow hidden and half-seen feelings and insights to come to the fore. So it stands to reason that a creative outlet is another good way of learning to sense the Spirit of Place.

Some creative exercises to try that I found helpful:

* lots of places have town shields and plenty of regions had their own flags. What design would you use to represent your place? What captures its essence?

* Similarly imagine you were creating a brand logo for your place. What would it be? Although this is similar to the above it does allow for slightly different artistic expression.

* Either draw or make a collage of the local landmarks - those places instantly recognisable that seem to make the place what it is. This was an illuminating exercise for me, because those places were, without me recognising it, places where the feeling was strong and the shape of the place easier to get a sense of. It's a good way to identify places you might not have thought of to send out feelers!

* Poetry. Go on give it a try! What words speak of this landscape? What images solidify in your mind? Go forth and scribble!

Connecting with the land - Walking the Boundary

It was when I was first researching Plough Monday customs that my attention was first called to consider the old custom of 'beating the bounds'. I had of course heard of it previously, but knowing of the existence of something and actually considering it are not the same thing at all.

When I first heard of Beating the Bounds, Heathenry was unknown to me. After learning about Heathenry, Beating the Bounds took on deeper shades of meaning in my mind.

Heathen world view places the reality where we lives our lives as Midgard. The Gods - the As - reside in Asgard. The '-gard' section of the words mean 'yard'. Literally an enclosure. An enclosure by it's very nature implies a boundary and the drawing of lines. Conceptually one could argue that each time the bounds were walked the boundary of Midgard was reaffirmed.

And why would you want to reaffirm such boundaries?

Because 'out there' was a dangerous place. A line is being drawn between the safety of domesticity and the danger of wilderness both tangible and intangible. Us Moderns may see the beauty and the romance of the wild, but we fool ourselves if we think that that is all there is to it. Our forebears knew better. Midgard is not a physical reality, a quaint name for the world from a barbarian peoples.  Midgard is a concept with shades of meaning.

The boundaries of home are a liminal area and liminality has a very long history of assosiation with 'otherness'. What better place to feel?

Go walk the boundaries of home. Can you feel a tension there? Walk slowly and pay attention, let it sink in for a few hours, a few days; then explore the texture of the feeling the boundary walking has created for you. Can you sense an element of domesticity? Is there a different feeling in those places where the houses are newer?

I personally find it very helpful to have a journal to work through these things. There is something about struggling to find the language to communicate what's inside that forces you to look even closer at it than you would normally.

Getting to know the Land - Foraging

Yes, you did understand correctly!

There's nothing quite like foraging to let the landscape sink in, both literally and metaphorically speaking.

Get yourself a good guidebook, a course if you can is even better, and get put there and find what edibles grow on your doorstep. If you're unsure it goes without saying: don't eat it! But after a while even he scarediest of cats will learn to recognise some edibles. Fruit is certainly one of the easiest things to learn. Mabey's 'Food for Free' is a good place to start ( though some of what he decides is edible I've never been at all keen to try - cleavers?! Eeew) . Even if you can't bring yourself to the eating side of things, just learning what things are and where they can be found brings you closer to the living reality of the land.

Lammas is celebrated by lots of Pagans, but it was never something that had any real meaning to me. And, let's face it, if it's not real then what is the point? That changed for me when I first started foraging as a means to find the Spirit of Place. 

Lammas, Anglo-saxon in origin, is Hlaf mass, or the loaf mass. Essentially a harvest festival. But living in a world that has little to do with harvests I didn't really get why there were three harvest celebrations in the Neo-pagan calendar (a post for another time), and Lammas in particular didn't stand out. 

When I started my foraging adventures it dawned on me that in my part of the world (very much an Anglo-Saxon area) Lammas coincides with the time that the trees are giving over their ripened fruit. Now even a little googling will tell you that Lammas is also known as the festival of first fruits. 

*light bulb moment*

Are you surprised at how very dense I can be sometimes?

And suddenly Lammas has a very real meaning to me. Around about Lammas you will probably find me making fruit leathers from wild plums... Yum!

Now while you're at it, watch out for other notable plants you see. Go home, find our what they are, and what they do...

... And obviously make a map! Where are all the apple trees? Where are the cobnuts? Where can you find comfrey growing wild? All these little things slowly build up your awareness of the land, and almost without you noticing it you start to become more sensitive to the Spirit of Place.

Connecting with the land - Mapping

Getting a sense of the Spirit of Place is something to do layer by layer. I shan't insult your intelligence by writing a long winded post that tells you to go spend time in a place. You've already been doing that.

One of the most helpful things I found when building up my feel for a place was mapping. 

By which I mean drawing my own maps. Not just the one, but a fair few, with different aims. Here is a list of some of the map exercises I set myself that I found gave more depth when trying to sense my home town.

1. My very first map I made was of places of importance, places that felt special to me, that made me take notice. Don't worry too much about being accurate with scale. Rather than label these places on my map according to what they might be called in reality, I named these places for how they made me feel and why they were important.

Give it a go! Maybe some places you can name easily, where as others will have you pondering for ages. There's no need to rush.

2. The second map I made I decided to look at the physical area of the immediately local land. Where are the rivers? The flood plain? Where are the forest, or beaches or fens? Where are the valleys and the high points?

When you are next out walking around, can you remember any of these details and orientate yourself within the physicality of the land? Stop at given points in your day and see if these physical pointers in the landscape can tell you which way is east. You need to be familiar with the land to build up a sense of it.

3. One of my favourite maps to draw was my map of my town in the past. You'll need to do a bit of research for this map! Use what ever resources you can get hold of. I spent hours looking at local history books O.S maps and archaeological reports at the local library, then I threw myself in to marking locations that seemed relevant to me. Are there any ancient church yards? How about barrows? Has there been an ancient horse sacrifice discovered? Ancient wells? Find those places that were important once upon a time. Is there any continuity? What do the places look and feel like today? Rather than look at each site on this map independently, look at the as a whole. See if there is anything significant to their placing, is there anything significant in the physical landscape going on too (a river confluence for example)? Consider why people in times distance chose this particular place for a barrow, or an iron-smelting site. And never immediately disregard anything as unimportant - for example, even metal working had its religious connotations in the British iron-age.

For me this was by far this richest map I drew. There is something I personally find incredibly moving, and thus a source of connection, about discovering the people this land knew such a very long time ago. 

4. The last map I want to mention was my "homeland map". For this I spent more time considering than I actually did drawing. I wanted to consider the wider area that I inhabit. Where does it wtop feeling like home? This was as much about what was in my heart as what was in the land. For me I found it was basically the counties of Norfolk and most of Suffolk, and a large part of Cambridgeshire. This is where I aligned myself with. Once that was decided I repeated #2 and #3 again but on my new, larger scale, and considered my 'homeland' as a whole.

Happy mapping!