Book of Leaves

It seems like my post with the Brighid imagery struck a real chord with people. One of my friends went as far as to call me this afternoon and thank me for addressing the concept of deity yoga in a CR context. The person has been doing work of this sort for a while but, as with so many things in CR, didn't dare mention it in public for fear of being taken to task over it. I don't like the stifling atmosphere that has been created around CR, where people are afraid to say anything that could possibly be construed as "not Celtic" because they know they are going to be hassled over it.

An orthodoxy of fear has already evolved within the community and it's not pretty. Yet when people talk privately to me about their own practices, so often I see people doing wonderful, innovative things. I see people whose practices have touched upon shared inspirations without any real discussion of it, manifesting in everything from a shared gnosis that Airmid has associations with moss agate to the idea of working with iconic images and using them to understand and embody deity in a manner similar to eastern deity yoga practices.

When people are afraid to talk about what they're getting there's no reason to believe that CR as a community or even as an individual practice is going to evolve. People are afraid to write ritual because they're afraid of violating unstated guidelines or offending other practitioners. They're afraid of doing it "wrong" at least in part because no actual "right" way has yet been articulated, but we've certainly seen the social penalties for disagreement within the community.

Aisling and archaeology. It's a phrase I've been using since the beginning of my involvement with this, back when I founded the Nemeton discussion list. Vision and history as equals, as equally necessary. Both must be measured against the other. Without history we have nothing to support our practice. Without vision, history is sterile dust. We are denying ourselves a rich and engaging colloquy about practice and community when we stifle outlying perceptions and voices -- and yet so much of the task of the fili is to walk within those mists, to dwell in those boundary places between tribes and perceptions and worlds.

I see so many innovative, fascinating people being cut out of reconstructionist Pagan communities for not playing along with an increasingly conservative orthodoxy, and it disturbs me profoundly. We need the mystics, the poets, the visionaries. We need the comparativists and the syncretists and the folks working in multiple traditions. We need the people working with the An-déithe as much as we need the ones working with the Déithe. We need the people who are walking the edges, even if they (and I include myself in this) sometimes make false steps -- how will we find the path through the darkness if we don't put one foot in front of the other and correct for errors when they happen? Is it only acceptable "to boldly go" on a tv screen with big-budget special effects and a nice, safe script?

We need more experimentation, not less. We need to envision our deities and embody them, to examine the virtues and practice them, to speak poetic words that push the boundaries of our knowledge and leave us gasping at the edge of the abyss. Standing on the bedrock of the past, we must cut new stone and build new temples to our deities. With the seeds of trees lying withered, we must plant new groves on the nurse logs of tradition. My vision and articulation of CR has always been a reconstruction of the path suited to our time and our place, based on the threads and patterns we can find but woven in colorful new cloth. The deities live and grow and learn even as we do. They are not static, changeless images bypassed by time.

One of our virtues is courage. We need to have the courage to bring forth our visions, to speak of our work so that we won't feel so alone with our insights and our challenges. I see too many good people stifled by our community's fears of mysticism and direct engagement with deity, of being "wrong", of looking foolish, of being different.

Even the geilta met in Gleann Bolcain to ease their loneliness and share their visions. Should we settle for less?